Los Angeles is hosting a surge of high-profile exhibitions to coincide with the arrival of Frieze Los Angeles and its various satellite fairs. The city's gallery and museum circuit is currently anchored by major debuts and surveys, including Leiko Ikemura’s mystical explorations at Lisson Gallery, Sarah Sze’s immersive video and painting installations at Gagosian, and Alejandro García Contreras’s folklore-inspired ceramics at Anat Ebgi.
Opera Gallery has officially opened its 14th international location in Houston’s River Oaks District, marking a significant expansion of its global footprint. The new space debuted with a high-profile presentation featuring masterworks by Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, and Marc Chagall, alongside contemporary pieces by Yayoi Kusama and Kehinde Wiley. Led by Director Gregory Lahmi and Deputy Director Kara Przybyl McIver, the gallery plans to host several curated exhibitions annually focusing on Modern and Post-War art.
Mariposa gallery has officially opened its permanent location in Hollywood’s historic Beachwood Canyon, housed in the 1923 storybook building originally built by the Hollywoodland Realty Co. Founded by Alec Smyth, a former David Zwirner staffer, and interior designer Noah Ruttenberg, the gallery moves away from the traditional 'white cube' aesthetic in favor of a cozy, domestic environment. The inaugural exhibition features a series of swan-shaped ceramic sculptures by the Los Angeles-born artist Peter Schlesinger.
British artist James Doran-Webb is set to debut his first solo exhibition with the venerable UK gallery Gladwell and Patterson during Scottsdale Ferrari Art Week 2026. Known for his intricate wildlife sculptures crafted from reclaimed driftwood, Doran-Webb’s practice transforms weathered, inanimate natural materials into dynamic animal forms such as horses, owls, and meerkats. The presentation will pair these contemporary sculptures with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings to create an immersive environment.
Gideon Appah has launched his debut New York solo exhibition, 'Beneath Night and Day', at Pace Gallery. The show features a new body of work from his 'Swimmers and Surfers' series, which explores themes of leisure, vulnerability, and the psychological space between night and day. Inspired by the coastal life of Ghana’s Busua and Kokrobite beaches, the exhibition also includes archival materials like movie stills and newspaper clippings to provide insight into the artist's creative process.
Rana Begum’s solo exhibition, "Reflection," is currently on view at the Gallery at Windsor in Vero Beach, Florida, following its debut at the SCAD Museum of Art. The exhibition showcases Begum’s signature style, which utilizes industrial materials like metal bars and reflectors to create elegant abstractions influenced by American Minimalism and Islamic architecture. The show traces her journey from a young immigrant in the UK to a Royal Academician, highlighting her ability to manipulate light and color through geometric forms.
L.A. Art Week 2026 is anchored by the return of Frieze Los Angeles at the Santa Monica Airport, featuring approximately 100 international galleries and the curated Frieze Projects. The week serves as a precursor to a landmark season for the city, which includes the upcoming opening of LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries and the debut of Lauren Halsey’s major sculpture park in South Central. Satellite fairs like Felix Art Fair at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and the artist-centric Post-Fair continue to expand the week's geographical and conceptual footprint.
Peggy Robinson, a graduate of the Elam School of Fine Arts and a former staffer at Page Galleries, has launched her own contemporary art space, PEG Gallery, in Wellington's Newtown district. The gallery debuted in November with a focus on national artists, including the estate of the late Selwyn Muru, fulfilling a long-held professional ambition for Robinson after years of working in the commercial art sector.
The Reefline, a non-profit eco-art initiative, has launched its first phase of a seven-mile underwater sculpture park and artificial reef along Miami Beach. The project debuted with 'Concrete Coral' by Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich, a submerged sculpture depicting a traffic jam designed to provide a habitat for marine life. Future phases include works by Carlos Betancourt, Alberto Latorre, and Petroc Sesti, all overseen by the architecture firm OMA and founder Ximena Caminos.
Kendall Hamelryck, the current artist-in-residence at Milligan University, has debuted her solo exhibition titled “Building a Life” at the Milligan Art Gallery. The showcase features mixed-media installations and sculptures, including the centerpiece “Be Content,” which explores themes of domesticity, faith, and the simplicity of childhood. The works reflect Hamelryck’s personal transition into marriage and family life, utilizing everyday objects like tea sets and stuffed animals to convey spiritual contentment.
