Greene Naftali presents Sophie von Hellermann's eighth solo exhibition, "After a Dream," featuring pairs of figures drawn from literature, art history, the artist's personal acquaintances, and imaginative constructs. The show explores creative relationships through the charged dynamic of the couple, presenting narrative chimeras that examine different forms of alignment and connection.
Roberto Lugo has unveiled a monumental 20ft-tall urn titled *Capicú de Cariño (I Heard It Both Ways)* (2026) in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park, as part of his exhibition *Alfarero del Barrio (Village Potter)* commissioned by the Madison Square Park Conservancy. The urn features portraits of prominent Puerto Rican figures including Bad Bunny, Sonia Sotomayor, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Roberto Clemente, and the artist’s own parents, Gilberto and Maribel Lugo. The installation also includes a 15ft-tall orange fire hydrant sculpture, *Para Los Días Caliente (This Is For The Hot Ones)* (2026), and several planters and domino tables, all designed to invite public interaction and community engagement.
Aicon Art in New York has opened its first exhibition dedicated entirely to Indian miniature painting, titled "Courtly Visions: Indian Miniature Painting." The show features a breadth of works created between roughly 1630 and the early 19th century, showcasing the intricate detail and narrative scenes characteristic of the genre. It aims to highlight the diverse styles and themes that emerged from various royal courts across the Indian subcontinent.
Hollywood star Johnny Depp is releasing limited-edition prints of two personal watercolors originally painted in the early 2000s at his French estate, Le Hameau. The collection, titled "Let the Light in," includes a self-portrait called *Add the Light* and a rose painting *A Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose*, a tribute to his daughter Lily-Rose. Each work is offered in 195 signed editions through London's Castle Fine Art on July 18, priced individually at £2,950 framed or £2,500 unframed. The paintings reflect Depp's life with former partner Vanessa Paradis and their children in the south of France.
Authorities confirmed that a body recovered from the Hudson River near Poughkeepsie is that of 32-year-old Ian Jones, the boyfriend of artist and model Tali Lennox. Jones went missing after their kayak overturned; Lennox was rescued by a passing boat after 20 minutes in the water. The cause of death was drowning, and neither was wearing a life vest. Jones was a photographer and model who appeared on the cover of L'Officiel Hommes and walked in the Berluti runway show. Lennox, daughter of Annie Lennox and Uri Fruchtmann, posted a tribute on Instagram calling Jones her "soul mate" and "partner in crime & creativity." The couple had collaborated on a portrait series called "Street Kids," featuring homeless youth from the East Village, and Lennox had her first solo show at Catherine Ahnell Gallery in Soho this past spring.
Lotus L. Kang's latest exhibition, "Already," is on view at 52 Walker in New York through June 7, 2025. The Brooklyn-based Canadian artist transforms the gallery into a diasporic memoryscape using steel greenhouses, mixed-media paintings, sculpture, and found objects like oversized kelp knots and soju bottles. The show takes its title from a poem in Kim Hyesoon's "Autobiography of Death" (2016), and Kang's installation explores themes of presence and absence, memory, and the transmutative qualities of photography and film. In an interview, Kang discusses how Korean poetry helps her understand her own origins as a Korean-Canadian gyopo, and how translation—both linguistic and material—shapes her work.
The article excerpts a book about Indian artist Lalitha Lajmi, exploring her creative struggles, loneliness, and distinctive use of blue and red in watercolors. It draws from her dream journals and interviews, describing how she often painted herself in red against blue landscapes, symbolizing desire and isolation, and how her works resemble raw underpaintings that reveal subconscious imagery.
Gerda Scheepers presents "Mallarmé’s Pillow" at blank projects in Cape Town, running from March 26 to May 9, 2026. The exhibition includes 27 images documenting the show, with a press release and checklist available.
The Campbell River Art Gallery (CRAG) is presenting a new group exhibition titled "Sacred in All Forms: Artists Reclaim the Divine Feminine Across Bodies, Lands, and Worlds," curated by Jenelle Pasiechnik. The show features four contemporary artists—Sandeep Johal, Xiaojing Yan, Kourtney Jackson, and Aaron McIntosh—whose works in textiles, video, sculpture, installation, and mixed media explore the sacred in everyday life, the body, relationships, and nature. The exhibition runs from May 7 to August 8, 2026, with an opening reception on May 9. Public programs including artist talks, workshops, and community conversations will accompany the show.
Two solo exhibitions by artists Josefina Auslender and Billy Gerard Frank are on view in Woolwich and Portland, Maine, through mid-May. Auslender's "La Chimera de Oro (The Golden Chimera)" at Sarah Bouchard gallery features new ink-on-paper drawings exploring themes of artistic truth and the seductive danger of commercial success, while Frank's show at the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design (ICA at MECA&D) addresses the legacy of slavery through multimedia installations.
