Why Aguirre's works remained out of the public eye

Two Madrid galleries, Malvin Gallery and Espacio Jovellanos, have launched a dual exhibition titled 'Mi perro tiene memoria' to showcase the long-overlooked work of Spanish artist Luis Fernando Aguirre. Following his death in 2021, Aguirre’s family worked to bring his extensive archive out of his studio and into the public eye, featuring both his courtroom illustrations for El País and his evolution through expressionism and figurative painting.

Theater/Arts: New exhibit at PIEAM showcases life in Guam during WWII

The Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum (PIEAM) is launching "So We Leapt – Para I Hinanao-ta Mo’na," an exhibition centered on a rare archive of photographs taken in Guam between 1944 and 1946. Captured by U.S. Army photographer Frank Buchman and curated by Pulitzer Prize-winner Manny Crisostomo, the images move beyond traditional wartime documentation to highlight the daily lives and resilience of the Indigenous CHamoru people. The show is augmented by "Hasso," a contemporary portrait series by Johnny Cepeda Gogo featuring elderly CHamoru survivors of World War II.

Noni Olabisi Art Exhibit Carries Relevancy, Truth, and Power

The Laband Art Gallery at Loyola Marymount University is hosting a retrospective titled "Noni Olabisi: When Lightning Strikes," showcasing over 40 works by the late Los Angeles muralist and painter. The exhibition, curated by Karen Rapp, spans Olabisi’s career from 1984 to 2022, featuring her powerful political murals and personal canvases that document Black culture and the struggle against systemic racism. This marks the first major posthumous survey of her work since her unexpected passing in 2022.

Never Spoken Again Exhibition at the Weisman Challenges Museum Norms

The Weisman Art Museum is hosting "Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections," a traveling exhibition produced by Independent Curators International (ICI). Curated by David Ayala-Alfonso, the show features works by over a dozen artists that challenge traditional museum practices, such as the use of pre-Hispanic ceramics as speaker stands to give them a literal voice. The exhibition uses diverse media—from cinefoil sculptures to tapestries from Las Vegas casinos—to critique how institutions collect, classify, and display artifacts.

Young Highland painter brings bold new works to Glasgow gallery

Finn Robinson, a young painter from the Scottish Highlands, will present his solo exhibition 'Caught in the Act' at the Horsepower gallery in Glasgow. The show, running from February 13 to March 1, features new paintings that repurpose imagery from art history, social media, and personal archives, stripping them of their original context to create new meaning.

'Ley Lines' a colourful, new community art exhibition created with local Redbridge residents launches this week at SPACE Ilford Gallery in East London

A new community art exhibition titled 'Ley Lines' has launched at SPACE Ilford Gallery in East London. The exhibition features 3D-printed and scanned artworks created by local Redbridge residents during a series of workshops led by artist Tadhg Charles. The interactive installation is designed to be tactile and accessible, with works displayed at various heights and formats to engage a wide audience, including children and people with disabilities.

Here are the exhibits honoring Black art and culture during Miami Art Week

During Miami Art Week 2025, multiple exhibitions and events are spotlighting Black art and culture. Highlights include the Point Comfort Art Fair + Show at the Historic Ward Rooming House, themed "Life & Times of Frederick Douglass," with a special installation hosted by former NBA star Alonzo Mourning. Soul Basel returns to Historic Overtown with exhibitions at the Center for Black Innovation and the Black Archives Lyric Plaza, featuring Marcus Blake's "In Art We Trust." The Art of Transformation showcase in Opa-locka explores "At the Edge of Entanglement," while Revolt Art Fair returns for its second year at Ice Palace Studios with over 50 Black artists. Additionally, historian Nadege Green's installation "The Power of Her Hands: Black Washerwomen in Early Miami" is on view at YoungArts Gallery.

Lisa Jarrett: Tenderhead

Lisa Jarrett's first solo museum exhibition in Oregon, "Tenderhead," opens at an unspecified venue on May 21, 2026. The show features new works and site-responsive installations that explore Beauty Supply stores and salons as critical intersections of Black life, migration, and diaspora. Jarrett uses materials like pink kanekalon hair, pigment prints, foam rollers, and lace, treating the Beauty Supply as her art supply store and a living archive of memory and community.

‘Proof that life goes on’: meet some of the people working to rescue—and re-energise—Ukrainian culture

Ukrainian cultural institutions and artists are actively restoring and creating art despite ongoing Russian attacks targeting the country's cultural identity. The Nahirna 22 arts collective in Kyiv, which runs 30 artist studios, was hit by air strikes in August that killed at least 23 people, damaging studios and forcing relocations. Meanwhile, the Mykhailo Boychuk State Academy of Decorative Applied Arts and Design in Kyiv, named after a Modernist executed in 1937, was struck by a Russian missile in 2024. Contractors in July 2025 recovered surviving works from the academy's archives, including paintings, textiles, ceramics, and student pieces, with support from UNESCO, the Japanese government, and Ukraine's culture ministry. A new conservation training program and exhibitions like Body/Fragility demonstrate ongoing cultural resilience.

