The Cheng-Lan Foundation, a new independent arts initiative, has launched in Hong Kong during the city's major art week. Founded by Brian Yue, it supports artists, curators, and writers from African, Asian, Indigenous, and Latin American backgrounds through exhibitions, residencies, and commissions, with an inaugural solo show by Manila-based artist Cian Dayrit.
Designboom has published a comprehensive guide to the 2026 Venice Art Biennale, featuring a curated list of must-see exhibitions, installations, and events across the city. Highlights include Miet Warlop's "IT NEVER SSST," Michael Armitage's "The Promise of Change" at Palazzo Grassi, and DRIFT's "Shy Society" at Palazzo Strozzi, alongside works by Lotus L. Kang, Lida Abdul, and Kan Yasuda. The guide also points to collateral shows in Pietrasanta and Berlin, offering visitors a broad itinerary beyond the main Biennale venues.
This article profiles Japanese artist Kimiyo Mishima, whose ceramic sculptures meticulously replicate discarded newspapers, cans, and other trash. Mishima, who died recently, began her career with painting and collage before pioneering a technique in 1971 of silk-screening and painting thin clay sheets rolled with an udon noodle roller to create fragile, lifelike sculptures of garbage. Her work was shaped by her experience growing up in postwar Osaka and her revulsion at consumer culture's disposable nature, leading her to collect trash from the streets of New York and Paris during artist grants.
Malmö Konstmuseum has announced its annual seminar, "Objekt/Object: An Order of Things and the Construction of the World," scheduled for April 16, 2026. The event features a series of lectures and panel discussions involving international scholars, curators, and artists, including philosopher Roman Krznaric and professor Ariella Aïsha Azoulay. The seminar uses the museum's current exhibition, "An Order of Things," as a case study to examine how historical classification systems and contemporary curatorial choices shape collective memory and societal values.
The Brooklyn Museum has announced a $13 million renovation project to establish a permanent 6,400-square-foot home for its extensive African art collection. Scheduled to open in Fall 2027, the new Arts of Africa galleries will feature approximately 300 works ranging from ancient Meroitic ceramics to contemporary pieces. The architectural overhaul, led by Peterson Rich Office and Beyer Blinder Belle, will transform former storage spaces on the museum's third floor into four distinct gallery environments.
Russia is set to return to the Venice Biennale for the first time since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, presenting a project titled "The tree is rooted in the sky" focused on folklore and multilingual cultures. The Russian pavilion, commissioned by Anastasia Karneeva and supported by Putin’s cultural envoy Mikhail Shvydkoy, will feature a filmed three-day festival. The Biennale organizers defended the inclusion, citing a policy of non-censorship for any country recognized by Italy that owns a pavilion in the Giardini.
The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw has launched "The Woman Question 1550-2025," a landmark exhibition featuring 200 works by nearly 150 female artists spanning five centuries. Curated by Alison M. Gingeras and designed by Dorota Terlecka of Biuro Kreacja, the show is organized into nine thematic sections within the museum’s new contemporary building. The exhibition design utilizes a minimalist approach, featuring neutral palettes and intentional spatial proportions to ensure the diverse artworks remain the primary focus.
The eighth edition of the Singapore Biennale, titled "Pure Intention," opens across five neighborhoods in Singapore, embedding over 100 artworks in sites ranging from shopping malls and housing estates to colonial-era buildings and parks. Curated by Selene Yap, Hsu Fang-Tze, Ong Puay Khim, and Duncan Bass, the biennale features works like field-0's "Drifting Bodies" (2025), which critiques Singapore's hydropower imports and their impact on Thailand's indigenous Karen hill tribe, and Allora & Calzadilla's "Under Discussion" (2004), exploring sovereignty and displacement. Organized by the Singapore Art Museum and commissioned by the National Arts Council, the event is part of SG60, Singapore's 60th anniversary celebrations.
The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center in Clarksville, Tennessee, will host "Of Mark & Meaning: American Women Artists" from February 13 to April 26, 2026, as part of its ongoing "Celebrating Women Artists" series. The exhibition features 105 works selected from 791 entries by professional women artists, including world-renowned figures such as Paula B. Holtzclaw, Sherrie McGraw, Diana Reuter-Twining, Taylor Wiedemann, and Star Liana York. Selection jurors include Vivian Chiu, Marcia Goldenstein, and Kirsten Kokkin, while award judges include Katie Delmez, Sharon Louden, and Nandini Makrandi. Artists compete for over $30,000 in prizes, including a $10,000 Grand Prize. A related Symposium of Women in the Arts will take place at the Frist Art Museum on April 25, 2026, featuring a keynote by Sharon Louden.
