Ben Millett Explores Queer Identity in Solo Quilted Art Exhibition in Des Moines

Ben Millett, a quilt maker based in Des Moines, Iowa, is presenting his first solo exhibition of quilts at the Des Moines Art Center as part of the Iowa Artists 2025 series. The show, on view through November 2, features approximately 20 quilts that explore themes of queer identity, pop culture, and the practice of quilting itself. Millett draws on Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, and queer abstraction, using solid-color fabrics inspired by the Progress Pride flag to create works that navigate transitions and nuance.

America’s Largest-Ever Exhibition on Raphael Will Open at the Met Next Year

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will host "Raphael: Sublime Poetry," the largest-ever U.S. exhibition dedicated to the Renaissance master, opening March 29, 2026. Featuring over 200 works, the show includes loans from major institutions such as the Uffizi, Prado, Galleria Borghese, British Museum, Louvre, and National Gallery of Art. Curated by Carmen Bambach, who previously organized the Met's blockbuster 2017 Michelangelo exhibition, the show spans Raphael's three career periods—Urbino, Florence, and Rome—and highlights recent scientific discoveries and his portrayal of women. A centerpiece is the reunion of Raphael's preparatory sketches with his painting *The Alba Madonna*.

Berlin Atonal, the first biennial rooted in music and sound, pushes the boundaries of what ‘art’ can mean

Berlin Atonal, recently recognized by the Biennial Foundation as the first biennial rooted in music and sound, defies conventional categories of festival and exhibition. Held in the decommissioned Kraftwerk power station, the event prioritizes sound as a central art form, with artists like Billy Bultheel, Anne Imhof, and Basma al-Sharif creating immersive, site-specific works. The festival sold out on Resident Advisor, reflecting growing demand for experimental sound in visual culture settings.

Art Blooms Across South Korea in September, Despite an Uneasy Market

South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is promoting a month-long Korea Art Festival in September 2025, featuring scores of events including design, craft, and calligraphy biennials across the country. The centerpiece is the concurrent staging of Frieze Seoul (fourth edition, over 120 exhibitors) and Kiaf (24th edition, some 175 galleries) at the Coex convention center in Gangnam, with a single ticket granting access to both fairs. International galleries have been opening local outposts in Seoul, and a Centre Pompidou branch is planned, as the city builds its reputation as an art capital.

The Biggest-Ever Raphael Exhibition in the U.S. Is Opening at the Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will host the largest-ever U.S. exhibition dedicated to Raphael, opening March 29, 2026. Titled "Raphael: Sublime Poetry," the show will bring together over 200 works from more than 30 international lenders, including the Louvre, Uffizi, Vatican Museums, and the Prado. Curated by Carmen Bambach, the exhibition spans Raphael's career from Urbino to Rome, featuring paintings, preparatory sketches, tapestries, and decorative objects, with highlights such as the Alba Madonna and works rarely loaned before.

Behind the scenes of assembling SAM's large-scale Ai Weiwei exhibition

The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) team faced an extraordinary challenge installing the retrospective “Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei,” which required handling eight tractor-trailers of artwork—far more than the usual two—within just three weeks. The exhibition features 130 complex works, including a giant tree sculpture, a life-size jail cell replica, and a Lego rendition of the Mueller report, many arriving without instruction manuals and requiring creative assembly by a 12-person crew led by lead preparator Joshua Gosovich.

New $31m art-filled park planned for downtown Pittsburgh

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust (PCT) will open a four-acre art-filled park called Arts Landing in 2026, part of a $600 million government plan to revitalize the city's cultural district. The $31 million project will feature ten regional artists, including Pittsburgh-based vanessa german, whose work 'Lifted' honors local elders, and Thaddeus Mosley, whose exhibition 'Touching the Earth' will travel from New York's City Hall Park via a partnership with the Public Art Fund. Other commissions include Darian Johnson's wildlife sculptures with VaultArt Studio and John Peña's interactive kinetic work with the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh.

New Smithsonian exhibit highlights American fairs, including crop art, butter from Minnesota

A new exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution spotlights the history and artistry of American state and county fairs, featuring unusual exhibits such as crop art and butter sculptures from Minnesota. The show explores how these community events have long served as platforms for creative expression, agricultural pride, and local tradition.

