London is set to debut the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in May 2026, a major new cultural hub located in a restored 18th-century waterworks building in Clerkenwell. The center will feature three galleries, a library, and learning spaces, opening with a solo exhibition titled 'Ever Feel Like…' by the rising illustration star MURUGIAH.
The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (Virginia MOCA) has announced plans to relocate from its longtime home to a new, state-of-the-art facility in Virginia Beach. This move marks a significant expansion for the institution, aiming to modernize its exhibition spaces and enhance its capacity for community engagement and educational programming.
The Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund has announced support for 15 new exhibitions as it celebrates its tenth anniversary. This grant initiative provides regional and smaller UK museums with the necessary funding to cover logistical costs—such as insurance, transport, and security—required to borrow major works from national collections. Notable upcoming projects for 2026 include the return of John Constable’s 'The Hay Wain' to Suffolk and Joseph Wright of Derby’s 'An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump' to the artist's hometown for the first time in eight decades.
The city of Pécs, Hungary, has reopened the Victor Vasarely Museum following a comprehensive renovation to mark the 120th anniversary of the artist's birth. The updated institution features a modernized building and a redesigned curatorial approach that showcases approximately 400 works, including monumental screen prints from the "VI-VA Album" that have been in storage for over 50 years. New interactive spaces and a focus on international dialogue place Vasarely’s Op Art legacy within the broader context of 20th-century geometric abstraction.
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is hosting "Wifredo Lam: When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream," the first comprehensive U.S. retrospective of the Cuban modernist's career. Running from November 2025 to April 2026, the exhibition traces Lam’s artistic evolution from his formative years in Europe to his return to the Caribbean, where he integrated Afro-Caribbean histories and spirituality into the language of modern painting. The show features major loans, a documentary film, and a scholarly catalogue exploring his unique synthesis of Surrealism and decolonial thought.
Santa Monica is launching its first-ever municipal art gallery at the Bergamot Station Arts Center, debuting with the inaugural exhibition "Case Study: Adapt." The opening ceremony on April 10 will feature remarks from California for the Arts Executive Director Julie Baker and a commendation for State Senator Ben Allen in recognition of Arts Month. The launch is part of a broader weekend of community programming including the Venice Street Fair and sound art workshops at the Camera Obscura Art Lab.
The National Trust has unveiled a new exhibition titled "Churchill the Artist" at Chartwell, the former home of Winston Churchill. The show features personal artifacts including his paint-spattered Savile Row overalls and spectacles, alongside the painting "Quiet Waters" (c. 1920s), which is being exhibited in the U.K. for the first time. The work, an impressionistic river scene, was originally a gift from Churchill to the press baron Lord Beaverbrook.
The Newcastle Art Gallery in New South Wales is set to open its $48 million expansion this Saturday, concluding a turbulent development process that spanned over two decades. The upgrade adds 1,600 square metres of exhibition space and 13 new galleries, transforming the facility into the largest public art institution in the state outside of Sydney and allowing its $145 million permanent collection to be displayed at scale for the first time.
A new cultural complex called the Taichung Green Museumbrary, designed by Japanese architecture firm SANAA, opens tomorrow in Taichung, Taiwan. The 58,000-square-meter project combines the Taichung Art Museum and Taichung Public Library across eight interconnected white-box structures in Central Park. The opening includes site-specific commissions by artists Michael Lin and Haegue Yang, and an inaugural exhibition titled 'A Call of All Beings: See You Tomorrow, Same Time, Same Place' featuring international artists such as Joseph Beuys, Joan Jonas, and Myrlande Constant alongside Taiwanese artists.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will open the Condé M. Nast Galleries, a nearly 12,000-square-foot space adjacent to the Grand Hall, next spring. The new galleries will become the permanent home for the annual Costume Institute exhibition, replacing the museum's largest retail space. The inaugural show, "Costume Art" (10 May 2026–10 January 2027), will pair paintings, sculptures, and other art objects with historical and contemporary garments, emphasizing the dressed body as a central theme across the museum's collections. The move follows the record-breaking success of 2018's "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination," which drew over 1.6 million visitors.
A guide to nine must-see art exhibitions in Miami highlights current and upcoming shows across the city. Featured exhibits include Random International's interactive light installation "Alone Together" at Superblue Miami, the Freedom Tower's centennial exhibitions "Libertad" and "We Carry Our Homes With Us" at the Museum of Art and Design, the first solo show of twin photographers Elliot & Erick Jiménez at Pérez Art Museum Miami, and Weerdo's graffiti exhibit "Signs of the Times" at the Museum of Graffiti. Also listed are the Smithsonian's "EYEJAMMIE" photo collection at The Art of Hip Hop and a Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at Frost Science.
