Margareta Magnusson, the Swedish author and artist who popularized the concept of 'death cleaning' (döstädning), has died at age 92. In her 80s, she wrote the international bestseller 'The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning,' which advocated for the mindful decluttering of one's belongings to spare loved ones the burden after one's death.
Créer des cerfs-volants artistiques et innovants : l’étonnante pratique de l’artiste dans le vent Victor Guerithault
Artist Victor Guerithault is redefining the traditional craft of kite-making through geometric innovation and 3D-printing technology. Showcasing his work at the 32nd Festival du cerf-volant in Châtelaillon, Guerithault utilizes complex tetrahedral structures inspired by the aerodynamic experiments of Alexander Graham Bell. His approach moves away from traditional bamboo frames toward a modular construction system involving custom-designed 3D-printed connectors that allow for hundreds of unique, gravity-defying aerial forms.
The article explores the ancient origins of astrology, tracing its foundational concepts to Babylonian, Egyptian, and classical civilizations. It details how these early cultures developed complex systems of celestial observation and interpretation that predate modern horoscope apps and the contemporary astrology industry.
A new cultural initiative in Hong Kong, the 'Textile Trail,' guides visitors through several neighborhoods to explore the city's industrial past as a major Asian textile exporter. The trail features preserved factories, warehouses, and other architectural remnants that tell the story of this foundational industry.
The New York Times explores the enduring influence of Shaker design on contemporary artists and designers, highlighting how its principles of simplicity, utility, and spiritual integrity resonate in today's world. The article features creators like furniture maker Thomas Moser and ceramicist Mary Law, who draw directly from Shaker aesthetics of plainness, proportion, and honest craftsmanship.
A new book titled 'Art Cure' by scientist Daisy Fancourt argues that engaging with the arts has significant, measurable benefits for both mental and physical health. The author, a professor of psychobiology and epidemiology, compiles extensive research to claim arts experiences can prevent suicides, help manage epidemics, increase life expectancy, reduce depression, aid trauma recovery, enhance neuroplasticity, and even encourage healthier eating habits.
The article is a first-person dispatch from Rojava, a Kurdish-majority region in northeastern Syria, where the author meets artists and fighters living and working on the front lines against jihadist groups. It focuses on artist Diyar Hesso, who has exchanged his camera for a rifle, and YPJ fighter Hevi, who articulates the necessity of armed self-defense for women facing a genocidal enemy. Their stories illustrate the impossible choice between artistic creation and survival in a war zone.
ArtReview's feature 'The Museum in Crisis' presents a critical diagnosis of contemporary museums, questioning their foundational authority, purpose, and relevance. The article compiles perspectives from professionals, highlighting challenges like restitution claims, alienated audiences, and the need to dismantle colonial hierarchies embedded in language and display practices. It argues that museums must move beyond being mere preservers to become active producers of public knowledge.
L’arte può essere ufficialmente una forma di cura. Intervista al Sottosegretario alla Cultura Lucia Borgonzoni madrina del progetto
The Italian Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Health have signed a formal protocol recognizing art as a form of therapy and care. The agreement, championed by Undersecretary of State for Culture Lucia Borgonzoni, mandates that museums, libraries, archives, and cultural institutions play a central role in developing therapeutic pathways using art to improve individual and community well-being. Borgonzoni, who has advocated for this initiative for nearly a decade, traces its origin to a 2018 study at the Sanctuary of Vicoforte that measured cortisol levels in visitors before and after viewing frescoes, showing significant stress reduction.
Continental, the premium tire manufacturer, has commissioned WOA Studio, a creative studio founded by Davide Carioni and Giuliana Pajola, to create an immersive sound installation titled "The Sound of Premium" for the Fuorisalone design festival in Milan. Presented at BASE Milano, the installation transforms urban noise pollution into a three-part sonic journey—chaos, harmony, and quiet—using seventeen audio-luminous elements that abstract the city soundscape. The experience is designed to show how noise can be mitigated rather than eliminated, with sound data derived from real urban recordings, particularly tire rolling noise.