August 2025 Opportunities: Open Calls, Residencies, and Grants for Artists

The article compiles a list of open calls, residencies, and grants for artists with deadlines in August through October 2025. Opportunities include the Wave Hill Sunroom Project Space in New York City, Sculpture by the Sea in Cottesloe, Australia, the Hunt Museum Open Submission Exhibition in Ireland, New Voices 2026 at Print Center New York, and the Moons, Castles, Trees exhibition for The Wrong Biennale in Copenhagen. Grant opportunities include the Ellis-Beauregard Project Grants in Maine, the Seattle Art Museum Betty Bowen Award for Northwest artists, and the Hornsby Art Prize in Australia, among others.

Elizabeth Catlett: “A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies”

The Art Institute of Chicago announces a major retrospective of Elizabeth Catlett, titled “A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies,” on view from August 30, 2025, through January 4, 2026. The exhibition brings together over 100 works spanning Catlett’s career as a sculptor, printmaker, feminist, and social activist, highlighting her enduring influence and her commitment to addressing poverty, racism, and imperialism through art and activism.

‘I'm excited for the future because it's in great hands’: winners of Somerset House's Talent 25 on what the programme means to them

Somerset House in London has announced the first five winners of its Talent 25 programme, a scheme supporting artistic innovators within its creative community. The awardees—Shanti Bell, Tyreis Holder, enorê, Identity 2.0 (founded by Arda Awais & Savena Surana), and Piarvé Wetshi—each receive an £8,000 bursary and mentorship from artist-designer Yinka Ilori to develop new work. Their creations will be exhibited in September as part of the Step Inside 25 Weekend, celebrating 25 years of Somerset House's public opening.

Crystal Bridges Museum and Art Bridges receive 90 works of contemporary Indigenous art in landmark acquisition

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and its Art Bridges Foundation have acquired 90 contemporary works by Indigenous artists from the John and Susan Horseman Collection. Art Bridges will receive 81 works for long-term loans across the U.S., while nine pieces will join Crystal Bridges' permanent collection. Artists include Kent Monkman, George Morrison, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Cannupa Hanska Luger. The acquisition is part of a broader strategy to expand the museum's holdings in Indigenous and craft art, with works set to debut in exhibitions starting November 2024.

Whiteley showcase reveals struggles with addiction and pursuit of beauty

A touring exhibition from the Brett Whiteley studio in New South Wales, titled *Inside The Studio*, has arrived at the Shepparton Art Museum in Victoria—its final stop and only Victorian venue. The show features drawings, ceramics, sketchbooks, photographs, Whiteley's iconic Sydney Harbour painting, and his 1976 Archibald Prize-winning self-portrait. Wendy Whiteley, the artist's former wife and an artist herself, shares memories of their turbulent marriage, including his struggles with addiction and his intense dedication to his craft. She has also repurchased several of her favorite sketches of her in the bathtub, which had been auctioned off over the years.

“Dyke is our armor:” A conversation with dyke artist Sarah-Joy Ford’s about her new exhibition Dykeland (2025)

Dr. Sarah-Joy Ford, an artist and independent scholar based in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, has opened her exhibition "Dykeland: Volume 1" at The Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery in Rossendale on June 7, 2025. The show explores the history of dyke and lesbian landscapes in the UK, focusing on queer relationality to placemaking and preservation. It interweaves historical material, personal memory, and fantasy in response to Jane Cambell's upcoming poetry collection "Dykeland and other secret islands," and is displayed alongside Cambell's art. Ford uses quiltmaking as a medium to share lesbian and queer archival material, continuing a tradition of queer fabric art that includes recent installations like the ACLU's 258-square-quilt display on the National Mall and the Euphoria Quilt by Eliot Anderberg.

Lillian Blades' first solo exhibition sparkles and shines at Sarasota Art Museum

Lillian Blades' first solo exhibition, "Through the Veil," is on view at the Sarasota Art Museum (SAM) through October 26. The Bahamian-born artist presents large, quilt-like mixed-media installations made from found objects such as toys, jewelry, utensils, and mirrors, wired together and hung from PVC piping. Her work is displayed on the museum's third floor, while a concurrent exhibition of Gee's Bend quilts occupies the second floor, creating a thematic dialogue between the two shows.

