Anuar Maauad and Roger Muñoz have cocurated the exhibition "La Alegría de Vivir" at Estudio Anuar Maauad in Mexico City, featuring works by Jorge de León, Benjamin Orlow, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Berenice Olmedo, Miguel Ventura, Paul McCarthy, and Teresa Margolles. The show confronts themes of necropolitics and systemic violence through sculptures, photographs, and installations that depict war, state power, and human suffering as ongoing, normalized conditions.
The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FVM) in Philadelphia has opened "Some American Dreams," an exhibition marking the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Curated by Hilde Nelson, FVM curatorial fellow, the show features 27 works by 20 artists created during the museum's Artist-in-Residence Program over four decades. The exhibition includes pieces in furniture, sculpture, textiles, clothing, video, and photography, and is on view until June 14, 2026. In an interview with My Modern Met, Nelson discusses her curatorial approach, which poses the question, "What if 'America' is not one project, but many?" and explores how these multiple Americas are affirmed, resisted, or remade through the artworks.
Phillips’ Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on May 19 achieved a white-glove result, totaling $115.2 million across 41 lots—a 122 percent increase from May 2025. The sale saw strong performances from works by Lee Bontecou, Salman Toor, and Cecily Brown, with Bontecou’s 1985 pastel on canvas setting a record for a two-dimensional work by the artist at $4.2 million. Other top lots included Andy Warhol’s *Sixteen Jackies* (1964) at $16.2 million, a Monet landscape at $9.3 million, and a Joan Mitchell at $6.9 million. Notably, less than half of the lots were guaranteed, with Phillips’ Priority Bidding incentive—offering a 4 percent discount on buyer’s premium—contributing to the strong results, as more than half of the lots attracted such bids.
A rare early artwork by David Hockney, created when he was just 19, is heading to auction at Tennants Auctioneers' Modern and Contemporary Art Sale on June 13. The mixed media piece, titled *Bolton Junction Eccleshill, Bradford*, depicts scenes from Hockney's hometown and is expected to fetch between £7,000 and £10,000. Originally purchased by Hockney's tutor Malcolm Riley at the artist's end-of-year show, the work reflects the perspective lessons Hockney learned at Bradford Regional College of Art. The sale also features works by other notable northern artists, including two drawings by L.S. Lowry, pieces by mining artists Norman Cornish and Tom McGuinness, and ceramics by Pablo Picasso, alongside lots by Damien Hirst and David Bailey.
Tate Britain in London is opening a major retrospective of James McNeill Whistler, the largest exhibition of his work in Europe in 30 years. Featuring 150 works spanning painting, drawing, printmaking, and design, the show includes iconic pieces like *Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1* (commonly known as *Whistler's Mother*) and *Nocturne: Blue and Gold - Old Battersea Bridge*. For the first time, the exhibition examines Whistler's teenage years and also displays his personal notebooks, easel, paint palette, and collections of East Asian ceramics and Japanese prints. The exhibition runs from May 21 to September 27, 2026.
Dustin Yellin, known for his glass sculptures and as founder of Pioneer Works, has made his first film, *Goodnight Lamby*, produced by Darren Aronofsky's A.I.-focused studio Primordial Soup. The short film, a hero's journey to rescue his daughter Zia's favorite stuffed animal, premiered at Cannes. Yellin discusses the project with his friend actor Paul Rudd, who voices the character "Papa," exploring how fatherhood and his existing artistic practice of "frozen cinema" inspired the animation.
An exhibition titled "Paris in Black: Internationalism and the Black Renaissance" at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center in Chicago celebrates the Black American artists, writers, and performers who moved to Paris after World War II to escape American racism. Curated by Danny Dunson, the show features over 100 artworks from the museum's permanent collection, including paintings by Archibald J. Motley Jr., sculptures by Richmond Barthé, Augusta Savage, and William Artis, and ephemera related to Josephine Baker. It traces the global influence of the Harlem Renaissance and the cross-pollination between Paris and U.S. cities like Chicago.
