designboom radar: exhibitions to see around the world this may

Designboom has published its monthly roundup of must-see art exhibitions around the world for May 2026. Featured shows include Nick Doyle's 'Collective Hallucinations' at Perrotin, Nicola Turner's 'Time’s Scythe' in collaboration with Annely Juda Fine Art at YSP, and Katharina Grosse's 'I Set Out, I Walked Fast' at White Cube. The article also includes a tribute to Georg Baselitz, the influential German painter who recently passed away at 88, and a guide to the 61st Venice Art Biennale 2026.

Full extent of Stephen Friedman Gallery's £7.8m debt revealed in filings

Administrators' filings for Stephen Friedman Gallery reveal a total debt of £7.8 million following its closure in February. Three prominent artists—Alexandre Diop, Deborah Roberts, and Kehinde Wiley—are among the unsecured creditors owed a combined £795,000, expected to recover only eight to nine pence per pound. The largest secured creditor is Coutts & Company, owed £3.1 million, followed by Pentland Group with £1.4 million outstanding. The gallery also owes £505,113 to the Pollen Estate for its Cork Street lease, £550,000 to HMRC, and significant sums to shipping and storage firms, including Crozier (£256,470) and Gander & White (£86,772). Art fairs Frieze and Art Basel Qatar are owed £71,227 and £18,763 respectively.

A Struggle Between Artist and Machine

Ein Ringen zwischen Künstler und Maschine

Mario Klingemann, a pioneer of AI art, presents "Conflict of Interest," a pop-up exhibition at Sleek Art Space in Berlin during Gallery Weekend. Curated by Anika Meier and produced in collaboration with Art on Tezos, the show features works that challenge the flood of AI-generated imagery. Klingemann displays mundane landscape photographs from private slides, a series called "Weapons of Mass Distraction" where he disrupts an AI algorithm's image generation, and a haunting 2020 video in which AI-generated faces morph to music. The exhibition makes visible the struggle between human control and machine logic.

Georg Baselitz ist tot

German artist Georg Baselitz has died at the age of 88. According to Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, he passed away peacefully on Thursday. Born Hans-Georg Bruno Kern in 1938 in Deutschbaselitz, Saxony, Baselitz fled East Germany in 1957 after political repression and academic conflicts. His first solo exhibition in West Berlin in 1963 was shut down due to scandal, and works were confiscated. He became internationally known in the late 1960s for his radical upside-down painting, a signature inversion that destabilized pictorial logic. He also created an extensive sculptural body of work. Key career milestones include representing Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1980 alongside Anselm Kiefer, multiple Documenta appearances, the Praemium Imperiale in 2004, and election to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2019. Major late-career exhibitions included "Nackte Meister" at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 2023.

Florence welcomes the great artist Georg Baselitz with a major exhibition at the Museo Novecento

Firenze accoglie il grande artista Georg Baselitz con una grande mostra al Museo Novecento

The Museo Novecento in Florence has opened "Avanti!", a major retrospective dedicated to German artist Georg Baselitz, featuring 170 works on paper spanning his career from the 1960s to the present. Curated by Sergio Risaliti and Daniel Blau, the exhibition is the first in Italy to focus on Baselitz's graphic output, including woodcuts, linocuts, and etchings, alongside sculptures and installations that explore themes of the human body, war, and inversion.

Jorge Nava | Untitled (2022) | Art & Prints

This article presents Jorge Nava's 2022 painting "Untitled," an oil-on-linen work measuring 180 × 180 cm, offered by Arma Gallery in Madrid. Nava, a Spanish artist born in Gijón in 1980, studied at the University of the Basque Country and Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee under Professor Katherina Grosse. His career includes participation in international fairs such as ARCO, CIRCA in Puerto Rico, Scope Art Fair in New York, and Photo Miami Art Basel, as well as exhibitions at Alzueta Gallery and the Barjola Museum. His work belongs to collections including the María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation and private collections across Europe and North America.

Dominique White at Kunsthalle Basel

Dominique White presents her solo exhibition "All Great Powers Collapse from the Centre" at Kunsthalle Basel, running from February 13 to May 17, 2026. The show features a press release, floor plan, and 10 exhibition images documented by photographer Philipp Hänger, with images courtesy of the institution.