Treviso è una città dipinta. La Fondazione Benetton racconta tutto nelle sue ricerche
The Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche has unveiled the results of its decade-long multidisciplinary project, "Treviso urbs picta," which documents the extensive history of frescoed facades in Treviso, Italy. Spanning the 13th to the 21st centuries, the initiative has produced a comprehensive database of 614 buildings, a scholarly publication, and a topographical map. The project includes a digital archive featuring professional photography and historical mapping to track the evolution and current state of the city's unique painted architecture.
Artist Gisela Colón has opened her first retrospective exhibition, 'La montaña, el monolito (The Mountain, the Monolith),' at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. The show, curated by Abdiel Segarra Ríos and Alexandra Méndez, features sculptures, paintings, video, and installations spanning over three decades of her career, with a focus on the organic forms of monoliths and mountains.
THE HISTORY OF ART FROM BOGOTA AT MAP
Montenegro Art Projects (MAP) in Bogotá opens a group exhibition titled 'La historia del arte contada desde Bogotá' (The History of Art from Bogotá), featuring 30 artists. The show explores how art history is activated today, treating it not as a closed archive but as a field in constant transformation, with artists reinterpreting and appropriating historical images and gestures through contemporary sensibilities.
The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (SMFA at Tufts) presents "Passages," the 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition, on view from May 5 to 17 at Tufts University Art Galleries in Medford, Massachusetts. The show features thesis work by nineteen MFA candidates, exploring themes of journey, transition, and exploration across media including painting, sculpture, assemblage, and artists' books. Works incorporate found visa documents, portraiture, clay cities, and symbolic animals such as goldfish, black birds, and a dog-headed cynocephalus.
Franco-Malian artist Ladji Diaby presents 'Who’s gonna save the world?' at Lafayette Anticipations, a solo exhibition featuring sculptural installations crafted from found furniture and discarded objects. By repurposing second-hand furnishings through the lens of his mother’s domestic and spiritual rituals, Diaby transforms marginal items into talismanic vitrines of memory. The works challenge Western hierarchies of cultural value, positioning the act of salvaging as both an aesthetic and political gesture.
« Restitutions » : le Parlement prêt à tout lâcher
The French Parliament is moving forward with an accelerated legislative process to pass a framework law governing the restitution of cultural property to foreign states. This bill aims to streamline the return of artworks and artifacts deemed to have been illicitly acquired, fulfilling a long-standing promise made by President Emmanuel Macron to address colonial-era acquisitions and other contested heritage.
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.
Graduate students at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design, part of George Washington University, have created an interactive exhibition titled “American Made” to commemorate the United States’ 250th anniversary. The exhibit, on view at the Luther W. Brady Art Gallery until May 14, combines 21 traditional artworks from GW’s collection—including photographs, pottery, and textiles—with interactive elements such as a touchscreen map and audio components. The project was developed collaboratively by students in museum studies and interactive design programs, led by professors Laura Schiavo and Sam Shelton, as part of the school’s annual NEXT Festival. Featured works include Patricia Kennedy-Zafred’s contemporary quilt “Tagged,” which addresses the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
The exhibition 'Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California' will run from September 18, 2026, to January 17, 2027, at BAMPFA. It traces the flow and flourishing of quilts during the Second Great Migration (1940–1970), when approximately five million African Americans moved from the rural South to the North and West, with hundreds of thousands arriving in California carrying quilts as containers of ancestral memory and cultural survival. The show features more than 80 artworks organized across several themes, highlighting repurposed work clothes, improvisational piecing, and pattern-based quilting by migrants from Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas. Works by contemporary artists show how these traditions remain alive today.
The British Museum in London is opening a major exhibition titled 'Hawai‘i: a Kingdom Crossing Oceans' (15 January–25 May), accompanied by a catalogue featuring over 150 works from ancient Hawaiian treasures to contemporary pieces. The show explores the historical and cultural ties between Hawaii and the UK, highlighting objects such as an 18th-century feather cloak gifted to a British captain, portraits of King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu from their 1824 London visit, and a crested helmet. The catalogue includes an inventory of the entire Native Hawaiian collection at the British Museum, the largest outside Hawaii.
