From gunshots to gilded plates: Who are the real hooligans of the art world?

Alex Burchmore reviews 'The Hooligans,' an exhibition that explores the Maoist concept of hooliganism in the context of contemporary Chinese art. The show features works by artists like Xiao Lu, who famously fired a gun at her installation during the 1989 'China/Avant-Garde' exhibition, as well as Zhu Yu and He Yunchang, known for incorporating human body parts and surgical procedures into their art. The exhibition contrasts these transgressive acts with more market-friendly works, such as Zhu Yu's gilded plate paintings and Hu Yinping's commercial-style figurines, highlighting the tension between artistic rebellion and commercial success.

Treasures from the worlds of fashion and art collide at an extraordinary new exhibition in Lisbon

A new exhibition titled 'Art & Fashion' has opened at Lisbon's Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, curated by Eloy Martínez de la Pera Celada. It juxtaposes masterpieces from the museum's permanent collection—spanning ancient Egyptian artifacts to Rembrandt and Impressionist works—with historic and contemporary fashion pieces, including garments from Charles Frederick Worth, Yohji Yamamoto, Dries Van Noten, Alexander McQueen, and Sarah Burton's debut at Givenchy. The show is organized by regional provenance and temporarily replaces the museum's usual display while its Brutalist building undergoes renovation.

NEPA Philharmonic & Everhart Museum Panel Discussion | Scranton, PA | NEPA Events

The Everhart Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania, will host a panel discussion on April 30, 2026, featuring astronaut and artist Nicole Stott, composer Amanda Lee Falkenberg, projection designer Camilla Tassi, and museum curator James Lansing. The event will explore the connections between the NEPA Philharmonic's upcoming "Planets, Moons, & Star Wars" concert and the museum's "Hubble Space Telescope: New Views of the Universe" exhibition.

Urban Reflections, Daniel Melim on the City as Studio, Archive and Collective Space

Brazilian artist Daniel Melim discusses his exhibition "Urban Reflections" at São Bernardo do Campo in an interview with Brendon Bell-Roberts. Melim, who emerged from the graffiti and stencil cultures of ABC Paulista, describes how the city functions as an active collaborator in his practice, transforming the gallery into an expanded studio where boundaries between street, studio, and institution dissolve. The exhibition juxtaposes pivotal and previously unseen works, tracing his artistic evolution and layered urban memory.

Nobody Can Handle Me: Brazil Rewrites the Pavilion as Living Memory.

Brazil's 2026 Venice Biennale pavilion, curated by Diane Lima, presents a radical, sensorial exhibition titled 'Comigo ninguém pode' featuring artists Adriana Varejão and Rosana Paulino. The show transforms the modernist pavilion into an active participant, where historical and new works by the two artists create friction and resonance, exploring themes of colonial violence, the Black female body as archive, and spiritual resistance.

Dutch Commission Recommends New Guardianship for ‘Orphaned’ Nazi-Looted Art

A Dutch government-appointed committee has proposed transferring guardianship of thousands of unclaimed Nazi-looted artworks from a state agency to a Jewish foundation, preferably housed at the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam. The plan includes funding for exhibitions and explanatory labels to publicly display the so-called "orphaned" art from the Netherlands Art Property Collection.

Monopol Gives Away 5 x 2 Tickets for Photo Exhibition at Museum Rietberg

Monopol verlost 5 × 2 Tickets für Foto-Ausstellung im Museum Rietberg

The Museum Rietberg in Zurich is presenting the exhibition "Fast ein Paradies" (Almost a Paradise), which critically examines colonial-era photography as an instrument of power. The show juxtaposes historical photographs with contemporary artworks that recontextualize this material, featuring artists like Sasha Huber, Sammy Baloji, Raphaël Barontini, and Andrea Chung, who intervene in the archival images to challenge colonial narratives and restore agency to the subjects.

In love with trees, sculptor Lélia Demoisy elevates nature through hybridization

Amoureuse des arbres, la sculptrice Lélia Demoisy sublime la nature par l’hybridation

Lélia Demoisy, a French sculptor born in 1991, creates hybrid works that blend wood with animal elements, such as a yew wood sculpture covered in fox fur or a suspended skeleton made from naturally curved thuya branches. She lives in a small village in the Yvelines region, where she works with wood and metal herself, often sourcing materials locally, and recently participated in the Maif pour le vivant committee as the only artist on the jury.