Tidawhitney Lek, a 33-year-old first-generation Cambodian American artist based in Long Beach, CA, is profiled in CULTURED's 2025 Young Artists list. Her densely layered, brightly colored paintings collapse distinctions between interior and exterior, past and present, and foreground and background, reflecting her life and heritage. She gained attention at the Hammer Museum's "Made in L.A." biennial in 2023 and has upcoming shows at Victoria Miro in London and Art Basel Miami Beach with Night Gallery. The profile highlights her painting "Refuge," currently at the Henry Art Gallery, which depicts a bomb exploding outside a home and addresses themes of disconnect, erasure, violence, and generational trauma.
Anzia Yezierska, a Polish-Jewish immigrant who arrived in New York in 1890, defied traditional gender expectations to become a leading literary voice of the 1920s. Dubbed the 'Queen of the Ghetto,' she documented the raw struggles of immigrant women on the Lower East Side using a unique 'immigrant English' style that captured Yiddish idioms. After escaping a restrictive marriage and pursuing an education at Columbia University, she channeled her personal frustrations into stories of poverty, ambition, and the psychological toll of assimilation.
The Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art will open a new exhibition titled "A Museum in the Making" on June 27, 2026, running through August 8, 2027. The show explores the origin story of the Freer Gallery of Art, America's first national art museum, by examining how collector Charles Lang Freer used his Detroit home as a living laboratory for museum design. It highlights collaborations with artists and architects, including James McNeill Whistler, Stanford White, and Mary Chase Perry Stratton, and features a video walkthrough of the Freer House. The exhibition is part of the nation's 250th anniversary celebrations and the Smithsonian's broader "Our Shared Future" initiative.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum will present "Much Here Is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U.S. Bicentennial," a landmark exhibition opening September 18, 2026, that brings together for the first time photography surveys created through a federally funded grant program by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) around the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial. Featuring 225 photographs by more than 70 photographers, the show draws on the museum's holdings and collections nationwide, including previously unseen works, and places them in the context of federal survey photography dating back to the 19th century.
The Michelson Museum of Art in Marshall, Texas, recently debuted 'Postcards from Home,' a collaborative exhibition featuring the works of regional artists Don Brown and Max Cole. The opening reception drew a significant local crowd, including three generations of Cole’s descendants, to celebrate the legacy of two figures who captured the landscapes and history of East Texas. The show, which runs through July 4, was organized in partnership with the Harrison County Historical Museum and the Meadows Museum of Art.
On Indigenous Peoples' Day, nonprofit media lab Amplifier launched an unsanctioned augmented reality exhibition titled “Encoded” at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. The project features 17 Native artists who have digitally altered 25 iconic American artworks from the Met's collection—such as Thomas Cole's *View on the Catskills – Early Autumn* and Emanuel Leutze's *Washington Crossing the Delaware*—overlaying Indigenous perspectives onto the museum's American Wing. Visitors can view the AR works on smartphones or iPads, and Amplifier representatives are on-site to distribute guides and offer tours through the end of the year.
Two major gifts from Louisa Stude Sarofim and The Anschutz Foundation, part of Princeton University's Venture Forward campaign, will name the Wilmerding Pavilion and the Anschutz Galleries in the new Princeton University Art Museum. The pavilion honors the late John Wilmerding, a pioneering American art historian and professor at Princeton, while the galleries within it will showcase the museum's American art collections. The museum opens on October 31, 2025, and the new space will allow a nearly five-fold increase in displayed works, including a broader definition of American art encompassing Spanish Colonial and Native American art.
Photographer Isaac Wright, known for his high-altitude urban exploration photography, announced that criminal trespassing charges against him will be dropped after he completed five months of court-ordered therapy. Wright was arrested by NYPD officers during the opening night of his solo exhibition "Coming Home" at Robert Mann Gallery in Chelsea in May, in front of 400 attendees. He had been charged with a class B misdemeanor after police issued a warrant, which Wright believes was triggered by his photograph "Empire State of Mind (2024)" taken from the Empire State Building.
Independent, the New York art fair, will relocate to Pier 36 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side for its May 2026 edition. The 70,000-square-foot venue more than doubles the size of its previous home at Spring Studios, accommodating increased gallery participation post-pandemic. The fair hosted 83 exhibitors in 2025, and founder Elizabeth Dee noted that even the coat check was repurposed for a special project. The architectural redesign will be led by Solid Objectives Idenburg Liu (SO–IL), with exhibition design by Berlin’s D_P_S.
Alexandre Gabriel, a partner at São Paulo gallery Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, opens his home in the Praça da República neighborhood to reveal his personal art collection, which includes works by friends and a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph of Peter Berlin (1976). Gabriel describes how his collection began with gifts from artist friends he met while interning at a film production company in 1996, including Ivens Machado, Luiz Zerbini, Barrão, and Ernesto Neto, and emphasizes that his collection is strictly personal, guided by love and memory rather than market trends.