“L’arte russa oggi è il sangue”. Una dura intervista alle Pussy Riot
During the preview of the 2026 Venice Biennale, the Russian Pavilion became the site of a protest by Pussy Riot and FEMEN, who staged an action called "STORM OF VENICE." Wearing pink balaclavas and carrying radical slogans, they denounced Russia's presence at the Biennale, accusing the Kremlin and the European cultural system of complicity. The protest centered on the phrase "Blood is Russia's art." In an interview, Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova argues that artists who represent the official Russian Pavilion become instruments of the aggressive imperial state, and that the Biennale confuses cultural dialogue with political normalization.
The Hayward Gallery at London's Southbank Centre has announced 'You Never Did Anything Wrong,' Nan Goldin's first major UK exhibition in over 20 years. The show, on view from November 24, 2026, to March 7, 2027, will survey Goldin's autobiographical photography, highlighting her intimate depictions of love, loss, queer and post-punk communities, and her recent anti-war activism. The exhibition follows the UK debut of her opera 'The Ballad of Sexual Dependency' at Gagosian London earlier this year.
CLOSE Gallery in Somerset presents 'Many Worlds, One Mind', a major survey exhibition of contemporary multi-media artist Gordon Cheung, running from 6 June to 15 August 2026. The show brings together 28 works across sculpture, painting, print and etching, including pieces from Cheung's 'New Order' series, which uses algorithms to reorder pixels from Dutch Golden Age still lifes, and 'Passages of Time', a sculpture incorporating Financial Times stock listings. Cheung's work examines global capitalism, cultural memory, and the intersection of classical art history with digital technology.
Tate Britain has opened the largest European retrospective of James McNeill Whistler in over 30 years, featuring 150 works across painting, drawing, printmaking, and design. The exhibition traces Whistler's career from his student days at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg and West Point to his bohemian years in Paris and London, highlighting his pioneering nocturnes, the iconic *Arrangement in Black and Grey: Portrait of the Painter’s Mother* (known as *Whistler’s Mother*), and rarely seen sketchbooks. It reunites a familial triptych of portraits and assembles the largest-ever collection of his nocturnes, exploring his radical approach to composition and color.
The article presents a curated list of the 10 best museums in the United States, as compiled by U.S. News & World Report, covering art, history, science, and cultural heritage. It begins with a philosophical reflection on the unique power of museums to provide direct, physical encounters with objects that cannot be replicated by digital media. The first museum profiled is The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, highlighting its 5,000-year collection, 5 million annual visitors, and its two distinct locations: The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters.
Anish Kapoor will return to the Hayward Gallery in London in 2026 with a major exhibition of new and celebrated works, running from 16 June to 18 October. Curated by Ralph Rugoff, the show will fill the gallery and its outdoor terraces with monumental installations, including a vast inflated PVC membrane, a dark mountainous threshold, and the suspended sculpture 'Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto' (2022). The exhibition also features Vantablack-coated works, mirrored steel sculptures, and recent paintings and sculptures in silicone, resin, and pigment, marking Kapoor's first major return to the Hayward since 1998.
Andrew Durham Gallery in Houston announces "Vestiges of Existence," a solo exhibition of multi-media works by artist Jill Bedgood, running from June 6 to August 1, 2026. The show explores how physical remnants—such as worn jewelry, handwritten letters, and natural anomalies—carry memory and document human presence, functioning as contemporary memento mori. An opening reception on June 6 and an artist talk on July 11 accompany the exhibition.
Internationally acclaimed artist Nada Al Barazi presented her solo exhibition 'Gardens' at Intent Gallery in Dubai from May 9 to 13. The show featured a contemplative body of work exploring nature as an emotional and introspective experience, with layered textures, expressive color, and organic forms that invite viewers to reflect on memory, transformation, and renewal. Al Barazi, a holder of the UAE Golden Visa from Dubai Culture & Arts Authority, is recognized for her contributions to contemporary art in the Emirates and globally.
The Centre Pompidou Malaga has opened the exhibition 'Gesture and Matter. International Abstractions (1945–1965)', running until September, featuring around 30 works by 26 artists. The show highlights abstract art as a post-World War II response, with key pieces including Jackson Pollock's 'Number 26A. Black and White' and Kazuo Shiraga's 'Planet Nature', painted with his feet while suspended from ropes. Co-curated by Anne Foucault and Christian Briend, the exhibition traces abstraction's development from Paris and New York to Asia and Europe, emphasizing painting as a full-body, performative act of freedom.
