Muscle memory: Natasha Tontey’s wild Venice installation explodes perceptions of Indonesian history

Natasha Tontey's new installation "The Phantom Combatants" at the Ateneo Veneto in Venice reimagines the story of Len Karamoy, a woman who was part of the CIA-funded Permesta resistance movement in North Sulawesi, Indonesia (1957-1961). The 22-minute film, commissioned by the LAS foundation and Amos Rex, features absurdly muscular mutant warriors and draws on Indigenous belief systems, video games, Indonesian soap operas, and B-movie aesthetics to explore themes of autonomy, resistance, and historical perspective.

The Bahamas returns to the Venice Biennale with a joy-filled posthumous collaboration

The Bahamas will return to the Venice Biennale in 2026 after a 13-year absence with a posthumous exhibition for artist John Beadle, who died in 2024 at age 60. Beadle was originally selected to represent the country in 2015 but the government withdrew funding. The exhibition, titled "In Another Man’s Yard," will feature Beadle’s work alongside that of his mentee, Lavar Munroe, using materials from Beadle’s studio including sails from Haitian migrant sloops. The pavilion is organized by commissioner Amanda Coulson and curator Krista Thompson, who raised private funds after the government declined to support the project.

A.I. Identifies Holbein Drawing as Possible Portrait of Anne Boleyn

Researchers at the University of Bradford have used artificial intelligence to analyze preparatory drawings by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. The AI model, which previously identified a forgotten Raphael painting, suggests that a drawing long believed to depict Anne Boleyn actually shows her mother, Elizabeth Howard, while another drawing labeled "Unidentified Woman" likely portrays Anne Boleyn herself. The findings, published in Heritage Science, are based on biometric analysis of facial features, bone architecture, and proportional relationships, offering quantifiable evidence to resolve long-standing scholarly uncertainty about the sitters' identities.

Hito Steyerl “The Island” Osservatorio Fondazione Prada / Milan by Piermario De Angelis

Hito Steyerl's solo exhibition "The Island" at Osservatorio Fondazione Prada in Milan explores the concept of submersion as both a geological condition and a media regime. The show takes its title from a Neolithic artificial island discovered off the coast of Korčula, Croatia, which remained submerged for approximately seven thousand years. Through video interviews, installations, and critical assemblages, Steyerl connects this submerged structure to contemporary issues of digital image circulation, algorithmic power, and the dispossession of agency, drawing on science fiction, quantum physics, biochemistry, and deep time.

A ‘bird of Mexico City’ strikes a revolutionary pose: Pieter Henket’s best photograph

Photographer Pieter Henket describes the creation of his portrait "La Mujer" (The Woman), part of his series "Birds of Mexico City." The image features Ixchel Paz, a young Mexican woman wearing a lucha libre wrestling mask, captured in a dignified pose on the first day of the project. Henket explains how the series evolved from an earlier project, "Birds of New York," which celebrated young people in New York during the first Trump administration. After the pandemic, he traveled to Mexico City with his husband Roger Inniss, collaborated with stylist Chino Castilla and his team, and encouraged subjects to express their identities through costume and culture.

Fiona Pardington’s portraits of the lost birds of Aotearoa New Zealand – in pictures

Fiona Pardington has created a new series of human-scale photographic portraits of native New Zealand birds, many of which are extinct or endangered, using taxidermy specimens from regional museums. The series, titled "Taharaki Skyside," will be exhibited at the Aotearoa New Zealand pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. Pardington, who has Māori and Scottish ancestry, incorporates the birds' eyes with superimposed historical landscapes to evoke their lost habitats and spiritual significance as intermediaries between human and divine worlds in Māori culture.

Mystery sitter in Holbein portrait could be Anne Boleyn, AI analysis finds

Researchers using AI have analyzed two Renaissance sketches by Hans Holbein from the Royal Collection, known as the Windsor sketch and the Unidentified Woman. The AI model, developed by Professor Hassan Ugail at the University of Bradford, compared the entire Holbein corpus and found that the Unidentified Woman may actually be Anne Boleyn, while the Windsor sketch—long thought to depict Boleyn—may instead show her mother, Elizabeth Howard. The study suggests the works were incorrectly inscribed in the 1700s, leading to centuries of misidentification.

Amanda Heng Walks the Walk

Singaporean artist Amanda Heng, now 74, is representing Singapore at this year's Venice Biennale with her exhibition titled *A Pause*, featuring a site-specific installation and durational performance. Known for her decades-long performance *Let's Chat* (1996–), in which she cleans mung bean sprouts with participants to foster casual conversation, Heng transforms everyday domestic gestures into feminist acts. Her work reclaims the body, labor, and relationships as sites of personal autonomy. She was part of the pioneering, male-dominated generation of Singaporean contemporary artists in The Artists Village, but left due to its hierarchical structure to pursue collaborations with women artists and further studies.

