Milan Art Week 2026 features a robust program of institutional exhibitions alongside the miart and Paris Internationale Milano fairs. Key highlights include Cao Fei’s multimedia exploration of smart agriculture at Fondazione Prada, Anselm Kiefer’s monumental tribute to forgotten female alchemists at Palazzo Reale, and a major retrospective of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s architectural research at Pirelli HangarBicocca.
Frieze New York is underway, with notable highlights including a provocative marble sculpture of underwear by Reza Aramesh at the Iranian gallery Dastan, representing the last garment removed before imprisonment. Meanwhile, collectors Susan and Michael Hort are hosting a charity sale at their Tribeca townhouse benefiting the Rema Hort Mann Fund, featuring a popular "Buy What You Love" section where $150 works on paper are sold anonymously. Actor Lucy Liu is also making waves with a new exhibition titled "Hard Feelings" at Alisan Fine Arts on the Upper East Side, showcasing deeply personal paintings about memory and family.
The 2026 Venice Biennale opened with 99 participating countries, including first-timers Somalia and Qatar, under the shadow of curator Koyo Kouoh's death. Her planned theme of "enhancement" and the main show "In Minor Keys" were disrupted by political protests: Pussy Riot objected to Russia's inclusion, and a strike against Israel's participation forced several national pavilions (UK, Austria, France) to close. Key takeaways include pervasive female nudity across pavilions, debates over Russia's presence, criticism of the US pavilion's lackluster art, maritime themes dominating several shows, and the rise of olfactory art.
Syrian artist Sara Shamma has been selected to represent Syria at the 2026 Venice Biennale, marking the country's return to the event with a single-artist national pavilion for the first time. Her immersive installation, 'The Tower Tomb of Palmyra,' curated by Yuko Hasegawa and commissioned by Syria's ministry of culture, combines painting, architecture, light, sound, and scent. It draws on the ancient funerary towers of Palmyra destroyed by Islamic State in 2015, addressing cultural loss and the possibility of reconstruction. Shamma, who returned to Syria in September 2024 after eight years abroad, describes living through the fall of the Assad regime and the country's rebirth as a transformative personal and national moment.
Alma Allen's exhibition "Call Me the Breeze" has opened at the U.S. Pavilion for the 61st Venice Biennale. The Utah-born sculptor presents a pared-down, whimsical show that contrasts with the bombastic work of his predecessors, grouping new and old pieces to explore themes of conflict, mourning, and transcendence inspired by Hieronymus Bosch's *Visions of the Afterlife*. The exhibition was produced hurriedly over a few months, and Allen, who typically leaves his works untitled, felt compelled to explain his art for the first time in 30 years amid controversy surrounding his commission.
Artist Isabel Nolan recently discovered she has aphantasia, a rare neurological condition that prevents her from visualizing mental images. Despite this, Nolan has built a successful career creating abstract sculptures, drawings, and tapestries, and her work is featured in the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Her exhibition, "Dreamshook," explores themes of imagination versus reality and draws inspiration from late medieval history and the printer Aldo Manuzio.
The article reviews a salon-style exhibition curated by Matthew Higgs, director of New York's White Columns gallery, at an unnamed gallery space. The show features 43 paintings by a diverse group of artists including Denzil Forrester, Andrew Cranston, Kaye Donachie, Merlin James, Margot Bergman, Gillian Carnegie, Bill Lynch, and Adam Keay, arranged around mismatched chairs facing white windows painted on the walls. The reviewer describes moving through the space, engaging with individual works, and highlights the eclectic, unthemed curation that prioritizes personal taste and conversation over academic or political messaging.
Aipad: The Photography Show is taking place at the Park Avenue Armory in New York from April 22-26, 2026, featuring works from over 70 galleries. The exhibition highlights include Bill Brandt's 1952 nude, Rania Matar's portrait of a young woman in Lebanon, and Zanele Muholi's 2009 portrait of a lesbian pageant queen, alongside works by Tania Franco Klein, Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, and others that explore themes of identity, anxiety, and alternative realities.
