Paul Waldman, a multifaceted artist known for his transgressive paintings and unique architectural birdhouses, has died at the age of 89. After overcoming childhood dyslexia and a stint as a competitive bodybuilder, Waldman established a significant career in the New York art scene, characterized by his meticulous technique and a fascination with the human form and avian structures.
Linda Dresner, the influential fashion retailer known for her minimalist, gallery-like boutiques, has died at the age of 88. Operating high-end spaces on New York’s Park Avenue and in Birmingham, Michigan, Dresner was a pioneer in treating avant-garde fashion as fine art, curating collections from designers like Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto, and Maison Margiela long before they became household names.
The Affordable Art Fair is returning to Hampstead Heath in London from May 6th to 10th, featuring over 100 galleries and more than 1,000 artworks. A key highlight is the inaugural 'Ceramics Unbound' exhibition, curated by Caroline Jackman, showcasing 27 boundary-pushing ceramic artists, including featured programme artist Sara Dodd. The fair also includes curated displays like 'Heath & Heart' and 'Finds Under £500,' outdoor painting workshops, evening 'Summer Lates' events with music, and family-friendly activities including a children's art competition.
Gabrielle Goliath, a South African artist, created the performance work "Elegy" in 2015 after hearing a father mourn his daughter, Ipeleng Christine Moholane, who was raped and murdered. The piece features seven operatic women sustaining a single note in relay for an hour, evolving over a decade into a series of iterations that address systemic violence and grief. In January 2026, South Africa's Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Gayton McKenzie, cancelled Goliath's presentation of the latest version of "Elegy" at the 61st Venice Biennale, which was to include tributes to victims in South Africa, Namibia, and Gaza, including journalist Hiba Abu Nada. Goliath refused to alter the work, took legal action, and will now show it independently at the Chiesa di Sant'Antonin in Venice, while the official South African Pavilion will remain empty for the first time since 2011.
Margaret Whyte, an artist from Uruguay, is set to represent her country at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026, with her pavilion located in the Giardini. In an interview with ArtReview, Whyte discusses her exhibition, which builds on her earlier show "Tiempo de Escuchar" at the National Museum of Visual Arts in Uruguay, curated by Patricia Bentancur. Her work is inspired by Nassim N. Taleb's book "Antifragile" (2012), exploring themes of chaos, uncertainty, and resilience. She sees her antifragile approach as complementary to the Biennale's theme, "In Minor Keys," curated by Koyo Kouoh, emphasizing emotional depth, silence, and healing.
The Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA) has announced a 24-hour strike for Friday, May 8, coinciding with previews of the 2026 Venice Biennale, alongside a protest rally organized by local group Biennalocene and Italian trade unions. Earlier this week, sixty artists staged a sonic protest at the Giardini entrance to draw attention to the plight of those affected by genocide and war in Palestine and elsewhere. The Latvian pavilion has also encouraged attendees to wear a design by artist Krišs Salmanis reading “Death in Venice – Russia go home!” Meanwhile, dissident artists Pussy Riot stormed the Russian pavilion waving Ukrainian flags, and the entire 2026 Biennale jury resigned after the decision to exclude countries whose leaders are charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court from competing for top prizes.
Lynda Roscoe Hartigan has been appointed as the new director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is a former chief curator of the museum and most recently served as executive director of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
A new exhibition titled "Anne Frank The Exhibition" opens Friday, May 1 at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. It features 130 collection items from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, including artifacts from the Secret Annex where Anne Frank and her family hid during the Nazi occupation. Some of these items have never been displayed in the United States before. The exhibition offers a personal look at the Frank family's life in hiding, including a board game that helped pass the time.
National Gallery Singapore has opened its first R18 exhibition, 'Passion Is Volcanic: Desire In South-east Asian Art', featuring around 60% of works from the national collection, many shown for the first time, alongside regional loans. The show includes a 14th-15th century tantric Buddhist sculpture of kissing buddhas, a pastel painting by pioneering gay Singaporean artist Tan Peng, Liu Kang's 1953 painting 'Scene In Bali', and long-exposure photography by Lavender Chang originally commissioned for a Viagra campaign. Co-curators Adele Tan and Kathleen Ditzig contextualize the exhibition with pre-modern works to demonstrate that artists' interest in the body, desire, and sex is enduring in Asia.
The DePaul Art Museum (DPAM) is hosting a career-spanning retrospective for New York-based artist Barbara Nessim titled "My Compass Is the Line" before the institution permanently closes in June. The exhibition marks Nessim’s first solo show in Chicago, featuring works from the 1960s to the present that span painting, computer art, and her iconic 1982 Time magazine cover. The show highlights Nessim’s exploration of femininity and sexuality, drawing stylistic parallels to the Chicago Imagists while showcasing her technical versatility.