Amanda Precourt, a 52-year-old philanthropist and real estate developer, has transformed a former fortune cookie factory in Denver's Baker neighborhood into a combined private residence and public art space called Cookie Factory. Over the past nine years, she has amassed a contemporary art collection at a rapid pace, designing her 8,000-square-foot home around specific works—such as Anselm Kiefer's monumental painting *Engel der Geschichte* (2017) and Jeffrey Gibson's beaded punching bag *Know Your Magic, Baby* (2016). The lower 5,700 square feet of the building serves as a free, self-funded public gallery, where Precourt, her partner Andrew Jensdotter, and artistic director Jérôme Sans invite artists to create site-specific works inspired by Colorado. The space opened last May with an exhibition by Sam Falls, and a second show featuring Gary Simmons runs through May 9.
The article reviews Alex Katz's latest exhibition at Gladstone Gallery in New York, featuring 11 large orange-and-white canvases depicting the road to his Maine home, alongside Matthew Barney's three-channel video work "DRAWING RESTRAINT 28" showing Katz at work on a ladder. The show, on view through December 20, 2025, pairs Katz's new paintings with Barney's video, continuing a collaboration first seen at O'Flaherty's gallery. Katz, now 98, reflects on his artistic evolution, citing Matisse's "The Red Studio" as inspiration while asserting his move away from literal representation.
Carmelo Anthony, the retired NBA star and soon-to-be Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, discusses his art collection in an interview with Cultured. He began collecting seriously early in his NBA career, guided by older players like Juwan Howard, and now owns works by artists such as Nelson Makamo, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Ernie Barnes, Marcus Jansen, Hebru Brantley, and Stan Squirewell. His collection emphasizes street art, photography, and the Black experience, with pieces displayed intentionally throughout his home.
CULTURED and Italian luxury brand Eleventy hosted an intimate luncheon at collectors Christine and Richard Mack's Bridgehampton home, blending Hamptons art-world socializing with Milanese craftsmanship. Guests viewed artworks by Thomas Houseago, Peter Farago, and Chloe West alongside Eleventy's fall collection, and included writer Candace Bushnell, artists Megan Gabrielle Harris and Arcmanoro Niles, and various advisors and collectors. A portion of proceeds from Eleventy purchases benefited the Mack Art Foundation, which runs a residency program bringing artists to New York for three months.
The Aspen Art Fair returns for its second edition from July 29 to August 2, 2025, at the historic Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colorado. The fair has doubled in size to 44 dealers, including returning exhibitors like Perrotin, Galerie Gmurzynska, and Southern Guild, and newcomers such as Marianne Boesky Gallery, Sean Kelly, and Vielmetter. Co-founded by Becca Hoffman and Bob Chase, the event features a boutique, intimate format with galleries displayed in hotel bedrooms, along with collector home tours, panel discussions, hikes, cold water plunges, and dinners. A special curated suite by advisor Wendy Cromwell draws inspiration from novels by Miranda July and Virginia Woolf.
Photographer Martin Parr, 73, visited 24-year-old Moscow-born artist Maya Golyshkina at her London home for a collaborative shoot and interview published by Cultured. The two, who both began photography before age 16, discussed playfulness in their work, non-traditional materials like cardboard and household objects, and the role of social media in their careers. Golyshkina showed Parr her wearable cardboard creations, and the conversation ranged from Parr’s decades-long career documenting human banality to Golyshkina’s viral crying videos and her rise from posting self-portraits on Instagram to collaborating with luxury fashion houses.
Design duo Stephen Alesch and Robin Standefer, co-founders of the architecture and design studio Roman and Williams, reflect on how their Montauk home, Sea Ranch, has become the creative heart of their practice. Purchased in 2006 as a rustic mid-Atlantic Colonial cottage, the property has evolved from a weekend retreat into a laboratory for furniture prototypes, ceramic experiments, and design ideas that later appear in high-profile projects worldwide—from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s British Galleries to London’s Maison Estelle. The couple, who met on a film set in 1994, also run the SoHo shop Roman and Williams Guild and a furnishings collection, balancing the intensity of New York with the shaping and forming they do by the ocean.
Cultured magazine's article "Weekend Tournament" reviews a group exhibition at Raisonné Gallery in New York, organized by Raquel Cayre and Ariel Ashe, that explores the intersection of sport, art, and design. The show features 63 works by 27 artists including Paul Pfeiffer, Adam McEwen, Le Corbusier, Cory Arcangel, and Rachel Harrison, with pieces ranging from a graphite replica of a school water fountain to an active ping-pong table and a mini-golf course. The author, Zito Madu, draws parallels between his own background as a professional soccer player turned writer and the exhibition's invitation to engage physically and playfully with art.
The Getty Foundation has awarded an additional $1.8 million to its Black Visual Arts Archives initiative, bringing total funding to $4.5 million across 20 awards. The program supports institutions in processing, digitizing, preserving, and activating archival collections related to Black artists and arts organizations in the US. Grantees include Afro Charities, the Auburn Avenue Research Library, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Charles H. Wright Museum, Morgan State University, the South Side Community Art Center, the University of Chicago’s South Side Home Movie Project, and the David C. Driskell Center. Notable discoveries include footage of the original Wall of Respect mural from the South Side Home Movie Project.