The Milwaukee Art Museum hosts the only Gertrude Abercrombie surrealist art exhibition in the Midwest

The Milwaukee Art Museum is hosting "Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World is a Mystery," a nationally touring retrospective featuring 83 paintings by the surrealist artist. The exhibition, which runs through July 19, is the only stop in the Midwest for the tour and includes works such as "Witches Switches" and "Inheritance," alongside wearable art from the 1950s. The gallery is designed as a maze to reflect Abercrombie's complex mind, and the museum is offering related events like Kohl's Family Sunday and MAM After Dark.

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Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed inheritance tax on Sunday, with 78% voting no. The tax, introduced by the Social Democrats, would have applied a 50% rate to inheritances and gifts exceeding 50 million Swiss francs (about $62.3 million). Billionaire Peter Spuhler threatened to leave the country if the tax passed, and Swiss wealth managers warned that other ultra-wealthy individuals would follow, citing their mobility and options to optimize taxes.

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Iwan and Manuela Wirth, owners of the global art gallery Hauser & Wirth, have relocated their permanent residency from the United Kingdom to Switzerland, where the gallery’s holding company is based. The move was registered in documents filed with Companies House this month, and the gallery confirmed to the Financial Times that the decision was for personal reasons, unrelated to tax law changes. Despite the relocation, the Wirths plan to open a new London location in 2026, and their UK gallery reported a 13 percent drop in turnover to £144 million in 2023.

Total Museum's 'Somebody Has to Collect It' examines collecting as a responsibility

The Total Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul has opened "Somebody Has to Collect It," an exhibition featuring works from the collection of French art collectors Catherine and Renato Casciani. Running from April 30 to May 31, the show marks the couple's first major presentation in Korea and inaugurates the museum's new "Collector/tion" project, which reframes collectors not as buyers but as actors at the intersection of capital, memory, and value-making. The exhibition includes 22 artists and collectives, with a focus on video art addressing themes such as precarious labor, state violence, colonial inheritance, climate crisis, and queer intimacy. It is also an official program of the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Korea and France.

Here's what's happening for First Friday in May

Juneau's First Friday in May 2026 features a diverse array of events, including a storytelling project called "Tambayan at Kwentuhan" that shares oral histories from Filipino elders, an exhibition titled "Dizzy Hooligan" by Kiyana Fonua recalling Kava gatherings in Anchorage, and a retrospective of Indigenous fashion designer Dorothy Grant at the Alaska State Museum. Other offerings include a chamber music concert by Taku Winds, a "Critter Trek" exhibition at the Juneau-Douglas City Museum featuring local wildlife art, planetarium explorations, a book release by author Corinna Cook, and displays of woodworking by Phil Paramore and jewelry by Colleen Goldrich.

Artists take a satirical look at the financial crisis in a new London show

Three emerging artists—Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison, and Jasmine Gregory—present a multi-media exhibition titled 'Genuine Fake Premium Economy' at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). The show satirically examines the societal and economic fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, using works that critique capitalism, inheritance, and art-world stereotypes. Gregory repaints Patek Philippe ads to expose class structures, Bliss films a fictional art fair that blurs reality and fiction, and Ellison creates lightboxes for a fictional private bank, manipulating corporate language and philosophy.

Masterworks from Jacob Rothschild collection go to London's National Gallery and V&A under acceptance in lieu scheme

Two masterworks from the collection of the late Jacob Rothschild—Guercino's *King David* (1651) and John Deare's *Edward and Eleanor* (1790)—have been allocated to London's National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) respectively under the UK's acceptance in lieu (AIL) scheme. The Guercino painting settles £5.6 million in inheritance tax, and will be reunited with two related Guercino works already at the National Gallery. The marble relief by Deare enters the V&A's collection.

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Director Steven Soderbergh is set to release 'The Christophers', a new film centered on the London art world starring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel. The plot follows a faded 1960s Pop Art star whose estranged children hire a former art forger to secretly complete his unfinished canvases to secure a future inheritance. Following its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, the movie is scheduled for a theatrical release in April.

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A new exhibition at the Pompeii Archaeological Park, titled “Being a Woman in Ancient Pompeii,” aims to correct centuries of historical neglect by highlighting the lives of real women from the ancient city. Through frescoes, artifacts, inscriptions, and an interactive app, the show presents the stories of entrepreneurs, priestesses, innkeepers, artisans, sex workers, and slaves—including Clodia Nigella, a public pig-keeper; Faustilla, a pawnbroker; Asellina, a tavern owner who employed bar workers and sex workers; Julia Felix, an independent property owner who rented out her bathhouse; and Eumachia, a businesswoman. Co-curated by archaeologist Francesca Ghedini, the exhibition uses archaeological evidence to reconstruct the personalities and daily activities of these women, whose roles have long been obscured by male-dominated historical narratives.

How This Palestinian-Canadian Artist is Bringing Her Voice to the Met Museum

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.

Monopol is giving away 1 × 2 tickets for "Arv og miljø" at the Schaubühne Berlin

Monopol verlost 1 × 2 Tickets für "Arv og miljø" in der Schaubühne Berlin

The Schaubühne Berlin is hosting the Norwegian production "Arv og miljø" (Will and Testament) as part of the Festival Internationale Neue Dramatik (FIND). Based on Vigdis Hjorth’s controversial novel, the play follows Bergljot, a woman who confronts her estranged family during an inheritance dispute over summer houses, leading to a harrowing clash over suppressed childhood memories and the nature of truth.

