At the 2026 Met Gala, Black stars and socialites turned the human form into art

The 2026 Met Gala, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art under the theme 'Costume Art,' featured Black celebrities and socialites interpreting the human form as art on the red carpet. Notable attendees included Beyoncé in a skeletal silver gown by Olivier Rousteing, Colman Domingo inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Rihanna in a custom Maison Margiela 'living sculpture' by Glenn Martens, and Venus Williams co-chairing the event while wearing a look referencing her own portrait by Robert Pruitt. Others like SZA, Tschabalala Self, and Cardi B offered surreal or literal nods to art history and body imagery.

The Met Gala May Be Over, But the Museum's New Exhibit Will Celebrate Costumes as Art all Year

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has opened a new exhibition titled "Costume Art," curated by Andrew Bolton, which pairs historical and contemporary garments with artworks from the museum's collection spanning 5,000 years. The exhibition is housed in the new 12,000-square-foot Condé Nast Galleries and runs from May 10, 2026 to January 10, 2027. It was launched in conjunction with the 2026 Met Gala, co-chaired by Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour, with celebrities like Emma Chamberlain, Naomi Watts, and Hunter Schafer wearing looks inspired by masterpieces in the Met's collection.

All the Looks That Made It From the Runway Into the Met’s “Costume Art” Exhibition

Bruges inaugurates BRUSK art hall with major exhibitions and festival weekend

Bruges, Belgium, will open a new art gallery called BRUSK on May 8, 2026, designed by Robbrecht en Daem architecten. The launch features two major exhibitions: 'Latent City', a digital art experience by Turkish-American artist Refik Anadol (his first solo show in Belgium), and 'Bigger Picture. Connected worlds of Bruges 900-1550', a cultural-historical exhibition examining Bruges as a medieval metropolis. A three-day city festival, BRUSK FEST, will accompany the opening weekend with free performances, workshops, and music.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's new exhibition celebrates the human body as art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute opened a new exhibition titled "Costume Art," curated by Andrew Bolton, which pairs historical and contemporary garments with artworks from the Met's collection spanning 5,000 years. The exhibition debuted at the 2026 Met Gala, co-chaired by Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour, with celebrities like Rihanna, Emma Chamberlain, and Hunter Schafer wearing looks inspired by masterpieces such as Van Gogh's "The Starry Night" and Klimt's "Mäda Primavesi." The show runs from May 10, 2026, to January 10, 2027, in the new Condé Nast Galleries, a 12,000-square-foot space that centralizes fashion displays within the museum.

Ahead of the 2026 Met Gala, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Introduced New Mannequins With Diverse Body Types Inspired by Real People

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has opened a new exhibition titled "Costume Art" ahead of the 2026 Met Gala, featuring mannequins with diverse body types—including larger, pregnant, trans, and disabled bodies—created through 3D printing and based on real-life models. The show pairs roughly 400 artworks with garments, aiming to shift the traditional perspective by viewing art through the lens of fashion rather than the reverse.

A History of the Human Body at “Costume Art,” the New Costume Institute Exhibit

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute has announced its latest exhibition, "Costume Art," opening May 10. Curated by Andrew Bolton, the show brings together garments and objects from across the museum's curatorial departments to explore the relationship between fashion and the human body. The exhibition is organized into thematic sections including the Naked & Nude Body, Classical Body, Abstract Body, Reclaimed Body, Pregnant Body, Corpulent Body, and Disabled Body, featuring works by designers such as Walter Van Beirendonck, LÛCHEN, Georgina Godley, Ann-Sofie Back, Di Petsa, Alessandro Michele for Gucci, and Vivienne Westwood, alongside historical art objects from Greek ceramics to Mesopotamian sculptures.

Garden Party: Nature on Paper

The McNay Art Museum in San Antonio presents "Garden Party: Nature on Paper," an exhibition running from May 7 to August 9, 2026, that explores humanity's relationship with the natural world. Featuring prints, drawings, photographs, paintings, and sculpture from the museum's permanent collection, the show includes works by René Magritte, Rufino Tamayo, Kara Walker, Luis Jiménez, and Honoré Daumier. Organized by Elizabeth Kathleen Mitchell, the exhibition is divided into two narratives: one celebrating nature's abundance through gardens and flowers, and another examining human extraction through hunting and exploitation imagery.

