À Bordeaux, la métamorphose du MADD

The Musée des arts décoratifs et du design (MADD) in Bordeaux has reopened its design-focused wing after three years of renovation, featuring a new entrance pavilion designed by Antoine Dufour Architectes that connects the historic Hôtel de Lalande and the former municipal prison. The overhaul includes a monumental shelving display of eighty vases by designers such as Andrea Branzi and Gaetano Pesce, a new "gallery of know-how" dedicated to rotating thematic presentations (starting with ceramics), a graphic arts cabinet showcasing the Jacques Sargos collection of over 130 drawings, and improved climate control for conservation.

The Palais des Papes in Avignon cancels Macha Makeïeff's exhibition

Le Palais des Papes d’Avignon renonce à l’exposition de Macha Makeïeff

The Palais des Papes in Avignon has cancelled its planned summer exhibition, 'Les Choses divines – Inventaire fantaisiste,' conceived by French director, scenographer, and visual artist Macha Makeïeff. The cancellation, officially attributed to a combination of administrative, technical, and budgetary constraints, may also be linked to the recent municipal election that saw Olivier Galzi succeed Cécile Helle as mayor.

A Dismembered Album by Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656): Unpublished Drawings and Reconstruction of a Corpus

Un album démembré de Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656) : dessins inédits et reconstitution d'un corpus

An article in La Tribune de l'Art presents a significant expansion of the known corpus of drawings by Dutch Golden Age painter Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656). Following the 2014 exhibition of twenty-seven drawings identified by the author, this study adds thirty-two more sheets—twenty-two of which are previously unpublished—as a preliminary step toward reconstructing a dismembered album. The research, conducted with direct observation and advanced imaging techniques (digital microscopy, ultraviolet, raking light), aims to restore the album's original order and shed light on the role of drawing in Honthorst's workshop and creative process.

Dans les ateliers de la Maison du vitrail, où création et restauration conjuguent au présent cet art du verre et de la couleur

The article visits the Maison du vitrail, a French stained-glass workshop founded in 1973 by Christiane and Philippe Andrieux and now run by their daughter Emmanuelle. Located in a historic courtyard, the studio employs fourteen artisans who cut, paint, and assemble colored glass for both restoration and original creations. The workshop has evolved from a small space in Châtillon to a thriving enterprise that handles everything from church windows and Parisian staircases to trophies, jewelry, and commercial projects for clients like Truffaut and the Casino de Paris.

Venice Biennale 2026: The Pavilions Not to Be Missed

Biennale de Venise 2026 : les pavillons à ne surtout pas manquer

The 61st Venice Biennale, curated by Koyo Kouoh as an invitation to slow down and reconnect with emotions, features a constellation of contemplative and powerful proposals across the city. Notable national pavilions include the Holy See transforming a monastic garden into an immersive sound experience by Soundwalk Collective, Canada exploring colonial heritage through giant water lilies by Abbas Akhavan, and Austria electrifying the Giardini with radical performances by Florentina Holzinger. Other highlights include Spain dissecting collective memory through postcards, Poland imagining new forms of language between human and underwater worlds, and India's pavilion exploring notions of home.

Au musée de l’Image d’Épinal, les talents multiples de Frans Masereel, entre autres inventeur du roman graphique

The Musée de l'Image d'Épinal is presenting a comprehensive exhibition on Belgian artist Frans Masereel (1889–1972), widely credited as the inventor of the graphic novel in 1918 with his wordless narratives composed of black-and-white woodcuts. The show, curated by Samuel Dégardin, brings together loans from major institutions and a private collection to reveal the full breadth of Masereel's practice, which spanned drawing, animation, painting, theater, ceramics, tapestry, and satirical press illustration. It highlights his pacifist activism during World War I, his collaborations with writers such as Stefan Zweig and Romain Rolland, and his humanist vision of a unified Europe.

‘What Color is Your Sky Today?’: The Becoming of the Image

Armineh Negahdari, a Bordeaux-based artist, presents her first institutional solo exhibition in France at the Fondation Louis Vuitton's Open Space series. Titled 'What Color is Your Sky Today?': The Becoming of the Image, the show features a new body of drawings that use charcoal, pastel, and oil paint to explore unstable morphologies between human, vegetal, and animal forms. The works resist narrative closure, emphasizing drawing as an event rather than representation, with lines that accumulate, falter, and begin again. The exhibition is on view at Gallery 8 until 30 August 2026.

