Chicago museums have announced a slate of ambitious summer exhibitions, including the opening of the Obama Presidential Center, an Anne Frank exhibition, and a Pokemon-themed show. These exhibits span a range of cultural and historical topics, aiming to attract diverse audiences to the city's major cultural institutions.
An exhibition of Edward Hopper's work at the Seoul Museum of Art has broken attendance records, drawing 330,000 visitors—the highest for any exhibition that year. The show marks the first solo exhibition of the American painter in South Korea, where Hopper was virtually unknown until the 1990s. The article traces Hopper's growing recognition in the country, from his first appearance in Korean media in 2002 to the 2011 co-hosted exhibition 'This Is American Art' at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, which introduced his work 'Railroad Sunset' (1929) to local audiences.
Historian and author Peter Frankopan has curated the inaugural exhibition at BRUSK, a new museum in Bruges, Belgium. Titled "Bigger Picture: Connected worlds of Bruges 900-1550," the show explores the city's medieval role as a global hub for trade, culture, and politics, featuring over 250 objects from 90 lenders worldwide. A rare loan from the Vatican Library—a portrait of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I—is a highlight. The exhibition opens alongside a digital work by Refik Anadol and a fresco by Laure Prouvost.
In 2026, Frida Kahlo has become a global cultural obsession, with museums, opera houses, and cinemas worldwide celebrating her legacy. The Metropolitan Opera in New York City will premiere Gabriela Lena Frank's Spanish-sung opera *El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego* on May 14, which imagines Diego Rivera summoning Kahlo back to life three years after her death. Set and costume designer Jon Bausor drew inspiration from the trees, veins, and cracked imagery in Kahlo's paintings.
The Getty Foundation has awarded $1.8 million in grants to eight institutions through its Black Visual Arts Archives initiative, a multi-year program aimed at increasing access to archival collections related to Black artists and arts organizations. The grants will support processing, digitization, and public programming at venues including Afro Charities, Auburn Avenue Research Library, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Charles H. Wright Museum, Morgan State University, South Side Community Art Center, the University of Chicago's South Side Home Movie Project, and the David C. Driskell Center. This brings Getty's total funding for the initiative to $4.5 million since 2022, supporting 20 grants nationwide.
미국의 광부들 사진전 'Beneath the Surface' 순회: 내셔널 갤러리(DC)-밀워키미술관-에이먼카터미술관(포트워스, TX)
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., will present 'Beneath the Surface: Mining and American Photography' from May 23 to August 23, 2026, the first exhibition to focus exclusively on the relationship between resource extraction and American photography. Featuring 150 photographs by over 100 artists—including Richard Avedon, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks—the show spans nearly 200 years, from early daguerreotypes of the California Gold Rush to contemporary large-scale works. After its Washington run, the exhibition will travel to the Milwaukee Art Museum (October 23, 2026–January 18, 2027) and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas (February 14–May 9, 2027).
The Olana Partnership opens "Frederic Church: Global Artist" on May 17 at Olana State Historic Site in Hudson, New York, commemorating the 200th anniversary of Frederic Church's birth (1826–1900). The exhibition brings together monumental oil paintings, drawings, oil sketches, and photographs from Church's global travels, with loans from major institutions including the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, The New York Historical, and the Terra Foundation for American Art. It is organized by Elizabeth Kornhauser, Tim Barringer, and Jennifer Raab, and is part of the broader Frederic Church 200 initiative.
Five museums across the globe are opening exhibitions this month that celebrate women who have shaped art and culture. The shows include Björk's multidisciplinary "Echolalia" at the National Gallery of Iceland in Reykjavík, Iris van Herpen's New York exhibition, Marina Abramović's historic showing at Venice's Gallerie dell'Accademia, the Tate Modern's first major Frida Kahlo retrospective, and centenary tributes to Marilyn Monroe. The article notes that despite women making up 51% of visual artists worldwide, their work remains underrepresented in public institutions, with 78% of London galleries showing more male than female artists.
Woody De Othello's first major solo public exhibition in New York, titled "Guardian Spirit," has opened at Brooklyn Bridge Park, presented by Public Art Fund. The exhibition features monumental redwood totems standing 20 to 22 feet tall, carved with chainsaws and grinders, alongside bronze sculptures created between 2021 and 2025. The works explore themes of ritual, spirituality, and the elemental forces of wind and water, drawing inspiration from nkisi, ritual objects from Western and Central Africa. The exhibition runs from May 5, 2026, to March 8, 2027, with sculptures installed at Pier 1 and the Manhattan Bridge View.
The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, presents "Giorgio Griffa: Paths in the Forest," the first solo museum exhibition in the United States dedicated to the Italian artist Giorgio Griffa (born 1936). On view from June 13 to October 12 at the Lunder Center at Stone Hill, the exhibition features works spanning nearly six decades, including highlights such as "Sessanta frammenti" (1980), "Rosa" (1968), and "Narciso" (1986). Griffa is known for his use of diluted acrylics on unstretched, unprimed canvases, and his practice emphasizes the intelligence of materials and an ecological ethic. The exhibition is curated by Robert Wiesenberger, John and Barbara Vogelstein Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum and former curator of contemporary projects at the Clark.
