Tiny Cranach Painting That Vanished During WWII Returns to Dresden

A miniature portrait of Friedrich III (Frederick the Wise) by Lucas Cranach the Elder, missing since World War II, has been returned to the State Art Collections of Dresden, Germany. The painting was last documented in May 1945 in a limestone quarry shelter near Pockau-Lengefeld before vanishing. It resurfaced in 2024 when consigned to Parisian auction house Artcurial, whose provenance investigation revealed a matching inventory number from 1722–1728. The Dreyfus family in France, the modern owners, returned the work after negotiations and a financial agreement. It is now on view at the Coin Cabinet of the Royal Palace in a special exhibition marking the 500th anniversary of Friedrich III's death, and will later be permanently displayed in the Semper Gallery.

Ed Ruscha | Angel (2014) | For Sale

Ed Ruscha's 2014 lithograph "Angel" is being offered for sale through Leslie Sacks Gallery in Santa Monica. The work is a unique color trial proof from an edition of 60, measuring 23 by 16 inches, hand-signed and numbered by the artist, and includes a certificate of authenticity. The listing appears on Artsy, where the price is available on request, and notes increased collector interest over the past 14 days.

Can Digital Art Ever Truly Replicate the Gallery Experience?

The article explores whether digital art platforms can replicate the experience of visiting a physical gallery. It acknowledges the impressive progress of virtual exhibitions—global accessibility, VR tours, AR overlays, and high-resolution zoom—and notes that 35% of UK adults digitally engaged with the arts in 2024/25, up from 27% in 2021/22. However, it argues that something essential is lost without physical presence: the tactile encounter with a painting's texture and scale, the serendipity of in-person discovery, and the spatial awe of standing before a Rothko in a white cube.

Theatre, production, performance: fashion invests in art

Fashion houses like Chanel are increasingly investing in contemporary art, not merely as inspiration for prints or patterns but as a strategic tool for brand positioning and cultural credibility. Gallery owner Tristan Paprocki, who recently opened a Milan space with partner Guido Romero Pierini, notes that brands now seek out emerging artists to demonstrate foresight and support new talent. Chanel has collaborated with Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof museum for large-scale installations by artists such as Klára Hosnedlová and Lina Lapelytė, and has announced ten artists for the third edition of its Next Prize 2026, including Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, Pan Daijing, and Álvaro Urbano. These artists work across fashion, sculpture, and performance, blurring the lines between clothing and contemporary art.

Turin's new art gallery is an apartment where works are displayed in the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom

La nuova galleria d’arte di Torino è un appartamento dove le opere si espongono in cucina, bagno e camera da letto

The Italian branch of Paris-based gallery CiacciaLevi is relocating from Milan to Turin in September 2026, opening a new space that is an apartment where artworks will be displayed in the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. Founders Antoine Levi and Nerina Ciaccia, who first met and began their careers in Turin between 2005 and 2010, describe the move as both a professional and personal life choice, deepening their ties to the city where they previously worked with Galleria Franco Noero and a.titolo.

Exhibition | Meg Webster, 'Thicket' at Paula Cooper Gallery, 521 West 21st Street, New York, United States

Meg Webster's exhibition 'Thicket' opens May 9 at Paula Cooper Gallery, 521 West 21st Street, New York, featuring new sculptures and drawings. The centerpiece is a large spiral installation made from plant cuttings, inviting viewers inside for an immersive sensory experience. The show follows Webster's major presentation at Dia Beacon (2024–2026) and her inclusion in 'Minimal' at Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection, Paris (2025–2026). Also on view are monochromatic works on paper made by rubbing organic materials onto the surface, and a three-part beeswax relief.

