New Exhibition Offers Portals Into the Past, Present, and Future of Blackness

Artist Todd Gray’s solo exhibition, "Portals," at Perrotin Los Angeles features a series of complex photographic assemblages that challenge the historical relationship between Blackness and European colonialism. By stacking framed images of West African landscapes, slave forts, and Renaissance interiors, Gray creates textured collages that collapse geographic and temporal boundaries. Notable works like "Paradox of Liberty" confront the hypocrisy of Enlightenment figures like Thomas Jefferson by physically obscuring his image with the architecture of the slave trade.

Exhibition | Lulama Wolf, 'The Architecture of Memory' at THK Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

South African artist Lulama Wolf presents 'The Architecture of Memory,' an online-only exhibition hosted by THK Gallery. Wolf utilizes a distinct material language of pigmented sand and acrylic to create tactile surfaces that reference the weathered walls of domestic and sacred spaces. Her work moves beyond simple representation, using geometric abstraction and earth-based materials to explore the intersection of personal history and collective generational memory.

Titanic, a deep emotion

Artist Claudia Bitrán is debuting her long-awaited solo exhibition, "Titanic, a deep emotion," at Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York City. The show features a scene-by-scene remake of James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster, meticulously reconstructed over a decade using lo-fi materials, DIY production methods, and a cast of over 1,400 volunteers. The exhibition is presented as a three-channel film installation complemented by paintings, sculptural props, and storyboards that highlight the labor-intensive, communal process of its creation.

Fifteen must-see design events during Mexico City art week 2026

Mexico City's annual art week, anchored by the Zona Maco fair, is expanding its focus to include a significant design component in 2026. The event features 15 highlighted design-focused exhibitions and installations, including site-specific shows in modernist houses, a dedicated collectible design category at Zona Maco, and exhibitions by international names like Lee Broom and Lanza Atelier.

Two Openings Signal Manila’s ‘New Wave of Cultural Activity’

Gajah Gallery, founded in 1996 and already operating in Singapore, Jakarta, and Yogyakarta, opened a new space in Mandaluyong, Manila, in November. Its inaugural exhibition, "Confabulations, A Fantasy of the Real," curated by Joyce Toh, features Filipino artists such as BenCab, Leslie de Chavez, and Kiri Dalena alongside peers from Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia, including a bronze sculpture by Marina Cruz produced at the gallery's Yogya Art Lab. Separately, Ames Yavuz, with spaces in London, Singapore, and Sydney, presented a pop-up group show, "Hold Everything Dear," in Makati, displaying over 50 Filipino artists and collectives. Both openings signal a surge in international gallery interest in Manila ahead of the Manila Art Fair in February 2026.

A Sprrrawling Exhibition of Cat-Themed Meowsterpieces

A group exhibition titled "Magnum O-Pspsps" at Cornell University’s Olive Tjaden Gallery in Ithaca, New York, features over 40 artists paying tribute to cats through paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media works. Curated by Cornell MFA students Michael Morgan and Elina Ansary, the salon-style show runs for 10 days through September 25, drawing inspiration from Edward Anthony's 1922 fairytale "The Pussycat Princess" and illustrator Louis Wain's anthropomorphic cat drawings. The exhibition includes works by artists such as Lisa Lebofsky, Tatiana Tatum, Steve Keister, Erika Ranee, Juan Hinojosa, Emily Weiskopf, and Leeza Meksin, with some pieces serving as memorials for deceased feline companions.

Detroit’s first fair, Season, revs up for inaugural edition

Detroit will host its first contemporary art fair, Season, from 25-28 September at Michigan Central, the city's renovated former train station. The fair debuts with 11 galleries and a special exhibition featuring ten local artists, evolving from Detroit Art Week, which was launched in 2018 by curator and entrepreneur Amani Olu. Olu, a collector himself, reimagined the festival as Season to fill a gap in the local cultural landscape, offering affordable booth costs of $2,500 and an online viewing room. Participating galleries include four from Michigan, four from New York City, and one each from Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Toronto, alongside talks, studio visits, and large-scale installations.

Signal Space Gallery for Digital Art to Launch in Prague

Signal Space, a new permanent gallery dedicated to digital art, will open in Prague's Neo-Renaissance Market Hall on September 30, 2025. Launched by the collective behind the Signal Festival, the inaugural exhibition, "Echoes of Tomorrow," features eight artworks including pieces by Playmodes Studio, Shohei Fujimoto, Quayola, and Max Cooper. The gallery aims to offer deeper engagement with digital media beyond typical screen-based content, with a program that also includes DJ sets, live performances, and lectures on creative coding.

