The Most Unique and Research-Focused Exhibitions to See in Brussels in Spring 2026

Le mostre più particolari e ricercate da vedere a Bruxelles nella primavera 2026

Brussels is hosting a series of niche and research-focused contemporary art exhibitions in spring 2026, coinciding with the 42nd edition of Art Brussels. Highlights include Jean-Michel Othoniel's "Diary of Happiness" at the Boghossian Foundation, Caroline Achaintre's "Extrazimmer" at La Verrière, a six-decade survey of the Art & Language collective at Fondation CAB, and a dialogue between Nassos Daphnis and Rita McBride titled "Abstract Constructions."

Sands and Rituals from the Antipodes: To Be Discovered in a Former Church in Venice

Sabbie e riti dagli antipodi. Da scoprire in una ex chiesa di Venezia

The Church of San Lorenzo in Venice, home to Ocean Space, is hosting "Tide of Returns," an exhibition by the Repatriates Collective. The installation transforms the historic nave with sand dunes populated by thousands of decorated shells known as Dadikwakwa-kwa, or shell dolls, from the Anindilyakwa people of Australia. The show also features a tripartite installation of video, textiles, and braids by German-Bolivian artist Verena Melgarejo Weinandt, exploring themes of ancestral connection and the universal significance of water.

In this L’Aquila High School, there is a Contemporary Art Collection Created by Students and Artists

In questo liceo dell’Aquila c’è una collezione d’arte contemporanea realizzata dagli studenti con gli artisti

The Liceo Bafile in L’Aquila has established a permanent collection of contemporary art featuring over 60 site-specific works created through collaborations between professional artists and students. Initiated by artist and professor Licia Galizia following the devastating 2009 earthquake, the project integrates art into the educational environment as a tool for cultural rebirth. In 2026, the collection will expand further with seven new installations created by artists including Elena Bellantoni and Marco Nereo Rotelli in partnership with the Academy of Fine Arts of L’Aquila.

Going clubbing in Ibiza this summer? Then you're going to be in a giant art gallery

A new art exhibition called the Culture Collective has been installed across three of Ibiza's biggest nightclubs—Hï Ibiza, Ushuaïa Ibiza, and [UNVRS]—featuring over 70 international artists. The season-long show, organized by London-based art platform W1 Curates in partnership with The Night League, includes monumental murals, marble sculptures (such as Nazareno Biondo's life-size Vespa and Fiat 500), and works by street artists like PichiAvo and VHILS, running from late April to mid-October.

Indrapramit Roy and Mark Cazalet art exhibition in New Delhi

An exhibition titled "Stray Birds: a journey together" in New Delhi brings together artists Indrapramit Roy and Mark Cazalet, curated by Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya. The show presents a dialogue between two distinct artistic voices, exploring narratives, techniques, and sensibilities shaped by their shared experiences studying under Professor Gulam Mohammed Sheikh at M.S. University in Baroda, including formative trips to the Ajanta and Ellora caves.

Toronto art gallery hosting free party ahead of new exhibit

The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto is hosting a free opening party on April 24 for its new exhibition, 'Colourful Parachutes: Imagining Alternative Futures Through the Power of Play.' The exhibition features interactive installations by ten international artists, including Temitayo Ogunbiyi, Leisure, Robin Rhode, and Claire Greenshaw, designed to be touched, climbed on, and altered by visitors.

Are All Crises Equal? A Conversation with MOS’s Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample by ANY

Architects Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample of the firm MOS discuss the concept of "polycrisis"—the intersection of economic, political, and ecological failures—and its impact on architectural form. The conversation highlights a growing void between the formal aesthetic project of architecture and the urgent political realities of the modern world. Sample specifically addresses how the dominance of political and regulatory restrictions in collective housing has stifled formal innovation, often reducing architecture to a mere byproduct of governance rather than a tool for social or cultural expression.

What We Saw at Buffalo Prescott’s 'Vernal 2026'

Buffalo Prescott’s Detroit headquarters is hosting 'Vernal 2026,' a spring-inspired contemporary arts exhibition running through June 27, with a public opening on May 22. The exhibition features works by resident artists including Jessica Wildman Katz, Halima Afi Cassells, Cyrah Dardas, Sara Nickleson, and Tony Printz, alongside metro Detroit and international artists. Highlights include Katz's botanical rabbit sculpture 'Kindling,' Cristina Umaña's whimsical 'Mesa De Centro' (a stack of white tables with human-like limbs), and Amelia Burns's photographic diptych 'Evil Eye' and 'Evil Eye Transmuted onto Organza, 2026,' which explores contemporary American culture through collage.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Frame Work: HORSE game becomes art in downtown Detroit

A new interactive art exhibition called "HORSE" has opened in downtown Detroit at 1001 Woodward Avenue, transforming a basketball court into an artistic installation. The centerpiece is a seven-armed sculpture featuring 21 basketball hoops at various angles and heights, inviting visitors to shoot hoops and play the game HORSE. Created by California-born, Detroit-based artist Tyrrell Winston—known for repurposing objects like basketballs—the project was developed in collaboration with landlord Bedrock and gallery Library Street Collective. The exhibition also includes a 30-by-50-foot painting, a sculpture made of old basketballs, a merchandise store, and a photo spot. It runs through October 5, with hours from Wednesday to Sunday.

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.

'Emergence' exhibition at Galerie Myrtis features artists telling powerful stories

The 'Emergence: Stories in the Making' exhibition at Galerie Myrtis in Baltimore features 12 artists, including Maxwell Pearce—an artist and Harlem Globetrotters player—and Linnea Poole. Pearce uses sports equipment like shoelaces and basketballs to create portraits of loved ones, responding to the 'shut up and dribble' narrative he faced after a traumatic incident. Poole's work focuses on mourning and grief, dedicated to Black women. The exhibition includes artists from Nigeria and the Caribbean, aiming to preserve personal and collective histories through uncensored storytelling.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

eimear walshe trial airport protest us military gaza

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.

the beatles white album art installation lands in liverpool

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.

hard truths curator invisibility

The article, presented as an advice column by consultants Chen & Lampert in ARTnews, addresses two anonymous letters from art-world professionals. The first letter is from a curator at a major museum who feels underpaid, invisible, and constrained by an ethics policy that prevents freelance work, while colleagues at smaller institutions enjoy more freedom. The second letter is from a veteran graphic designer and illustrator, active since the 1960s, who laments losing commercial clients to younger, cheaper talent using AI and smartphones. The consultants respond with sharp, critical advice: they tell the curator to consider collective action with colleagues to push for institutional reform, and advise the designer to leverage their legacy and experience rather than accept obsolescence.

a i art summary venice intelligens

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

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.