Dominique White “All Great Powers Collapse from the Centre” at Kunsthalle Basel

Dominique White (b. 1993) presents her solo exhibition "All Great Powers Collapse from the Centre" at Kunsthalle Basel, transforming the galleries into immersive environments with her sculptures. The exhibition evokes a sense of submersion, as if walking along an ocean floor where orientation shifts and measures dissolve, creating a weighty, water-like atmosphere.

2026 Future Fair: Everything You Need To Know About the Art Fair Before It Opens Next Month

Future Fair, a contemporary art fair focused on community and emerging talent, will hold its sixth edition at Chelsea Industrial in New York from May 14 to 16, 2026. The fair brings together nearly 70 exhibitors, including brick-and-mortar galleries, artist-run initiatives, and collaborative platforms from nine countries, with nearly half hailing from the New York tri-state area. Highlights include the return of the Pay-It-Forward Fund, which allocates 15% of annual profits as grants to participating galleries and dealers, and a VIP preview day on May 13.

georg baselitz dies at 88, pioneer of inverted painting and postwar german art

Georg Baselitz, the influential German painter known for his inverted figures and raw, expressive style, has died at age 88. A pioneer of postwar German art, Baselitz gained international fame in the 1960s by turning his canvases upside down, forcing viewers to focus on form and paint rather than narrative. His work often grappled with the trauma of Nazi Germany and the divided nation's identity, making him a central figure in the Neo-Expressionist movement.

EFG LATIN AMERICA ART AWARD PRESENTA AL ARTISTA NOMINADO EN SP ARTE 2026

The EFG Latin America Art Award, in partnership with ArtNexus, has named Brazilian artist Cristiano Lenhardt as its nominee from SP-Arte 2026. Lenhardt, represented by Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, was selected for his work *Lieoe* (2025), a mixed-media piece combining ceramic, embroidery, and cotton fabric dyed by floodwaters from the Guaíba River. The work responds to the environmental tragedy of the May 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul, transforming trauma into a tactile, intuitive object. The nomination was made with input from Fernando Oliva, curator of MASP, and Celia Sredni de Birbragher, director of ArtNexus.

EFG LATIN AMERICA ART AWARD PRESENTS THE NOMINATED ARTIST AT SP ARTE 2026

The EFG Latin America Art Award, in partnership with ArtNexus, has named Brazilian artist Cristiano Lenhardt as the nominated artist at SP-Arte 2026. Lenhardt, represented by Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, was selected for his work *Lieoe* (2025), a mixed-media piece combining ceramic and embroidery on cotton that responds to the devastating floods in Rio Grande do Sul in May 2024. The selection was made with input from Fernando Oliva, curator of MASP, and Celia Sredni de Birbragher, director and editor of ArtNexus.

Filipa Ramos takes on 2027 Lofoten Festival

Filipa Ramos has been appointed curator of the 19th edition of the Lofoten International Art Festival, set to take place across the Norwegian arctic archipelago in June 2027. Ramos, a curator and writer who teaches at the Institute Art Gender Nature of the Academy of Art and Design FHNW in Basel, is known for ecologically-focused research that reimagines human-animal-environment relationships. She authored *The Artist as Ecologist* (2025) and is currently organizing the LOOP Festival in Barcelona and the symposia series *The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish*, created with Lucia Pietroiusti.

Montclair Art Museum Hires New Chief Curator Kate Kraczon

The Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey has hired Kate Kraczon as its new chief curator, replacing Gail Stavitsky. Kraczon previously served as director of exhibitions and chief curator at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, where she was terminated last December amid university layoffs. At the Bell, she organized the only US screening of "Prisoners of Love, 2025" by Palestinian artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, and an exhibition of Julien Creuzet's work originally shown at the French Pavilion in the 2024 Venice Biennale. Before Brown, she worked as a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia, where she organized the 2018 show "Ree Morton: The Plant That Heals May Also Poison."

The Venice Biennale’s Polite Fiction of Being ‘Above the Market’ Is Wearing Thin

The 61st Venice Biennale is underway, with art world figures flocking to Venice for the opening. While the Biennale is officially a non-selling curatorial platform, commercial interests are increasingly visible: galleries are funding artists' projects to recoup investments, auction houses like Christie's are hosting private selling exhibitions (including a 'Ghost Pavilion' at the Ca' Dario Palazzo), and fashion houses such as Bottega Veneta and Chanel are sponsoring events. Sotheby's has pulled support for the U.S. Pavilion, which is now crowdfunding, while Frieze is bankrolling the British Pavilion for a second time.