Artists and Gulf royalty top ArtReview Power 100 list

ArtReview has released its 2025 Power 100 list, ranking the most influential figures in the art world over the past year. Artists dominate the top ten, with Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama taking the first place for using his art profits to build institutions and community spaces in Tamale. Other top artists include Wael Shawky, Ho Tzu Nyen, Amy Sherald, Kerry James Marshall, Forensic Architecture, and Wolfgang Tillmans. Gulf royalty also feature prominently: Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani of Qatar ranks second, and Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi of Sharjah ranks third, reflecting the region's growing art-world influence. The list also includes academic Saidiya Hartman as a "thinker" in eighth place.

Spanish Artist Juan Saliquet Explores Urban Soul in Art Exhibition

Spanish artist Juan Saliquet opened a solo exhibition titled "Archaeology of a City: Almaty" at Esentai Gallery in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on September 5, running until October 15. The show, organized by the Embassy of Spain in Kazakhstan and ART FUTURE, culminates Saliquet's international residency with the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID). Through photography, Saliquet captures Almaty's urban details—architecture, graffiti, reflections, and street fragments—treating the city as a living archive layered with memory and identity.

Hera Büyüktaşçıyan Channels Istanbul’s Haunted Histories

Hera Büyüktaşçıyan Channels Istanbul’s Haunted Histories

Hera Büyüktaşçıyan has opened a major solo exhibition, 'I Know You As Her', at Istanbul's Arter museum. The show features new and existing works, including sculptures, installations, and watercolors, that explore submerged histories and spectral presences within the city's urban fabric, particularly around the historic Pera district.

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The Swiss Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale pays tribute to Lisbeth Sachs (1914–2002), one of Switzerland's first licensed women architects, by recreating her 1958 kunsthalle design inside the pavilion originally built by Bruno Giacometti. The exhibition, titled "Endgültige Form wird von der Architektin am Bau bestimmt," is curated by an all-woman team—Elena Chiavi, Kathrin Füglister, Amy Perkins, Axelle Stiefel, and Myriam Uzor—and resurrects a structure Sachs built for the 1958 Swiss Exhibition for Women's Work (SAFFA) in Zürich, of which almost no trace remains today.

Art, Public Space, and Urban Regeneration: The New Issue of the Render Newsletter Arrives

Arte, spazio pubblico e rigenerazione urbana: arriva il nuovo numero della newsletter Render (iscrivetevi!)

Artribune has announced the release of the 55th edition of its bi-weekly newsletter, Render, which focuses on public art, urban regeneration, and contemporary architecture. This latest issue features a deep dive by researcher Fabio Ciaravella into the role of public monuments in shaping societal views on peace versus war, alongside an interview with Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak regarding the Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi. Additionally, the newsletter highlights Italian urban renewal projects, the trend of repurposing abandoned cinemas, and upcoming events like Milan Design Week.

Historic Monument Honors New York's First Arabic-Speaking Community

New York City unveiled its first commemorative public artwork under Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration on April 30, honoring the historic "Little Syria" neighborhood in Manhattan's Financial District. The monument, titled "Al Qalam (The Pen): Poets in the Park," is a mosaic installation and sculpture by French-Moroccan artist Sara Ouhaddou, created over the past decade. It celebrates nine members of the enclave's literary community, including Lebanese-American poet Khalil Gibran, who co-founded the writers' association Pen Bond in 1920. The $1.6 million artwork sits in Elizabeth H. Berger Plaza, within the blocks where immigrants from Greater Syria settled in the late 19th century before being displaced by tunnel construction in the 1940s.

Henrike Naumann (1984–2026): Domestic Responsibilities

The article is a personal reflection on the work and legacy of artist Henrike Naumann, who passed away in 2026. The author, a peer from West Germany, contrasts their own upbringing with Naumann's East German background, detailing how Naumann's practice critically examined the domestic interiors and built environments of post-war Germany to explore the social and political responsibilities embedded within everyday objects and art's role as "stage design" in a fascist-leaning society.