Artist to Watch: Erin M. Riley’s Tapestries Examine Hard-Hitting Themes While Breaking Down Barriers

Brooklyn-based artist Erin M. Riley is preparing to unveil her latest and largest weavings in a solo exhibition at New York's P.P.O.W gallery in September 2025. Her tapestries tackle hard-hitting themes such as family trauma and domestic abuse, drawing on memory, photographs, and everyday iconography. Riley, who studied at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Tyler School of Art and Architecture, initially faced pushback from both galleries and traditional weavers but has since become a leading figure in the blurring of fine art and craft. Her new works incorporate embroidery for the first time and include pieces like "Road Reverberations" (2024), which uses crowdsourced quotes from survivors of abusive relationships.

9 must-see Seattle art exhibits for the next month

This article highlights nine visual art exhibitions in Seattle for June, curated as staff picks to embrace themes of change, regeneration, and healing. Featured shows include "Taking Care: Embrace with Tenderness" at Seattle University's Hedreen Gallery, which closes next year when the building is razed for a new museum; "Jill Kyong: Between Spaces" at SlipStitch Studio; "Mel Carter: bitter, the mourning" at Gallery 4Culture; "Gina Ariko: Ikebana and the Art of Resilience" at Gallery 110; "Healing Our Roots" at The Fishbowl gallery; and "Third Eye" at Base Camp Studios, among others. The exhibitions span photography, glass art, floral arrangements, and group shows, all free and open to the public.

Future Fair updates portraiture for 2025

Future Fair returns for its fifth anniversary from May 7-10 at Chelsea Industrial in Manhattan, featuring 67 exhibitors. The fair is impacted by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, with one Bologna-based gallery, Magazzeno Art Gaze, displaying a sign that its shipment is stuck at JFK customs, showing only works brought in luggage. Montreal’s Wishbone Gallery narrowly avoided a similar fate after its artist consulted a psychic, and the works arrived just in time. Despite trade disruptions, the fair continues its focus on portraiture, showcasing artists such as Saki Sonoda (depicting Bushwick club House of Yes), Émile Brunet (Dutch Golden Age-inspired portraits), Izere Antoine (impastoed Black women), Matthew Rosenquist (wooden reliefs of Americana), Katie Commodore (digital textile tapestries), and Catie Cook (animal stand-ins for Southern womanhood).

In Minor Keys: The 61st Biennale di Arte Venezia Opens Under Koyo Kouoh (1967–2025).

The 61st Biennale di Arte Venezia opens under the posthumous curatorial vision of Koyo Kouoh (1967–2025), the late Cameroonian-born curator who reshaped contemporary African and diasporic art discourse. The central exhibition, spanning the Giardini and Arsenale, features 111 participants including artists, collectives, and artist-led organizations from across the Global South, with works in textiles, film, sculpture, and performance that interrogate colonialism, migration, and ecological repair. The Biennale is also marked by a pronounced presence of African and diasporic narratives across national pavilions, including several first-time pavilions from the African continent.

eimear walshe trial airport protest us military gaza 1234772742

Artist Eimear Walshe, who represented Ireland at the 2024 Venice Biennale, will stand trial alongside activists Áine Treanor and Aindriú de Buitléir, collectively known as the Shannon Three. They are charged with trespassing and illegally accessing a runway at Shannon Airport in County Clare during a 2024 protest where they raised a Palestinian flag and held a sign reading "US military out of Ireland." The protest, which shut down the airport for over half an hour, was staged on Land Day to draw attention to the conflict in Gaza and the use of the airport by US military and civilian aircraft allegedly transporting munitions to Israel.

menachem begin grandson avinadav art exhibition israel 1234753825

Avinadav Begin, grandson of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, is currently exhibiting his latest abstract metal and steel works at Sheetrit & Wolf Contemporary Art Gallery in Tel Aviv. The pieces, which he describes as “openings, apertures,” are neither paintings nor sculptures but heavy hybrid forms weighing up to 220 pounds, resembling rubble and broken window frames. In interviews, Begin has emphasized his identity as an artist rather than a politician, distancing himself from the current Likud party leadership under Benjamin Netanyahu, while acknowledging the influence of the ongoing war and hostage crisis on his work.