Sixteen artists have been commissioned to create original works for "Forged," a group exhibition at Drummond Studio Gallery honoring the legacy of Philip Simmons. Simmons was a master ironworker and blacksmith whose ornamental gates and balconies are definitive features of Charleston’s architectural landscape. The exhibition, which opens March 6, features local artists including Demetrius Bing, Riivo Kruuk, and Jonathan Green, and aims to highlight the cultural significance of the Simmons home and workshop.
A posthumous exhibition titled "Remembrance: A Tribute to the Work of Dinh Q. Lê" is on view at 10 Chancery Lane in Hong Kong from March 20 to May 23, 2026. Curated by David Elliott, the show features key works by the late Vietnamese artist, including his series of manipulated photographs that slice and weave the iconic 1972 image "The Terror of War" into pixelated grids, alongside pieces like "Skin on Skin Black Mixed No. 9" that critique the influx of Western pornography into Vietnam after internet legalization.
Zineb Sedira has been selected for the Tate Britain commission, creating her largest UK installation to date, titled *When Words Fall Silent, Cinema Speaks…*, on view until January 2027. The site-specific work in the museum's Duveen Galleries pays tribute to radical African cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, highlighting Algeria's role as a revolutionary hub. Sedira recreates the Parisian cafes of her childhood, featuring Scopitone machines that play short music films, and draws on the legacy of the Cinémathèque Algérienne and the 1969 Pan-African Festival.
Boston Art Review (BAR) has published an article examining how Maine-based cultural institutions are approaching the American Semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of the United States in 2026. The piece explores the programming, exhibitions, and institutional strategies being developed by museums and art centers across Maine to mark this milestone, focusing on how they interpret American history and identity through contemporary art.
The article features an interview between NMWA Assistant Curator Hannah Shambroom and collector Komal Shah about the exhibition 'Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection.' The show, drawn from Shah and her husband Gaurav Garg's collection, presents approximately 80 works by women artists exploring abstraction, including pieces by Howardena Pindell, Sarah Sze, Kapwani Kiwanga, and Jacqueline Humphries. Shah discusses her transition from a technology career to art collecting, her focus on women working in abstraction, and how the exhibition emerged after publishing a book on the collection in 2023, with curation by Cecilia Alemani.
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) announced a major gift of 1,986 photographs from Joy of Giving Something, Inc. (JGS), a nonprofit founded by financier Howard Stein. The donation includes works by over 450 artists, spanning the 19th century to the present, with highlights such as rare daguerreotypes by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, prints by Gustave Le Gray and Eugène Atget, and significant holdings in American documentary photography from figures like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. The gift follows an earlier 2023 donation of portfolios and series, and positions VMFA to open five new photography galleries in 2027 as part of its expansion.
Boston Art Review (BAR) has published an article titled “Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone” that reconstructs the life of the 19th-century sculptor Edmonia Lewis across fragmented historical records. The piece examines Lewis’s career, her neoclassical marble works, and the challenges of piecing together her biography due to limited archival materials.
The National Gallery is displaying high-quality reproductions of masterpieces by Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, J.M.W. Turner, and Vincent van Gogh in town centres across the UK, starting with Croydon. The three-year initiative, called Art on Your Doorstep, places artworks in locations such as Croydon Minster and Queen’s Gardens, and will expand to Torquay, Derry, Birstall, and the Isle of Wight in 2026. Local residents help select the pieces and contribute creative responses, embedding the project within each community.
The 2026 Venice Biennale is plagued by controversy and structural issues. Curator Koyo Kouoh died of cancer in 2025, leaving her team to execute the main exhibition "In Minor Keys" without her. The Biennale's jury resigned after refusing to judge entries from countries charged with war crimes, and media coverage during preview week focused on protests against the Israeli and Russian pavilions rather than the art. The sprawling exhibition features 96 national pavilions and 110 artists, with works ranging from Daniel Lind-Ramos's found-material figures to María Magdalena Campos-Pons's tribute to Toni Morrison and Kouoh.
Five museums across the globe are opening exhibitions this month that celebrate women who have shaped art and culture. The shows include Björk's multidisciplinary "Echolalia" at the National Gallery of Iceland in Reykjavík, Iris van Herpen's New York exhibition, Marina Abramović's historic showing at Venice's Gallerie dell'Accademia, the Tate Modern's first major Frida Kahlo retrospective, and centenary tributes to Marilyn Monroe. The article notes that despite women making up 51% of visual artists worldwide, their work remains underrepresented in public institutions, with 78% of London galleries showing more male than female artists.