The Ricci Oddi Gallery in Piacenza has been renovated. Here's how it changed after the work (funded by citizens)

La Galleria Ricci Oddi di Piacenza è stata rinnovata. Ecco com’è cambiata dopo i lavori (finanziati dai cittadini)

La Galleria d'Arte Moderna Ricci Oddi in Piacenza, Italy, has completed a year-long renovation and reinstallation project, reopening to the public on April 28. The work, designed pro bono by Milanese studio Lissoni & Partners and funded by citizens, restored the original architecture by Giulio Ulisse Arata, emphasizing a central panopticon and natural zenithal light. The museum remained partially open during construction, which refreshed all 22 rooms and over 1,000 square meters of space, aiming to reconnect the collection with its purpose-built building.

Il Padiglione della Gran Bretagna alla Biennale d’Arte di Venezia 2026 spiega cos’è l’appartenenza

The British Council has selected artist Lubaina Himid to represent Great Britain at the 2026 Venice Biennale. Her exhibition, titled "Predicting History: Testing Translation," will transform the British Pavilion into a large-scale installation exploring belonging, displacement, and the recreation of home in new contexts. Created in collaboration with artist Magda Stawarska, the show features multi-panel paintings and a surreal soundscape that engages with the neoclassical architecture of the pavilion. Himid, a Turner Prize winner and pioneer of the Black British Art Movement, focuses on cultural memory and identity, challenging Eurocentric narratives and highlighting overlooked Black figures in Western history.

Auction house Phillips presents highlights of the next art and design auction in Milan

La casa d’aste Phillips presenta a Milano gli highlights della prossima asta tra arte e design

Phillips auction house is presenting a selection of highlights from upcoming auctions and private sales in Milan during the city's Art Week and Salone del Mobile. The exhibition, staged in a space with architecture and furnishings by Dimoregallery and Dimoremilano, features significant Italian post-war art and design pieces, including a notable 1983 'Mappa' by Alighiero Boetti made in Kabul, works by Carla Accardi and Piero Dorazio, and a Carmen Herrera painting slated for auction in New York.

Shopping Experience: How Has the Way of Experiencing Luxury Changed?

Shopping experience: com’è cambiato il modo di vivere il lusso?

Luxury retail in Milan is undergoing a significant transformation, evolving from simple commercial spaces into 'cultural brandscapes' that blend art, design, and hospitality. Major fashion houses are redesigning their flagship stores to function as urban salons and living galleries, integrating site-specific art installations, historical architecture, and high-end gastronomy to foster community and tangible experiences in an increasingly digital world.

In Pistoia, an exhibition dedicated to the great architect and designer Ettore Sottsass

A Pistoia c’è una mostra dedicata al grande architetto e designer Ettore Sottsass

The Fondazione Pistoia Musei has inaugurated a major retrospective titled "Io sono un architetto. Ettore Sottsass" at Palazzo Buontalenti in Pistoia. Curated by Enrico Morteo, the exhibition focuses on a specific thirty-year period from 1945 to 1975, exploring the visionary designer's prolific output before the formation of the Memphis Group. The show features an extensive collection of drawings, paintings, textiles, and iconic design objects, many of which are previously unseen works sourced from the CSAC at the University of Parma.

In this Milan exhibition, the viewer can modify the spaces. The great artist-architect Gianni Pettena explains why

In questa mostra a Milano lo spettatore può modificare gli spazi. Il grande artista-architetto Gianni Pettena ci spiega perché

Gianni Pettena, a pioneer of the Italian Radical Architecture movement, has unveiled his immersive installation "Paper/Northern Lights" at the BiM urban regeneration project in Milan's Bicocca district. Originally conceived in 1971 as a pedagogical exercise at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the work consists of 49 kilometers of white paper strips hanging from the ceiling. Visitors are invited to physically interact with the installation by cutting through the paper, effectively reshaping the architectural environment and challenging traditional notions of fixed space and authorship.

Are All Crises Equal? A Conversation with MOS’s Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample by ANY

Architects Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample of the firm MOS discuss the concept of "polycrisis"—the intersection of economic, political, and ecological failures—and its impact on architectural form. The conversation highlights a growing void between the formal aesthetic project of architecture and the urgent political realities of the modern world. Sample specifically addresses how the dominance of political and regulatory restrictions in collective housing has stifled formal innovation, often reducing architecture to a mere byproduct of governance rather than a tool for social or cultural expression.