Korean-born, Los Angeles-based artist Ken Gun Min is set to debut his third solo exhibition, 'Strange Days of a Quiet Sun,' at Nazarian/Curcio in Los Angeles. The showcase features a new body of work including a monumental double-sided folding screen and paintings that utilize Min's signature technique of combining embroidery, beading, and hand-applied materials with traditional pigments. The exhibition explores themes of sadness and estrangement through the astronomical metaphor of a 'quiet sun,' blending Western art history with East Asian traditions.
Ai Weiwei has launched his first major solo exhibition in India at Nature Morte gallery in New Delhi, timed to coincide with the India Art Fair 2026. The show features a range of works spanning three decades, including his signature large-scale Lego compositions and porcelain sculptures. Notably, the artist debuted new pieces that engage specifically with Indian art history, reimagining works by modernists SH Raza and VS Gaitonde, as well as traditional Rajasthani Pichwai paintings, through his modular toy-brick medium.
The Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts in Winston-Salem is set to debut "By Any Means Necessary," a collaborative exhibition featuring local artists Owens Daniels, Leo Rucker, and Affee Vickers. Opening February 27, 2026, the show integrates digital photography, traditional portraiture, and mixed-media sculpture to explore themes of activism, personal identity, and community history. Each artist utilizes a distinct medium—from Daniels’ layered digital canvases to Rucker’s historical murals and Vickers’ engineered material studies—to address the central question of what causes individuals are willing to pursue at any cost.
The Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas has launched "Street Nihonga: The Art of Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani," the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the late artist's work. Curated by Kris Ercums and Maki Kaneko, the show features 145 works that trace Mirikitani’s journey from his Nihonga training in Japan to his incarceration in a U.S. internment camp during WWII, and finally his years as a homeless street artist in Lower Manhattan. The exhibition is accompanied by a major scholarly catalog and documentary footage by filmmaker Linda Hattendorf.
Rapper and actor Kid Cudi, now using the name Scotty Ramon, has debuted his first solo art exhibition, "Echoes of the Past," at Galerie Ruttkowski;68 in Paris. The show features over 50 paintings created in the past year, marking his official entry into the visual art world under a new artistic persona.
Mangkuluhur ARTOTEL Suites in Jakarta has opened a solo exhibition titled "Weaving The Unseen" by local artist Ratih Alsaira. The show, featuring ten primary works, explores the resilient strength and multifaceted nature of women, using tailoring and domestic crafts as central metaphors. It runs from February 13 to May 30, 2026, at the hotel's ARTSPACE gallery.
The Cincinnati Art Museum is hosting "What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine," an exhibition exploring the history and artistic impact of the iconic satirical publication. The show, organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum, features original comic covers, notable artwork, and interactive elements like the famous "Fold-Ins," tracing MAD's evolution from its 1952 debut through its cultural commentary on topics from the Cold War to modern celebrities.
Christie's London will offer Wassily Kandinsky's painting *Le Rond Rouge* (1939) with a high estimate of £15.5 million ($21.3 million) in its 20th/21st Century evening sale on March 5. The work, a key piece from the artist's Paris period, has been in prominent collections and was last sold at Sotheby's New York in 2018 for $20.6 million. The sale will also feature a fresh-to-auction Henry Moore bronze sculpture, *King and Queen* (1952-53), estimated at up to £15 million.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum has unveiled "Nick Cave: Mammoth," a major new commission by artist Nick Cave. The exhibition, which opened on February 13, 2026, is the museum's largest-ever commission by a single artist and marks Cave's first solo show in Washington, D.C. It transforms a suite of galleries into immersive environments featuring a massive hand-beaded tapestry, towering sculptures incorporating mammoth skulls, and a large light table displaying thousands of found objects.
Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 will feature 240 galleries and an expanded program, including the Asia debut of the digital-focused Zero 10 section and a reimagined Encounters section. The Encounters section, curated by a team led by Mami Kataoka, will feature 12 large-scale works based on the Five Elements theme, with pieces by artists like Suki Seokyeong Kang and Parag Tandel. The Film section is under new curation by Ellen Pau, and the fair coincides with major exhibitions at institutions like M+.