The Floyd Memorial Library in Greenport, New York, has opened a new exhibition titled "Stow Wengenroth + The Flacks: The Greenport Group," featuring works by lithographer Stow Wengenroth, his wife Edith Flack Ackley, and her sister Marjorie Flack. The show includes Wengenroth's lithographs, watercolors, and drawings, alongside Ackley's handmade dolls and books, and Flack's children's books, many on loan from the private collection of Joanna Lane. The exhibition opened on April 24 and highlights the artistic legacy of these former Greenport residents.
A monumental portrait of late Venice Biennale curator Koyo Kouoh, created by American artist Derrick Adams, has been unveiled in Venice ahead of the Biennale's public opening. The collage, titled *Heavy is the head that wears the crown* (2026), is displayed near the Arsenale until September 24. Kouoh, who died unexpectedly in May 2025 at age 57, was the first African woman to curate the Biennale. Adams' work uses golden hues and flattened forms to celebrate Kouoh's legacy, referencing the pressures of leadership and the joy she brought to the art world.
Boston Art Review (BAR) has published an article titled “Persona” Crafts a Lineage of Performed Identity, exploring how contemporary artists use persona and self-performance to trace a lineage of identity construction. The piece examines works by artists who adopt alter egos or theatrical roles to challenge fixed notions of selfhood, drawing connections to historical precedents in art and culture.
Designboom has published its monthly roundup of must-see art exhibitions around the world for May 2026. Featured shows include Nick Doyle's 'Collective Hallucinations' at Perrotin, Nicola Turner's 'Time’s Scythe' in collaboration with Annely Juda Fine Art at YSP, and Katharina Grosse's 'I Set Out, I Walked Fast' at White Cube. The article also includes a tribute to Georg Baselitz, the influential German painter who recently passed away at 88, and a guide to the 61st Venice Art Biennale 2026.
The Marmottan Monet Museum in Paris has opened a major retrospective of Giovanni Segantini, an Italian painter known for his Symbolist and Divisionist Alpine landscapes. Titled "I Want to See My Mountains," the exhibition runs from April 29 to August 16, 2026, and features over 60 works including oil paintings, pastels, and drawings, plus around 30 works on paper from European collections. Curated by Gabriella Belli and Diana Segantini, the show traces Segantini's artistic journey from his early days in Italy to his time in the Engadine Valley in Switzerland, where he found inspiration in mountain landscapes. The exhibition is divided into ten sections and also includes a contemporary tribute to Anselm Kiefer, whose works create a dialogue with Segantini's vision.
The Portland Art Museum is launching a program to bring on a team of Native American co-curators to revitalize its Native American art collection, led by curator Kathleen Ash-Milby. The museum has partnered with multi-disciplinary artist and scholar Phil Cash Cash, a member of the Nez Perce and Cayuse tribes, who will contribute Indigenous perspectives to the collection's evolution. Cash Cash, who holds a PhD in Anthropology and Linguistics and co-founded the Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts, gave a talk to the museum's Native American Art Council in early 2026, marking a new collaborative phase.
The iconic Rocky Balboa statue, long stationed outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), is being moved indoors for a new exhibition titled "Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments." Opening this weekend, the show examines how the fictional boxer and his statue became a symbol of Philadelphia's identity, tracing over two millennia of artists' engagement with boxing and celebrity. The exhibition includes works by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol alongside the bronze statue, which attracts roughly 4 million visitors annually. After the exhibit ends in August, the city's statue will be permanently relocated to the top of the museum steps, replacing a temporary loan from Sylvester Stallone's private collection. A new statue honoring legendary Philadelphia boxer "Smokin'" Joe Frazier is being built at the statue's original location.
RM, the leader of K-pop group BTS, will present his personal art collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) in an exhibition titled "RM x SFMOMA," running from October 3 to February 7. The show features around 200 works from RM’s collection and SFMOMA’s holdings, many never before shown in the US, and is co-curated by RM, SFMOMA curatorial project manager America Castillo, and assistant curator Kim Hyo-eun. Key Korean artists in RM’s collection include Yun Hyong-keun, Park Rehyun, Kwon Ok-yon, Kim Yun-shin, To Sang-bong, and Chang Ucchin, while SFMOMA contributes works by Kim Whan-ki, Mark Rothko, Agnes Martin, Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Paul Klee.
The art world mourns the passing of Melvin Edwards, a pioneering American sculptor who died on March 30, 2026. Known for his mastery of steel, iron, and barbed wire, Edwards rose to prominence in the 1960s with works that balanced formal abstraction with the heavy symbolism of chains and industrial materials. His career was marked by significant milestones, including being the first African American sculptor to have a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum in 1970 and his long-standing presence in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
White Cube Paris is hosting a major retrospective of Park Seo-Bo’s 'Ecriture' paintings, covering five decades of the artist’s career. The exhibition notably features the debut of his 'Newspaper Ecritures' in Paris—a series he originally conceived in the city during the late 1970s—presented alongside the final works completed before his death in 2023.