Special Edition : The Photography Show presented by AIPAD

The Photography Show presented by AIPAD, the world's longest-running photography fair, takes place April 22-26, 2025 at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. The 2026 iteration features exhibitors from around the world, including new participants like Galerie Sophie Scheidecker, Ruiz-Healy Art, and Leica Gallery New York, alongside returning galleries such as Augusta Edwards Fine Art and IBASHO. The fair introduces a new solo presentation sector called Focal Point, designed by architecture firm Oficina.la, and will host the Aperture Portfolio Prize for the first time. Over a third of exhibitors are women-led or founded, and Latin American photography is prominently featured. Events include AIPAD Talks, the AIPAD Award, and the AIPAD Lifetime Achievement Award, with MUUS returning as Lead Cultural Partner.

New Exhibition Offers Portals Into the Past, Present, and Future of Blackness

Artist Todd Gray’s solo exhibition, "Portals," at Perrotin Los Angeles features a series of complex photographic assemblages that challenge the historical relationship between Blackness and European colonialism. By stacking framed images of West African landscapes, slave forts, and Renaissance interiors, Gray creates textured collages that collapse geographic and temporal boundaries. Notable works like "Paradox of Liberty" confront the hypocrisy of Enlightenment figures like Thomas Jefferson by physically obscuring his image with the architecture of the slave trade.

Exhibition | Lulama Wolf, 'The Architecture of Memory' at THK Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

South African artist Lulama Wolf presents 'The Architecture of Memory,' an online-only exhibition hosted by THK Gallery. Wolf utilizes a distinct material language of pigmented sand and acrylic to create tactile surfaces that reference the weathered walls of domestic and sacred spaces. Her work moves beyond simple representation, using geometric abstraction and earth-based materials to explore the intersection of personal history and collective generational memory.

Artist to Watch: Erin M. Riley’s Tapestries Examine Hard-Hitting Themes While Breaking Down Barriers

Brooklyn-based artist Erin M. Riley is preparing to unveil her latest and largest weavings in a solo exhibition at New York's P.P.O.W gallery in September 2025. Her tapestries tackle hard-hitting themes such as family trauma and domestic abuse, drawing on memory, photographs, and everyday iconography. Riley, who studied at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Tyler School of Art and Architecture, initially faced pushback from both galleries and traditional weavers but has since become a leading figure in the blurring of fine art and craft. Her new works incorporate embroidery for the first time and include pieces like "Road Reverberations" (2024), which uses crowdsourced quotes from survivors of abusive relationships.

Nobody Can Handle Me: Brazil Rewrites the Pavilion as Living Memory.

Brazil's 2026 Venice Biennale pavilion, curated by Diane Lima, presents a radical, sensorial exhibition titled 'Comigo ninguém pode' featuring artists Adriana Varejão and Rosana Paulino. The show transforms the modernist pavilion into an active participant, where historical and new works by the two artists create friction and resonance, exploring themes of colonial violence, the Black female body as archive, and spiritual resistance.

The Cosmic Entanglements and Inner Transformations of ‘Metamorphosis’.

Isaac Julien has created a new site-responsive film installation titled 'All That Changes You. Metamorphosis' at The Cosmic House in London. The work, which features protagonists Lilith and Naomi, explores themes of transformation, cosmology, and interdependence through a non-linear narrative that moves from Californian redwoods to Renaissance interiors, using the postmodern architecture as an active participant in the dialogue.

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Bianca Censori, known for her revealing fashion and as Ye's wife, debuted her first performance art piece titled "BIO POP (The Origin)" on December 12-13 at Layer 41 in Seoul, South Korea. The 14-minute performance features Censori in a maroon bodysuit preparing an object at a kitchen island before revealing furniture intertwined with female contortionists styled as her duplicates, all made from discarded mobility devices. A related jewelry line inspired by medical devices also launched the same day.

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Designer and digital researcher Mindy Seu presented her performance lecture "A Sexual History of the Internet" at New York's Performance Space, using an Instagram Stories format to explore how sex has shaped digital tools and infrastructure. The audience followed synchronized prompts on their phones, reading scripted text and viewing archival materials, with the lecture credited to Julio Correa's influence from Seu's class at the Yale School of Art. The sold-out event is part of a tour that will next visit the Kunstverein in Hamburg and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

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A report commissioned by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), titled the RIBA Build It Together report, reveals widespread sexism and toxic workplace culture in British architecture. Based on a survey of 635 industry workers conducted by the Fawcett Society, the report found that half of female respondents experienced bullying, one-third reported sexual harassment, and 83 percent said their career was hindered by having children. Many women described feeling humiliated, objectified, and traumatized, with 38 percent not reporting harassment for fear of consequences.

