Deutscher Pavillon wird zum Plattenbau

The German Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale has been transformed into a prefabricated concrete slab building (Plattenbau) for this year's edition, designed by artists Sung Tieu and the late Henrike Naumann, who died suddenly in February at age 41 from cancer. Curator Kathleen Reinhardt described the pavilion as part of a highly political Biennale, with Tieu covering the 1938 fascist-era building with a mosaic of over three million tiles depicting a Berlin apartment block that once housed Vietnamese contract workers. Naumann's interior installation features mint-green references to Soviet barracks in East Germany, a cartography of war, and works including a relief of chairs, a curtain of chainmail, and the performance "Trümmerfrau."

An Abandoned Shipyard in Venice Is Getting a New Life Thanks to This Congolese Choreographer

Congolese choreographer Faustin Linyekula is staging "The Galeazze Project," a performance in a 16th-century shipyard complex in Venice that has been inaccessible since World War II and never open to the public. Commissioned by the nonprofit Scuola Piccola Zattere, the work will bring up to 500 people into the 32,291-square-foot open-air ruin for two nights during the 2026 Venice Biennale preview week. The rental fee from the performance will help stabilize and restore the floors of the historic Galeazze site.

Ai Weiwei to Reenact His Own Detention in 24-Hour Performance in Manchester

Artist and dissident Ai Weiwei will reenact his 81-day detention by China's Ministry of Public Security in a 24-hour performance titled "Sewing a Button" at Factory International's Aviva Studios in Manchester, England. The performance, part of his exhibition "Button Up!" running from July 2, 2025, will take place in a re-creation of his cell and involve Ai sleeping, eating, exercising, writing, washing, and being interrogated, with visitors able to book two-hour slots or a full 24-hour ticket. The work follows his earlier piece "S.A.C.R.E.D." (2013) and is joined by other commissioned works including "Eight-Nation Alliance Flags" and a new version of "History of Bombs."

diana ross performance alex prager art basel miami beach 1234765441

Diana Ross performed an intimate 20-minute set at a dinner celebrating Alex Prager's immersive installation 'Mirage Factory' during Art Basel Miami Beach. The event, held in a green room evoking Griffith Park, featured Ross singing hits from her Supremes days and solo career. Prager's installation, located in the old Beach Theatre on Lincoln Road, includes a 1:12 scale miniature of Hollywood Boulevard and was created with Capital One and the Cultivist. A performance based on Prager's photograph 'Beverly Palms Hotel' (2025) also took place, with actors embodying characters from the image.

moca los angeles geffen nadya tolokonnikova 2654494

Artist Nadya Tolokonnikova, a founding member of Pussy Riot, began a durational performance titled *Police State* at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles on Thursday, inhabiting a cell and sewing clothing. The following day, protests erupted in the city after ICE raids in the garment district, leading to clashes with police and the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops by President Donald Trump. MOCA closed its Geffen branch early on Sunday for safety, while Tolokonnikova continued her performance, live-streaming audio from the protests into her installation.

art lottery ryan lee gallery martine gutierrez

Martine Gutierrez's exhibition "Lottery" at Ryan Lee Gallery in Manhattan documents a performance she staged at Paris Photo in 2025, where attendees directed her actions. The show features 17 photographs from 755 taken during the performance, alongside a video installation recreating the waiting line. Gutierrez also created a meta-text in which she interviews herself, drawing on a conversation with the article's author.

Up Close: Aki Sasamoto’s “Grilled Diagrams” at Studio Voltaire

Artist Aki Sasamoto presented her performance-installation "Grilled Diagrams" at Studio Voltaire in London. The work featured Sasamoto wielding oversized cooking utensils, manipulating rocks and gems on a custom grill, and delivering a monologue, creating a tense and unpredictable atmosphere for the audience.

David Beckham dutifully does the art rounds in Doha

David Beckham was a prominent attendee at Art Basel Qatar in Doha, visiting key art venues and installations. He was seen at Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija's interactive installation in MIA Park, viewing works by Chung Seoyoung at the Fire Station, and attending a performance by Haroon Mirza alongside major collector Sheikha al-Mayassa. Movie star Angelina Jolie was also spotted at a special project by the performance collective Sweat Variant.