The Triennale Milano is hosting a dedicated exhibition celebrating the prolific output of the British design duo Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby. The showcase highlights the studio's influential career, featuring a range of industrial design projects that have defined modern British aesthetics over the past two decades.
Acme Art Studios, a longtime visual arts institution in downtown Wilmington, North Carolina, has been listed for sale at $4.4 million. The one-acre complex at 711 N. Fifth Ave. includes a 12,000-square-foot warehouse with studio and gallery space, plus four vacant lots. Founded in 1991 by a collective of artists in a former carpet warehouse, Acme has become a vital hub for the local arts scene, renting to dozens of artists and hosting countless shows over more than three decades. The property is owned by five artists, including co-founder Pam Toll, who said the decision to sell was unanimous and that the timing is right for a number of reasons.
Dubai-based Palestinian-Canadian artist Samar Hejazi has been commissioned to create mirrored sculptural mannequin heads for the Costume Institute's Spring 2026 exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, opening alongside the Met Gala. Hejazi's reflective works, designed for the exhibition "Costume Art," aim to collapse the distance between viewer and object, creating moments of surprise and questioning about identity, perception, and belonging.
TOTAH gallery in New York presents 'The Time That’s Left', a solo exhibition of works by Italian artist Tommaso Spazzini Villa, opening May 14, 2026. The show expands on his recent large-scale mural on West 45th Street in Hell’s Kitchen, moving from public space to an intimate gallery setting. It features graphite drawings traced across antique book pages—sacred texts, epic poetry, theatre scores—depicting root-like forms that challenge linear language, alongside metal box sculptures with wire, light, and dried leaves that create fleeting shadow dioramas.
Chinese artist Gulistan, based in Beijing, presents her solo exhibition "Time Garden" at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art (GNAMC) in Rome. Curated by Gabriele Simongini and supported by the Foundation for Chinese Art in Italy and the International Federation of Women Artists 923 Art Space, the show explores a fusion of Eastern and Western aesthetics through painting, drawing on the legacy of the Silk Road. The exhibition features series such as "Fragments of Time," "The Nature of Memory," and "Memory of the Portraits," blending Chinese ink traditions with classical Western portraiture and archaeological motifs.
The National Museum of Mexican Art (NMMA) in Chicago was founded in 1987 by a group of public school educators, led by Carlos Tortolero, to address a lack of Mexican history and culture in the curriculum. It has grown into a 48,000-square-foot institution with a collection of over 20,000 objects, spanning from Pre-Columbian times to the present, and was the first Latino museum in the U.S. to be accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
The Cleveland Museum of Art has unveiled "Epic of the Northwest Himalayas: Pahari Paintings from the ‘Shangri’ Ramayana," an exhibition reuniting a widely dispersed 18th-century pictorial series. The show features 40 physical paintings alongside digital animations that reconstruct the original episodic sequences of the Hindu epic. This presentation is part of a larger collaborative initiative involving the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art to study and display works from the Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Ralph Benkaim Collection.
Artist Shaniqwa Jarvis is set to debut her first UK solo exhibition, "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," at London’s Public Gallery on April 30, 2026. The show features twelve new works that blend photography with silk, mirrored surfaces, aluminum, and collage to explore themes of grief, memory, and renewal. Central to the exhibition are immersive silk installations that create live double exposures and a new film work that weaves together personal archival footage with intimate conversations on motherhood, labor, and identity.
The Art Gallery of Peterborough is set to host "Elizabeth Thompson Advises," a multimedia exhibition by Cavan-based artist JoEllen Brydon running from April to June 2026. The show centers on the work of Brydon’s late mother, Jean Armstrong Brydon, who wrote a progressive advice column for The Globe and Mail under the pseudonym Elizabeth Thompson between 1966 and 1978. The exhibition integrates original letters and columns with JoEllen’s bold paintings, audio recordings, and short films to bring these mid-century narratives to life.
The Newport Art Museum is set to host "Voices of Springboard" on April 16, a moderated panel discussion featuring four artists from its current members' juried exhibition. Led by juror and art consultant Julie Keyes, the event features artists Karin Gielen, Tas Mahr, Saberah S. Malik, and Janice Smyth. The discussion will explore the transition from emerging to professional status, the impact of branding on artistic careers, and how contemporary practices engage with historical museum collections.
The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) has launched a long-term exhibition titled 'Guests of Honor,' featuring significant loans of Jewish ceremonial objects from the Jewish Museum in New York. Running through January 2027, the display includes intricate items such as Torah crowns, pointers, menorahs, and spice boxes sourced from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The objects are integrated into various galleries, including the Arts of the Islamic World section, to highlight shared aesthetic motifs and historical connections between different cultures.