Black Artists Featured in Monet to Matisse Exhibition at Birmingham Museum of Art

The Birmingham Museum of Art (BMA) has opened its presentation of the traveling exhibition "Monet to Matisse: French Moderns, 1850–1950," which features over 100 masterworks from the Brooklyn Museum. Uniquely, the BMA version includes more than 40 additional works from its own collection, among them paintings by two Black American artists—Henry Ossawa Tanner and Charles Ethan Porter—who lived and worked in France during the period. Curator Dr. Maggie Crosland emphasized the importance of including these artists to highlight the contributions of Black Americans to French modernism, especially given the political climate that drove many to Paris between 1850 and 1950.

Musée d’Orsay displays Renoir and Degas works looted by Nazis

The Musée d’Orsay in Paris has opened a new gallery dedicated exclusively to artworks suspected of being looted or forcibly sold during the Nazi occupation of France. Among the 13 works on display is Edgar Degas's *Dinner at the Ball* (1919), originally owned by Jewish collector Fernand Ochsé, who was deported to Auschwitz with his wife in 1941. The painting passed through multiple hands before being identified as one of over 100,000 artworks plundered by the Nazis. The museum has assembled a team of six provenance researchers to spend three years tracing the original owners of these works, which are part of the "MNR" (Musées nationaux récupération) collection—some 2,200 pieces deemed too important to sell but whose owners remain unknown.

DATALAND Preview: The World’s First Museum of AI Arts Co-Founded by Refik Anadol

DATALAND, the world's first museum of AI arts co-founded by artist Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, will open to the public on June 20, 2026, in downtown Los Angeles. Located in the Frank Gehry-designed building The Grand LA within the Grand Avenue Cultural District, the 35,000-square-foot venue will debut with the inaugural exhibition "Machine Dreams: Rainforest," an immersive 360-degree experience based on millions of images and sounds of nature. The custom AI model powering the exhibition was trained on data collected from 16 rainforests worldwide, with data partnerships established with the Smithsonian, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Getty, iNaturalist, and the Natural History Museum in London.

Everything to know about the Met Gala 2026: Theme, hosts and what to expect

The Met Gala 2026 will take place on the first Monday in May, with the theme "Costume Art" and a dress code of "Fashion is Art." The accompanying exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art explores depictions of the dressed body throughout time, pairing garments with artworks from the museum's collection. Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour are named co-hosts, while Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos serve as honorary chairs. The event will debut the newly named Condé M. Nast Galleries, a permanent 12,000-square-foot space in the museum's Great Hall, allowing the exhibition to run for nine months from May 10, 2026 to January 10, 2027.

lina lapelytė fills hamburger bahnhof with 400,000 cubes, inviting visitors to build and sing

Lithuanian artist Lina Lapelytė has filled Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof museum with 400,000 lightweight foam cubes, creating an interactive installation titled "The Singing Cube." Visitors are invited to stack, carry, and rebuild the cubes while participating in collective singing performances, transforming the museum into a participatory sound and sculpture environment. The installation evolves over time through the collaborative actions of participants, blending architecture, music, and social interaction.

Beyond Body-Con: In the the Met’s Spectacular New Exhibition, “Costume Art,” the Human Form Connects Fashion and Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has opened a new fashion exhibition titled "Costume Art" in its newly established Condé M. Nast Galleries. Curated by Andrew Bolton, the show features faceless mannequin heads by sculptor Samar Hejazi that reflect visitors' own images, encouraging self-reflection and empathy. The exhibition is structured around a typology of bodies, using mannequins of diverse body types modeled after named individuals to challenge traditional beauty standards. It explores the connection between fashion and the human form, positioning the dressed body as a unifying thread across the museum's collections.

The Artists Who Put Their Bodies Into the Work

This article from Google News, dated May 3, 2026, profiles a selection of artists who have used their own bodies as central elements in their work. It draws a connection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's spring Costume Institute exhibition, "Costume Art," which places fashion in dialogue with other artworks. The roundup includes Marina Abramović, known for her 2010 MoMA performance "The Artist Is Present"; Chris Burden, who staged dangerous works like "Shoot" (1971); David Hammons, creator of the "Body Prints" series; Frida Kahlo, whose painting "The Broken Column" (1944) depicts her own physical pain; Ana Mendieta, whose "Silueta" series used her figure in the landscape; and Yoko Ono, a conceptual artist with a significant body-based practice.

Eat Frida food off a Frida plate: Kahlo kitsch raises eye...