A new immersive exhibition titled "David Bowie: You're Not Alone" will open at Lightroom in London on April 22. The show, organized by creative director Mark Grimmer, will feature projected performance footage, interviews, film clips, and drawings, including newly recovered footage of Bowie's 1978 "Heroes" performance at Earl's Court.
Michelangelo Pistoletto, a leading figure of the Italian arte povera movement, has opened his first-ever solo exhibition in St. Moritz, Switzerland. The show, presented at the Robilant + Voena gallery's outpost in a repurposed 18th-century church, features five new mirror works from his "Color and Light" series and a sixth new piece from his "Black and Light" series, all created specifically for the ecclesiastical space.
A series of gallery openings are taking place across London this week, featuring solo exhibitions by a diverse group of artists. Cristine Brache's "Centerfolds" at Bernheim explores persona and omission through the lens of Dorothy Stratten's poetry. Ella Wright presents new paintings at Cedric Bardawil, Dylan Doe's "Muscle Memory" opens at Mandy Zhang Art, Isaac Julien's film installation premieres at Victoria Miro, and Paul Winstanley's "Bringing It All Back Home" debuts at Anthony Wilkinson.
The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University will present 'Yinka Shonibare: Sanctuary,' a major exhibition opening in February 2026. The show centers on the U.S. debut of Shonibare's monumental installation, *Sanctuary City* (2024), which features 18 illuminated, scaled-down replicas of historical and contemporary refuge buildings, each lined with the artist's signature Dutch wax textiles.
Artist Gerard Byrne has opened a new gallery named the Gerard Byrne Gallery at 13 Trinity Street in Dublin's city centre. This marks a homecoming for the Dublin-born artist, who returns after a successful period in the United States that included a debut at the 2025 Hamptons Fine Art Fair and a solo show at Slattery Gallery in Southampton.
The Frieze New York art fair will return to the Shed in Manhattan for its sixth edition this May, featuring 67 galleries. This marks the first edition since the fair's parent company was acquired by Ari Emanuel's Mari. The event will coincide with several other New York art fairs and major spring auctions, creating a competitive landscape for collectors' attention as it follows closely on the heels of the 2026 Venice Biennale opening.
Philadelphia-born artist Devan Shimoyama makes his regional solo debut with the exhibition “SHIFT” at Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum, on view through March 21. The show reimagines the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck through mixed-media paintings incorporating oil, colored pencil, glitter, collage, Swarovski crystals, and other materials, exploring themes of identity, transformation, and Black queerness. Shimoyama, who earned a BFA from Penn State and an MFA from Yale School of Art, previously exhibited at the Andy Warhol Museum and taught at Carnegie Mellon University.
Spanish artist Nieves González, born in 1996 and based in Granada, has gained widespread attention for her time-warping portraits of women that blend Old Master influences—such as José de Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Diego Velázquez—with contemporary details like colorful puffer coats. Her recent commission for the cover of Lily Allen's album *West End Girl* went viral on social media, and she has just opened her debut solo exhibition, “Sacred Hair,” at T293 Gallery in Rome, focusing on the figure of Mary Magdalene as a powerful, autonomous woman.
Banco Santander announced on 21 January that it will manage 160 works from the Gelman Collection of 20th-century Mexican art, following a long-term agreement with the Zambrano family, which acquired the collection in 2023. The newly branded Gelman Santander Collection will debut this summer at Faro Santander, the bank's new venue in Cantabria, Spain. The collection, started by Russian-born film producer Jacques Gelman and his wife Natasha, includes major works by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, and others, but has been largely out of public view since 2008 amid inheritance disputes. The agreement is complicated by Mexican law, which designates many works as National Artistic Monuments, restricting their permanent export and requiring oversight by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL).
London artist Georg Wilson opens "Against Nature," her second solo exhibition with Pilar Corrias, exploring the hidden world of poisonous plants in the English countryside. The show features paintings of henbane, thorn apple, and nightshade, depicting them as rebellious agents that thrive in abandoned, uncultivated land. Wilson's work coincides with her institutional debut at Jupiter Artland in Edinburgh, titled "The Earth Exhales." Her research began by collecting second-hand botanical books, which led her to notice toxic flora growing unnoticed around London, including a towering thorn apple near her studio.