The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania is hosting "Mavis Pusey: Mobile Images," the first museum retrospective of Jamaican-American artist Mavis Pusey (1928-2019). Curated by Hallie Ringle and Kiki Teshome, the exhibition spans five decades and features over 60 works, including seven paintings shown publicly for the first time. Pusey, who studied at the Art Students League and worked at Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop, was known for her geometric abstraction at a time when many Black artists focused on figuration. The show will travel to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
San Francisco's de Young Museum will unveil its newly reinstalled galleries of Native American art on August 26, following a years-long overhaul led by a group of predominantly Native curators. The reimagined spaces, called the Arts of Indigenous America galleries, feature contemporary works alongside historical pieces—some over 1,000 years old—as well as recent acquisitions and new commissions. One gallery focuses on Native California with rotating regional exhibits, while another covers all of North America, with ceramics, textiles, paintings, beadwork, and basketry arranged thematically. The museum consulted the communities of origin for historical pieces, as required by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and invited members to help interpret the works.
Noah Davis, a painter who died at age 32 in 2015, is the subject of a posthumous retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and a concurrent exhibition at the Underground Museum, the institution he co-founded with his wife, artist Karon Davis. The article traces his brief but influential career, highlighting his figurative paintings that blend everyday Black life with surrealist and spiritual undertones, and his role as a community builder in the Los Angeles art scene.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art celebrated the renovation and reopening of the Arts of the Ancient Americas galleries in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing with a special exhibition tour. Curators Joanne Pillsbury and Laura Filloy Nadal, along with museum director Max Hollein and special guest Alejandro de Avila, led the event, highlighting new scholarship on the Mesoamerican ballgame, the roles of women of power, and Moche metalworking technology.
Tate chair of trustees Roland Rudd has suggested that naming rights for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern could cost a minimum of £50 million. The proposal, reported by The Telegraph, is tied to the institution's new Tate Future Fund, launched last week with a goal of reaching £150 million by 2030. Rudd stated that endowing curators, directors, or naming the iconic space are all potential options for donors, though a Tate spokesperson emphasized the comments were hypothetical and the fundraising campaign is just beginning.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has released new photographs of its David Geffen Galleries, designed by architect Peter Zumthor with SOM as collaborating architect. The building, a long horizontal glass and concrete structure curving along Hancock Park and Wilshire Boulevard, opened temporarily for a three-day preview last week and is scheduled to open to the public in April 2026. The 347,500-square-foot wing includes 110,000 square feet of gallery space, along with street-level pavilions housing a theater, store, bar, and education center. To mark the preview, LACMA hosted three "sonic previews" featuring composer Kamasi Washington leading over 100 musicians in a performance of his work Harmony of Difference. Architectural critic Christopher Hawthorne described the wing as "bold and compromised in nearly equal measure," while Zumthor noted that curators initially critical of the spatial layout have begun to appreciate the space and the beauty of the handmade concrete structure.
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is reopening its Galleries of the Arts of Oceania to the public for the first time since 2021, following a major renovation that allowed curators to reimagine the presentation of art from the vast Pacific region. The galleries feature more than 600 artworks from Melanesia, Polynesia, Micronesia, Australia, and New Zealand, including the iconic Kwoma ceiling installation from Papua New Guinea, which has been reconfigured with input from the artists' descendants to accurately reflect clan groupings. The renovation is part of a broader $70 million overhaul of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, which also houses collections from the ancient Americas and Africa.
On April 26, 2025, the School of the Arts held its annual MFA Thesis Exhibition at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, featuring twenty-nine emerging and established artists. Curated by Amal Issa, the show spans a wide range of mediums including installations, videos, paintings, drawings, and sculptures, with many works exploring themes of memory, ancestry, and identity. Notable pieces include Maya Dixon's immersive installation using gourds and found objects, Daniel Castro's surreal cityscapes, and Ridwana Rahman's interactive carpet piece that invites reflection on direction and prayer.
The article profiles the unique aesthetic and historical significance of Kettle's Yard, a house in Cambridge, England, created by Jim Ede. Ede, a former Tate curator, transformed a series of dilapidated cottages into a living work of art and a haven for modern artists in the mid-20th century. He filled the space with a carefully arranged collection of modern art, natural objects, and furniture, embracing the building's worn, imperfect character rather than restoring it to pristine condition.