Discover the quietly affecting artworks of Poppy Jones, a fashion-world favourite

Poppy Jones, a British artist known for her quietly affecting works on textiles like suede and silk, has opened her first institutional solo exhibition, 'Frozen Sun', at Towner Eastbourne (until 31 May 2026). The show follows her 2024 presentation 'Solid Objects' at Herald St gallery in London and a sold-out monograph with Zolo Press in 2025. Jones, who was commissioned by Bottega Veneta's Louise Trotter for two works that became the house's A/W 2026 show invitation, creates intimate pieces featuring eggs, flowers, glasses of water, and vintage apparel details, often framed in sleek aluminium. Her practice, which blends photography, lithography, and watercolour, was shaped by the birth of her first child in 2019 and the Covid-19 lockdowns, leading her to focus on domestic subjects and small-scale works.

Review: The Good, The Bad and The Venice Biennale

The article reviews the 2024 Venice Biennale, focusing on controversies over Russia's and Israel's participation. Protests erupted during opening week, leading the EU to cut funding and the International Jury to resign. As a result, awards like the Golden Lion and Silver Lion will be decided by public vote, with many pavilions and artists withdrawing in protest. The main exhibition, curated under the theme 'Minor Keys,' features standout works by Alfredo Jaar and Carrie Schneider, alongside national pavilions like Austria's provocative entry by Florentina Holzinger.

Art Busan Bets on Sustainability Over Speculation

Art Busan's 15th edition, taking place May 21–24, 2026 at BEXCO Exhibition Center, will feature over 110 galleries from 18 countries, with expanded programming including craft and design sections, curated exhibitions, and a new section called LIGHTHAUS that reframes gallery booths as curated environments. Data from the 2025 edition indicates an art market reorganization rather than contraction, with increased pre-sale activity, repeat attendance, and purchases across a wide price spectrum, suggesting a shift away from speculation toward sustained engagement.

Across Venice, Artists Defy Censorship to Mourn and Memorialize Gaza

The 2026 Venice Biennale, titled “In Minor Keys,” features numerous artworks that mourn and memorialize the destruction of Gaza, despite censorship pressures. The main exhibition opens with a poem by slain Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, and includes works by artists such as Theo Eshetu, Mohammed Joha, Manuel Mathieu, and Avi Mograbi that directly or indirectly address the conflict. Outside the official Biennale, South African artist Gabrielle Goliath’s performance series “Elegy” was censored by her country’s culture minister after she proposed a version honoring murdered Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, leading her to present the work independently at a church in Venice.

Orsay inaugure une salle destinée aux œuvres « MNR »

The Musée d'Orsay in Paris has opened a new dedicated gallery, Room 10b, to display works from its MNR (Musées nationaux Récupération) collection—artworks looted or acquired under dubious circumstances during the Nazi era. The room features detailed labels and educational texts, with some works shown verso to reveal provenance labels. The initiative is funded by the American Friends of the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée de l'Orangerie with €1 million over four years, and includes a fake Monet, a Degas subject to a restitution claim, a Rodin sculpture, and a debated Cézanne. The museum's provenance research team, led by Inès Rotermund-Reynard, collaborates with the French Ministry of Culture's M2RS mission.

La Biennale de Venise s’ouvre dans un climat houleux

The 61st Venice Biennale opened amid intense controversy after its president, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, announced the return of the Russian pavilion, which had been absent since the start of the Ukraine war. The European Commission suspended its €2 million subsidy for the 2028 edition, and the entire Biennale jury resigned on April 30. Buttafuoco later declared the Russian pavilion would remain closed, but protests erupted during the pre-opening days (May 6–8), drawing 28,000 professionals. Pussy Riot members, Femen activists, and the Free Nations League staged demonstrations, while the Israeli pavilion remained open despite a letter signed by nearly 200 artists calling for its exclusion.

JR to cover Paris’s Pont Neuf in homage to Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

French artist JR has begun installing a monumental trompe-l’oeil work titled *La Caverne du Pont Neuf* (2026) on Paris’s Pont Neuf, transforming the city’s oldest bridge into an immersive cave. The project reimagines the bridge as a limestone quarry cave, referencing the stone from which the bridge and many Parisian buildings were constructed. The work pays homage to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s iconic *The Pont Neuf Wrapped* (1985) and will be visible both day and night throughout the summer.