Franco Bellucci “Works (c. 2010–2018)” at a. SQUIRE, London

Franco Bellucci's exhibition "Works (c. 2010–2018)" is on view at a. SQUIRE gallery in London. The show features his sculptures, which are composed of knotted, humble, and mass-produced materials like socks, bandages, cables, and plastic bags, reflecting a direct engagement with his immediate surroundings.

Rika Nakajima: A New Book of the Dead, Part 3

連載 中島りか 新しい死者の書 第三回

Japanese artist Rika Nakajima reflects on the trial of Tetsuya Yamagami, who assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022, weaving together her own experience running the project space "Datsuisho – (a) place to be naked" in Tokyo's Yanaka district. As the space faced demolition in late 2025, Nakajima draws parallels between the trial's timing and the closure of her venue, recalling earlier events at the space that discussed the state funeral controversy and the cult issues exposed by the assassination. She describes attending the trial in Nara, observing Yamagami's demeanor, and connecting the case to broader themes of political aesthetics, fascism, and the theatricality of the judicial system.

Primal field. Interval

LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe presents 'Primal field / Interval,' an exhibition of new paintings and monotypes by San Francisco-based artist Henry Jackson, running from May 15 to June 20, 2026. Jackson’s work blends Bay Area Figuration with Abstract Expressionism, using masonry trowels and scrapers to build and excavate layers of oil paint and cold wax, creating elemental fields where the human figure emerges from abstraction. The show also includes oil-based monotypes derived from spontaneous material happenings on the plate.

Exhibition | Yelena Popova, 'Moments of Grace' at Osnova gallery, Valencia, Spain

Yelena Popova's solo exhibition 'Moments of Grace' opens at Osnova gallery's new space in Valencia, Spain, marking a decade of collaboration between the artist and the gallery. The show brings together works from several of Popova's major series, including 'Painting Installations' (2012-2017), 'Evaporating Paintings', 'Post-Petrochemical Paintings', and three jacquard-woven tapestries, tracing her practice over the past fifteen years. Popova approaches each project as part of an interconnected body of work, comparing her logic to garden cultivation—a layered, cyclical process. Her cross-disciplinary research focuses on the material conditions of painting, exploring temporal transformations like evaporation, oxidation, and decay, as well as the dynamics between image, surface, and space.

In Venice, the Wagner Museum changes status

À Venise, le Musée Wagner change de statut

The Wagner Museum in Venice, currently a discreet institution housed within the Casino di Venezia in the Ca' Vendramin Calergi palace on the Grand Canal, is set to join the network of the Fondazione dei Musei Civici di Venezia (MUVE) by 2027. An agreement signed in March 2025, after thirty years of discussions, between MUVE, the Casino, and the Richard Wagner Association will make the museum the fourteenth institution under MUVE's management, alongside the Museo Correr, Ca' Pesaro, and the Museo Fortuny. The museum, established in 1995 in the rooms where Richard Wagner stayed and died in 1883, holds significant collections including the Josef Lienhart and Walter Just collections, making it one of the most important private Wagnerian collections outside Bayreuth, Germany.

An Argentine artist inaugurates a brand-new space dedicated to photography in Turin

Un artista argentino inaugura a Torino le attività di un nuovissimo spazio dedicato alla fotografia

A new photography space called K! has opened in Turin's San Salvario district, inaugurated by Argentine artist Emilio Nasser with his exhibition "La Cornuda de Tlacotalpan." The space is the latest curatorial project of the Kublaiklan collective (Rica Cerbarano, Francesco Colombelli, Elsa Moro, Aleksander Masseroli Mazurkiewicz) and focuses on research, production, and education centered on the relational power of photography. Nasser's exhibition reinterprets a fading Mexican legend from Tlacotalpan by involving the local community in a collective reconstruction through drawings, transcriptions, and mud masks, resulting in a choral portrait of the mythical Cornuda creature.

