Lowry Hill Gallery is hosting an exhibition titled “Annemarie’s Vision” featuring the work of artist Kirsten Tradowsky. The show is presented in partnership with Minnesota Women's Press, highlighting Tradowsky's artistic exploration of vision and narrative.
Carole A. Feuerman's sculpture "Miniature Serena (with Blue-Green Tube)" (2021) is being offered for sale. The work is an oil on resin piece with 24K gold leaf cap, table-top scale, measuring 10 x 17 x 8 inches, from a variant of 10. Feuerman, born in 1945, is an American sculptor and author credited with co-founding the Hyperrealist movement in the late 1970s, known for figurative works of swimmers and dancers. Her public sculptures have been displayed globally, including at Central Park, the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, the Venice Biennale, and the State Hermitage Museum. She has received multiple awards, including the Medici Award, and her works are in the permanent collections of 31 museums and owned by notable figures such as Steven A. Cohen, former President Bill Clinton, and Dr. Henry Kissinger.
D Lan Galleries is presenting 'Significant', a major exhibition of secondary-market Australian First Nations art, running from 14 May to 27 June 2026 across its spaces in Melbourne, Sydney, and New York. The show features the Carey Lyon and Jo Crosby Collection, including rare early Papunya paintings from 1971–1972, such as Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi's 'Man Dreaming 1972' and Kaapa Mbitjana Tjampitjinpa's 'Honey Ant Travelling Dreaming 1971', alongside later works by Emily Kam Kngwarray, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori, and Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu.
Gala Porras-Kim presents her first exhibition at kurimanzutto in Mexico City, titled "Future spaces replicate earlier spaces," running from April 11 to June 13, 2026. The show brings together works that examine how museums and conservation institutions reclassify objects removed from their original contexts, using reconstruction and resituating to explore their spatial, material, and temporal conditions. Central to the exhibition is the installation "The motion of an alluvial record" (2024), which recreates the humid marshland atmosphere of the Yucatán Peninsula inside the gallery, contrasting with the controlled climates of museums. Other works include drawings replicating wall decorations from the Techinantitla complex in Teotihuacan, which were fragmented and sold on the black market, and graphite drawings of objects by artist Brígido Lara, whose "original interpretations" of Totonac ritual clay objects were mistakenly catalogued as Pre-Hispanic artifacts in major museums.
Gallery Isabelle, founded by Isabelle de Caters in Dubai's Al Quoz district, celebrated its 20th anniversary in April 2026 with a 20-day exhibition titled "Move, Pause, Return." The show unveiled one work per day before bringing all 20 artists together for a final gathering. De Caters, who opened her first space B21 Gallery in 2006 when contemporary art in the Gulf was seen as a passing fad, reflects on two decades of building a gallery through instinct, long-term artist relationships, and organic growth rather than commercial dictates.
The May 2026 issue of The Burlington Magazine (n°1478, vol. CLXVIII) presents a rich array of scholarly articles, exhibition reviews, and book reviews covering European art from the medieval period to the 20th century. Highlights include Laure Boyer's study of two photographs of Victorine Meurent linked to Manet's 'Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe' and 'Olympia', Axel Moulinier's analysis of Watteau's copies after old masters, and Richard Thomson's essay on a century of Monet in print. Exhibition reviews cover shows on Monet's Étretat coast, Orazio Gentileschi, Cornelius Jonson van Ceulen, Gainsborough, Seurat, Italian Symbolism, and Iliazd. Book reviews range from medieval art and Pietro Bellotti to Helene Schjerfbeck, Roberto Matta, and contemporary jewelry at the Dallas Museum of Art.
The Metropolitan Opera has staged Gabriela Lena Frank's first opera, *El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego*, which imagines a supernatural reunion between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera on Día de los Muertos. The production, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and starring Isabel Leonard and Carlos Álvarez, uses magical realism to explore the couple's turbulent relationship, though it largely sidelines their Communist activism and Kahlo's queer affairs in favor of a simplified reconciliation narrative.