Nude Performance at MFA Boston Confronts One of Art’s Oldest Tropes

Artist Xandra Ibarra staged her performance "Nude Laughing" (2014–) at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston on April 16, appearing nude except for a breastplate and yellow heels while dragging a nylon stocking stuffed with blonde wigs and fake breasts. She moved through the galleries, laughing hysterically, and ultimately collapsed in front of Paul Gauguin's painting "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" (1897–98). The performance was part of the exhibition "Subvert, Repair, Reclaim: Contemporary Artists Take Back the Nude," which features 12 artists critiquing racial, gender, and power hierarchies in Western art history. The event sparked heated debate on the museum's Instagram, with hundreds of commenters arguing about its legitimacy and obscenity.

Theater in Paris: Studio Hébertot brings to life the companions of Pablo Picasso, from Fernande Olivier to Françoise Gilot

Théâtre à Paris : le Studio Hébertot fait revivre les compagnes de Pablo Picasso, de Fernande Olivier à Françoise Gilot

A theatrical production titled 'Les Amours de Pablo' is being staged at the Studio Hébertot in Paris until the end of May 2026. The play, created by the Compagnie Bille en Tête, focuses on the intimate and tumultuous relationships of Pablo Picasso, but primarily aims to give voice and substance to seven of his romantic partners, portraying them as complex individuals and artists in their own right.

south africa pavilion venice biennale cancelation qatar 1234769587

South Africa has canceled its pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which was to feature a performance by artist Gabrielle Goliath addressing the killings of women and queer people in South Africa, a German-led genocide in Namibia, and Israel’s war in Gaza. The performance would have included readings of poetry by Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2023. South African Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie blamed an unidentified foreign nation for seeking to use the pavilion for "proxy power," and Israeli publication Ynetnews reported that nation is Qatar. McKenzie denied censorship, claiming a rift with the nonprofit Art Periodic South Africa over a foreign nation's offer to purchase artworks after the Biennale.

internet personality mackenzie thomas performance review 1234769494

Internet personality MacKenzie Thomas staged a four-hour durational performance titled "I Said What I Said" in New York, where she read aloud every post she made on X over the past year, interspersed with personal essays. The performance, which sold out both New York showings, will travel to Los Angeles at Heavy Manners. Thomas recounted intimate details of her life, including a breakup, her dog's death, health struggles, and family dynamics, while notably omitting her success as an influencer with half a million followers.

art basel artist arrest chalk performance 1234766521

Performance artist Thomas Iser was arrested during Art Basel Miami Beach after spray-painting the words “Sorry to disturb, art in progress” on a window of the Miami Beach Convention Center using washable spray chalk. He invited his three-year-old daughter to add marks, and police charged him with criminal mischief. Iser, who has staged similar interventions globally, was handcuffed in front of his child and spent a night in jail before posting $600 bail. Miami-based artist Jillian Mayer witnessed the scene and documented it, noting the artist was in full body paint. Iser has since reframed the arrest as an unintended extension of the performance.

park avenue armory 50 pianos 11000 strings 1234755137

The Park Avenue Armory in New York is hosting the North American premiere of *11,000 Strings*, an orchestral piece by composer Georg Friedrich Haas featuring 50 black pianos arranged in a ring. The performances began last night and run through October 7, with the 55,000-square-foot Drill Hall providing a dramatic setting for the microtonally tuned pianos and a 25-member ensemble from Klangforum Wien. The piece explores texture and tone over melody, evoking composers like Ligeti, Penderecki, and Stockhausen.

K-Pop Band BTS Performed Two Songs from New Album ‘ARIRANG’ at the Guggenheim on Wednesday Morning

The K-pop group BTS performed two songs from their new album 'ARIRANG' in the main lobby of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The private, phone-free event for about 150 invited fans featured the tracks "SWIM" and "2.0," with leader RM performing seated for one song due to an ankle injury.

The Interview: Gabrielle Goliath

Gabrielle Goliath, a South African artist, created the performance work "Elegy" in 2015 after hearing a father mourn his daughter, Ipeleng Christine Moholane, who was raped and murdered. The piece features seven operatic women sustaining a single note in relay for an hour, evolving over a decade into a series of iterations that address systemic violence and grief. In January 2026, South Africa's Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, Gayton McKenzie, cancelled Goliath's presentation of the latest version of "Elegy" at the 61st Venice Biennale, which was to include tributes to victims in South Africa, Namibia, and Gaza, including journalist Hiba Abu Nada. Goliath refused to alter the work, took legal action, and will now show it independently at the Chiesa di Sant'Antonin in Venice, while the official South African Pavilion will remain empty for the first time since 2011.