Es Devlin Is Creating a Living Portrait of the Entire U.K.

British artist Es Devlin has launched a participatory public artwork titled "A National Portrait for the National Portrait Gallery," inviting all 69 million U.K. residents to upload selfies that are transformed into charcoal-and-chalk-style portraits using an AI model trained on Devlin’s drawings. The portraits appear on a framed screen in the museum’s History Makers gallery, and the project runs through October 27, accompanied by online and onsite drawing classes.

A Poetic and Material Institutional Critique: Gala Porras-Kim at kurimanzutto and the Venice Biennale

UNA CRÍTICA INSTITUCIONAL POÉTICA Y MATERIAL: GALA PORRAS-KIM EN KURIMANZUTTO Y LA BIENAL DE VENECIA

Colombian artist Gala Porras-Kim presents her first solo exhibition at kurimanzutto gallery in Mexico City, titled "Espacios del futuro replican los del pasado" (2026), alongside her participation in the 2026 Venice Biennale. The show critically examines how museum conservation protocols transform objects by detaching them from their original material, ritual, and spiritual contexts. Central to the exhibition is "The Motion of an Alluvial Record" (2024), a greenhouse that recreates the humidity and temperature of Yucatecan mangroves, allowing clay and sediment to shift continuously, resisting the linear, stratified time of Western archives and evoking cyclical Maya cosmologies. Another series, "Uprooted" (2026), reproduces fragments of looted Teotihuacan murals from Techinantitla, now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, reinstalling them near the floor to restore their original architectural scale and orientation.

Nasher Museum’s ‘Everything Now All At Once’ Celebrates Diversity, Resilience, and Joy

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is presenting 'Everything Now All At Once,' an exhibition drawn entirely from its permanent collection that features works by over a dozen contemporary artists including Nick Cave, Ai Weiwei, Nina Chanel Abney, Wangechi Mutu, Jeffrey Gibson, Amy Sherald, and Barbara Chase-Riboud. The show focuses on painting and sculpture—deliberately analog mediums in an era of rapid technological change—and highlights pieces acquired over the past twenty years that center artists from historically marginalized backgrounds. Running since August 2025, the exhibition will rotate new works next month and continue through November 1 in Durham, North Carolina.

Artists turn to textiles as they excavate history at Nada New York

At the New Art Dealers Alliance (Nada) New York fair, running until 17 May, multiple artists are presenting works that heavily incorporate textiles to explore themes of culture, belonging, and history. Artists such as Keith Lafuente (with SoMad), Polina Osipova (with JO-HS), and Griselda Rosas (with Luis De Jesus Los Angeles) use fabric and sewing techniques to examine histories of inequality, migration, and labor. Rosas embroiders over painted paper using imagery from Mexican codices, Osipova prints family photos onto traditional Chuvash fabric, and Lafuente repurposes scraps from Oscar de la Renta to comment on global labor inequalities. Other participants like Ruth Owens (with Voltz Clarke Gallery) use textiles in lightbox works to tell personal stories of migration and abduction.

Ayan Farah and Asmaa Jama on Representing Somalia at the 61st Venice Biennale

Ayan Farah and Asmaa Jama, two of the three artists representing Somalia at the 61st Venice Biennale (2026), discuss their plans for the national pavilion in an interview with ArtReview. Farah will present an installation of large-scale embroidered landscape paintings using clay pigment sourced from Somalia and shell-derived pigment from Scotland, alongside silk paintings exploring time and nature. Jama will focus on the Somali poetry form saddexleey, creating a sensorial experience through moving image, installation, and visual artworks that draw on magical realism and cinematic surrealism. The pavilion is located in the Palazzo Caboto, and the third representative is poet Warsan Shire.