‘Abstract Angularity’ Is on Exhibit at the Avram Gallery This Fall

The Avram Gallery at Stony Brook Southampton is hosting 'Abstract Angularity: The Artistry of Vincent Quatroche Sr.,' an exhibition showcasing the works of the late East End artist whose paintings blend musical influence with cubist and abstract expressionist styles. The show draws from the collection of the Jazz Loft Archives and the personal collection of Jazz Loft founder Tom Manuel, featuring over 50 pieces acquired directly from the artist's studio. It runs through the Fall 2025 semester and is a collaboration between the Jazz Loft and the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center.

Auudi Dorsey: Self Esteem and 2D Surrealism

Artist Auudi Dorsey's recent exhibition, 'What's Left, Never Left,' at the Jonathan Carver Moore gallery in San Francisco, focuses on Black leisure and collective joy through paintings of Lincoln Beach in New Orleans. The works, which depict Black families and community members, use a surrealist visual vernacular to archive and celebrate Southern Black experiences and the building of self-esteem.

NRW will Verbot für Handel mit Holocaust-Dokumenten

The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is introducing a legislative bill to ban the commercial trade of personal Holocaust documents and artifacts, such as letters from concentration camps, Gestapo cards, and yellow stars. The initiative follows international outrage over a planned auction in Neuss in November 2025, which was halted at the last moment; around 460 objects from that auction were transferred to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. The bill, to be presented at the Bundesrat session on May 8, aims to prohibit the sale of items directly linked to Nazi victims, while exempting museums, archives, and research institutions.

Looking Back to Look Forward

Blick zurück nach vorn

The Museum Rietberg in Zürich is hosting an exhibition that examines the intersection of photography and colonialism. The show highlights how early photographic techniques, introduced to Africa shortly after their invention in 1839, were historically used as tools of power, surveillance, and scientific categorization. By juxtaposing historical archives with contemporary works, the exhibition demonstrates how modern artists are reclaiming and transforming these violent visual legacies.

The Postal Museum recovers its name

Le Musée postal retrouve son nom

The Musée de La Poste in Paris has reverted to its original name, Musée postal, as part of a major rebranding effort. The institution, approaching its 80th anniversary, has introduced a new visual identity and aims to reposition itself within the Parisian cultural landscape, seeking to distance itself from the image of a corporate museum.

An Interactive Archive Celebrates the Wide Ranging Projects Inviting ‘Unruly Play’

Amsterdam-based studio Imagination of Things, co-founded by Vitor Freire and Monique Grimord, has launched "Unruly Play," an interactive digital archive featuring 169 artworks, designs, games, and participatory projects. The repository includes notable works such as Rael San Fratello's "Teeter-Totter Wall" and the Wind Phone project, alongside a 12-foot puppet that travels the world. The archive is searchable by theme or through a shuffle feature, aiming to showcase projects that invite surprise, camaraderie, and unexpected encounters with imagination and joy.

Water Samples from Around the World Melt into Dima Rebus’ Dreamy Paintings

London-based artist Dima Rebus creates large-scale watercolor paintings using water samples collected from strangers around the world. In her series "Floaters," she freezes the crowdsourced water with pigments, then lets it melt across paper to form abstract color fields, later adding figures and aquatic landscapes. Each sample arrives with a letter, building an archive of rain, rivers, seas, oceans, and glaciers that serve as both material and human message.

‘Night at the Museums’ to feature exhibits April 23, including Old Coaly

Penn State University is hosting its spring “Night at the Museums” on April 23, offering public access to a diverse array of campus collections from 4 to 8 p.m. Organized by the Penn State Museum Consortium, the event features a dedicated trolley service to transport visitors between sites including the Palmer Museum of Art, the HUB-Robeson Galleries, and the Frost Entomological Museum. A highlight of this year's program is the unveiling of a newly updated display for "Old Coaly," a historic mule significant to the university's 19th-century construction.

Kansong's Cultural Defense Exhibition Features National Treasure Vase

The Kansong Art Museum in Seoul has launched a special exhibition titled "Cultural Defense of the Nation: The Spirit of Our People Preserved Through Faith," showcasing 46 significant artifacts reclaimed by collector Chun Hyung-pil during the Japanese colonial period. The centerpiece of the show is a rare 18th-century white porcelain bottle decorated with underglaze blue, iron-red, and copper-red, which Chun famously acquired at the Gyeongseong Art Club auction in 1936. He outbid a prominent Japanese dealer with a record-breaking bid of 14,580 won—a sum equivalent to the price of 15 houses at the time—to prevent the treasure from leaving Korea.

2026 Downtown Spring Gallery Walk

The Iowa City Downtown District is hosting its annual Spring Gallery Walk, a self-guided tour featuring local art and special exhibitions across various downtown venues. Key participants include the Stanley Museum of Art, which is hosting a grand opening reception for two new exhibitions, and the UI Main Library Gallery, which is presenting a retrospective on conductor James Dixon. The event also features community-created works at the UI Museum of Natural History.