For the 61st Venice Biennale, a quest for beauty despite a troubled world

Pour la 61e Biennale de Venise, une quête de beauté malgré un monde troublé

Koyo Kouoh, the Swiss-Cameroonian curator who was set to become the first African woman to direct the Venice Biennale, died suddenly on May 10, 2025, at age 57, just weeks before the opening of the 61st edition she had conceived. Titled "In Minor Keys," the exhibition at the Giardini and Arsenale will proceed posthumously based on her detailed directives, featuring 111 artists including Laurie Anderson, Wangechi Mutu, and Kader Attia, with a focus on beauty, resilience, and radical emotional connection amid global turmoil.

« Le monde entier semble s’être mis en mouvement, animé par une soif d’expériences culturelles »

The article explores the transformation of cultural travel for artists and art lovers, contrasting the arduous, unknown journeys of historical figures like Eugène Delacroix, Paul Gauguin, and Ella Maillart with today's accessible, curated experiences. It describes how contemporary artists such as Ólafur Elíasson, JR, and Marina Abramović now use travel itself as a medium, creating works that engage with climate change, social issues, and presence. Destinations like the Venice Biennale, AlUla in Saudi Arabia, Naoshima in Japan, and Le Voyage à Nantes are highlighted as hubs where art and travel merge into immersive, sensory experiences.

À Annecy, le cinéma d’animation célébré toute l’année grâce à l’ouverture d’un lieu hybride et ambitieux en juin

A new permanent home for animation cinema, the Cité internationale du cinéma d'animation, will open in Annecy, France, on June 19, 2025, just before the annual Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Housed in a restored 19th-century horse stable (haras) listed as a historic monument, the 54-million-euro project includes a 450 m² permanent museum, a 332-seat cinema, temporary exhibition spaces, educational workshops, artist residencies, and image-education facilities. The city of Annecy contributes 30 million euros, with additional funding from the Haute-Savoie department, the state, and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. Designed by architecture firm dd.a and landscape architect Philippe Deliau, the center aims to be a hybrid, year-round hub for animation, blending heritage, creation, and transmission.

WURUS – Light catches before form does.

Artist Caroline Gueye presents 'WURUS', a new installation for the Senegal Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale. Curated by Massamba Mbaye, the work is a shifting field of brass and polymer bronze elements, using mirrors and light to create an environment where perception is contingent on the viewer's movement and position. The title invokes gold, opening onto histories of extraction, but the work deliberately resists singular meaning.

Nairy Baghramian and Ibrahim Mahama to create major new commissions for Art Basel 2026.

Art Basel has announced that Nairy Baghramian and Ibrahim Mahama will create major new site-specific sculptures for the 2026 edition of its flagship fair in Switzerland. Baghramian will present "Modèle vivant (S’empilant)" (2026), an elaborate installation designed for the Messeplatz fountain, while Mahama's commission details are yet to be fully disclosed. Both artists are part of Art Basel's inaugural class of Gold Awardees, with the commissions first revealed in February 2026.

Disobedience Archive (Canopy for Broken Time) In Dialogue with Raqs Media Collective at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich

The Disobedience Archive, a mobile video archive initiated by Marco Scotini in 2005, is presented in dialogue with Raqs Media Collective at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zürich. The archive contains over one hundred documentary and art films at the intersection of art and activism, documenting forms of resistance, social struggle, and collective self-organization.

“Clean / Clear / Cut” Malta Biennale 2026

The Malta Biennale 2026, titled "Clean / Clear / Cut," launched on March 11 and runs through May 29, transforming historical sites and cultural landmarks across Malta and Gozo into venues for contemporary art and critical dialogue. The biennale is under the artistic direction of international curator Rosa Martínez.

