Kalshi Rolls Out Prediction Markets Tied to Art Auctions

Kalshi, an online prediction market platform based in New York, launched a new category of prediction markets tied to art auction prices on May 26. The platform offers 16 contracts, including bets on whether artists like Andy Warhol and Vincent van Gogh will break their auction records, and speculation on specific lots such as Gustav Klimt's *Portrait of Gertrud Loew* (1902) at Sotheby's London. The move follows Kalshi's earlier forays into luxury watches and Pokémon cards, and comes after New York's spring auction week generated $2.1 billion in sales at Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips.

Taiwanese Pop Star Is the Buyer of $20 M. Matisse Painting at Sotheby’s

Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou revealed himself as the buyer of Henri Matisse's 1924 painting *La Séance du Matin* at Sotheby's modern art evening sale, where it sold for $20 million before fees ($21.2 million with fees). Chou, who guaranteed the work, received an $800,000 rebate and shared his emotional connection to the piece on Instagram, recalling visits to Matisse's home in Nice. The sale was part of a larger auction that also featured another Matisse, *La Chaise lorraine* (ca. 1919), which sold for $48.4 million.

Stripteases, ecstatic embraces and a dog in a dress: the full-on photos celebrating queer dancefloors worldwide

A new photo book titled *Sex, Clubs, Dissent: Visualising Queer Nightlife*, edited by writer Amelia Abraham, collects photographs from the 1960s to today that document queer nightlife around the world. The anthology features works by artists such as Wolfgang Tillmans, Sunil Gupta, Kia LaBeija, Phyllis Christopher, Roxy Lee, Ajamu X, and Del LaGrace Volcano, alongside images from trans community archives in Mexico City and Buenos Aires. The book is organized into sections on sex, clubs, and dissent, and includes a range of media from film stills to a Grindr screenshot, aiming to capture the messy, sexy, and politically charged atmosphere of queer social spaces.

Detroit’s MOCAD Reopens with a New Vision and a New Kind of Leadership

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) has reopened after an eight-month renovation, marking its 20th anniversary with a new vision centered on artists and community. Co-directors Jova Lynne and Marie Madison-Patton have titled this new chapter "A Practice of Multiplicity," emphasizing the wholeness of artists' lives beyond their work. The renovation includes infrastructural upgrades like an HVAC system, a new Learning Studio, a transformed café for programming, and a facade that opens to the street. Two inaugural surveys highlight Detroit artists Olayami Dabls and Carole Harris, whose practices explore the city's history, culture, and social transformation.

Leonora in the Morning Light review – pioneering British artist who fled convention for the surrealists

A new biopic titled *Leonora in the Morning Light* chronicles the life of British surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, who fled her aristocratic upbringing in London to join the surrealist circle in Paris. The film, adapted from Elena Poniatowska's biographical novel, follows Carrington from her affair with the older Max Ernst through her mental health crisis in Spain and eventual settlement in Mexico, where she created art on her own terms. Olivia Vinall portrays Carrington with a fierce, uncompromising spirit, though the film is criticized for uneven storytelling and clunky dialogue.

Steven Soderbergh, the Colors of Money

Steven Soderbergh, les couleurs de l’argent

Steven Soderbergh's new film "The Christophers" (2025) is a sharp, chamber-piece drama about art, inheritance, and money. The story follows Julian Skar, a former art superstar from the 1970s now living in seclusion and earning a living by caricaturing himself on social media. His children, Barnaby and Sally, eager to maximize their future inheritance, hire a repentant forger named Lori Butler to secretly complete Julian's unfinished masterpiece, an eight-portrait series titled "The Christophers." The film explores the complex relationships that develop between the four characters in a labyrinthine London house, written in the style of a lively theatrical play.

Matías Duville on Representing Argentina at the 61st Venice Biennale

Matías Duville will represent Argentina at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026 with a site-specific installation titled *Monitor Yin Yang*, transforming the Argentina Pavilion into a walkable landscape made of salt and charcoal. The work expands drawing into a spatial, sonic, and time-based experience, inspired by the natural environments of Mar del Plata and Patagonia. Duville discusses his approach in an interview with ArtReview, noting how early encounters with vast territories and geological time continue to shape his practice, and how the project relates to the Biennale's theme, *In Minor Keys*, by focusing on subtle intensities and open-ended evolution.

Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific opens at the V&A

The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London has opened 'Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific', a landmark exhibition drawn from the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA). Featuring over 70 works by more than 40 artists from 25 countries, the show is organized in three thematic sections—Re-Visioning History, Enduring Knowledge, and Evolving Faith—and includes sculpture, photography, painting, ceramics, weaving, and body adornment. Many works are on view outside their home region for the first time. The exhibition runs until 10 January 2027.

A West Coast First: A Retrospective of SFMOMA’s KAWS Exhibit

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) concluded its six-month exhibition "KAWS: FAMILY," the artist's first major museum retrospective on the West Coast. The show featured 30 years of Brian Donnelly's (KAWS) work, from early advertising recreations to monumental sculptures, with a central theme of kinship. It attracted a record influx of young adults and families, helping SFMOMA recover from a 30% drop in annual foot traffic between 2019 and 2024.

Ansel Adams Trust Decries Dealer's Sale of Photo Colorized Using AI

The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust has publicly condemned New York gallerist Peter Danziger for selling AI-colorized editions of Adams's iconic photograph "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico" (1941) at the AIPAD Photography Show in April. Danziger displayed the AI-generated image at his booth with a wall text disclosing the prompt used, and offered prints in editions of 10 at three sizes. The Trust stated it was not notified in advance and accused Danziger of exploiting Adams's name and reputation for commercial gain. Danziger defended his actions, arguing the original image is in the public domain and that his work is transformative, though he apologized for not notifying the Trust.

Zanzibar: Mapping Memory Through Sound and Colour

Lisson Gallery in London presents 'Zanzibar' (1999–2023), a collaborative installation by artists Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska. The exhibition reunites Himid's abstract diptychs from 1999 with Stawarska's eight-channel soundscape composed in 2023, creating an immersive meditation on loss, migration, and belonging. Himid's geometric canvases depart from her signature figurative style, evoking fragments of Zanzibar, the East African archipelago where she was born, and memories of her migration to London after her father's death. Stawarska's sonic composition weaves archival recordings, Taraab music, opera, and spoken text through the gallery space, guiding viewers through overlapping histories and imagined geographies.

Lionel Wendt: The Politics of the Male Nude

ArtReview publishes an essay by Qingyuan Deng analyzing the first US solo exhibition of Lionel Wendt's photographs at American Art Catalogues in Manhattan's West Village. The show presents Wendt's haunting gelatin silver prints of male nudes, still lifes, and solarized images, positioning him as a canonical figure of South Asian modernism. Deng argues that while the exhibition correctly identifies homoerotic desire in Wendt's work, it over-relies on queer theory's framework of opacity and fails to fully address the political radicality of Wendt's practice under British colonial rule in Ceylon, where homosexuality was criminalized under the 1883 Penal Code.

PAM CUT Announces 2026 Sustainability Labs Fellows

PAM CUT // Center for an Untold Tomorrow, the film and new media arm of the Portland Art Museum, has announced the 2026 Sustainability Labs Fellows. The program, now in its fifth year, supports five mid-career media artists—Kamari Bright, Peter Burr, and others—with bespoke mentorship in business planning, financial strategy, creative brand expansion, and mental health. The Labs culminate in a pitch session at Wieden + Kennedy and attendance at PAM CUT’s Cinema Unbound Awards on May 29, honoring polymath artists including Titus Kaphar, Emma McIlroy, and Maria Bamford.

One Fine Show: “Beyond Mysticism, The Modern Northwest” at the Seattle Art Museum

A new exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, “Beyond Mysticism: The Modern Northwest,” reexamines the legacy of a 1953 LIFE magazine feature that anointed four Seattle artists—Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson—as the faces of a distinct regional Modernism. The show expands the original narrative by including Asian artists like Kamekichi Tokita, whose work challenges the magazine's oversimplified framing, and features 150 works across painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture. It also connects the movement to Abstract Expressionism and contemporary environmental concerns, pairing pieces by artists such as Malcolm Roberts with works by Salvador Dalí and Georgia O'Keeffe.

“A Golden Age for Whom?”, June 6 through September 20

The Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, will present "A Golden Age for Whom?" from June 6 through September 20, a contemporary art exhibition that runs alongside the museum's concurrent show "The Golden Age: Featuring Northern European Works from the National Gallery of Art." The exhibition brings together works by artists including Beth Lipman, Oliver Okolo, Yasumasa Morimura, and Fabiola Jean-Louis, who respond to the themes and aesthetics of Renaissance and Baroque art. The two exhibitions are housed in adjoining galleries, allowing visitors to move directly between historic works and contemporary responses.