Monet auction drives Sotheby’s Paris sale to 35 million euros

Sotheby's Paris sale on April 16, 2026, achieved a total of 35 million euros, an 84% increase over the previous year's equivalent auction. The event was dominated by two rediscovered Claude Monet paintings, with 'Vétheuil, effet du matin' setting a new auction record for the artist in France at 10.2 million euros. Strong results were also posted for works by Marc Chagall, Lucio Fontana, and Gerhard Richter, with 62.5% of lots selling above their high estimates.

Sotheby’s Evelyn Lin On Asia’s Maturing Market, Young Collectors and the New Rules of the Hong Kong Sale

Sotheby’s recently concluded its spring marquee auctions in Hong Kong, generating a combined total of HK$711.8 million ($91.2 million). The sales were anchored by the success of Joan Mitchell’s 'La Grande Vallée VII,' which sold for $17.6 million, and achieved a nearly 100 percent sell-through rate by value. The performance was bolstered by the auction house's new 'Maison' headquarters, a dual-level retail and exhibition space that attracted over 44,500 visitors in the lead-up to the sales.

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Bianca Censori, known for her revealing fashion and as Ye's wife, debuted her first performance art piece titled "BIO POP (The Origin)" on December 12-13 at Layer 41 in Seoul, South Korea. The 14-minute performance features Censori in a maroon bodysuit preparing an object at a kitchen island before revealing furniture intertwined with female contortionists styled as her duplicates, all made from discarded mobility devices. A related jewelry line inspired by medical devices also launched the same day.

christies jonathan burden decorative arts auction results 1234756132

Christie's online sale of decorative arts from the collection of Jonathan Burden, titled 'Crafted and Collected: The Jonathan Burden Sale,' achieved over $1.07 million with fees, more than doubling the low estimate of $487,500. The sale featured 151 lots, with only five unsold, a 97% sell-through rate. The top lot was a 10-foot-long French Incarnat Turquin marble dining table that sold for $101,600, far exceeding its $30,000 high estimate. The auction employed an innovative 'in-situ' viewing at Burden's studio in Long Island City, where potential bidders could meet the dealer, hear stories, and see pieces demonstrated. Many items sold for multiples of their estimates, including a Victorian metamorphic chair that brought $27,940 against a $3,000 high estimate.

“In corpo presente” at IED, Florence

On Tuesday, April 28, at IED Firenze (former Teatro dell'Oriuolo), the collective performance "In corpo presente" took place as the final act of a research project exploring contemporary meanings of freedom, presence, belonging, and collective action. Since December 2025, 50 students from various disciplines at IED Firenze have been involved in the project, guided by artist Jacopo Benassi.

The World's Most-Visited Museums – and Why Germany is Falling Behind

Die meistbesuchten Museen weltweit – und warum Deutschland hinterherhinkt

The Art Newspaper's 2025 ranking of the world's most-visited museums reveals a global landscape dominated by institutions in Paris, Seoul, London, and New York. The Louvre leads with just over nine million visitors, followed by the Vatican Museums and Seoul's National Museum of Korea, which doubled its attendance to 6.5 million. Notable trends include strong post-pandemic recoveries at New York's MoMA and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, while London's Tate Modern and National Gallery still lag significantly behind their 2019 numbers.

April 2026 Art And Culture Guide: Exhibitions, Museums & Cultural Events You Can’t Miss

A guide highlights key art and cultural events in India for April 2026. It features several exhibitions, including Nayanaa Kanodia's 'Staged Realities' at Bikaner House, Neha Sahai's introspective solo show at LATITUDE 28, and Mari Ito's first Indian solo exhibition at Bikaner House. Other notable events are the performance 'Sair-e-Motorcar' blending Kathak with vintage cars, the group show 'Houses I Almost Lived In' at LATITUDE 28, and the two-day World Dance Day festival curated by Geeta Chandran at the India International Centre.