Seattle's art scene in May 2026 features six diverse exhibitions. Highlights include 'Influences: Japanese Prints and Northwest Art' at the Cascadia Art Museum, exploring the impact of Japanese woodblock printing on regional artists; a site-specific installation by Carly Sheehan at the appointment-only Double Garage Gallery; Clare Johnson's exhibition of over 6,000 artworks on sticky notes at Gallery 4Culture; Emma Bergman's surreal multimedia installation 'The World to Come' at Specialist Gallery; and a landmark retrospective of light-art pioneer Tom Lloyd at the Frye Art Museum.
Berlin's Pergamon Museum, closed since October 2023, will partially reopen in June 2027, with only the north wing and central section accessible. The renovation and expansion project, launched in 2012, has faced repeated delays and its budget has ballooned to €1.5 billion. The partial reopening coincides with the bicentenary of Berlin's Museum Island and will bring back the Pergamon Altar, unseen for over a decade, along with redesigned permanent exhibitions for the Museum of Islamic Art and the Museum of the Ancient Near East. However, major attractions like the Ishtar Gate and the Market Gate of Miletus will remain closed until the 2030s, with full museum completion now estimated between 2037 and 2043.
Hervé Barbaret, aged 60, will step down as director general of France-Muséums on April 30, returning to the Cour des comptes (Court of Auditors). He had led the organization since 2019. Barbaret, a former student of the École Nationale d'Administration (ENA) and a senior counselor, previously served as general administrator of the Louvre, overseeing the Louvre-Lens project, the Department of Islamic Arts, and Louvre Abu Dhabi. He also directed the Mobilier national and was secretary general of the Ministry of Culture. France-Muséums coordinates French museum expertise internationally, from Louvre Abu Dhabi to a project in New Delhi. His successor has not yet been announced.
Yvon Lambert, the legendary French art dealer and collector, reflects on his lifelong relationship with art and literature in an interview for TLmag41: The Art of Collecting. He recounts buying his first painting at age 14, opening his Paris gallery in the 1960s, and later donating a major portion of his collection to the French State, now housed at the Collection Lambert in Avignon. After closing his gallery in 2014, he shifted focus to an artist's bookshop, now run by his daughter Eve Lambert. The conversation, led by Sibylle Grandchamp, explores Lambert's early influences, his father's passion for literature, and the family's shared love for art books.
Francis Dosoo, a self-taught Scottish artist now based in Vienna, is mounting his first solo show at Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) titled "Portrait Of Dorothy Gale." Dosoo began his career in nightlife, running club nights and DJ sets that blended into performance and installation art. His practice spans sound, film, and visual art, with past collaborations including Joanne Dawson, Aniela Piasecka, and Alberta Whittle, and commissions from the Glasgow Film Festival and Edinburgh Art Festival. The DCA exhibition draws on the 1978 film *The Wiz*, reimagining *The Wizard of Oz* with an African-American cast, focusing on star Diana Ross's career and personal life at the time.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a 300,000-square-foot institution designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects with Stantec, will open in Los Angeles' Exposition Park on September 22. The 11-acre campus includes a park by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA and will feature over 1,200 objects across 30 galleries, showcasing narrative art from ancient sculptures to modern cinema, drawn from the museum's founding collection. Separately, Julien's Auctions will host "Roberta Flack: Style, Art & Music," a no-reserve auction celebrating the singer's life and cultural impact, including her Bösendorfer Imperial Concert Grand Piano.
Internationally acclaimed glass artist Dale Chihuly has returned to Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the first time in over a decade with the exhibition "Chihuly at Meijer Gardens," running from May 2 to November 1, 2026. The show spans 12 outdoor locations and includes an indoor component, "Chihuly: Radiant Forms," making it the largest Chihuly exhibition in the venue's history. The artwork was built in Chihuly's Seattle studio, disassembled, shipped, and reassembled on site over two weeks.
The University of Melbourne's Buxton Contemporary has opened a new exhibition titled "Poetry goes no further than language," which examines the emergence of conceptual art in China during the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Featuring works by the Beijing collective New Measurement Group and Shanghai artist Qian Weikang, the show also includes a new commission by Victorian College of the Arts graduate Darcey Bella Arnold. Curated by Dr. Carol Yinghua Lu, Director of Beijing's Inside-Out Art Museum, together with artist Liu Ding, the exhibition brings previously inaccessible or little-known works to Australia for the first time.
The University of Melbourne's Buxton Contemporary has opened "Poetry goes no further than language: A historical moment of art becoming art again," an exhibition examining the emergence of conceptual art in China during the mid-1980s and early 1990s. It features works by the Beijing collective New Measurement Group and Shanghai artist Qian Weikang, alongside a new commission by Victorian College of the Arts graduate Darcey Bella Arnold. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Carol Yinghua Lu, Director of Beijing's Inside-Out Art Museum, and artist Liu Ding.