Syrian Artist Sara Shamma To Present An Ode To Palmyra At The 61st Edition Of La Biennale Di Venezia

Syrian artist Sara Shamma will present a large-scale immersive installation titled 'The Tower Tomb of Palmyra' at the 61st edition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2026. This marks Syria's first participation in the Biennale since the fall of the Assad regime and the appointment of President Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa. Shamma's project, inspired by the ancient funerary towers of Palmyra destroyed during the Syrian Civil War, aims to restore the heritage site to life through a multisensory journey combining architecture, painting, and other elements. It will be the first solo presentation by a single Syrian artist at the Biennale, departing from previous group exhibitions with European collaborators.

Seattle May art shows include speakeasy-style gallery attached to house

A series of diverse art exhibitions are opening across Seattle in May. Highlights include a show exploring the influence of Japanese woodblock prints on Northwest artists at the Cascadia Art Museum, a site-specific installation in a private garage gallery called Double Garage, and a large-scale display of drawings on sticky notes by Clare Johnson at Gallery 4Culture. Other featured shows include Emma Bergman's surreal multimedia installation at Specialist Gallery and a landmark retrospective of light artist Tom Lloyd at the Frye Art Museum.

Tourist Damages Florence’s Neptune Fountain in Pre-Wedding Stunt

A 28-year-old tourist in Florence climbed the Neptune Fountain in Piazza della Signoria and caused €5,000 ($5,800) in damage while attempting to touch the statue's genitals as part of a pre-wedding challenge. Police intervened, and specialists from the Fabbrica di Palazzo Vecchio later found damage to a horse's legs and a frieze. The woman has been reported to judicial authorities but is presumed innocent until a verdict.

An artist told the incredible story of a Calabrian village that no longer exists. The interview

Un artista ha raccontato l’incredibile storia di un borgo della Calabria che non c’è più. L’intervista

Italian artist Martin Errichiello has created [campanamuta], a six-part audio work broadcast on RAI Radio 3's Zazà program in late 2025 and now available on RaiPlay Sound. The piece tells the story of Eranova, a farming community founded in 1896 near Reggio Calabria that was destroyed by 1980 after the Christian Democratic party planned—but never built—a steel center on its land, now the site of the Port of Gioia Tauro. Errichiello weaves together interviews with former residents and his own original texts, using non-linear narration to explore the village's utopian origins and forced disappearance.

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.

A Buddha Is Reborn on the High Line

Tuan Andrew Nguyen's sandstone and brass sculpture "The Light That Shines Through the Universe" (2026) has been installed on the High Line in Manhattan as the park's fifth site-specific commission. The 27-foot-tall work, selected from nearly 60 proposals, resurrects the destroyed Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan, which were demolished by the Taliban in 2001. Nguyen sourced artillery brass from Afghanistan to cast the sculpture's mudra hand gestures, symbolizing fearlessness and compassion, and had the sandstone carved in Vietnam. The piece is on view through Spring 2027.

‘It’s a huge, futuristic space with massive skylights’: Ali Zolghadri’s best phone picture

Ali Zolghadri, a Tehran-born fine art photographer, captured a composite image of the central atrium of the Iran Mall in Tehran—the world's largest shopping mall—which was shortlisted in the creative category of the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards. The photograph, taken four months before the US and Israel launched their war on Iran, depicts the mall's futuristic architecture with sweeping curved lines, metallic surfaces, and massive skylights, and includes a lone passerby to emphasize scale. Zolghadri emphasizes that his process involves manual editing in Photoshop without AI, blending three frames and removing unnecessary elements to construct meaning.

There were gardens at King's Leap

King's Leap gallery in New York presents "There were gardens," a group exhibition running from April 3 to May 9, 2026, featuring works by Dara Birnbaum, Gina Folly, Collin Leitch, Chris Marker, Jeff Preiss, Julia Scher, Jason Simon, and Mira M. Yang. The show includes 37 images documented in the Contemporary Art Library, with photography by Stephen Faught.

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.

Reba Maybury at Secession

Reba Maybury presents her solo exhibition "I Come in Peace" at Secession in Vienna, running from March 6 to May 31, 2026. The show features a press release, floor plan, and venue website, documented through 10 images and photographs by Lisa Rastl, courtesy of Secession.

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.

Viandalism: the exhibition bridging street art and contemporary art at the Mona Bismarck

The Mona Bismarck American Center in Paris is hosting an exhibition titled 'Viandalism' from May 7-8, 2026, bringing together 40 artists from graffiti and contemporary art backgrounds. The show features installations and site-specific interventions within the 1,000 m² private mansion, aiming to create a dialogue between the artworks and the venue's unique architecture and atmosphere.