Cultured magazine asked 12 European collectors how they discover new talent, timed to the 61st Venice Biennale. Collectors like Nicole Saikalis Bay, Amélie du Chalard, Belma Gaudio, and Laurent Asscher share their personal approaches—ranging from emotional resonance and dialogue with existing works to long-term obsession with an artist before acquiring a piece. The responses reveal a diversity of methods, from instinct-driven buying to conceptual and technical evaluation.
Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo, an entrepreneur, investor, and Harvard-educated lawyer, is profiled for her pioneering work at the intersection of frontier technology and art. A former Princeton academic and one of the youngest board members of the Shed in New York, Kuo began collecting art as a child with a jade gourd from her grandfather's museum of Asian carvings. She was an early entrant into blockchain in 2011, co-founded OpenSea 2.0, and now advises frontier tech companies like Orchid Health. Kuo believes technologies such as AI and robotics can enhance human creativity, enabling individualized artworks, autonomous creations, and robot performances, rather than replacing human cultural meaning.
The 61st Venice Biennale, themed “In Minor Keys” by late curator Koyo Kouoh, emphasizes quiet reflection over spectacle. A collateral exhibition titled “Fermata: Hong Kong in Venice,” curated by the Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA), runs through November 22, 2026, and features two Hong Kong-born artists: Kingsley Ng and Angel Hui. Ng’s installation *Laundry Nocturne* (2026) uses projections and sound to connect the shared laundry-drying traditions of Venice and Hong Kong, while Hui’s *I Would Like to Open a Window for You* (2026) incorporates wrought-iron window frames crafted with local metalsmiths. Both artists explore everyday experiences, memory, and quiet emotions, aligning with the Biennale’s call for a slower, more reflective engagement with art.
Finland's largest art museum, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art (Emma), has launched a radical new artist support model under director Krist Gruijthuijsen. The program commits to four artists—P. Staff, Tarik Kiswanson, Jenna Sutela, and Eglė Budvytytė—over several years, providing financial backing through acquisitions, production support, a part-time stipend, and health insurance. It will culminate in mid-career survey exhibitions in 2029 and 2030, which the museum plans to tour with partner institutions. Three of the artists are currently showing at the Venice Biennale with Emma's support.
The New Art Dealers Alliance opened the 12th edition of NADA New York on May 14, 2026, at Chelsea’s Starrett-Lehigh building, coinciding with Frieze and 1-54 fairs nearby. The fair featured 110 exhibitors, including 51 first-time galleries from New York to Shanghai, with standout presentations by Andrae Green and Cyle Warner at Forgotten Lands, Ruth Owens at Voltz Clarke, and Keiko Narahashi at Tappeto Volante Gallery. This year’s edition emphasized ceramics and fiber art, marking a shift from recent years’ focus on figurative painting.
The National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC, has received a landmark $116 million donation from the Mitchell P. Rales Family Foundation to permanently endow its Across the Nation lending programme. Launched in spring 2025, the initiative has already reached around 900,000 visitors at ten partner institutions, including the Anchorage Museum and the Mint Museum, by loaning works from the NGA's collection at no cost—covering transport, installation, insurance, and marketing. The next cycle will run from autumn 2027 to 2029, with new partners to be announced.
Hyperallergic profiles the work of South Korean textile artist Lee ShinJa, whose handwoven artworks are described as 'portals' that bridge traditional craft and contemporary abstraction. The article highlights her use of traditional Korean weaving techniques to create layered, ethereal pieces that evoke both physical and metaphysical spaces.
Wenn Muscheln zu Waffen werden
Swedish artist Lotta Antonsson, born in 1963, presents her exhibition "I am Everything" at Fotografiska in Stockholm, featuring around 50 works that repurpose found black-and-white photographs from 1960s and 1970s fashion and lifestyle magazines. She overlays these images of women in objectifying poses with shells, stones, and crystals, creating assemblages that obscure faces or add threatening details like crystal vampire teeth on actresses Ali MacGraw and Jane Fonda. The show opened during the Stockholm Art Fair and draws on Antonsson's extensive archive, including East German erotic magazines sourced from Berlin flea markets.