'A work of conceptual art': Belmond launches new Art Deco-inspired train dining car

On 15 May, Belmond's British Pullman will debut a new private dining car named Celia, originally built in 1932. The carriage's interior has been designed by film director Baz Luhrmann and his wife, production designer Catherine Martin, who created an Art Deco-inspired aesthetic featuring burl veneers, marquetry, stained glass, and their signature rich red. The couple invented a backstory for the car's namesake, a fictional 1930s Shakespearean actress, aiming to immerse guests in a narrative experience reminiscent of A Midsummer Night's Dream. This follows Belmond's previous collaborations with Wes Anderson and artist JR, as part of its strategy under LVMH ownership to commission high-profile creative figures for its heritage trains.

Israel Addresses Venice Biennale Jury’s ‘Boycott’ of Pavilion: ‘A Contamination of the Art World’

Israel’s foreign ministry has condemned a statement by the Venice Biennale jury, in which the five curators declared they would not consider pavilions from countries charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. The jury’s decision effectively boycotts Israel and Russia, whose leaders face ICC arrest warrants. Israel called the move a “contamination of the art world,” while the artist representing Israel, Belu-Simion Fainaru, also denounced the jury for creating a hostile environment. The Biennale’s organizers have distanced themselves from the jury, stating they cannot exclude any recognized state from the exhibition.

food ruthie rogers austin butler paul mccartney

Ruthie Rogers, the chef behind London's Michelin-starred River Cafe, has launched a digital podcast called "Ruthie's Table 4," where guests like Tina Fey, Austin Butler, and Paul McCartney discuss their lives through food. The conversations have been compiled into a new book, "Table 4 at The River Cafe." Rogers reflects on her career, her socially active upbringing, and the restaurant's role as a cultural hub where artists such as Cy Twombly, Ellsworth Kelly, and Damien Hirst have contributed menu illustrations.

The Nerve Center of This Art Fair Isn’t Painting. It’s Couture.

The Independent art fair in New York is featuring a significant presentation of designs by Rei Kawakubo and her label Comme des Garçons. The works, which include garments and sculptural objects, are being presented as a curated exhibition within the fair, challenging traditional art fair categories.

An Artist Asks: Without Darkness, Who Are We?

Artist Jan Tichy has created a new exhibition that explores the consequences of light pollution and the disappearance of natural darkness. The project, titled "Without Darkness, Who Are We?", involved extensive research and collaboration with scientists including entomologists and neurobiologists to understand the ecological and psychological impacts of artificial light.

An L.A. Artist Devoted to the Process of Paint

Los Angeles-based artist Sandy Rodriguez is profiled for her multifaceted practice that extends far beyond traditional painting. Her work involves deep research into art history, botany, and indigenous materials, positioning her as a scientist, historian, and alchemist as much as a painter.

‘My Father’s Shadow’: Now You See Me

Clive Chijioke Nwonka reviews Akinola Davies Jr.'s film *My Father's Shadow* (2025), a semi-autobiographical story of two adolescent brothers traveling through Lagos with their estranged father during the 1993 Nigerian presidential elections. The film, selected for the Cannes Official Selection, employs a metaphysical narrative style rooted in the Nigerian oral tradition, blending literal and spiritual worlds to explore diasporic identity, memory, and cultural preservation.

Dries Verhoeven on Representing the Netherlands at the 61st Venice Biennale

Dries Verhoeven will represent the Netherlands at the 61st Venice Biennale (2026) with a new work titled *The Fortress*, installed in the Dutch Rietveld Pavilion in the Giardini. The 25-minute performance piece transforms the sunlit pavilion into a darkened bunker, featuring a raw vocal composition using only false vocal cords. Verhoeven describes the work as a meditation on transition and self-preservation, reflecting a Western society caught between its enlightened self-image and a dark vision of the future. The piece responds to geopolitical unrest outside the Biennale grounds and is designed to be melancholic and confrontational, contrasting with the main exhibition's theme, *In Minor Keys*.

‘My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein’ by Deborah Levy, Reviewed

Deborah Levy’s latest novel, *My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein*, follows a first-person narrator who travels to Paris to research the American writer and collector Gertrude Stein. The narrative slips between the early twentieth century and the autumn of Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection, using stream-of-consciousness prose and liquid metaphors to blur past and present. The narrator’s research into Stein’s role in shaping modernity becomes a vehicle for exploring her own sense of helplessness and lack of agency in a hyperconnected, war-weary present.