Antwerp exhibition celebrates its homegrown fashion designers, the influential Antwerp Six

The MoMu fashion museum in Antwerp has launched a major exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of the "Antwerp Six," a group of influential designers who graduated from the city's Royal Academy of Fine Arts. The show focuses on the formative years between the late 1970s and mid-1980s, culminating in the 1986 London event that launched them into the global spotlight. It highlights the distinct creative identities of Marina Yee, Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Bikkembergs, and Dirk Van Saene, while also serving as a poignant tribute to Yee, who passed away in late 2024.

Hundreds Protest Israel’s “Genocide Pavilion” at Venice Biennale

On May 6, 2026, the first day of previews at the Venice Biennale, hundreds of pro-Palestine activists led by the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA) blocked the entrance to the Israeli pavilion, demanding its immediate closure. Protesters waved Palestine flags and banners reading "No Artwashing Genocide" and "No Genocide Pavilion at Biennale," chanting accusations of genocide against Israel. The demonstration temporarily shut down access to Belu-Simion Fainaru's exhibition "Rose of Nothingness" for about half an hour. The protest followed a letter signed by over 200 artists urging the Biennale to exclude Israel, which instead moved the pavilion to an alternative location in the Arsenale due to renovations. Separately, Pussy Riot and FEMEN rallied outside the Russian pavilion, which will only open during preview days due to sanctions. Venice cultural workers plan a 24-hour strike on May 8 in solidarity with Palestinians, potentially disrupting the Biennale's schedule.

How to Extract the Story of Appalachia

The artist collective GRIT has issued a sharp critique of Fia Backström’s exhibition, "The Great Society," currently on view at the Queens Museum. The authors argue that Backström, a European artist, engages in "extractive" storytelling by focusing exclusively on trauma, environmental disaster, and poverty in West Virginia. They contend that the exhibition’s aesthetic choices—such as inverting landscape photographs and omitting human subjects—flatten the region's complexity into a spectacle of misery that alienates the very community it claims to represent.

The Museum Breathing Life Into New York's Downtown Performance Scene

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in SoHo has emerged as a vital hub for New York’s downtown performance scene through its intergenerational exhibition, "Sacred and Profane." Featuring a collaborative residency between poet Pamela Sneed and performance artist Carlos Martiel, the programming centers on themes of Black maternal grief, queer identity, and the exhumation of suppressed histories. Recent performances included Martiel’s "No Resurrection," a ritualistic piece involving his mother and a mound of earth, and Sneed’s readings that address the collective trauma and "urgent care" status of the LGBTQ+ community.

LA Artists Honor Dolores Huerta’s Defiant Spirit

The Chicano cultural center Plaza de la Raza in Los Angeles has launched "DOLORES," a major group exhibition celebrating the 96th birthday and enduring legacy of labor leader Dolores Huerta. Featuring works by over 30 artists, including Barbara Carrasco and Vincent Valdez, the show utilizes portraiture, mixed media, and depictions of migrant labor to honor Huerta’s contributions to the United Farm Workers (UFW) and Chicano civil rights.

Patarei Prison Could Become Museum

paterei prison could become museum 1338275

Estonia’s Minister of Justice, Urmas Reinsalu, has proposed transforming the historic Patarei Prison in Tallinn into an international museum and research center dedicated to the crimes of communism. The sprawling 10-acre seaside complex, which served as a site of political incarceration under Soviet rule until 2002, remains largely unrestored, containing haunting remnants such as surgical tools and tattered bunk beds. The proposal has gained significant diplomatic traction, receiving formal support from representatives of eight EU member states during a recent meeting in the Estonian capital.

wang contemporary ying alexander wang 2744300

Designer Alexander Wang and his mother Ying Wang have acquired the historic 58 Bowery building in New York's Chinatown for $9.5 million, marking its first Chinese American ownership. They are transforming the former bank into a cultural venue named Wang Contemporary, which will host exhibitions, performances, and festivals focused on Asian and Asian American creatives, with its inaugural exhibition curated by the art collective MSCHF.

the beatles white album art installation lands in liverpool 79072

New York artist Rutherford Chang has brought his installation of over 1,000 copies of The Beatles' 'White Album' to FACT in Liverpool, the band's hometown. The piece, which took eight years to assemble, features copies of the album with handwritten notes, drawings, and other traces left by previous owners, and is on view for the first time in the UK. The exhibition, titled 'We Buy White Albums,' also invites the public to sell their copies to the artist.