Christie's is holding its 20/21 auction week in New York from May 9–22, 2026, featuring seven live auctions and two online sales at its Rockefeller Center galleries. Highlights include the dedicated sale "MASTERPIECES: The Private Collection of S.I. Newhouse" (led by Constantin Brancusi's *Danaïde* and Jackson Pollock's *Number 7A, 1948*), the Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale, and "Defined Space: The Collection of Henry S. McNeil, Jr.," which focuses on Minimalist works by Donald Judd and Dan Flavin. Other consignors include prominent collectors Agnes Gund, Marian Goodman, and Joanna Carson. The public can view works for free from May 9–21.
The article reports on several developments in the art world: the Centre des Monuments Nationaux (CMN) loses management of Mont-Saint-Michel; the Venice Biennale opens amid controversy; a law on the restitution of cultural property looted during colonization is definitively adopted; the V&A East museum targets younger audiences; in Giverny, the Monet legacy does not benefit everyone; and the market for the Nabis artists is becoming more structured.
The latest issue of Le Journal des Arts (No. 677, May 15, 2026) leads with the opening of the Venice Biennale amid a tense climate. Other top stories include the final adoption of a French law on the restitution of cultural property looted during colonization, the V&A East museum's strategy to attract younger audiences, tensions in Giverny over the uneven economic benefits of Monet's legacy, and a market analysis showing the structuring of the Nabis art market.
Jacques Gairard, a figure in the French art world, has died. The announcement appears in Le Journal des Arts, which also covers the opening of the Venice Biennale amid controversy, the final adoption of a law on the restitution of cultural property looted during colonization, the V&A East's focus on young audiences, the uneven economic impact of Monet's legacy in Giverny, and the structuring of the Nabis art market.
Sales in the decorative-art category—including design objects, furniture, jewelry, and watches—reached approximately $3.9 billion in 2025, a 7.1% increase from 2024 but still well below the 2023 peak of $5.7 billion. The number of lots sold fell by 11.9%, yet the average price rose 21.6% to $15,247, indicating a shift toward trophy buying. A standout was François-Xavier Lalanne's 1976 Hippopotamus bar, which sold for $31.4 million at Sotheby's after a 26-minute bidding war, setting an auction record. Sotheby's led the category with $1.1 billion in sales, followed by Christie's at $1 billion and Phillips at $369.7 million. Europe remained the largest market at $1.4 billion, while North America overtook Asia for second place with $1.2 billion.
A new biopic titled *Leonora in the Morning Light* chronicles the life of British surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, who fled her aristocratic upbringing in London to join the surrealist circle in Paris. The film, adapted from Elena Poniatowska's biographical novel, follows Carrington from her affair with the older Max Ernst through her mental health crisis in Spain and eventual settlement in Mexico, where she created art on her own terms. Olivia Vinall portrays Carrington with a fierce, uncompromising spirit, though the film is criticized for uneven storytelling and clunky dialogue.
New York City's spring auction week generated approximately $2.1 billion in sales across Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips, more than doubling the $1 billion total from May 2024. Christie's led with a $1.3 billion haul, driven by the $630.8 million S.I. Newhouse collection and record prices for works by Jackson Pollock ($181.2 million) and Constantin Brancusi ($107.6 million). Sotheby's netted around $737 million, including a Rothko from the Robert Mnuchin collection, while Phillips rebounded with $115.2 million in a white-glove sale, its strongest New York spring result since 2022.