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Wayne Koestenbaum, a leading figure in New York's queer and literary scenes since the 1980s, is releasing his first novel in nearly two decades, *My Lover, the Rabbi*, in March. The 464-page book centers on an unnamed narrator's psychosexual affair with an aging rabbi, exploring themes of desire, repulsion, internalized homophobia, and the lingering aftermath of the Holocaust. Koestenbaum, known for his confessional prose and genre-straddling criticism—including his 1993 book *The Queen's Throat*—discusses the novel's intellectual filth, the conflation of desire and disgust, and his literary role models such as Samuel Delany and Jean Genet.

Signs of Life: Kunel Gaur’s Immersive Solo Exhibition at Method Delhi

Artist Kunel Gaur presents his solo exhibition "Signs of Life" at Method Delhi, running from December 11, 2025 to January 25, 2026. The show features immersive works that explore contemporary life through architectural materials like wood, concrete, metal, and acrylic, with series including "Colour Field Studies," "Interface Portraits," "KUMI," and "Tile Assemblies." Gaur's practice draws on graphic design, architecture, and brutalist influences to examine how identity, memory, and emotion are filtered through technology and industrial systems.

Gail Mabo leads new exhibition round at Umbrella Studio

Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts in North Queensland will present three new exhibitions next month, led by Meriam artist Gail Mabo's 'Wer Wer (Boundaries)'. Developed during a residency with master printmaker Dian Darmansjah, the exhibition reinterprets boundary maps drawn by Mabo's father, land rights pioneer Eddie Koiki Mabo, through four unique drypoint etching and collagraph prints. Also opening are 'Neural Architecture' by Geoffrey Schmidt, exploring memory and consciousness through oil, string and rocks on aluminium panels, and 'Scattered' by Barbara Pierce, a site-responsive installation made from found materials addressing global displacement and survival.

Heirs of Dave the Potter, the Enslaved Artist, Are Battling to Recover His Legacy

The heirs of David Drake, an enslaved 19th-century potter known as Dave the Potter, are engaged in a legal and ethical struggle to recover his legacy and his works. They argue that his pottery, which includes jars inscribed with his name and poetry, represents their family's artistic and spiritual inheritance, and they are seeking recognition and a role in the stewardship of these artifacts.

‘What My Mother Gave Me’: Monuments of Flesh

Nona Faustine’s first retrospective, ‘What My Mother Gave Me,’ is on view at the Center for Photography at Woodstock until 10 May 2026. The exhibition gathers nearly three decades of the artist’s work, spanning series such as *Young Mothers*, *Mitochondria*, and *White Shoes*, to explore themes of matrilineal memory, the Black female body, and the afterlives of slavery in urban spaces. Faustine’s photographs range from intimate depictions of young motherhood to defiant nude self-portraits that transform sites of erasure into counter-monuments of presence.

Leslie Powell Gallery to open multiple art exhibitions in May

The Leslie Powell Gallery in Lawton, Oklahoma, will open two art exhibitions in May 2026. "Beauteous Maximus" features paintings by New Zealand-born Polynesian artist Tania Landers, whose work explores memory, identity, and generational storytelling through vibrant colors and collage. "Between the Front Door and the Kitchen Sink" showcases artwork by Texas artist Abigail Rainey, focusing on themes of home, inheritance, and the sacred within the mundane. Both exhibitions open with a reception on May 16 and run through June 26.

Artists reimagine Kanjeevaram saris in ‘Journey and Exile’ showcase at Asian Art Museum, USA

Artist and curator Vara Ramakrishnan presented a one-day exhibition titled 'Journey and Exile' at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, featuring 34 Kanjeevaram saris reimagined with artwork by artists and master weavers. The saris, including a piece by Shirin Nijhawan titled 'Ganesha' enhanced by embroidery artist Prabha Narasimhan, were displayed as unstitched garments that transcend size and social status, each carrying its own narrative.

'We matter; we're important': Disabled artists centrestage in new show

The Bathurst Regional Art Gallery has launched "Acts of Inheritance," a major exhibition featuring 17 disabled artists from the Western Sydney collective We Are Studios. Curated by Jordan Valageorgiou, the show presents a diverse array of mediums—including music videos, installations, and interactive paper dolls—to explore themes of identity, wrestling culture, and the nuances of living with invisible illnesses.

Exhibition reflects on the seven deadly sins

Artist CO-MA presents his second solo exhibition, 'Every Saint Has a Past and Every Sinner Has a Future,' at Spazju Kreattiv in Malta from May 9 to June 29. Curated by Lily Agius, the show interprets the seven deadly sins—pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth—through large-scale oil paintings on canvas and wood, marking a shift from the charcoal medium used in his 2021 debut. The artist draws inspiration from Norse mythology, Renaissance and Baroque art, and Dante's Divine Comedy, exploring these vices as universal human failings rather than strictly Catholic concepts.

Ballast review: emerging artist Isabella Kennedy considers submerged histories

Emerging multidisciplinary artist Isabella Kennedy has unveiled her installation 'Ballast' at Firstdraft in Sydney, a site-specific work that blends paper sculpture, video projection, and sound. The exhibition draws on the unfinished research of her late father, journalist Les Kennedy, regarding the 1941 disappearance of the HMAS Sydney II. Through delicate stitched paper forms and immersive blue light, Kennedy explores themes of familial grief, maritime history, and the meditative acts of remembrance that bridge personal and national narratives.