A new home for Asian contemporary art opens in landmarked building in Manhattan's Chinatown

The Wang Contemporary has officially opened its doors in a landmarked Beaux Arts building at 58 Bowery in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Founded by fashion designer Alexander Wang and his mother, Ying Wang, the cultural organization debuted with a site-specific installation by the Brooklyn-based conceptual collective MSCHF titled '20,000 Variations On A Paper Plane In Flight.' The performance featured red and gold paper planes launched from the building's central oculus, blending traditional Lunar New Year symbolism with conceptual art in a space that formerly served as a bank.

Ragnar Kjartansson's politically charged soap opera—halted by the Russia-Ukraine war—goes on show in Reykjavík

Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson's video work *Soap Opera*—a recording of his durational performance *Santa Barbara: A Living Sculpture*—is on view for the first time at i8 Grandi in Reykjavík. The original performance, staged at the V-A-C Foundation's GES-2 House of Culture in Moscow from December 2021 to February 2022, featured Russian and Ukrainian actors reenacting episodes of the American soap opera *Santa Barbara*, which had been a cultural phenomenon in post-Soviet Russia. The production was halted at episode 81 on February 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Pussy Riot co-founder starts Los Angeles prison performance with existential scream

Nadya Tolokonnikova, co-founder of Pussy Riot, began a durational performance titled "Police State" at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles on June 5, 2025. Inside a mock prison cell at the Geffen Contemporary, she screams, plays a pink toy piano, synthesizer, and laptop, and layers live music with sampled prison noises to create an 80-hour experimental soundscape. The performance, running until June 15, references her own 2012 imprisonment in Russia for an anti-Putin protest. On the fourth day, MOCA closed due to clashes between ICE agents, the California National Guard, and protesters over immigrant raids, prompting Tolokonnikova to post: "Police State exhibit closed today due to police state."

In Venice, an unprecedented space in the Arsenale opens to the public for the first time. It will host performances.

A Venezia apre al pubblico per la prima volta uno spazio inedito dell’Arsenale. Ospiterà performance

For the first time, the Galeazze—historically used for constructing the Serenissima fleet—will open to the public during the 2026 Venice Art Biennale on May 5 and 6. Artist and choreographer Faustin Linyekula has conceived a site-specific performance titled The Galeazze Project, activating the monumental, water-adjacent spaces of the Arsenale Nord. Collaborating with musician Heru Shabaka-Ra, Linyekula integrates the architecture into the performance, involving local performers and musicians. The project, conceived by Cosimo Ferrigolo and Dirk Bell and curated by Edoardo Lazzari, features scaffolding, platforms, and an irregular lighting system, inviting the audience to move freely and redefine the relationship between bodies and space.

Rawya El Chab Tends to the Wounds of Lebanon's Civil War

Lebanese performance artist Rawya El Chab has debuted the second installment of her trilogy, "Crossing the Water," at The Brick in Brooklyn. The performance explores the collective trauma of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and her family's subsequent flight to the Ivory Coast, blending personal memory with political satire and mythology. By embodying various roles—from suspicious neighbors to puppet-like politicians—El Chab navigates the complexities of life under military occupation and the persistent feeling of surveillance.

Johannes Phokela: Exploring Virtue, Contradiction, and Power at the Venice Biennale 2026.

South African artist Johannes Phokela is set to showcase a significant body of work at the 2026 Venice Biennale, building on his recent series 'The Seven Virtues' and 'Original Sin'. Curated under a vision initiated by the late Koyo Kouoh and supported by Eclectica Contemporary, Phokela’s paintings subvert the aesthetics of European Old Master traditions. His works, including 'Fides' and 'Temperantia', utilize Baroque visual languages to critique constructed morality, institutional power, and the performance of virtue.

Raheleh Filsoofi’s Deep Listening and Raheleh Filsoofi and Reza Filsoofi’s Listening: The Fourth String at the Ismaili Center, Houston, TX

Raheleh Filsoofi and Reza Filsoofi presented a collaborative sound performance titled *Listening: The Fourth String* at the Ismaili Center in Houston on April 11, 2026, alongside a participatory installation of the *ShahTár* (شهتار), a large Persian rug fitted with two four-string instruments. The performance featured Houston musicians Will Adams, Tom Carter, Parham Daighighi, Laura Dykes, Ruthie Langston, Gabriel Martinez, and Firuz Shukrikhudoev, blending improvisational music, poetry, and vocals. Audience members were invited to touch their own bodies and eventually join the stage, fostering an immersive, embodied experience.