Spring 2025: 2 minutes with Rory Fitzgerald Bledsoe

Rory Fitzgerald Bledsoe, a PhD candidate in media studies, operates the multimodal art gallery Space__Space in East Boulder. Her inaugural exhibition, "Phones are Heavy," concluded in January, and a new show, "Archive Fever Dream," is set to open in March. She previously ran a similar gallery, Space 121, out of her Boston apartment.

Svolta per il Museo del Fumetto che chiuse a Milano: nuova sede in un’ex biblioteca di Monza

The Franco Fossati Foundation's Museo del Fumetto (Comics Museum), which was evicted from Milan due to a €180,000 debt to the city, has found a new permanent home in Monza. The Monza city council approved the foundation's proposal on April 30, paving the way for the renovation of a former library in the Cederna district, which has been abandoned for years. The archive of 500,000 pieces will be temporarily stored in Desio while the Monza building is refurbished with €850,000 from the municipality and additional funds from the foundation.

No, the closed Museum of Comics in Milan has not found a new home in Brianza

No, il Museo del Fumetto chiuso a Milano non ha trovato la nuova sede in Brianza

The Museum of Comics (Museo del Fumetto) in Milan, which suspended operations in June 2025 due to a €180,000 debt to the city, has not found a permanent new home despite online rumors. Instead, the Fondazione Franco Fossati, which runs the museum, has secured temporary storage for its archive in Desio (Monza-Brianza) for up to two years, using spaces granted free of charge by the local municipality. The archive—containing over 500,000 items including publications, original boards, and memorabilia—will be cataloged and preserved there, but the museum itself remains closed to the public.

Holding Us Together: Images of Care, Continuity, and Black Life

The exhibition 'Kinship & Community' has opened, drawing from the Texas African American Photography Archive to present a living archive of everyday gestures and images of Black life. The show positions photography as both a witness to and a participant in the formation of community memory, focusing on themes of care and continuity.

Dancing the Revolution: The Exhibition

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago has opened 'Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón,' a major exhibition exploring dance as a political language. It features over forty artists working across installation, video, sculpture, and sound, tracing the cultural trajectories of dancehall and reggaetón from the Caribbean diaspora to global contexts.

Researcher Announcement: The Duke of Morny's Far Eastern Objects Collection

Annonce de chercheur : la collection d'objets extrême-orientaux du duc de Morny

A doctoral researcher at Sorbonne University, Anaïs Veyrac, is publicly seeking information to aid her thesis on the collection of Far Eastern objects assembled by the Duke of Morny (1811-1865). She is asking collectors, enthusiasts, or anyone with relevant correspondence, archives, or testimonies regarding Asian-origin objects that belonged to the Duke to come forward, as the collection was dispersed after his death and lacks comprehensive archival records.

Meet the maker behind iconic Pitt public art pieces in the University Art Gallery’s latest exhibit

The University of Pittsburgh's University Art Gallery presents "Earth and Ether: The Art of Lucille and Virgil Cantini," a new exhibition curated by students in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. The show features never-before-seen works uncovered in the Heinz History Museum's archives, alongside pieces from Pitt's collection and the Cantini family, highlighting the artistic partnership of Virgil Cantini—creator of iconic public art on Pitt's campus like "Skyscape" and "Man"—and his wife Lucille, a notable jewelry maker, ceramist, and enameler.

Recording Presence: Practical Strategies For Documenting Contemporary Exhibitions

The article provides a practical guide to documenting contemporary art exhibitions, outlining methods for creating useful, ethical, and durable records. It emphasizes the importance of shot lists, consistent file naming, descriptive metadata, and accessibility features like captions and transcripts to ensure archives remain searchable and meaningful over time.

From the Darkroom recalls Springfield's Civil War centennial exhibit

The Springfield News-Leader, in partnership with the Springfield-Greene County Library District, is publishing a historical photograph from its archives. The 1961 image shows Kenneth M. Shuck, director of the Springfield Art Museum, examining Civil War artifacts—including a saber, a drum, and a painting of Union General Nathaniel Lyon—in preparation for a centennial exhibition.

Insights Juried Exhibition of Fine Art opens this week

The Elora Fergus Arts Council is launching the 46th edition of the Insights Juried Exhibition of Fine Art at the Wellington County Museum and Archives. This long-running Ontario showcase features a diverse range of original works from regional artists, selected through a rigorous in-person jurying process rather than digital submissions. The event includes an opening reception on April 23 and a "Walk with the Jurors" educational tour on April 25, with over $5,000 in prizes being awarded for artistic excellence.

Split-Toe Archive Exhibitions

Maison Margiela has launched the "Tabi: Collectors Exhibition" at the Third Avenue Art Museum in Chengdu, China. This immersive installation showcases the personal archives of nine global collectors, featuring rare, customized, and historically significant versions of the iconic split-toe shoe dating back to its 1989 debut. The exhibition utilizes large-scale photography and mannequins to contextualize the footwear within reconstructed wardrobes, forming a key part of the broader MaisonMargiela/folders initiative.