Azerbaijan Destroys Armenian Holy Mother of God Church in Artsakh

Satellite imagery obtained by Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW) confirms that the Azerbaijani regime has demolished the Holy Mother of God Church in Stepanakert, the former capital of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). The church, consecrated in 2019 after 12 years of construction, was destroyed within the last eight weeks, as evidenced by Sentinel-2 satellite images from March 3 and April 2. The Artsakh Tourism and Cultural Development Agency announced the destruction on April 21, three days before the 111th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. This demolition follows a pattern of damage to Armenian religious and cultural sites since the forced displacement of over 130,000 Armenians in September 2023.

Un itinerario fotografico tra installazioni e progetti d’autore della Design Week 2026. La collaborazione tra Artribune e i computer di MSI

This article outlines a one-day itinerary through Milan's 2026 Fuorisalone design week, highlighting key installations and exhibitions. It begins at Torre Velasca, featuring Polish Modernism and Brazilian modernist Jorge Zalszupin, then moves to the University of Milan's cloisters for the Interni magazine exhibition themed 'Materiae,' with oversized sculptures and a yacht installation by Piero Lissoni for Sanlorenzo. Other stops include Palazzo Litta, where architect Lina Ghotmeh presents 'Metamorphosis in Motion,' and Galleria Rossana Orlandi, focusing on the theme of doors. The itinerary concludes at Alcova in the former Baggio Military Hospital, an abandoned space reactivated by curators Valentina Ciuffi and Joseph Grima.

I wanted to hate the new LACMA. Then I went back

The article describes the author's evolving impression of the newly opened David Geffen wing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), designed by architect Peter Zumthor. Initially visiting at 11am, the author found the $724 million, 110,000 sq ft building to be a "dismal, dated, inelegant brute," with thick bronze windows, dark concrete slabs, and bunker-like galleries. However, returning at 4pm, the author experienced a transformation: golden afternoon light warmed the concrete, illuminated the interiors, and revealed the building as a "brilliant innovation and true gift to the city." The article details the building's 20-year design evolution, challenges including fossil discoveries on site, and Zumthor's public frustrations with the compromised details.

The New Entrance of the Louvre

La nouvelle entrée du Louvre

The article, titled "La nouvelle entrée du Louvre," reports on the upcoming redesign of the main entrance to the Louvre Museum in Paris. It also covers several other art-world stories: the return of American Rousseau works to Paris, the growing trend of outsourcing museum reception services, the New Museum's expansion, the troubled Musée des Tissus project, and Art Brussels adapting to contemporary trends.

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.

After Going Through the Darkness Part 1: Kōta Takeuchi Exhibition "Nononononomatsuri" @ Ichihara Lakeside Museum

暗闇をくぐってみたら Part1 竹内公太展「のののののまつり」@ 市原湖畔美術館

The Ichihara Lakeside Museum, currently under renovation since late 2025, will partially reopen on May 1, 2026, with a theater-style series of solo exhibitions titled "Kōta Takeuchi: Nononononomatsuri" as its first installment. Artist Kōta Takeuchi, born in 1982 in Hyogo Prefecture and based in Fukushima, presents new video installations created during a four-month residency in Ichihara, where he visited over 70 stone monuments across the city—including horse-headed Kannon statues, Koyasu statues, and war memorials—to explore themes of parallel bodies and possession. The exhibition features works such as "Disassembly of the Sansha-za" (2013–2023), "Cement Thief" (2024), and "Sigh of the Ground" (2022), with a map showing the locations of the documented stone monuments.

Required Reading

This week's Required Reading from Hyperallergic features a photo by Saber Nuraldin, a finalist for the World Press Photo of the Year, depicting Palestinians climbing an aid truck in Gaza during famine caused by Israel's blockade. The article also includes Elena Megalos's essay on the American Museum of Natural History as a site of motherhood, and reports on Meenu Batra, a legal interpreter arrested by ICE, and the New York Times blocking the Internet Archive from crawling its site.

Navid Baraty’s Atmospheric Photos Explore Contrasting Scales of Time

Navid Baraty's series "The Time Between" combines digital photographs of urban skylines like Manhattan and Chicago with dramatic natural landscapes such as desert dunes and snow-capped mountains. Using a double-exposure technique, the artist blends city lights and skyscraper outlines with geological features to explore contrasts between contemporary urban life and ancient, timeless terrains.

Survey finds town rejects Earth Goddess sculpture

A survey conducted by the St Austell Town Team found that approximately 90% of nearly 500 respondents want the controversial 38-foot-tall ceramic sculpture 'Earth Goddess' removed from the town center of St Austell, Cornwall. Installed in June 2022 as part of a regeneration project celebrating the area's China clay heritage, the £80,000 artwork by Sandy Brown has divided opinion, with local business owner and Town Team chair Jake Richards reporting frequent complaints from customers. Suggested relocation sites include the Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan, though the artist argues moving the piece is impractical and costly.