Mind the baby! Visitors to the Japanese Venice Biennale pavilion will be asked to look after dolls

Ei Arakawa-Nash, a Japanese-born artist who no longer holds Japanese citizenship, will represent Japan at the Venice Biennale with an exhibition titled "Grass Babies, Moon Babies." The pavilion will feature over 100 baby dolls that visitors are invited to adopt and carry, engaging in caregiving tasks such as changing a nappy. Each doll corresponds to a historically significant date tied to minority communities, linking intimate acts of care to broader historical narratives. The project also includes a collaboration with the Korean Pavilion, marking the first such partnership between the two national pavilions in Biennale history.

Mummy, is this a video game? The dangers of showing kids art on a screen

A parent takes their toddler to Frameless, an immersive digital art experience in London, where works by Hieronymus Bosch, Claude Monet, and Georges Seurat are projected onto walls, ceilings, and floors. The child reacts with mixed engagement—enjoying some moments but feeling overwhelmed by the frenetic, screen-based environment—while the author reflects on the tension between traditional static art and animated digital reproductions.

SFMOMA reimagines our connection to 250 works of art across four floors.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has unveiled "Reimagined: The Fisher Collection at 10," a major reinstallation of approximately 250 works from 35 artists across four floors. The project was led by project assistant curator Ted Mann and chief education and public engagement officer Gamynne Guillotte, who collaborated to transform how the collection is presented. Changes include rotating galleries, such as the Agnes Martin room, to improve sightlines, and incorporating artists' voices, archival video, and interpretive tools to make abstract works more accessible. The reinstallation marks the tenth anniversary of the Fisher Collection's long-term loan to SFMOMA, originally arranged in 2009 and later extended to 100 years.

Marietta Museum of Art & Whimsy closing for summer, but 37 other exhibitions on view at museums in May

The article provides a roundup of museum exhibitions on view in Southwest Florida during May, highlighting five new openings, eight closings, and 25 continuing shows across museums from Sarasota to Naples. Featured exhibitions include Molly Hatch's site-specific ceramic installation "Amalgam" at Sarasota Art Museum, Jillian Mayer's interactive "Slumpies" sculptures, a group show "Something Borrowed, Something New" with works by Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, David Hockney, Yoko Ono, Kara Walker, and Ai Weiwei, and Maria A. Guzman Capron's solo textile exhibition "Penumbra." The Marietta Museum of Art & Whimsy is noted as closing for the summer.

At this art show, kids make the rules

The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto is hosting 'Colourful Parachutes: Imagining Alternative Futures Through the Power of Play,' a group exhibition that centers children as active participants rather than passive observers. Curated by Frances Loeffler, the show features interactive works by artists including Temitayo Ogunbiyi, Leisure (Meredith Carruthers and Susannah Wesley), Claire Greenshaw, Rivane Neuenschwander, Harold Offeh, Sassa Linklater, Tobias Linklater, and Robin Rhode, with installations that invite climbing, drawing, playing, and touching. The exhibition draws inspiration from a 1968 show at Moderna Museet in Stockholm that transformed the museum into an adventure playground.

'Something Borrowed, Something New' at Sarasota Art Museum features 85 works from 10 private collections

Ten art collectors from Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota have loaned 85 works from their private collections to the Sarasota Art Museum for the exhibition 'Something Borrowed, Something New.' The show features pieces by renowned artists including Kara Walker, Ai Weiwei, Alex Katz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Chuck Close, Hank Willis Thomas, and Yoko Ono, with many prints coming from Graphicstudio at the University of South Florida. The exhibition was conceived by executive director Virginia Shearer after visiting collectors' homes and was inspired by a trip to the Renwick Museum at the Smithsonian.

Met Gala guests from Beyoncé to Nicole Kidman set to flaunt fashion as art

The article previews the 2025 Met Gala, where celebrities including Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams will ascend the Metropolitan Museum of Art's steps dressed according to the dress code "Fashion is art." The event, which raises funds for the museum's Costume Institute, encourages guests to treat fashion as an embodied art form, drawing on historical collaborations between designers and artists—such as Elsa Schiaparelli with Salvador Dalí, Yves Saint Laurent with Piet Mondrian, and Marc Jacobs with Takashi Murakami. The red carpet will be livestreamed by Vogue and the Associated Press.

Why Is Beeple So Successful?