The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) has exported a major exhibition, "Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific," to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The show, which runs until January 10, 2027, features works collected over 30 years through QAGOMA's Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, including pieces by Australian artists Michael Cook, Naomi Hobson, Shirley Macnamara, Ken Thaiday Sr, and Judy Watson, as well as artists from China, Japan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, and beyond.
The Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG) opened "Tough Stuff: Women in the American Glass Studio" on May 16, 2026, as part of its 75th anniversary celebration. This is the first survey exhibition dedicated to women artists who shaped the American Studio Glass Movement from the 1960s onward, featuring over 200 works by artists including Claire Falkenstein, Audrey Handler, Margie Jervis, Susie Krasnican, Kathleen Mulcahy, Ginny Ruffner, Ruth Tamura, and Toots Zynsky. The exhibition draws from CMoG’s permanent collection, the Rakow Research Library, and loans from the artists, and is complemented by an oral history initiative preserving first-person accounts.
Rome's Galleria Borghese, a 17th-century villa museum housing masterpieces by Caravaggio, Bernini, and Canova, is facing controversy over a privately funded feasibility study for a potential expansion. Sponsored by Italian engineering firm Proger, the €900,000 initiative would fund an international architecture competition to explore adding exhibition and visitor space to the Villa Borghese Pinciana grounds. Museum officials cite operational constraints: the historic interiors limit access to 360 visitors per two-hour slot (about 4,000 daily), reservations require weeks of waiting, many works remain in storage, and accessibility is poor. Visitor numbers hit a record 630,760 in 2025, up from 506,000 a decade earlier. Preservation groups including Italia Nostra Roma and Amici di Villa Borghese have objected to any new construction in the sensitive historic landscape. Director Francesca Cappelletti emphasized at a May 18 press conference that no project exists yet and the museum is only beginning a study process, with a winner possible by year's end.
The Palm Springs Art Museum in California has released a three-page statement claiming that an investigation into a whistleblower complaint alleging mismanagement, fraud, and theft found no wrongdoing. The complaint included allegations of improper reclassification of endowment funds, a $3 million discrepancy in investment accounts, and the forced departure of a former director. The museum hired law firm Barnes & Thornburg and forensic accounting firm RSM US to conduct a six-month review, but declined to release the resulting report to ARTnews or the public. The museum acknowledged that proceeds from deaccessioned artworks were used for operating expenses, calling it a long-standing board-approved practice with an internal loan being repaid by 2030.
A new exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, titled "For the Win," showcases championship rings, trophies, medals, and jewelry spanning nearly 150 years of US sports history. Highlights include Jesse Owens's 1936 Olympic gold medal, Breanna Stewart's 2024 WNBA championship ring, the 1877 NYPD Medal of Valor, and items from Kevin Durant and the Seattle Seahawks. The exhibition, timed to the upcoming World Cup, is housed in the museum's gems and minerals space to emphasize craftsmanship.
Marat Guelman's exhibition at Ethan Cohen Gallery in New York (April 23–May 30, 2026) features AI-generated monoprints created in collaboration with the Montenegrin digital art group + - Komma. None of the works were painted by Guelman himself; instead, he programmed AI outputs based on historical models by artists like Picasso, Gauguin, Monet, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Turner, Matisse, and Richter. Every piece in the show incorporates an image of an atomic mushroom cloud, a motif Guelman uses to respond to Vladimir Putin's nuclear threats during the Ukraine war.
Marianna Simnett, one of the most radical contemporary artists known for exploring metamorphosis, myth, ecstasy, sex, and pain, has created an exclusive edition titled "The Healer" for the German art magazine Monopol. The work is a watercolor depicting a naked female figure licking a lion lying on the ground, with other lions roaring in the background. The edition is an archival pigment print in a size of 60 x 79 cm, published in an edition of 25 plus two artist's proofs, priced at 950 euros plus VAT.