Press Photos of the Year Chosen

Pressefotos des Jahres gewählt

Carol Guzy won the World Press Photo competition for 2025 with her image "Separated by ICE," taken for the Miami Herald. The photograph depicts children clinging to their father's shirt during a court hearing in New York, after he was unexpectedly detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The jury selected the image from nearly 57,000 entries by about 3,700 photographers. Two other finalists were recognized: Saber Nuraldin for documenting the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and Victor J. Blue for covering the trial of perpetrators who kidnapped and abused women during Guatemala's civil war.

Writer Thomas Clerc casts a tender fictional gaze on Montmartre's 'daubs'

L’écrivain Thomas Clerc pose, à travers une fiction, un regard tendre sur les « croûtes » de Montmartre

French writer and essayist Thomas Clerc has published a new fiction titled "Croûtes" as the fifteenth volume in the "Fléchette" collection by éditions sun/sun. The book draws inspiration from a single autochrome image taken from the Musée Albert-Kahn's "Archives de la planète" (1909–1931), specifically a one-minute film shot in March 1927 at the Foire aux croûtes in Montmartre, Paris. Clerc's narrative tenderly and humorously explores the life of an amateur painter and the infinite possibilities of so-called "croûtes"—a French slang term for amateurish or kitsch paintings that exist outside institutional recognition.

‘Apoi’ and Weaving What Remains

Ugandan artist Acaye Kerunen presents her first solo museum exhibition in Germany, titled 'Apoi,' at the Kunstmuseen Krefeld. The show, installed across the modernist spaces of Haus Lange and Haus Esters, features handwoven textiles, sculpture, sound, and film that draw on Indigenous knowledge systems and intergenerational exchange. It is part of the museum's ongoing 'HL HE Dialog: What Comes After Art' series.

Exhibition | Dini Nur Aghnia, 'What Gathers, What Holds' at Gajah Gallery, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Indonesian artist Dini Nur Aghnia presents her solo exhibition 'What Gathers, What Holds' at Gajah Gallery in Yogyakarta, opening April 25, 2026. The exhibition features a new body of work exploring landscape through layered compositions of clay, resin, and patchwork textiles, moving away from a totalized vista to focus on fragments and accumulative change.

Heiner Goebbels’ Landscape Plays faces an uphill battle to appeal to the public

The Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai is hosting the first solo exhibition in India of German composer Heiner Goebbels, titled 'Landscape Plays'. The exhibition, presented by the Goethe-Institut, features six slow-moving, non-narrative video installations that challenge traditional viewing habits with their meditative, plotless approach.

Reconnecting with the Handmade: The Hart Gallery’s Ampersand student art exhibit

William & Mary students showcased their handmade artworks in the Hart Gallery's "Handmade" exhibit, held in conjunction with the Ampersand International Arts Festival. Curated by alumna Zara Fina Stasi '12, a Richmond-based artist and founder of Good for the Bees, the multimedia exhibition featured approximately a dozen student submissions including assemblage, collage, sculpture, sewn hangings, and traditional painting. Student curators Gibran Adnan '27 and Rebecca Graber '27 collaborated with Stasi to select and install the works, which explored themes of experimentation, self-expression, and the human process of creating by hand.

Artist Sandra Hansen spotlights plastic pollution with ‘Our Exquisite Pollution Series: Under the Sea’

International environmental artist Sandra Hansen's exhibition 'Our Exquisite Pollution Series: Under the Sea' is on view at the Evanston Art Center from March 28 to April 26. The show features large-scale marine scenes made from handmade paper and repurposed plastics, including a 12-foot paper whale and kelp columns braided from hundreds of plastic bags, all highlighting the impact of plastic pollution on oceans. Hansen began the series in 2014 after learning about agricultural runoff in Lake Erie and has since collected beach trash to incorporate into her conceptual art.

New exhibition in Torre del Mar explores the art of calligraphy

Calligraphy artist Gema Martínez has opened a new solo exhibition titled 'Evocâre' at the tourist information office in Torre del Mar on Spain's Costa del Sol. The exhibition presents a series of works that use distorted, superimposed, and invented calligraphic signs to explore the mechanisms of memory, transforming personal recollections into visual, often illegible, writing.