The article examines the meteoric rise of artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, who broke auction records in 2021 by selling an NFT for $69.3 million at Christie's, becoming the third most expensive living artist. His robot dogs, featuring heads of figures like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, debuted at Art Basel Miami Beach and are now on view at Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie during Gallery Weekend. The show, titled "Regular Animals," has sparked controversy, with critics like Markus Lüpertz denouncing the works as trivial entertainment unworthy of a museum, while curators Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Lisa Botti defend the exhibition.

How to watch the 'Costume Art' Met Gala red carpet

The 2026 Met Gala, held on May 4 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, featured a dress code titled 'Costume Art' that explicitly frames fashion as an embodied art form. Celebrities including Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams ascended the museum's steps wearing archival fashion pieces and custom creations, with references to artistic collaborations such as Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí's lobster dress, Yves Saint Laurent's Mondrian-inspired designs, and Marc Jacobs' work with Takashi Murakami. The event raises funds for the museum's Costume Institute, whose spring exhibition 'Costume Art' examines the centrality of the dressed body.

Met Museum show at new Costume Institute puts fashion in same spotlight as Egyptian artefacts

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute has opened its spring exhibition 'Costume Art' in a new 12,000-square-foot space called the Condé M Nast Galleries, located off the museum's Great Hall. The show pairs 200 garments and accessories with 200 artworks from the Met's collection, organized into 13 thematic body types such as Naked and Nude, Abstracted Body, Corpulent Body, Disabled Body, and Mortal Body. Lead curator Andrew Bolton aims to challenge traditional hierarchies by placing fashion on equal footing with fine art. The exhibition's launch is overshadowed by controversy over sponsorship by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos for the Met Gala.

The Broad: Yoko Ono Exhibition Draws Spring Crowds in 2026

As of March 2026, The Broad in Los Angeles is hosting Yoko Ono's first major solo museum show in Southern California, titled 'Music of the Mind.' The exhibition traces Ono's career from her 1950s Fluxus experiments to large-scale conceptual works, featuring interactive installations such as 'Wish Trees for Los Angeles' on the museum's East West Bank Plaza. The show opened on March 5, 2026, and has drawn record crowds to the free museum, which offers timed tickets for entry. The article also highlights other permanent attractions at The Broad, including Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrored Room and galleries dedicated to Cy Twombly and Jeff Koons.

Marcel Duchamp Is Stripped Bare at MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art in New York has opened "Marcel Duchamp," the first retrospective of the artist on this continent in over 50 years. Curated by Ann Temkin, Michelle Kuo, and Matthew Affron, the exhibition is organized strictly chronologically and features Duchamp's most famous works—including his revolutionary readymades like *Fountain* (1917) and *Bicycle Wheel* (1913)—often shown only in photographic reproduction or as later refabricated copies, replicas, and miniatures from his *Box in a Valise* series. The show highlights how Duchamp's original objects have been lost or dematerialized, forcing viewers to confront the very definition of an artwork.

BUSINESS MONDAY: Spotlight on Art in the Berkshires—now open on Castle Street

Art in the Berkshires, founded in 2024 as an online resource, has opened a physical gallery and studio space at 8 Castle Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The venture is led by Shany Porras, an abstract painter and founder who serves as gallery director, aiming to make Berkshire creativity more accessible through artist directories, venue listings, and a weekly newsletter.

New Met Gala fashion exhibit seeks to ‘reclaim’ body types that art history has ignored

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute will launch a new fashion exhibition titled "Costume Art" at the 2026 Met Gala, curated by Andrew Bolton. The show features 400 items across sections exploring body types historically marginalized in art, including the corpulent, disabled, pregnant, and aging body. It debuts in the newly renovated Conde M. Nast galleries on the museum's main floor, with custom mannequins modeled on real individuals such as Sinéad Burke, Aariana Rose Philip, and Goddess Bunny. The exhibition pairs fashion garments with art objects to argue that fashion is art, and will be open to the public from May 10 for eight months.

In Belgio inaugura BRUSK. A Bruges un nuovo museo ibrido dall’arte antica all’AI

A new hybrid cultural center called BRUSK has opened in Bruges, Belgium, designed by Robbrecht en Daem and Olivier Salens. Part of the Musea Brugge network, the venue blends ancient art with contemporary and AI-driven works, featuring two inaugural exhibitions: "Bigger Picture. Connected Worlds of Bruges 900–1550," a historical survey co-curated with historian Peter Frankopan, and "Latent City," the first Belgian solo show of digital artist Refik Anadol. The building offers free ground-floor public spaces, including a café and a permanent mural by Laure Prouvost, aiming to attract both tourists and locals.