Absa Group has announced that Eric Joe Gayi, an Absa L’Atelier 2023 Ambassador, will open his solo exhibition *Breaking the Norm* on November 1, 2025, at The Summit Residences in Naguru, Kampala, in collaboration with Amasaka Gallery. The show features intricate ballpoint pen drawings exploring Afro hair as a symbol of identity, resistance, and cultural pride, using blue figures to represent conformity and black figures with honeycomb textures to symbolize authenticity and resilience against Eurocentric beauty standards.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has reopened its newly reimagined galleries dedicated to the arts of Africa, the Ancient Americas, and Oceania, following a multiyear transformation of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. The renovated spaces present a refreshed installation of the museum's extensive collection, highlighting cross-cultural connections and updated interpretive approaches.
Fourteen Kurdish artists staged a provocative "Non-Art Exhibition" at Media Gallery in Erbil to commemorate World Art Day. In a radical departure from traditional gallery formats, the participants displayed only the reverse sides of their canvases, completely concealing the painted surfaces from the audience. Organized by artist Ahmed Nabaz, the one-day event kept its conceptual twist a secret from the participating artists until the moment of the opening.
Portland-based artist Ami Maki has unveiled her latest exhibition, "Obese Landscapes," at the Multnomah Arts Center. The showcase features eight large-scale charcoal drawings, some reaching seven feet in height, that draw visual parallels between the human form and natural topographies like rolling hills and rock formations. By utilizing earth tones and monumental scale, Maki seeks to reframe bodies often marginalized by societal beauty standards as majestic, natural environments.
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) Academy has opened its 2026 program at Ocean Space in Venice with the exhibition 'Tide of Returns'. Developed by the Repatriates Collective, the show features artists, filmmakers, and Indigenous communities from across the globe, transforming the former Church of San Lorenzo into an immersive environment. It moves beyond conventional restitution debates by presenting repatriation as a living, tidal process expressed through ritual, memory, and community care, using materials like sand from Anindilyakwa Country and returned shell dolls.
Hyperallergic published its seasonal Art Tarotscope for the Spring Equinox, a feature that blends tarot and astrology to offer a collective reading for its creative readership. The reading, developed by contributor AX Mina using the Mixed Signals Tarot deck by artist M Eilo, focuses on the arts and creative practice, interpreting cards drawn for the equinox to reflect on themes of struggle, transition, and the path forward.
The Bailey Art Gallery in Hobe Sound, Florida, will open a new exhibition on April 24 featuring works by local painter Dan Mackin and photographer M.E. Gruber. Mackin’s highly stylized paintings—created with airbrush and traditional techniques—depict idyllic coastal scenes on canvas, navigation maps, surfboards, and a guitar, and include collaborations with Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys. Gruber’s mid-century Kodachrome transparencies, drawn from an archive of over 5,000 images, document the emerging surf culture of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast. The exhibition will display 50 full-frame prints from this collection.
A student-led exhibition titled 'Unsung Artists' is being organized in New Paltz, New York, to provide a platform for young and emerging local artists who struggle to find opportunities to showcase their work. The show, a collaboration between SUNY New Paltz student Izzy Kerr and the Unframed Artists Gallery, aims to be inclusive of various artistic mediums and offers a professional, off-campus venue for artists who might not otherwise have a thesis show or gallery access.
The Museum of Contemporary Art has opened a new exhibition titled 'Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón.' The show features works by 42 contemporary artists, including paintings, sound sculptures, and interactive installations like a karaoke machine, examining the social, political, and spiritual histories of these musical genres. It was inspired by the 2019 protests in Puerto Rico, where reggaetón music and dance became a central form of protest and celebration.
Israeli artist Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi has unveiled a new body of work that utilizes the visual language of Old Masters and classical mythology to process the collective trauma of the October 7 attacks. By referencing iconic compositions from art history, Cherkassky-Nnadi creates a bridge between historical depictions of suffering and the immediate, raw experiences of contemporary Israeli life, offering a formal structure to otherwise unspeakable events.