Gunjan Tyagi Selected for Women’s History Month Exhibition in NYC

Gunjan Tyagi, a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Schenectady, New York, has been selected to exhibit at Pen + Brush, one of New York's oldest nonprofit galleries, during Women's History Month. Tyagi's work spans painting, sculpture, site-specific installation, nature art, video, photography, and mixed media, often incorporating unconventional materials like cow dung and found objects to explore identity, cultural exchange, and humanity's relationship with nature. She also serves as organizer of the India chapter of the Global Nomadic Art Project and as a jury member at the Biennale of Seychelles.

Artist-run gallery in Old Town Scottsdale’s Art District among best in Valley

On The Edge Gallery, an artist-run collective in Old Town Scottsdale's Arts District, has been named one of the top 10 galleries in the Phoenix metropolitan area by Modern Luxury Magazine. The gallery operates as a co-op where local Arizona artists create the work, set their own prices, and often work on-site, allowing visitors to interact directly with the creators.

African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta revisits the works of W.E.B. Du Bois

The African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta (ADAMA) has opened a new exhibition revisiting W.E.B. Du Bois' groundbreaking "Exhibit of American Negroes" from the 1900 Paris World's Fair. Developed in partnership with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), the show builds on a Black History Month project by reporter Mirtha Donastorg and photographer Natrice Miller, who revisited Du Bois' original data and photographs. The exhibition features contemporary portraits of Black Atlantans alongside historical images, asking what has changed and what has endured in Black American life over the past century.

Story of the designer who transformed MotoGP by designing Valentino Rossi's bikes and suits

Storia del designer che ha trasformato la MotoGP disegnando moto e tute di Valentino Rossi

Aldo Drudi, the influential designer who transformed the visual aesthetics of MotoGP, created a special site-specific livery for the Pertamina Enduro VR46 Racing Team's presentation at The Edge in Hudson Yards, New York. The livery, unveiled on March 24, 2026 for the United States Grand Prix, is a complex graphic composition that references team history, Valentino Rossi, and American culture, elevating motorcycle design to a form of moving art.

Solana’s first physical art gallery is using a Frank Ape solo show to prove the onchain art model works in the real world

Brandon Sines, the artist behind FrankApeWorld, opens his first solo exhibition in eight years, titled “Let’s Be Frank,” on May 1 at Cycol Gallery in New York. The show features a cohesive, journey-like curation culminating in a site-specific immersive installation, with every piece minted on Exchange.Art. Cycol Gallery, located at 91 Allen Street, describes itself as Solana’s first brick-and-mortar gallery, built on Solana infrastructure and powered in part by the BONK memecoin, which acquired Exchange.Art in March 2025. Physical display uses Blackdove Art’s digital frames, allowing works to exist as tangible objects and verifiable onchain assets simultaneously.

In Salento c’è una residenza che mette gli artisti in contatto con territorio e storia della Puglia. Intervista

In Casamassella, in the heart of Salento, Red Lab Gallery's residency program has produced "Chiedete al vento, all’onda, alla stella, all’uccello," a project by artists Agata Ferrari Bravo and Thomas Michael Saccuman with an intervention by Flavio Favelli, curated by Leonardo Regano. The centerpiece is a large bird-cart, a hybrid sculpture and performative device made from papier-mâché, fragments of festive lights, and objects collected from the local area, designed to be disassembled and reactivated. Favelli's installation transforms decommissioned luminarie into a suspended environment that amplifies the work's ambiguous, almost ritualistic quality.

Major Prizes Available: Plein Air Art Contest Inspires Artists to Protect Public Lands

A plein air art contest is being held in Alton, Illinois, from May 1–31, 2026. Artists over 16 are invited to create works on-site at up to eight Rivers Project recreation areas. For a $25 submission fee, they can enter their work for prizes, and all submissions will be exhibited at the National Great Rivers Museum through August.

Istanbul exhibition features artist voice via art at Karaköy Palace | Daily Sabah

The Kültür Medeniyet Vakfı (KÜME) opened its ArtıKÜME 2025 and ODAK exhibitions at Karaköy Palas in Istanbul on Saturday, featuring 25 projects across disciplines from digital art to calligraphy under the theme 'Mümkün' ('Possible'). The exhibition transforms the historic Karaköy Palas into a platform for experimental and process-driven works, with artists like Muharrem Dalhan presenting interactive installations such as 'Threshold,' which critiques algorithm-driven media environments. The ODAK project was also introduced as a platform tracking cultural production across Türkiye, with its first publication, the ODAK 2025 book, launched alongside the exhibition.

Gallery: NYC, Stockholm artists probe how history is staged in Tallinn show

Zody Burke and Klara Zetterholm have opened a joint exhibition titled "Ersatz Strata" at Temnikova & Kasela Gallery in Tallinn, Estonia. The show examines how history is staged and reimagined, using reliefs, sculptures, printed works, kinetic elements, and industrial residue to create a fictional archaeological site. A live performance by Los Angeles-based artist 011668 accompanied the opening. The exhibition runs through August 15.