Bugarin + Castle on Representing Scotland at the 61st Venice Biennale

ArtReview published a questionnaire response from Bugarin + Castle, the artist duo representing Scotland at the 61st Venice Biennale (2026). Their exhibition, titled "Shame Parade" and curated by Mount Stuart Trust, explores charivari—medieval public shaming rituals involving sound, costume, and cross-dressing. The work draws on the artists' research into how noise and music have been used as tools of control, with particular attention to the Filipino legal definition of charivari as a punishable public disturbance. The exhibition includes sculpture, print, moving image, and a musical score created with Manila-based band Kalye Teresa, and is housed at the Olivolo, Castello pavilion.

Rafał Zajko Is Hatching a Plan

Rafał Zajko's exhibition 'The Egg Egg' at Arsenal Gallery in Białystok, Poland, brings together 50 works from the past decade across two floors of a former power station, organized into nine 'acts'. The show features modular installations like 'Funny Games' (2025), a set of pastel-colored platforms on wheels with ceramic reliefs, and monumental sculptures such as 'Sisyphus' (2025), a suspended ceramic bobbin evoking textile factory tools. Performances by Agnieszka Szczotka, including 'Song to the Siren' (2026), activate works like 'Amber Chamber III Echo' (2025), blending archaism, futurism, and themes of labor and technology.

Guangzhou Image Triennial 2025 Review: The Case for Sensitivity

The Guangzhou Image Triennial 2025, titled 'The Case for Sensitivity,' has opened at the Guangdong Art Museum. The exhibition, featuring over 50 artists and artist groups, directly addresses a perceived crisis of technological mediation, arguing that digital existence deprives us of direct contact with the natural world. It aims to foster new forms of attention by emphasizing the materiality of images—what they are made of—over what they represent.

Fondazione Bvlgari Bets on the Venice Biennale: Beyond the Pavilion in the Giardini, an Exhibition at the Biblioteca Marciana

Fondazione Bvlgari scommette sulla Biennale di Venezia: oltre al padiglione ai Giardini, una mostra alla Biblioteca Marciana

Fondazione Bvlgari is making its debut at the Venice Biennale with a collateral exhibition at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, featuring site-specific works by Monia Ben Hamouda and Lara Favaretto. The show runs from May 9 to November 22, 2025, alongside the 61st International Art Exhibition. Ben Hamouda presents 'Fragments of Fire Worship,' neon sculptures in the Vestibule that explore language and cultural heritage, while Favaretto installs the final edition of 'Momentary Monument – The Library' in the Salone Sansovino, inviting public consultation of donated books. Additionally, Bvlgari has a pavilion in the Giardini featuring Canadian artist Lotus L. Kang, as part of a three-edition partnership with the Biennale through 2030.

Arch Hades opens major solo exhibition on the Grand Canal in Venice

Artist-poet Arch Hades has opened a major solo exhibition on the Grand Canal in Venice, running concurrently with the Venice Biennale. The collateral show features monumental paintings and immersive sculptures that delve into themes of loss and vulnerability as part of a broader meditation on the human condition.

15 Top Artists Showcase the Power of Textile Art in Stunning Group Exhibition

The Saatchi Gallery in London is hosting "Textile Art Redefined," a group exhibition featuring 15 artists from the UK and around the world, including Ian Berry, Kaffe Fassett, Magda Sayeg, and Jakkai Siributr. Curated by Helen Adams based on her book "Textile Fine Art," the show presents a wide range of techniques such as embroidery, quilting, weaving, knitting, and crochet, with works like Fassett's "Geometric Sampler" and Berry's "Secret Garden" made from recycled denim. The exhibition runs from April 10 to May 10, 2026.

Ngununggula art gallery unveils exhibition of works from Tangentyere and Yarrenyty Arltere women artists

Ngununggula, the Southern Highlands regional art gallery, has opened a major all-women exhibition titled 'Old Days, New Days | Arlta-imankinya, Arlta-errama.' The show features works from artists associated with Tangentyere Artists and Yarrenyty Arltere Artists, alongside celebrated artist Thea Anamara Perkins. It includes paintings, sculptures, video, textiles, and works on paper, exploring the role of women in family and community life across generations, and will be on view until June 14.