Sotheby’s Modern evening auction on 19 May in New York achieved $303.3m with fees, falling within its pre-sale estimate of $244m to $322.8m. The standout lot was Henri Matisse’s 1919 painting *La Chaise lorraine*, which sold for $48.4m after a ten-minute bidding battle, becoming the second most valuable Matisse painting at auction. Other highlights included Alberto Giacometti’s *La Clairière (Composition avec neuf figures)* at $23.1m, Pablo Picasso’s *Arlequin (Buste, 1909)* at $42.6m, and a Mark Rothko untitled work on paper at $9.27m. The sale also saw strong demand for works by female Surrealists Leonor Fini and Leonora Carrington, while a Rodin sculpture was passed and a Gottlieb painting was withdrawn.
Christie's held a record-setting evening sale on May 18, 2025, that generated over $1 billion, featuring a promotional video starring Nicole Kidman. Jackson Pollock's drip painting "Number 7A, 1948" sold for $181.2 million, nearly tripling the artist's previous auction record, while Constantin Brancusi's bronze bust "Danaïde" (c. 1913) fetched $107.6 million, becoming the second most expensive sculpture ever sold. The works came from the collection of late magazine magnate S.I. Newhouse, and a Rothko from Agnes Gund's collection also set a new artist record at $98.4 million.
Bruno Bischofberger, who served as Jean-Michel Basquiat's exclusive worldwide dealer from 1982 until the artist's death in 1988, reflects on Basquiat's life and legacy in an excerpt from the forthcoming book *Basquiat: The World of Jean-Michel*, published by Assouline. Bischofberger contrasts Basquiat's raw, politically charged approach with Andy Warhol's detached, commercial style, and recounts personal memories of Basquiat's visits to Switzerland, where he absorbed everything from visual art to folk art and design.
The article analyzes the shifting dynamics of the global art market, reporting that regions outside the traditional 'big three' hubs of the US, UK, and China have increased their market share from 17% in 2015 to 24% in 2025. This shift is driven by nationally protective regulations like Brexit and tariffs, which have stifled the free circulation of contemporary art. While the US market remains dominant at 44%, countries such as South Korea, Switzerland, Japan, and Australia have seen growth, and emerging cultural energy is noted in places like Bangkok, Warsaw, Margate, and Qatar.
Artist Bouke de Vries has created five unique sculptural porcelain bottles for Dries Van Noten's unisex perfume Soie Malaquais, which launched in 2022. The bottles, priced at £6,000 each, are sold at the designer's London and New York stores, with a limited-edition series also available online. De Vries, known for reassembling broken china fragments into dynamic objects, designed the bottles to reflect the fragrance's warm notes of chestnut, rose, blackcurrant, and cardamom, developed by perfumer Marie Salamagne.
A former senior South Korean prosecutor, Kim Sang-min, has been convicted on appeal for allegedly gifting a painting by renowned artist Lee Ufan to former first lady Kim Keon Hee in exchange for political support ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections. The Seoul High Court overturned an earlier acquittal, sentencing Kim to two years in prison (suspended for three years) for bribery, plus a separate suspended sentence for illegal political donations. The case took a strange turn when Kim's defense argued the artwork, titled *From Dots (No. 800298)* and valued at 140 million won ($95,500), was a forgery worth less than $700—a claim the court rejected after physically examining the piece and consulting experts.
Four artworks recovered from the 1MDB scandal—by Picasso, Miró, Balthus, and Maurice Utrillo—have gone on public display for the first time at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission headquarters in Putrajaya. The paintings were repatriated from New York after being traced through Sotheby’s and shipped back to Malaysia on April 14. They are part of a broader art trail linked to the massive financial fraud, with Malaysian officials framing the display as an act of restitution rather than an art event.
The article, part of the Artnet Intelligence Report: Year Ahead 2026, analyzes art market performance by price bracket in 2025. The $1 million-to-$10 million range was the strongest segment, with sales totaling $3.5 billion—a 20.8% increase from 2024. Sales above $10 million rose 36.1% to $2.3 billion, boosted by high-priced masterpieces at New York's November auctions. The $100,000-to-$1 million bracket saw $3.2 billion in sales, up 6%. Meanwhile, works under $10,000 and in the $10,000-to-$100,000 range grew less than 1%, indicating cautious buyer behavior.