Berlin's Next Crash Landing

Berlins nächste Bruchlandung

Berlin's culture senator, Sarah Wedl-Wilson, resigned on Friday after being pressured by Mayor Kai Wegner amid a funding scandal. She approved 13 project applications totaling €2.6 million intended for combating antisemitism, bypassing mandatory co-payment rules and ignoring objections from her state secretary. Leaked chat logs revealed that CDU parliamentarians Christian Goiny and faction leader Dirk Stettner pushed her to fast-track approvals, leading to violations of budget law. The state audit office had flagged irregularities, and Wegner withdrew his support, prompting her resignation.

Berlins Kultursenatorin tritt ab

Berlin's Senator for Culture, Sarah Wedl-Wilson, has resigned after less than a year in office, following a damning report from the Berlin Court of Audit. The report found that the allocation of €2.6 million in funding for 13 projects aimed at combating antisemitism was 'evidently unlawful,' citing a lack of proper criteria, arbitrary project selection, and violations of budget regulations. Wedl-Wilson stated she stepped down to prevent damage to the fight against antisemitism, and Governing Mayor Kai Wegner accepted her resignation, vowing to reform the funding system. The opposition has accused CDU politicians of exerting improper influence to push through the projects.

Culture Senator under pressure due to Court of Audit report

Kultursenatorin wegen Rechnungshofberichts unter Druck

Berlin's Court of Audit has issued a scathing report accusing Culture Senator Sarah Wedl-Wilson (independent) of serious legal violations in the allocation of €2.6 million in anti-Semitism prevention grants for 2025. The audit found that the selection process was arbitrary, lacked transparent criteria, and violated state budget regulations. Six of the 13 funded projects—receiving €2 million—were deemed ineligible for the specific budget line, and some recipients were newly founded entities that were not properly vetted. The report warns that the grants may need to be repaid.

Albert Yuk Shuttered Light Exhibit Opens in Reed Gallery

On April 12, the Reed Gallery opened 'Shuttered Light,' an exhibition of photographs by Deerfield Academy student Albert Yuk (class of 2026). The show juxtaposes staged war scenes from a Beijing film set with real wartime documentation from Israel and Iran, aiming to highlight media bias and the blurring of authenticity in news imagery. Yuk, who has traveled to conflict zones including Israel, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Afghanistan, began his photography career working for Pulitzer Prize-winning Chinese photojournalist Liu Heung Shing. The exhibition includes personal favorites like 'Intersection of Tradition and Modernity' and 'Warrior’s Respite,' reflecting themes of freedom, liberty, and gender roles.

Boyne Arts Center seeks artists for new installation honoring donors

The Boyne Arts Center in Boyne City, Michigan, is calling for artists to submit proposals for a commissioned installation that will honor donors at its new gallery at 211 Water Street. The permanent piece will initially feature 50 to 100 donor names and be expandable. Artists may propose designs for one of three locations: an exterior courtyard, a gallery window, or a moveable interior piece. Proposals are due May 26, with selection by June 15 and installation by September 7, ahead of an October ribbon-cutting ceremony.

In Romagna for over a century there is a "serious" spring carnival. The story of the plaster and thought floats

In Romagna da oltre un secolo c’è un Carnevale “serio” di primavera. La storia dei carri di gesso e di pensiero

A small town in Romagna, Casola Valsenio, has been hosting a unique spring festival for 125 years, featuring massive allegorical floats made of plaster and wood. Unlike traditional carnivals, this event—called the "serious carnival"—takes place in late April/early May and focuses on social and political themes. The floats, up to seven meters long and nine meters high, are built by local youth and paraded twice (day and night) with performers frozen in tableau vivant poses. A jury, this year chaired by Roberto Cantagalli, director of the MAR museum in Ravenna, awards a winner.

Immersive Room-Sized Exhibit Environments

Spazio Viruly is presenting the exhibition 'UNBOXING: A Room as Instrument' at Superattico in Milan during Milan Design Week. The installation, created by designers Matthijs Koerts and Merijn Haenen, deconstructs everyday devices to reveal core elements like energy and sound, then rebuilds them into immersive, room-sized environments. The experience is enhanced with live dance performances by Eleonora Cattaneo and custom soundscapes.