Whistler Didn't Mean to Make His Mourning Mother an Art World Star. Today, She's a Highlight at a Major Exhibition in London

James McNeill Whistler's iconic 1871 painting 'Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1,' better known as 'Whistler's Mother,' is currently on display at Tate Britain in London as part of 'James McNeill Whistler,' Europe's largest-ever retrospective of the artist's work. The painting, on loan from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, was created in Whistler's London studio when his mother Anna McNeill Whistler agreed to pose after a model canceled. The exhibition runs through late September 2026.

Pilar Zeta Navigates the Beautiful Absurdity of Venice Biennale

Pilar Zeta navigates the Venice Biennale, offering her perspective on several standout exhibitions. She praises Anish Kapoor's show at Palazzo Manfrin as the strongest at the Biennale, describing it as a psychological distortion of space through mirrors and voids. She also highlights Antonio Canova's tomb at the Frari Basilica as a quiet counterpoint to Biennale excess, Marina Abramović's participatory exhibition at the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Jan Fabre's theatrical installation at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, and an unnamed Dadaist performance blurring art and reality in the streets.

Kiran Nadar’s Ambition to Put Indian Art On the World Stage

Kiran Nadar, one of India's most influential arts patrons, is spearheading the development of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in Delhi, set to become the largest integrated cultural center in India at over one million square feet. The museum, supported by the Shiv Nadar Foundation, will feature multiple exhibition spaces, a performing arts center, a library, an education center, and restaurants. Nadar recently appointed Manuel Rabaté, former director of Louvre Abu Dhabi, as KNMA's director. She also made headlines by purchasing M.F. Husain's record-breaking painting *Untitled (Gram Yatra)* for $13.8 million at Christie's New York. On the occasion of Nalini Malani's collateral exhibition "Of Woman Born" at the 2026 Venice Biennale, supported by KNMA, Nadar discussed her vision for putting Indian art on the world stage.

'Fade' review: Studio Museum Harlem's 'F' series returns

The Studio Museum in Harlem has opened 'Fade,' the sixth installment of its influential 'F' series, featuring 17 emerging Black and Afro-Latinx artists. The exhibition includes works such as London Pierre Williams's large-scale oil painting 'The Stage: He that leaves me blue, a dream (2026)' and Antonio Darden's 'Untitled (Reclining Figure) (2025),' among others. Curated to feel like an unfolding conversation rather than a traditional group show, 'Fade' explores themes of ancestry, spirituality, grief, and transformation, with sculptures, paintings, and installations that hover between memory and dream.

Beyond Mystics, the Northwest Contribution to Modern Art

The article profiles Kenneth Callahan, a key figure in Northwest modern art and former director of the Seattle Art Museum, who found inspiration in the coastal landscapes of the Long Beach Peninsula. It highlights his role alongside Mark Tobey, Guy Anderson, and Morris Graves—collectively known as "The Big Four"—in establishing the value of Northwest art. The piece also announces a current exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum titled "Beyond Mysticism—The Modern Northwest," which features Callahan prominently alongside major American artists such as Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and Helen Frankenthaler, and runs through August 2.

Art for hot days: Top 10 exhibitions to see this summer in Chicago

This article presents a curated list of ten must-see art exhibitions in Chicago for summer 2025, highlighting a diverse range of artists and venues. Featured shows include a rare solo exhibition of miniature figurines by 85-year-old Argentinian artist Liliana Porter at Secrist|Beach, a group show inspired by cosmology at the Renaissance Society, and a posthumous survey of Martin Wong's brick-focused paintings at Wrightwood 659. Other notable exhibitions include sculptural works by Oren Pinhassi and Leticia Pardo at the Arts Club of Chicago, Nathaniel Mary Quinn's emotionally charged portraits at the National Public Housing Museum, and Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford's monumental sculptures at the Elmhurst Art Museum.

Amoako Boafo Drew on Venice’s Rich Creative Heritage for His First Solo Show in Italy

Amoako Boafo, the Ghanaian artist known for his finger-painted portraits of stylish Black sitters, opened his first solo show in Italy at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani in Venice during the 61st Venice Biennale. Titled "It doesn’t have to always make sense" and produced by Gagosian, the exhibition runs through November 22 and features Boafo's paintings alongside works by friends and collaborators, including poems by Raphael Worlasi Langani and a sculpture made with Stephen Allotey. The show also includes a video documenting Boafo's life and a "heroine wall" of portraits honoring women he admires, such as curator Koyo Kouoh.