Landmark Exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts Reframes an Iconic Historical Era

The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C., will present "Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750" from September 26, 2025, to January 11, 2026. This landmark exhibition features nearly 150 artworks by 40 Dutch and Flemish women artists, including Judith Leyster, Rachel Ruysch, and Clara Peeters, alongside works by unnamed textile makers. Co-curated by Virginia Treanor and Frederica van Dam, the show includes loans from over 50 institutions such as the Rijksmuseum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Prado Museum. It will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium, from March to May 2026.

Vitra Design Museum celebrates the enduring influence of egalitarian religious sect, the Shakers

The Vitra Design Museum in Germany has opened "The Shakers: A World in the Making," an exhibition exploring the minimalist designs and democratic beliefs of the Shakers, an egalitarian religious sect founded in the 18th century. Organized with the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, and Germany's Wüstenrot Foundation in collaboration with the Shaker Museum in Chatham, New York, the show features historic Shaker objects like oval boxes and ladder-back chairs alongside newly commissioned works by contemporary artists including Amie Cunat, David Hartt, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed.

Review: Guadalupe Rosales crafts an analog Wayback Machine for a vibrant show at Palm Springs Art Museum

Guadalupe Rosales presents a solo exhibition titled "Tzahualli: Mi memoria en tu reflejo" at the Palm Springs Art Museum, centered on a checkerboard dance floor with a makeshift DJ booth, motorized blue spotlights, and mirrored disco fixtures. The show gathers ephemera from the 1990s—magazines, snapshots, lowrider bicycle parts, bandannas, street signs, and more—used in assemblage sculptures and display cases. Four thematic sections include a dance room, an entryway, a nighttime space, and a car culture gallery, with imagery referencing Chicana culture, Los Angeles' Eastside, and historic clubs like Arena and Circus.

MAM’s New Erin Shirreff Exhibition Reshapes Sculpture and Photography

The Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) will present “Permanent Drafts,” a major exhibition of over 40 recent works by Canadian artist Erin Shirreff, opening May 30. The show spans collage, photography, sculpture, and video, including site-specific installations and a new museum acquisition, “Paper sculpture” (2024). Shirreff, who began as a sculptor, uses photography to explore the gap between 2D representation and 3D objects, creating works that challenge how viewers perceive images and forms. Key pieces include the cyanotype collage “Inside times” (2020) and the sheet-metal installation “Drop” (2025).

‘Art is an important way of depicting these atrocities’: London show shines a light on sexual violence in conflict

The Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London has opened "Unsilenced: Sexual Violence in Conflict," the first major UK museum exhibition to address the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. Featuring video testimony from journalist Christina Lamb, the show draws on the IWM's collections and new testimonies from survivors, including propaganda posters, photographs by Lee Miller, and a newly acquired miniature Sonyeosang statue. Curators Maeve Underwood and Helen Upcraft re-examined the museum's holdings to uncover hidden narratives of sexual slavery and humiliation from World War II to the Russia-Ukraine war.

‘I derive a lot of inspiration from paintings and fibre art’: clothing designer Ulla Johnson on the art she collects and why

Fashion designer Ulla Johnson, founder of her eponymous clothing line, discusses her art collection in an interview with The Art Newspaper. She shares details about her first major purchase—Kathleen Ryan's sculpture *Diana* (2017)—and her most recent acquisition, a Gilbert Poillerat mirror. Johnson reveals her long-term search for a work by Olga de Amaral and expresses regret over not buying a set of Afra and Tobia Scarpa chairs. She also names upcoming New York exhibitions she plans to see, including the textile show at MoMA and Caspar David Friedrich at the Met.

Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always

The Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, is presenting "Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always," on view from February 1 through December 21, 2025. This exhibition is the largest and final show organized by the late Native artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, featuring over one hundred works by ninety-seven artists representing some seventy Nations and communities. The show is organized around four thematic sections—Political, Tribal, Social, and Land—and includes a separate gallery of Quick-to-See Smith's own prints, notably the "Survival Suite" (1996). The exhibition is intergenerational, with artists ranging from their eighties to those born at the end of the twentieth century, and most works date from the twenty-first century.

Surprised by Jack: A Review of “Jack Whitten: The Messenger” at MoMA in New York

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is hosting "Jack Whitten: The Messenger," the largest survey ever mounted of the late abstract artist Jack Whitten, who died in 2018. The exhibition features 175 works spanning his sixty-year career, from early quasi-representational pieces to his innovative "slab" paintings made with a custom squeegee device and his later "tesserae" works that mimic glass tiles using acrylic paint. The show includes archival audio of Whitten discussing his creative process, which blended philosophy, craft, and science, and is curated by MoMA's Michelle Kuo, who knew Whitten personally.