Victoria Miro is hosting the largest exhibition of Paula Rego’s drawings to date, curated by the artist’s son, Nick Willing. Spanning from the 1950s until her death in 2022, the show features intimate pencil sketches, pastels, and ink drawings that reveal the foundational narratives of her career, including her early childhood sketches, her fierce opposition to the Salazar dictatorship, and her advocacy for women's rights.
Miart, Milan's international modern and contemporary art fair, is launching its 30th-anniversary edition in a new, larger venue, the Allianz MiCo South Wing. The 2026 edition, themed "New Directions: Miart, but different," will host 160 galleries from 24 countries across three levels, featuring sections like Emergent for new voices, Established for historical dialogue, and a special film project called Movements.
Art Paris 2026 will take place from April 9–12 at the Grand Palais, featuring two major curated themes: "Babel – Art and Language in France," guest-curated by Loïc Le Gall, and "Reparation," curated by Alexia Fabre. The fair will include roughly 165 galleries, with sectors like Promises for emerging artists, Solo Show for monographic presentations, and French Design Art Edition.
British artist Lincoln Townley has launched a new series titled "Success," which explores the psychology of ambition and achievement through gestural, abstract portraits. The collection, available through his partnership with the Prague-based Eclipse Art Group, expands his market into Eastern Europe, following successful sell-out exhibitions at the London Art Fair 2025 and a planned presentation at the Palazzo Bembo during the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Art Palm Beach returns for its fourth edition from January 28 to February 1, 2026, at the Palm Beach County Convention Center. The fair features a mix of returning and first-time galleries from the U.S. and abroad, including Gefen Gallery (San Francisco), Onessimo Fine Art (Palm Beach), Oliver Sears Gallery (Dublin), and John Martin Gallery (London). Highlights include Hollis Taggart’s presentation of John Knuth’s fly paintings, Pontone Gallery’s showcase of Matteo Massagrande, and Provident Fine Art’s retrospective ‘Sylvester Stallone: Evolution.’ For the first time, the DIVERSEartPB program presents a large-scale, biennial-style installation curated by Marisa Caichiolo, featuring Chilean artist Eugenia Vargas-Pereira’s participatory work AGUAS (1991).
Laura Footes, a British artist living with chronic illness, opened her solo exhibition “Anamnesis” at Shrine NYC in early December 2024. Her paintings feature translucent, ethereal bodies in hallucinogenic landscapes, exploring themes of entrapment, escape, and the porous, temporal nature of the body. Footes, who has Crohn’s disease, draws on her hospital experiences and was discovered by Tracey Emin in 2022 after Emin saw her work on social media. Emin later mentored Footes at TKE Studios in Margate and curated her solo show “A Healing Dream” at Carl Freedman Gallery in late 2024.
Design Miami 2025 preview drew a bustling crowd with over 70 exhibitors under the theme "Make Believe." Highlights included Katie Stout's whimsical carousel featuring marine animals, Roham Shamekh's biomorphic "Roots" sofa with integrated headphones, and ATRA's futuristic "Intelligence of Evolution" seating system upholstered in Hermès fabric. The Spanish silver brand Garrido showcased collaborations with Peter Marino, while the fair's 20th anniversary edition embraced a carnivalesque atmosphere with popcorn and mirrored walls.
Parker Gallery in Los Angeles mounted its final exhibition, “Bowls, Boxes, Plates & Vessels,” at its longtime home in the Los Feliz neighborhood from February 1 to October 19, 2025. The show featured an intergenerational group of artists—including Magdalena Suarez Frimkess, Nancy Shaver, Ruby Neri, Shio Kusaka, Zachary Leener, and Daisy Sheff—who had previously exhibited at the gallery, invited back to explore the theme of the container as form. Works in ceramic ranged from small hand-held bowls to large-scale sculptures, displayed within the domestic space of founder Sam Parker’s home, adding intimacy and resonance.