Father's Day 2026: exhibitions to enjoy with Dad in Paris this Sunday

This article, published by La Rédac with photos by Cécile de Sortiraparis, offers a curated guide to exhibitions in Paris for Father's Day on Sunday, June 21, 2026. It highlights several family-friendly shows, including a monumental installation by JR on the Pont Neuf, the Louvre's 'Primordial Water' exhibition on Mesopotamian myths, a Matisse retrospective at the Grand Palais, a Hilma af Klint exhibition at the Grand Palais, and the 'Silla: Gold and the Sacred' exhibition at the Guimet Museum, among others. The guide is regularly updated to help readers plan their outing.

The ultimate scavenger hunt for art: Check out this KDKA video of Carnegie International highlights that your family can visit

KDKA has released a video showcasing highlights of the Carnegie International exhibition, presented as an art scavenger hunt designed for families. The video encourages viewers to explore the exhibition together, turning the museum visit into an interactive experience for all ages.

From an Artist to His Dealer

D’un artiste à son marchand

A new book titled "Miró-Loeb. Correspondance. 1926-1936" has been published by Éditions Norma, presenting the previously unpublished correspondence between Spanish painter Joan Miró and his Parisian dealer Pierre Loeb from 1926 to 1936. The volume includes photographs, reproductions of artworks, an illustrated record of Miró's exhibitions at Galerie Pierre, a prologue by art historian Joan Punyet Miró (the artist's grandson), and contributions from Albert Loeb (Pierre's son) and Sonia Loeb (his granddaughter), contextualizing a decade of exchanges amid cultural ferment and rising tensions. The book also features sparser letters from 1945 until Loeb's death in 1963, tracing the evolution of their relationship.

“A Milano Fondazione Elpis sarà luogo di sorpresa e di comunità”. Intervista alla nuova direttrice Marcella Ferrari

Fondazione Elpis in Milan has appointed Marcella Ferrari as its new director, effective April 2026, marking a new phase for the foundation founded by Marina Nissim in 2020. Ferrari plans to expand the foundation's spaces in Porta Romana with the addition of Villa and Atelier Elpis alongside the existing Lavanderia, creating a constellation of venues for residencies, production, education, and public programs. She emphasizes listening to staff, artists, curators, and the local community, while strengthening international relations and developing projects that connect artistic production with public space and contemporary research.

Haegue Yang’s Constellations for a Divided Korea

Haegue Yang's exhibition "Star-Crossed Rendezvous" at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles features two large-scale Venetian blind installations that explore themes of division, exile, and reunification. The works draw on the arbitrary 1945 division of Korea by U.S. military officers and the life of composer Isang Yun, who was tortured and imprisoned by South Korean authorities. One installation mirrors and inverts a cube of white blinds inspired by Sol LeWitt, while the other uses colored blinds, projections, and Yun's "Double Concerto" to create a fragmented, shadow-filled meditation on longing and separation.

Marieta Chirulescu at Galeria Plan B

Marieta Chirulescu is the subject of a solo exhibition at Galeria Plan B, as documented by Contemporary Art Daily. The exhibition is presented through 15 images on the platform, with no accompanying videos or text descriptions, focusing purely on visual documentation of the artworks on display.

Death as Performance

Der Tod als Performance

The article reviews Maria Martínez Bayona's debut sci-fi comedy film "The End of It," which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The film follows Claire, a 250-year-old artist who, in a future where medical advances have eliminated death, decides to stage her own suicide as a radical art performance. The story critiques a world obsessed with synthetic rejuvenation and explores themes of mortality, authenticity, and the commodification of art.

Hans Ulrich Obrist on the Vatican Pavilion

Hans Ulrich Obrist über den Vatikan-Pavillon

Hans Ulrich Obrist, the renowned curator, has dedicated the Vatican Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale to the medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen. The exhibition, titled "The Ear Is the Eye of the Soul," features a walkable sound garden created with the Soundwalk Collective, designed as a space for listening, meditation, and inner reflection. In a Monopol podcast interview, Obrist discusses the project's origins, Hildegard's holistic thinking, and contributions from artists including Patti Smith, Jim Jarmusch, Brian Eno, Meredith Monk, FKA twigs, and Blood Orange. The episode also covers the final work of the recently deceased Alexander Kluge, shown in a former monastery complex in Venice.