Photo London x Nikon Emerging Photographer Award 2026 – in pictures

The Photo London x Nikon Emerging Photographer Award 2026 has announced its shortlist, showcasing works from seven emerging photographic artists. The exhibition is on display at Photo London, featuring pieces such as Sal Taylor Kydd's "Passing" (2026), Devin Oktar Yalkin's portraits including "Anne Hathaway" and "Swallows Pride" (2020), Ci Demi's "Il-Giorniale" (2021), Steffi Reimers' "Gunshot punctures" (2023) from her series "Guilty Grounds," Sebastian Gonzalez's "Escalas Temporales" (2025), and Edward Rollitt's "Alfred Smee Pruned His Roses" (2024). The award, launched in 2015 in partnership with Nikon, aims to nurture and enable the career development of emerging photographic artists.

A Political Anthology of the United States: The Great Exhibition of Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince in Venice

Un’antologia politica degli Stati Uniti. La grande mostra di Arthur Jafa e Richard Prince a Venezia

Fondazione Prada presents "Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince" at Cà Corner della Regina in Venice, the 15th exhibition produced by the foundation in the city. Curated by Nancy Spector of the Brooklyn Museum, the two-person show brings together over fifty works—photographs, videos, installations, sculptures, and paintings—that explore the fractured identity of the United States through the lens of race, masculinity, popular culture, and appropriation. Both artists, though separated by more than a decade in age, share a practice of scavenging and recontextualizing images from film, comics, advertising, and social media to critique American society.

A Roma è tutto pronto per il weekend delle gallerie d’arte: mostre, progetti speciali, inaugurazioni. Il programma

The fourth edition of Roma Gallery Weekend will take place from May 15 to 17, 2026, featuring 31 galleries across Rome. The event kicks off with a new Gallery Night on May 14, where simultaneous openings and special projects serve as a concentrated prologue. Participating galleries include established names like Gagosian, Galleria Continua, and Lorcan O'Neill, as well as emerging spaces such as Amanita and Cantadora. Highlights include exhibitions of Francesca Woodman, Tracey Emin, Friedrich Kunath, and Carlos Garaicoa, alongside site-specific interventions and group shows.

Semiha Berksoy: The Turkish Artist Who Made Her Life a Total Work of Art

Semiha Berksoy: l’artista turca che ha reso la sua vita un’opera totale

A major retrospective titled "Aria of All Colors" at the Istanbul Modern, running until September 6, celebrates the multifaceted Turkish artist Semiha Berksoy (1911–2004). Featuring over 200 works, the exhibition showcases her pioneering career as a painter, sculptor, opera singer, actress, costume designer, and performance artist. Berksoy became the first Turkish soprano to perform on European stages after studying in Berlin, and she helped found the Ankara State Opera. Her deeply personal paintings, often depicting her mother and cultural figures, are marked by a graphic, childlike style and a recurring "line of destiny." The show includes costumes, sketches, archival footage, and even a refrigerator door painted with her daughter's portrait.

The Artist Who Painted Pixels Before We Saw in Pixels

Der Künstler, der Pixel malte, bevor wir in Pixel sahen

Reinhard Voigt, a German artist little known to the public, painted grid-based pictures as early as 1968—years before pixels became ubiquitous in daily life. Despite early discouragement from Gerhard Richter and fellow artist Alan Jones, Voigt persisted, creating meticulous works on paper and canvas using transparent paper, rulers, pencil, and oil paint. His first major exhibition, "Pure Pleasure," took place in 2023/2024 in Nuremberg, and his current duo show "High on Low" with Anna-Sophie Berger is on view at Berlin's Kunstraum Grotto, featuring his Word Paintings series. Voigt lives and works in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg with his wife, artist Susan Elias.

NJCU Visual Arts Gallery presents "Formidable Women, Dangerous Times"

New Jersey City University Visual Arts Gallery is presenting a solo exhibition by Johanna Foster titled "Formidable Women, Dangerous Times," running from May 14 to 28, 2026. The show features a series of figurative oil paintings that depict fierce women from Foster's communities, both real and imagined, exploring themes of resistance, courage, and perseverance in difficult times. Foster, a professor of sociology at Monmouth University, began her MFA at NJCU in 2022 and has exhibited widely across New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and California, including a digital exhibition at Newark Liberty International Airport and the Montclair Art Museum.