Newcastle gallery to open new exhibition exploring 'craft' in art

The Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle is opening a new exhibition titled 'With These Hands' from May 17 to September 27, exploring the representation of craft in paintings, drawings, and prints. The show features works produced in Britain and Europe from the 1750s onward, depicting hand-making and mending as domestic pastime, rural labor, semi-industrial work, and war effort. It includes paintings by artists such as Mary Cassatt, G.F. Watts, and Evelyn Dunbar, alongside objects like quilts, embroidery, metalwork, and ceramics from makers including Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew. Loans come from Tate, V&A, Royal Academy of Arts, Imperial War Museums, and regional collections.

Gotta Have Art: Scottsdale galleries have evolved over decades

The article explores the evolution of art galleries in Scottsdale, Arizona, over the past several decades. It traces how the local gallery scene has transformed from a small, desert-focused art community into a diverse and sophisticated hub for contemporary, Native American, and Western art, attracting both local collectors and international visitors.

antonio pichilla quiacain elizabeth xi bauer

Artist Antonio Pichillá Quiacaín, born in 1982 and based in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala, presents his solo exhibition “Umbilical Cord” at Elizabeth Xi Bauer gallery in London. The show, on view through August 2, 2025, features new and recent works that explore Maya visual culture, Indigenous craft traditions, and the knot as both a formal element and a metaphor for connection, life, and time. A 3:22-minute video from 2021 shows the artist in a forest with traditional weaving materials, while the exhibition also marks the gallery’s announcement of representing the artist.

25 years later, artist David Adey continues to push the envelope

Artist David Adey is the subject of a mid-career survey, “David Adey: Sacrificial Bodies,” opening April 25 at the Oceanside Museum of Art. The 70-piece exhibition, curated by gallery owner Mark Quint in collaboration with Adey, spans 25 years of his career and includes a 2026 re-creation of his 2001 piece “The Lamb,” which features a reconstructed lamb carcass. Adey, now 53, originally created the work as a graduate student at Cranbrook Academy of Art. The show also features pieces like “Gravitational Radius” and “2,127 Rounds,” a sculpture made by firing an AR-15, Glock 34, and shotgun into cedar.

Artist Sid Pattni’s Dual Cultural Backgrounds Inspire His Exploration of Identity in Flux | Travel Insider

Melbourne-based artist Sid Pattni is gaining international recognition for his unique fusion of portraiture and traditional Indian embroidery. Following a transformative residency in New Delhi, Pattni has developed a practice that reclaims colonial-era imagery by framing figures within vivid, beaded borders inspired by Mughal miniatures. His work explores the complexities of the Indian diaspora and the fluid nature of identity, moving beyond conventional portraiture to incorporate ancestral craft techniques.

Karla Knight’s Cosmic Conspiracies

Karla Knight's exhibition "Orbit" at Andrew Edlin Gallery presents her game-like paintings and tapestries filled with cryptic symbols, cosmic diagrams, and celestial imagery. Works such as "Orbiter 2" (2024–25) and "Feelers" (2025–26) feature irregular black devices, floating spheres, and rows of arcane script, inviting viewers to decode what appear to be blueprints for extraterrestrial systems or maps of hidden dimensions. Knight employs meticulous grids, bold primary colors, and textile techniques to render the paranormal as strangely normal.

The super architect Kengo Kuma on display at the Bonsai Museum, a magical place on the outskirts of Milan

Il super architetto Kengo Kuma in mostra al Museo del Bonsai, luogo magico alle porte di Milano

The Crespi Bonsai Museum in Parabiago, near Milan, is hosting an exhibition during Fuorisalone featuring the new carpet collection "Faces" by Indian brand Jaipur Rugs, created in collaboration with renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. The museum, founded 35 years ago by Luigi Crespi, houses the world's most important collection of author bonsai outside Japan, including a thousand-year-old Ficus retusa. The 16 carpets in the collection reinterpret the facades of iconic buildings by Kengo Kuma & Associates, translating their rhythm, depth, and sensory memory into wool and regenerated viscose, displayed among the bonsai and in the museum's zen garden.