Here is the first and for now only interview with the curators of the 2026 Venice Art Biennale

Ecco la prima e per ora unica intervista ai curatori della Biennale d’Arte di Venezia 2026

The team of the late curator Koyo Kouoh has completed the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, titled "In Minor Keys," which opens to the public on May 9, 2026. In an exclusive interview, curators Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Helene Pereira, Rasha Salti, Siddhartha Mitter, and Rory Tsapayia discuss the challenges of realizing Kouoh's vision after her death, including fundraising, installation design by Wolff Architects of Cape Town, and the use of cardboard as a non-invasive material to create thresholds between spaces.

Performance, gioco, rischio. Il grande Paul McCarthy è in mostra a Madrid: l’intervista

Paul McCarthy's latest exhibition, titled "A&E," is on view at Bowman Hal gallery in Madrid, part of the SOLO CONTEMPORARY initiative founded by a Spanish collector couple. The show features large-scale works on paper and videos created in collaboration with German actress Lilith Stangenberg, exploring role-play, performance, and the blurred lines between art and entertainment. The acronym "A&E" alludes to historical pairs like Adam and Eve or Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, as well as "Arts & Entertainment." The works stem from private encounters between McCarthy and Stangenberg, with drawings serving as storyboards for videos that capture their improvisational, trance-like interactions.

There is a major Paulo Nazareth exhibition to see in Venice (but the artist himself hasn't seen it)

C’è una grande mostra di Paulo Nazareth da vedere a Venezia (ma l’artista stesso non l’ha vista)

A major exhibition of Brazilian artist Paulo Nazareth, titled "Algebra," has opened at Punta della Dogana in Venice, but the artist himself is absent. Nazareth has kept a promise not to set foot in Europe until he has crossed African territories on foot, as they existed before the arbitrary divisions imposed by the 1884 Berlin Conference. He did not participate in the installation or opening, instead staging a simultaneous event in Veneza, a working-class district of Ribeirão das Neves, Brazil—a gesture he also made when invited to the 2013 Venice Biennale. The exhibition centers on structural violence and uses attention and care as strategies for healing, with the word "algebra" referring to the act of recomposing what was broken.

The New Installation of the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice Is a Game of Combinatory Art. Interview with Director Cristiana Collu

Il nuovo allestimento della Fondazione Querini Stampalia a Venezia è un gioco di arte combinatoria. Intervista alla direttrice Cristiana Collu

The Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice has unveiled a new permanent installation titled "The Dreamer," curated by director Cristiana Collu and opening May 5, 2026. The exhibition repositions over 170 works from the foundation's collection—including Giovanni Bellini's *Presentation of Jesus at the Temple*, Luca Giordano's *San Sebastiano*, and Palma il Vecchio's *Madonna with Child*—in dialogue with works by six contemporary artists: Giusy Calia, Silvia Giambrone, Daniela De Lorenzo, Davide Rivalta, Emanuele Becheri, and Chiara Bettazzi. Inspired by the dreams and passions of founder Giovanni Querini Stampalia (born May 5, 1799) and his sister Caterina, the installation is conceived as a non-chronological, emotionally driven journey likened to a "reverse cinema" where visitors move through space like directors constructing their own narrative.

A Vienna una grande mostra dedicata a Daumier, l’artista della satira

The Albertina Museum in Vienna is hosting a major retrospective titled "Honoré Daumier – Mirror of Society," dedicated to the French artist Honoré Daumier (1808–1879). The exhibition features lithographs, drawings, paintings, and sculptures, with significant loans from the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. Daumier, known for his sharp satire and acute social observation, critiqued political abuses and social injustices of 19th-century European society. The show also recalls a previous Daumier exhibition held at the Albertina in 1936, which served as a political statement against Nazi oppression.

France reckons with Nazi-looted art in a new Paris museum gallery

France has opened a new permanent gallery at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris dedicated to displaying Nazi-looted artworks that remain unclaimed. The gallery features 13 works from the MNR (Musées Nationaux Récupération) collection, including a painting by Alfred Stevens originally destined for Hitler's planned museum in Linz. The display is the first in the museum's history to show the backs of paintings, revealing stamps, labels, and inventory marks that trace how each piece moved from private Jewish homes into Nazi hands. The museum also launched its first research unit to trace rightful heirs, led by Ines Rotermund-Reynard.

More than 30 exhibitions on display in May at art centers from Marco Island to Sarasota

More than 30 exhibitions are on display in May at art centers across Southwest Florida, from Marco Island to Sarasota. Venues like Art Center Sarasota host shows featuring member, regional, and nationally renowned artists, including the "North Sarasota County Schools Spring Art Show" with over 1,500 student artists, solo exhibitions by Anja Palombo and Cat Tesla, and the "Architects Who Art" show co-curated by Morris Hylton III.