A major Tate Modern exhibition dedicated to Frida Kahlo and her circle opens next month in London, accompanied by a wave of commercial spin-offs including a Kahlo-inspired menu, dinner plates, a Netflix documentary, a clothing line, and an opera premiering in New York. The show, titled "Frida: The Making of an Icon," will also display over 200 souvenir objects and knick-knacks, examining Kahlo's transformation into a global brand. A new whodunnit novel by Oscar de Muriel reimagines Kahlo as a detective, and a culinary collaboration with Mexican chef Santiago Lastra will run at the Tate Modern restaurant.

Meet the Mona Lisa! A free new immersive exhibition opens at Hong Kong Heritage Museum

A free immersive digital exhibition titled 'Meet Mona Lisa & Portraying the Renaissance' opens on May 1 at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, running through July 27. Created in collaboration with the Musée du Louvre and the Grand Palais Immersif, the show is split into two sections: a multimedia journey guided by a narrated Mona Lisa across six chapters, including an interactive photo booth, and a second section featuring over 100 Renaissance treasures from European institutions. Highlights include four original manuscripts of the human body and faces by Leonardo da Vinci, shown for the first time in Hong Kong, alongside loans from the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the Musée national de la Renaissance, works by mainland artist Xu Lei, and items from the museum's own collection.

Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince’s ‘Helter Skelter’ Is Pure American Grit

American artists Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince will present a joint exhibition titled "Helter Skelter" at Fondazione Prada's Venetian venue, timed to coincide with the Venice Biennale. Curated by Nancy Spector, the show features over 50 works across photography, video, sculpture, installation, and painting, along with a collaboratively produced zine. It marks the first time the two artists have been exhibited together, exploring themes of authorship, race, and image-making within American popular culture.

One Fine Show: “Wes Anderson, The Archives” at the Design Museum in London

The Design Museum in London has opened "Wes Anderson: The Archives," the first major museum exhibition dedicated to the filmmaker. Featuring over 700 pieces of ephemera—including costumes, props, stop-motion puppets, miniature models, paintings, and Anderson's notebooks and storyboards—the show draws from a personal archive he has built since 1998. The exhibition, a collaboration with la Cinémathèque française in Paris where it premiered last year, has been expanded by some 300 additional objects for its London run. It runs through July 26, 2026.

What’s on now at San Francisco museums, May 2026

San Francisco museums are navigating a mix of upcoming exhibitions and financial challenges in May 2026. SFMOMA is closing "KAWS: Family" on May 3 and opening "Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal" from May 16 to September 13. The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts has suspended operations due to funding issues, and SOMArts is also facing a budget gap. Meanwhile, the Museum of Craft and Design presents "Video Craft" through August 16, and the Letterform Archive hosts "Black Memory Scholar: The Language of Storytellers" and "Piet Zwart: Brand Architect." SFMOMA has announced three SECA award winners—CrossLypka, Em Kettner, and Chanell Stone—who will exhibit from December 2026 to May 2027, and the museum continues to showcase "Reimagined: The Fisher Collection at 10" and new installations by Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg + Coosje van Bruggen, and Rose B Simpson.

What I learned from Tracey Emin about regeneration

The article reviews Tracey Emin's exhibition "A Second Life" at Tate Modern, describing the author's initial lack of aesthetic connection to the artworks—finding the paintings derivative and neon signs tacky—but ultimately being moved by the exhibition's emotional force and the artist's refusal to disguise pain, humiliation, and grief. The author notes the crowded galleries, the predominantly female audience responding with visceral emotion, and highlights the film "How It Feels" as the most impactful piece, in which Emin discusses her traumatic abortion and its effect on her self-perception.

Charlottesville's Confederate statues are centerstage in West Coast art exhibition rooted in tragedy and trauma

The remains of Charlottesville's melted Confederate statue of General Robert E. Lee are now on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles as part of the 'Monuments' exhibition. The statue, originally standing in Market Street Park, was acquired by the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center (JSAAHC) in 2021, melted down at a secret location, and shipped to Los Angeles. The exhibition, presented in partnership with The Brick, also features artist Kara Walker's reconstruction of the Thomas Jackson statue. The bronze ingots and slag from the melting process are displayed alongside other works that reimagine Confederate monuments.