a i art summary venice intelligens 2654713

Nick Axel and Daniele Balleri have written a reply to this article. The 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, organized by MIT professor Carlo Ratti under the theme “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.,” features A.I.-generated summaries alongside traditional wall texts for each exhibit. These two-sentence distillations, labeled “A.I. Summary,” are designed to help visitors quickly grasp core ideas and choose their pace through the dense show. An example is Beatriz Colomina, Roberto Kolter, Patricia Urquiola, Geoffrey West, and Mark Wigley's installation *The Other Side of the Hill*, whose 200-word wall text is condensed into a succinct A.I. summary about microbial intelligence and demographic collapse.

yuge zhou midnight moment 2656704

Artnet is co-presenting Midnight Moment in partnership with Times Square Arts this June, featuring Yuge Zhou's video work *Trampoline Color Exercise*. The piece uses archival Olympic footage to show gymnasts tumbling on pink-gridded trampolines in a seamless collage, exploring themes of globalization, geopolitical tension, and humanity's pursuit of perfection. Zhou, a video artist with a background in computer science and a former child singer in China, discusses her creative journey and the inspiration behind the work in an accompanying interview.

the new rules of subculture 2642595

Writer and theorist Nadia Asparouhova has published a new book titled *Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading*, which introduces the concept of "anti-memes"—cultural phenomena whose influence derives from being hard to find or difficult to understand, rather than from popularity and visibility. The book is released by the Dark Forest Collective, a group of artists and thinkers inspired by Yancey Strickler's metaphor of the internet as a "dark forest," where meaningful exchange retreats to private spaces away from commercial and contentious public platforms. Artnet News critic Ben Davis reviews the book, connecting its ideas to contemporary art that deliberately operates below the radar.

Stitches in time: the artist chronicling the DRC’s blood-soaked history in tapestry

Lucie Kamusekera, an 82-year-old artist in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, creates embroidered tapestries on tobacco sacks that chronicle the country's violent history. Born in 1944 and taught sewing by Italian nuns, she began documenting contemporary conflicts after witnessing a military truck filled with corpses. Her more than 70 works depict events from the colonial Belgian Congo era to the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba and the second Congo war, as well as personal tragedies including her husband's murder by rebels. Despite ongoing danger from rebel offensives, she continues to stitch from her home studio, training her children and great-granddaughter to carry on her work.

Body, Territory, and Food Sovereignty at MAMM

CUERPO, TERRITORIO Y SOBERANÍA ALIMENTARIA EN EL MAMM

The Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (MAMM) has inaugurated a trio of exhibitions titled 'Nos habitan pájaros y montañas', 'La luz, el fuego y la ceniza', and 'El susurro del barro'. These shows collectively explore the intersection of the human body, territorial sovereignty, and food security, featuring a dialogue between the museum's permanent collection—specifically the work of Débora Arango—and contemporary artists. The exhibitions utilize diverse media, including sound and raw materials like clay and soil, to address environmental and social crises.

Nasan Tur Collects Contributions for 'Archive of Feelings' for Manifesta 16

Nasan Tur sammelt Beiträge für "Archiv der Gefühle" zur Manifesta 16

Berlin-based artist Nasan Tur is calling on people from the Ruhr region and beyond to submit contributions to his "Archive of Feelings" via an online portal. The project is part of his commissioned work for the 16th edition of the nomadic biennial Manifesta, which opens on June 21 across several cities in the Ruhr area. Tur's installation, titled "Elevation," will be housed in St. Gertrud Church in Essen, where excerpts from anonymous submissions—expressing hopes, fears, wounds, ideas, wishes, and everyday observations—will be carved into old church pews.

The Emptiness That Will Still Be There Should the War End Tomorrow

"Die Leere, die noch da sein wird, sollte der Krieg morgen enden"

The group exhibition "Looking into the Gaps" at the Jam Factory in Lviv presents works by artists living in Ukraine or in exile, as well as by those killed on the front lines. Curated by Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan, it is the fourth installment of a series exploring the fractures and diverse experiences within Ukrainian society, with this iteration focusing on the theme of loneliness rather than collective identity.

57th CIMAM Annual Conference: Together Forever

The 57th CIMAM Annual Conference brought together 300 museum professionals in Turin for discussions on pressing institutional issues. The event featured keynote speeches from figures like political scientist Francoise Vergès and economist Mariana Mazzucato, who addressed themes of power structures and public arts funding. Performances by artists such as Alessandro Sciarroni and Abdullah Miniawy served as central, unifying experiences for the attendees.