A school district in Watertown, New York, is facing potential legal action from the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a conservative Christian legal organization, after a middle school art teacher assigned students to visit the Keith Haring Foundation website and interpret two of the artist's works from the 1980s. Parents complained at a school board meeting that the assignment exposed 11- and 12-year-olds to sexually explicit content. The ACLJ sent a letter to Superintendent Larry Schmiegel on November 21, demanding a reprimand for the teacher, parental consent forms for future sensitive content, and counseling for affected students, threatening litigation if the district did not respond by December 1. The teacher resigned in November but was rehired as an English teacher.
Ayoung Kim's video "Delivery Dancer's Sphere" (2022) captures the experience of delivery workers during the Covid-19 pandemic in Seoul, following two female riders navigating the city via app-based systems. Kim shadowed real delivery workers to create the work, which blends documentary footage, anime-style animation, and AI-generated imagery. The video is part of a series that will be featured in Kim's first US solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 in New York, opening this week, and she will also debut a new motion-capture piece at the Performa festival later this month. Kim recently won a $100,000 award from the Guggenheim Museum and LG.
Sam Falls has created two paintings, "Rewilding" (2024) and "King's Crossing" (2024), for Ruinart's "Conversations with Nature" program, following a residency at the Champagne house's Taissy vineyard near Reims. The works, which incorporate natural materials and ecological processes, will debut at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2024 before traveling to Ruinart's headquarters. Falls's practice involves arranging plants on canvas and using pigment that reacts to humidity and sunlight, reflecting a collaboration with the environment.
Claudia Altman-Siegel closed her San Francisco gallery, Altman Siegel, in November 2025 with a farewell party, handing out beers to friends, artists, and visitors. She aimed to provide closure and avoid the sudden, chaotic closures that have become common in the mid-tier art market, which often leave artists unpaid, works unreturned, and staff in limbo. Other dealers, including Tif Sigfrids and Rena Bransten, shared strategies for ethical closures, such as continuing to support artists through networks, paying them on time, and returning all works. Bransten's gallery, after 50 years, is shifting to a nomadic model rather than fully closing.
The estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat is releasing a new screenprint titled *King Alphonso*, available from Pace Prints starting November 5. Produced in an edition of 60, the print reproduces a 1982–83 drawing in acrylic and charcoal, referencing the Spanish monarch Alfonso XIII, known as “El Africano.” The work will be stamped and signed by Basquiat’s sisters, Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, administrators of his estate. The announcement follows recent estate activities, including the 2022 “King Pleasure” exhibition in New York and the designation of Great Jones Street as “Jean-Michel Basquiat Way.”
Artist Lita Albuquerque staged a 25-minute performance titled "The Sea Is Within Me" in the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern, a 1926 underground reservoir in Houston, during the inaugural edition of Untitled Art, Houston. The piece featured Albuquerque's daughter and dancer Jasmine Albuquerque, vocalist Carmina Escobar, and double bassist Laura Dykes, guiding small groups through a meditation and a dramatic call-and-response between the vocalist and dancer, exploring themes of joy, despair, and symbiosis.
Paul Pfeiffer's studio visit reveals his ongoing exploration of media spectacles, particularly through his "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" series (2001–), which digitally isolates NBA basketball players by erasing teammates, opponents, and jersey details from archival images. The artist discusses his counterintuitive relationship to sports, his intense Christian upbringing in Hawaii and the Philippines, and the influence of horror films like "The Exorcist" on his work, which examines the religious undertones of secular activities and the mechanics of voyeurism.