Larissa Sansour: Rogue Agents of History

Wereldmuseum Amsterdam is presenting "Rogue Agents of History," the first solo exhibition in the Netherlands by Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour. Running from April 24 to September 27, 2026, the show features three films—including the premiere of "A Sunken Tale of Losses Delayed" commissioned by the museum—alongside Sansour's artworks, personal heirlooms, film props, and historical objects. Curated by Nat Muller, the exhibition explores themes of identity, memory, belonging, and loss through a science-fiction lens, drawing on the Palestinian context and blurring boundaries between fact and fiction.

Try Free Art in Tribeca: A Gallery Walkthrough

A budget-friendly walk through Tribeca's gallery scene highlights two free exhibitions. At Savage Wonderground Tribeca, Brent Owens presents "Fancy Feast," a 24-foot-long banquet table of wooden sculptures mimicking gourmet cat food, with prices ranging from $1,000 to $8,000 but viewing free. At Almine Rech Tribeca, Youngju Joung's "Pause and Flow" features melancholic paintings on traditional Korean paper, memorializing the "moon villages" of displaced working-class citizens from South Korea's urbanization.

Maria Lassnig and Edvard Munch's exhibition

The Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany, presents a major double exhibition pairing Austrian artist Maria Lassnig (1919–2014) with Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944) for the first time. Featuring nearly 200 works—including paintings, works on paper, sculptures, films, and photographs—the show highlights parallels between the two artists across a half-century gap, tracing Munch’s influence on Lassnig and revealing new aspects of both oeuvres. Key works include Munch’s *Madonna* (1893–1895) and Lassnig’s *Traditionskette* (1983), with the exhibition organized into 13 chapters plus a prologue and epilogue exploring themes such as self-portraits, gender, nature, and mortality.

27 Best Museums in the World for Art, History, and Cultural Wonders

This article from Travel + Leisure lists 27 of the best museums in the world, covering art, history, science, and culture. Featured institutions include the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Vatican Museums, the National Museum of China in Beijing, the National Gallery and Tate Modern in London, the Natural History Museum in London, the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and Miraikan in Tokyo. The piece highlights iconic artworks such as the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and the Sistine Chapel ceiling, as well as notable architectural features like I.M. Pei's glass pyramid at the Louvre.

50 years of art-inspired floral installations at the MFA

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its annual 'Art in Bloom' event, where floral designers and volunteers from 50 garden clubs and community organizations create arrangements inspired by artworks in the museum's collection. This year, participants were assigned to 50 objects, including John Singer Sargent's 1895 painting 'Helen Sears,' which was featured in the inaugural 1976 event. The tradition was conceived by Chuck Thomas to boost early spring attendance, and has grown from 18 arrangements drawing 4,300 visitors to becoming the museum's largest public event, attracting 29,000 visitors in 2025.

Museum Exhibitions Opening This Summer in Central Texas

Museums across Central Texas are opening a slate of summer exhibitions, including the Blanton Museum of Art's "Art in Every Corner: The Works Progress Administration (1935-1943)," featuring prints and paintings by Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, and Dorothea Lange. The San Antonio Museum of Art will present "Microhistories of the Andes" with Andean artifacts, while the McNay Art Museum hosts "Garden Party: Nature on Paper" with works by René Magritte and Winslow Homer. Women & Their Work in Austin will showcase "MARK," a group drawing exhibition by 25 Texas women artists.

Expansive Exhibition Highlights U.S. History Through ‘A Nation of Artists’

The United States is marking its 250th anniversary in 2026 with a major collaborative exhibition titled *A Nation of Artists*, presented simultaneously at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA). The show features over 1,000 works—paintings, photographs, sculptures, and decorative arts—spanning from the late 18th century to the present, including more than 120 rarely seen pieces from the Middleton Family Collection, one of the country's most significant private holdings of American art. PAFA organizes the works thematically around westward expansion, industrialization, and globalization, while PMA, celebrating its 150th anniversary, presents a chronological survey from 1700 to 1960, highlighting international exchange, technological innovation, and shifting cultural economics.

Experience 'Mona Lisa' and Renaissance Art at Hong Kong Heritage Museum Exhibition Starting Tomorrow

The Hong Kong Heritage Museum is launching 'The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Meet Mona Lisa & Portraying the Renaissance' exhibition from May 1 to July 27. The show offers a multimedia immersive experience centered on Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa' and features Renaissance art treasures on loan from French and Italian cultural institutions, including the Musée du Louvre and the Musée national de la Renaissance. The opening ceremony on April 30 was attended by Hong Kong Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Rosanna Law, French Consul General Christile Drulhe, and other dignitaries.