New York City is hosting its inaugural Trans Art Fest, a grassroots, community-driven festival featuring the work of over 120 transgender artists. Founded by curator and textile artist Carter Shocket, the two-month program includes 12 all-trans exhibitions and more than 20 events ranging from glassblowing workshops to cinema screenings. Major highlights include the exhibitions "Alchemists" and "A Tender Touch," the latter of which focuses exclusively on the work of Black trans artists.
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.
Lavorare nell’arte: opportunità da Arte Laguna Prize, Reggio Parma Festival, Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Londra, Museo Mitoraj
Artribune has compiled a list of five open calls and job opportunities in Italy for visual artists, theater professionals, curators, and digital media specialists. The opportunities include the Arte Laguna Prize 2026 offering exhibitions at Venice's Arsenale Nord and international residencies at venues like The Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai and BigCi in Australia; the Gradus theater residency program by Reggio Parma Festival; an artist residency for Italians under 40 at Camberwell College of Arts in London organized by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Londra; the Terre Alte residency for visual artists and curators under 36 by CasermArcheologica; and a digital media specialist position at the Fondazione Museo Igor Mitoraj.
The Fundação Bienal de São Paulo has appointed Amanda Carneiro and Raphael Fonseca as chief curators for the 37th Bienal de São Paulo, scheduled for 2027 at the Pavilhão Ciccillo Matarazzo in Ibirapuera Park. Carneiro, a curator at MASP since 2018 and an artistic organizer for the 2024 Venice Biennale, and Fonseca, a visual arts curator at Culturgest and curator-at-large at the Denver Art Museum, will lead the largest visual arts event in Latin America.
Following the recent electoral defeat of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP coalition by the opposition party Tisza, the Hungarian art world faces a monumental task of institutional restoration. For 16 years, the regime’s 'System of National Cooperation' (NER) systematically co-opted cultural institutions, installing loyalists in leadership roles at major venues like the Kunsthalle and Ludwig Museum to promote an ethno-nationalist agenda. This period was marked by the exodus of independent curators, the occupation of museums by activists, and a fractured ecosystem where state funding was tied to political compliance.
Tate Modern in London is hosting a major solo exhibition of Emily Kam Kngwarray, the celebrated Aboriginal artist who rose to fame in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The show, first presented at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, features works from the height of her career, deliberately omitting some of her final paintings due to concerns about the circumstances under which they were created. Curators Kelli Cole and Hetti Perkins highlight how Kngwarray's rapid success attracted dealers and entrepreneurs who exploited the artist and her community, revealing an opaque market system that took advantage of artists' inexperience and poor socio-economic conditions.
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.
Una importante mostra a Milano racconta il Man Ray meno conosciuto: intervista al curatore
The Gió Marconi gallery and Fondazione Marconi in Milan have launched a major retrospective titled "Man Ray: M for Dictionary," marking fifty years since the artist's passing. Curated by Yuval Etgar and Deborah D’Ippolito, the exhibition moves beyond Man Ray’s famous photography to highlight his role as a pioneer of conceptual and multimedia art. The show is organized into five thematic sections that explore his use of visual puns, experimental "Rayographs," and the transformative power of language across painting, drawing, and sculpture.
Cubitt Artists, a non-profit gallery and studio space in central London that has operated for over 25 years, announced it will leave its current home in Islington this spring after its lease was not renewed. The artist-run cooperative, which houses 32 studios, is launching a fundraising campaign to find a new location and continue providing affordable studios, contemporary art programming, and opportunities for early-career artists and curators.
Alserkal Avenue in Dubai has launched "Deja Vu," a multi-gallery exhibition bringing together 20 UAE-based galleries at the Concrete venue, running until May 8. Curated by Zaina Zaarour with co-curators Kevin Jones and Nada Raza, the show features works including German artist Michael Sailstorfer's installation of a car fuel tank, reflecting anxieties around fuel prices and geopolitical uncertainty. The exhibition emerged from urgent community meetings after the Iran war disrupted the spring art season, which typically includes Art Dubai and collector visits. Participating galleries include 16 from Alserkal Avenue, plus Nika Project Space, Total Arts at The Courtyard, Tabari Artspace, and Iris Projects, with many works priced under $10,000 to facilitate sales.
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.
The Ishara Art Foundation in the UAE has launched 'Urdu Worlds,' the region's first contemporary art exhibition dedicated to the Urdu language. Curated by Hammad Nasar, the show features a visual dialogue between the late Indian-born artist Zarina and Pakistani multimedia artist Ali Kazim. The exhibition showcases Zarina’s delicate woodcut prints, including her seminal 'Home is a Foreign Place,' alongside an expansive survey of Kazim’s paintings, sculptures, and his new 'Alphabets' series, marking his institutional debut in West Asia.