The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs has selected six finalist proposals for a monument to jazz singer Billie Holiday in Queens, where she once lived and performed. The finalists—all Black artists from around the world—include Tavares Strachan, La Vaughn Belle, Tanda Francis, Nikesha Breeze, Thomas J Price, and Nekisha Durrett. Their designs range from realistic to abstract, with some focusing on Holiday's expressive face, her signature gardenia, or symbolic forms. The winning project will be announced this summer and installed near the Jamaica Performing Arts Center (JPAC).
Imagine Documentaries, the nonfiction arm of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment, premiered a new documentary about photographer Richard Avedon at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17. The film, co-produced by the Richard Avedon Foundation, draws heavily from archival interviews conducted by Helen Whitney for the PBS series *American Masters*, supplemented by new interviews with Avedon's son John, muse Lauren Hutton, Isabella Rossellini, Twyla Tharp, and former *New Yorker* colleagues Tina Brown and John Lahr. The documentary explores Avedon's career, his technique of building rapport with subjects, and his iconic images such as *Dovima with Elephants*, which dealer Larry Gagosian notes sold for $2 million.
Sotheby’s Modern evening auction on 19 May in New York achieved $303.3m with fees, falling within its pre-sale estimate of $244m to $322.8m. The standout lot was Henri Matisse’s 1919 painting *La Chaise lorraine*, which sold for $48.4m after a ten-minute bidding battle, becoming the second most valuable Matisse painting at auction. Other highlights included Alberto Giacometti’s *La Clairière (Composition avec neuf figures)* at $23.1m, Pablo Picasso’s *Arlequin (Buste, 1909)* at $42.6m, and a Mark Rothko untitled work on paper at $9.27m. The sale also saw strong demand for works by female Surrealists Leonor Fini and Leonora Carrington, while a Rodin sculpture was passed and a Gottlieb painting was withdrawn.
Japanese writer-director Koji Fukada's new film *Nagi Notes* premiered on 13 May at the Cannes Film Festival. The story follows Yuri (Shizuka Ishibashi), who visits the remote town of Nagi to sit for a sculptor friend, Yoriko (Takako Matsu). The film explores how characters use art—from drawings to sculptural busts—as a medium to express unspoken desires, grief, and identity, with key scenes set at the Nagi Museum of Contemporary Art featuring a permanent installation by Arakawa and Madeline Gins.
Art in America, the sister publication of ARTnews, has announced its Summer 2026 "New Talent" issue, featuring 20 emerging artists selected by the magazine's editors. The list includes international artists working across various mediums, such as Joeun Kim Aatchim, Jenny Calivas, Kiah Celeste, Malo Chapuy, Mitchell Charbonneau, Isaiah Davis, Elizabeth Glaessner, Juliana Halpert, Craig Jun Li, Kinlaw, Koyoltzintli, Kyung-Me, Chyrum Lambert, Terran Last Gun, Satchel Lee, Claudia Pagès Rabal, Ren Light Pan, Emma Safir, Frank Wang Yefeng, and Alexa West. Profiles of each artist appear in the print edition and will be published online in the coming weeks.
Indigenous artist Tony Albert has issued a public call for Australians to donate their 'Aboriginalia'—objects that depict Aboriginal people and designs but were created by non-Indigenous people, often as caricatures or exoticized souvenirs. Over 3,000 items from Albert's own collection, including tea towels, ashtrays, and playing cards, are now on display in his solo exhibition 'Not a Souvenir' at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney, opening on 21 May.
Grayson Perry’s life story is being adapted into a stage musical titled *Grayson the Musical*, co-created with Richard Thomas, composer of *Jerry Springer: The Opera*. The show follows Perry from his childhood in Chelmsford to his rise as a Turner Prize-winning ceramicist and tapestry-maker, featuring his iconic dresses and his teddy bear Alan Measles. Perry wrote the lyrics, with a book by screenwriter Sara-Ella Ozbek and direction by Sean Foley. A workshop production will run for five performances in July at Soho Theatre Walthamstow, the east London borough where Perry once kept a studio and which inspired his famous work *The Walthamstow Tapestry*.