The New Museum in New York has opened "New Humans: Memories of the Future," an exhibition curated by Chief Curator Massimiliano Gioni that explores a century of art predicting the fusion of humans and machines. The show features works by artists including Anicka Yi, Francis Picabia, Constantin Brancusi, and Marcel Duchamp, alongside robots and technological artifacts that blur the boundaries between bodies and technology. The exhibition is housed within OMA's newly expanded museum space on the Bowery.
The National Gallery in London will stage its first exhibition of modern German paintings, 'German Expressionism: Modern Painting 1900–1918', in spring 2027, before traveling to the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin in autumn 2027. This is the first UK and Ireland exhibition since the 1960s to cover both key Expressionist groups, Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, featuring over fifty international loans from institutions such as Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie, Brücke Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago, alongside works from private collections.
The Skylands Museum of Art in Lafayette, New Jersey, presents "FINI...pas fini!" from May 16 to September 26, 2026, a temporary exhibition of over 30 works by the internationally recognized artist Leonor Fini (1907-1996). Drawn from the museum's permanent collection, the show includes original drawings, etchings, silkscreens, and lithographs featuring portraits, sphinxes, female figures, cats, and fantastical beings. Special events include an opening reception on May 16 and a gallery talk by art appraiser Carol Curci, a friend and authority on Fini, who will discuss the artist's life and work.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute has announced its latest exhibition, "Costume Art," opening May 10. Curated by Andrew Bolton, the show brings together garments and objects from across the museum's curatorial departments to explore the relationship between fashion and the human body. The exhibition is organized into thematic sections including the Naked & Nude Body, Classical Body, Abstract Body, Reclaimed Body, Pregnant Body, Corpulent Body, and Disabled Body, featuring works by designers such as Walter Van Beirendonck, LÛCHEN, Georgina Godley, Ann-Sofie Back, Di Petsa, Alessandro Michele for Gucci, and Vivienne Westwood, alongside historical art objects from Greek ceramics to Mesopotamian sculptures.
A new exhibition titled "Nervous Breakdown" at the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany, presents the most comprehensive collection of Raymond Pettibon's album cover art to date. The show draws from over 200 works in the collection of Stefan Thull, spanning Pettibon's record, CD, and cassette covers from 1979 to the present, including iconic designs for Sonic Youth's "Goo" and Black Flag's logo. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by the museum and David Zwirner Books.
DATALAND, the world's first museum of AI arts co-founded by artist Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, will open to the public on June 20, 2026, in downtown Los Angeles. Located in the Frank Gehry-designed building The Grand LA within the Grand Avenue Cultural District, the 35,000-square-foot venue will debut with the inaugural exhibition "Machine Dreams: Rainforest," an immersive 360-degree experience based on millions of images and sounds of nature. The custom AI model powering the exhibition was trained on data collected from 16 rainforests worldwide, with data partnerships established with the Smithsonian, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Getty, iNaturalist, and the Natural History Museum in London.
Artforum's editors preview twenty-five anticipated institutional exhibitions opening worldwide between May and August. Highlights include "Fade" at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the latest in its career-making "F show" series featuring seventeen emerging artists of African descent; "Modernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkstätte" at the Jewish Museum in New York, showcasing over 180 women designers from Austria's famed atelier; "Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz" at the Hessel Museum of Art, exploring the intersection of Navajo weaving and microchip history; the 59th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, with 61 artists spread across Pittsburgh venues; and "Mary Ellen Carroll: How to Talk Dirty and Influence People" at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.
San Francisco museums are navigating a mix of upcoming exhibitions and financial challenges in May 2026. SFMOMA is closing "KAWS: Family" on May 3 and opening "Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal" from May 16 to September 13. The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts has suspended operations due to funding issues, and SOMArts is also facing a budget gap. Meanwhile, the Museum of Craft and Design presents "Video Craft" through August 16, and the Letterform Archive hosts "Black Memory Scholar: The Language of Storytellers" and "Piet Zwart: Brand Architect." SFMOMA has announced three SECA award winners—CrossLypka, Em Kettner, and Chanell Stone—who will exhibit from December 2026 to May 2027, and the museum continues to showcase "Reimagined: The Fisher Collection at 10" and new installations by Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg + Coosje van Bruggen, and Rose B Simpson.
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York will present "Jessica Lichtenstein: Rewilding," the artist's first solo museum exhibition, from May 30, 2026, through April 18, 2027. The immersive installation transforms the third-floor gallery into a lush, overgrown terrain featuring thousands of digitally rendered female nudes that coalesce into forests, ruins, and flowering canopies, exploring themes of femininity, ecological imagination, and bodily autonomy.