Venice Biennale 2026 Collateral Events Six Of The Best – Nico Kos Earle

The 61st Venice Biennale is described as the most contested and chaotic in recent history, marked by the absence of a curator following the death of Koyo Kouoh and overshadowed by global conflicts that made presentations in national pavilions fraught with difficulty. Amid this turmoil, standout collateral events include Michael Armitage's exhibition 'The Promise of Change' at Palazzo Grassi, curated by Jean-Marie Gallais and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, which uses softly painted scenes to address sociopolitical tensions and post-colonial identity. Another highlight is The Holy See Pavilion, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers, featuring a sonic prayer by Soundwalk Collective with contributions from contemporary composers including Patti Smith.

Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst on AI Optimism and Bringing Two-Headed Worms to Venice

Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, known for their work in digital art and experimental music, have curated a group exhibition titled "Strange Rules" at Palazzo Diedo in Venice alongside Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Their contribution includes a collaboration with Tufts University biologist Michael Levin, featuring live planarian worms modified to grow two heads through bioelectric manipulation. The interview discusses their concept of "protocol art," which seeks to expose and reclaim the underlying systems—from algorithms to biological protocols—that shape artistic production.

LR Vandy tells stories of labor, movement, and collective resistance through rope sculptures

British artist LR Vandy presents 'Rise' at Yorkshire Sculpture Park's Weston Gallery, featuring rope sculptures that appear caught mid-motion. The exhibition includes works like 'A Call to Dance,' a monumental maypole form, and explores themes of tension, labor, and movement through maritime fibers sourced from her studio at Chatham Dockyard. The sculptures climb walls, loop through pulleys, and collapse onto the floor, evoking both architectural strength and delicate fragility.

He’s behind you! The best of Photo London – in pictures

Photo London, the UK's leading photography fair, launches its 11th edition at a new venue, Olympia in Kensington, London, running from 13–17 May 2026. The fair features a diverse array of exhibitors, including debutants like Agony and Ecstasy gallery, which showcases nostalgic works of Ibiza by Oriol Maspons and Walter Rudolph, and Hackney-based Guest Editions, presenting Laura McCluskey and Thomas Duffield. A new 'Focus' section highlights galleries from Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, such as Ungallery (Argentina) and Galeria Monopol (Poland). Notable presentations include vintage prints by Japanese master Daido Moriyama at Akio Nagasawa Gallery, and Ketaki Sheth's series 'Twinspotting' at Photoink, which pairs Patel twins in the UK with those in India.

Venice in Crisis Mode

Venedig im Krisenmodus

The 61st Venice Biennale has opened under extraordinary circumstances, marked by political protests, a jury resignation, and canceled awards. The Biennale's jury resigned en masse after announcing they would exclude Israeli and Russian contributions from their decisions, leading to the cancellation of the Golden Lion awards and a crisis over the international competition's legitimacy. A newly introduced audience prize also faced boycotts from artists in solidarity. Protests, closed pavilions, and pro-Palestinian actions dominated the preview days, with artists pasting protest posters directly onto their works, reflecting heightened tensions.

Parliamentary Report Outlines Major Issues In French Museums After The Louvre Heist

A French parliamentary commission released a report on May 13 detailing severe security deficiencies in French museums, following a December 2025 heist at the Louvre where French Crown Jewels worth $100 million were stolen. The report, overseen by MPs Alexis Corbière and Alexandre Portier, draws on over 20 hearings and highlights that only 25% of surveyed museums have a finalized security plan, with the Louvre itself criticized for dilapidated conditions and ignored audit warnings from 2017 and 2019 that predicted the thieves' modus operandi. Former Louvre director Laurence des Cars, who resigned in February, faced criticism for delays in implementing a security master plan.