Sotheby's London sale of British socialite and arts patron Pauline Karpidas's collection shattered its $53 million high estimate, totaling $100 million on Wednesday evening. Nine works by artist-designer couple François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne (known as Les Lalanne) achieved $18.5 million, more than five times their combined high estimate of $3.5 million, contributing nearly 20% of the total. The top result was Claude Lalanne's Structure végétale mirror and wall light, which sold for $4.8 million against a $615,000 high estimate. Additional Lalanne works in a day sale and online auction also performed strongly, with jewelry and furniture pieces far exceeding expectations.
Andres Serrano has publicly proposed to represent the United States at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026 with an installation expanding his ongoing project "The Game: All Things Trump," a collection of Trump-themed memorabilia acquired largely from eBay. The proposal includes a site-specific iteration of the work at the U.S. Pavilion in Venice's Giardini, potentially incorporating his controversial film "Insurrection" about the January 6 riots. The U.S. State Department is accepting submissions through July 30 and will announce its choice on September 1, leaving the winner only eight months to prepare.
Dublin-born Egyptian artist Rafik Greiss discusses his practice and recent work in an interview conducted at a Paris café. Greiss, who recently presented a solo show titled “The Longest Sleep” at Galerie Balice Hertling in Paris, creates photographs and films that explore themes of loneliness, urban space, and religious experience. His 12-minute film *The Longest Sleep* (2024), shot in Cairo, depicts Sufi rituals and deserted fairgrounds, informed by neurotheology. Greiss prints his black-and-white photographs on thick Japanese paper, emphasizing the tactile signature of his lens-based work. He is currently considering exhibition invitations from institutions around the Mediterranean and plans to travel to Egypt to make new work.
Alexandra Metcalf, a rising artist based in Berlin, is gaining attention for her multidisciplinary work that blends Victorian and psychedelic aesthetics with the dark history of women's psychiatric facilities. Her upcoming Art Basel debut with London's Ginny on Frederick features an installation titled "Assembly," consisting of four reclaimed grandfather clocks transformed into psychologically charged dioramas, which has been nominated for the Baloise Art Prize 2025. Metcalf also recently opened a solo exhibition "Gaaaaaaasp" at The Perimeter in London, an immersive installation evoking a 1960s doctor's waiting room and surgical theater, further exploring themes of madness, gendered labor, and Freudian psychology.
Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta (b. 1976) presents a solo exhibition at Galleria Continua in San Gimignano, on view through September 7, 2025. The show features a range of works from her career, including the large-scale embroidered piece *Untitled (Rectangles on flags of the world)* (2021–25), the monumental sculpture *Truth* (2025), and *100 Hand-drawn Maps of Italy* (2007–2023). Through video, installation, performance, and sculpture, Gupta explores themes of censorship, migration, borders, control, and resilience, engaging viewers with multisensory works that question societal norms.
London's Piano Nobile gallery has opened "Barbara Hepworth: Strings," the first exhibition dedicated to the British sculptor's use of string in her work. The show explores how Hepworth (1903–1975) incorporated string into sculptures, paintings, and drawings from 1939 onward, including pieces never before exhibited in the U.K. Highlights include the rediscovered "Theme on Electronics (Orpheus)," 1956, commissioned by Mullard and long thought lost, and "Pierced Hemisphere (Telstar)," 1963, making its U.K. debut. Curated by Michael Regan, the exhibition draws on Hepworth's letters and archival material to illuminate her innovative approach to tension, space, and light.
Sotheby's held a three-part marathon of contemporary art auctions in New York on Thursday evening, totaling $186.1 million with fees across 68 lots. The evening included white-glove sales for the collections of legendary dealer Barbara Gladstone and veteran dealer Daniella Luxembourg, with the Gladstone offering exceeding its presale estimate. Top lots included Richard Prince's "Man Crazy Nurse" (2002–03), which sold for $3.96 million, and Lucio Fontana's "Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio" (1963), which achieved $14.5 million. The main contemporary evening sale took in $127 million, while the overall result fell short of last May's equivalent sale of $234.6 million.