The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, in cooperation with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, has opened the first major exhibition of sculptor Constantin Brancusi in Germany in over 50 years. Featuring more than 150 works—including sculptures, photographs, drawings, films, and archival materials—the show presents key pieces such as "The Kiss," "Bird in Space," "Sleeping Muse," and "Endless Column," alongside a partial reconstruction of Brancusi's legendary studio, shown outside Paris for the first time since its bequest to the French state in 1957.
The United States is marking its 250th anniversary in 2026 with a major collaborative exhibition titled *A Nation of Artists*, presented simultaneously at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA). The show features over 1,000 works—paintings, photographs, sculptures, and decorative arts—spanning from the late 18th century to the present, including more than 120 rarely seen pieces from the Middleton Family Collection, one of the country's most significant private holdings of American art. PAFA organizes the works thematically around westward expansion, industrialization, and globalization, while PMA, celebrating its 150th anniversary, presents a chronological survey from 1700 to 1960, highlighting international exchange, technological innovation, and shifting cultural economics.
The Hong Kong Heritage Museum is launching 'The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Meet Mona Lisa & Portraying the Renaissance' exhibition from May 1 to July 27. The show offers a multimedia immersive experience centered on Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa' and features Renaissance art treasures on loan from French and Italian cultural institutions, including the Musée du Louvre and the Musée national de la Renaissance. The opening ceremony on April 30 was attended by Hong Kong Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Rosanna Law, French Consul General Christile Drulhe, and other dignitaries.
The National Gallery in London presents a landmark exhibition of Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664), the first major retrospective of the Spanish Baroque master in Britain. In collaboration with the Louvre and the Art Institute of Chicago, the gallery has assembled over 40 works from institutions worldwide, including Seville and San Diego. The show features Zurbarán's electrifying religious paintings and radiant still lifes, displayed in darkened galleries that echo the chiaroscuro of his compositions. Highlights include the shattering *The Crucifixion* (1627) and *Saint Peter Nolasco's Vision of Saint Peter the Apostle* (1629), which demonstrate his hyper-real, sculptural approach to sacred subjects.
The Banco de la República has opened a new exhibition at the Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia (MAMU) in Bogotá titled "Francis Alÿs, juegxs de niñxs 1999–2025." Featuring 27 video works from the Belgian-born, Mexico-based artist's long-running series documenting children's games worldwide, the show opened on April 23 at El Parqueadero and the second floor of MAMU. Curated by Cuauhtémoc Medina and Virginia Roy, the exhibition includes footage from Afghanistan, India, Mexico, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Colombia, where a new work filmed in the Amazon with the Arara community is featured.
The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) and the Nasher Sculpture Center have jointly opened "Roy Lichtenstein in the Studio," a landmark two-venue exhibition celebrating the pop artist's centennial. Organized by curators Dr. Catherine Craft, Ade Omotosho, and Dr. Emily Friedman, the show features over 50 works gifted by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, which is closing its operations. The exhibition marks the first collaboration between the neighboring institutions since "Matisse as Sculptor" nearly 20 years ago, and includes prints, drawings, maquettes, and sculptures that establish Dallas as a study center for Lichtenstein's work.
LACMA is running a 50-week series called '50 Works 50 Weeks' leading up to the 2026 opening of its new David Geffen Galleries. The fourth installment highlights Millard Sheets's 1931 painting *Angel's Flight*, which depicts a historic Los Angeles funicular and tenement life. The work was inspired by George Bellows's *Cliff Dwellers* (1913), one of the first acquisitions by LACMA's predecessor, and was painted for the 1931 Carnegie International Exhibition. Sheets's painting won a prize at the Los Angeles Museum in 1932 and is now displayed alongside Bellows's work in the new galleries.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has opened its new David Geffen Galleries, a $724 million building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The structure features a floating floor, floor-to-ceiling windows, and minimalist concrete interiors that create a calm, light-filled space. The inaugural exhibition presents 26 interconnected galleries with no set path, displaying artworks from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to contemporary installations like Do Ho Suh's "Jagyeong Hall, Gyeongbok Palace" (2026), aiming to eliminate hierarchies of time, place, or genre.
The San Antonio Museum of Art is presenting "Maya Blue: Ancient Color, New Visions," an exhibition curated by Kristopher Driggers that explores the ancient Maya pigment known as Maya blue. The show features eight earthenware artworks and one stucco piece dating from 550 to 1,500 years ago, alongside five modernist and contemporary works that highlight the enduring influence of Indigenous knowledge. Objects on view include figurines, a censer, and jade pieces, many bearing traces of the distinctive blue pigment, which was difficult to produce and held sacred significance in Maya culture.
A new exhibition titled 'Art & Fashion' has opened at Lisbon's Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, curated by Eloy Martínez de la Pera Celada. It juxtaposes masterpieces from the museum's permanent collection—spanning ancient Egyptian artifacts to Rembrandt and Impressionist works—with historic and contemporary fashion pieces, including garments from Charles Frederick Worth, Yohji Yamamoto, Dries Van Noten, Alexander McQueen, and Sarah Burton's debut at Givenchy. The show is organized by regional provenance and temporarily replaces the museum's usual display while its Brutalist building undergoes renovation.