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Artist Alex Vellis responded to criticism from conservative commentators, including Elon Musk and US Vice President JD Vance, over a graffiti-style art installation at Canterbury Cathedral. The installation, titled “HEAR US,” features questions posed to God, such as “What is the architecture of heaven?” and “Why are you indifferent to suffering?” Created through workshops with marginalized communities—including the Punjabi, black and brown diaspora, neurodivergent individuals, and the LGBTQIA+ population—the work uses spray-paint-like lettering but was not actually painted onto the historic building. Vance called the installation “ugly,” while Musk accused it of being “anti-Western propaganda.” Vellis responded on Instagram with a crude retort and the hashtag #freepalestine.

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Frieze is launching Frieze House Seoul, a new exhibition space in the Yaksu-dong neighborhood of central Seoul, which will open alongside the fourth edition of Frieze Seoul in early September 2025. The four-story venue, renovated by architecture studio Samuso Hyoja, spans 210 square meters and includes two main galleries and a landscaped garden. Galleries can apply to program the inaugural season, following a model similar to Frieze's No. 9 Cork Street space in London. The announcement coincides with Korean artist Im Young-zoo being named the 2025 Frieze Seoul Artist Award recipient, a prize funded by Bvlgari.

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Ai-Da, the world's first robot artist, has debuted a retro-futuristic architecture concept at the Utzon Center in Aalborg, Denmark, as part of the exhibition "I'm not a robot." The design, a smooth-edged pod with sweeping curved windows, imagines a space-age co-living space for humans and humanoids. Ai-Da, created by British gallerist Aidan Meller in 2019, uses A.I. to generate her works, and the building concept emerged from discussions between the robot and her team. The exhibition runs through October 18, and Ai-Da's designs will also be shown in London later this year.

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The article recounts the Sack of Persepolis in 330 B.C.E., when Alexander the Great and his Macedonian forces pillaged and destroyed the Achaemenid capital. It describes Persepolis as a marvel of ancient architecture, including the 31-acre limestone terrace, the Apadana hall with 36 columns, and the palace of Xerxes I. Ancient sources like Diodorus of Sicily and Plutarch offer conflicting accounts of the destruction—whether it was spontaneous, premeditated, or fueled by alcohol—while modern historians view it as a political act of retribution for Xerxes' attack on Athens.

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Santina Semadar Panetta, a progenitor of Neo-Pointillism, recently exhibited her vibrant, brushstroke-driven works at Art Miami. In an interview with Artnet News, she discussed her debut at the fair, showing two key pieces—'Souls Connection' (2022) and 'Ciel et Terre' (2023)—chosen to reflect Miami's dual nature of boldness and introspection. She also described her practice as 'emotional architecture,' evolving to engage more deeply with classical art philosophy and contemporary themes like identity and the fluidity of time.

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The article uncovers the story of three secret sculptures carved by François Décure, a quarryman in the Catacombs of Paris during the late 18th century. Décure, a veteran of the Seven Years' War, used his lunch breaks and spare time to chisel detailed stone models of buildings he remembered from his imprisonment on the island of Menorca, including a fortress called Port Mahon. He died tragically when a staircase he was working on collapsed, but his sculptures survived, were restored in 1854, and remain a highlight of guided tours through the catacombs.

Ada: My Mother the Architect review – illuminating profile of brilliant builder balances work and family

Architect-turned-filmmaker Yael Melamede directs a documentary portrait of her mother, Israeli architect Ada Karmi-Melamede, who co-designed the Supreme Court of Israel building in Jerusalem in the early 1990s with her brother Ram Karmi and later created Ben Gurion Airport. The film explores Karmi-Melamede's architectural philosophy of "architecture of the ground and of the sky," her departure from her brother's brutalism, and a painful family split when she left her husband and children in New York after being denied tenure at Columbia University.