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The Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art has opened "Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art," the largest-ever exhibition dedicated to LGBTQ+ African art. The show, curated by Kevin Dumouchelle and Serubiri Moses, features nearly 60 works by 30 artists from across Africa and its diasporas, spanning photography, painting, tapestry, collage, and sculpture.
Two new winter exhibitions open February 11, 2026 at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University: “Photorealism in Focus” and “Yinka Shonibare: Sanctuary.” The first brings together pioneering Photorealists like Richard Estes, Charles S. Bell, Audrey Flack, and Ralph Goings alongside contemporary artists, exploring the blurred line between painting and photography. The second features the U.S. debut of Yinka Shonibare’s installation “Sanctuary City” (2024), comprising 18 illuminated miniature buildings that served as historical refuges, lined with the artist’s signature Dutch wax textiles. Both shows are curated by Gannit Akori, the museum’s director and chief curator.
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark is opening "Basquiat: Headstrong," the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to Jean-Michel Basquiat's depictions of the human head, focusing on works from 1981 to 1983. These early drawings on paper, many made with oil sticks and bearing traces of studio debris, were largely hidden in his studio during his lifetime and only reached a wider audience after his death, notably through a 1990 show at Robert Miller Gallery in New York. The exhibition includes a single painting, Untitled (1982), which sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby's in 2017.
January brings a full slate of exhibitions across the Bay Area timed to San Francisco Art Week, headlined by the 12th edition of FOG Design+Art at Fort Mason Center (January 21-25). Galerie highlights nine must-see shows, including "100 Candleholders" at Blunk Space, where international artists create candleholders inspired by JB Blunk; "New Work: Sheila Hicks" at SFMOMA, featuring fiber installations tied to personal places; "The Houses Are Haunted By White Night-Gowns" at The Future Perfect, a furniture-and-bowls installation by Studio Ahead; and "Auudi Dorsey: What’s Left, Never Left" at Jonathan Carver Moore, where the painter excavates histories of African American leisure sites.
A roundup of art exhibitions opening in India during January-February 2026, curated to help readers plan their cultural calendar. Featured shows include 'Signs of Life' by Kunel Gaur at Method-Delhi, 'Chhoti Baatein, Bade Sapne' by Rajesh Ram at Palette Art Gallery, 'Zameen' at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture in Kolkata, and three exhibitions by Emami Art at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity, covering themes from identity and ecology to printmaking and regional artistic lineages.
SF Art Week returns with a packed schedule of events across San Francisco, including the Recology Artist in Residence exhibition featuring work made from materials sourced at the city's recycling center, a mural painting and unveiling by eL Seed in collaboration with incarcerated artists at San Quentin, and the launch of ICA SF's nomadic model with exhibitions by Tara Donovan and Lily Kwong at the Transamerica Pyramid Center. Other highlights include gallery openings at Paul Thiebaud Gallery, frame-making demonstrations at Aedicule, a new art fair at the Fairmont Hotel, and a curator-led tour at SHACK15, alongside workshops, a rave-themed reception at the Asian Art Museum, and a conversation between artist Lava Thomas and curator Key Jo Lee at MoAD.
Lehmann Maupin has secured a permanent space on the first floor of No. 9 Cork Street in London's Mayfair, the gallery hub operated by Frieze. The gallery will hold three to four exhibitions annually in the ground-floor gallery, starting with a show of British painter Freya Douglas-Morris on February 26, priced between £40,000 and £60,000. The upstairs viewing space opened with Billy Childish and will feature Catherine Opie later this year. The gallery also plans to develop its secondary market business from this London base.
A major exhibition of William Nicholson (1872-1949) has opened at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, running from 22 November 2025 to 10 May 2026. It is his first major show in 20 years and spans his entire career, featuring bold posters, woodcuts, portraits, still lifes, and graphic works. The exhibition highlights his collaborations under the name J & W Beggarstaff, his celebrated series *An Alphabet* and *London Types*, and his portraits of both society figures and people from lower social classes. It also includes his book illustrations for works such as *The Velveteen Rabbit* and *Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man*.
Artsy has published a list of 11 must-see museum exhibitions scheduled for 2026, highlighting major retrospectives and biennials. The article opens by reflecting on 2025's trend of amplifying marginalized voices, citing exhibitions like "Paris Noir" at the Centre Pompidou and the Turner Prize win of neurodivergent artist Nnena Kalu. For 2026, the piece notes a shift toward large-scale retrospectives of established figures, including Tracey Emin's "A Second Life" at Tate Modern and "Raphael: Sublime Poetry" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, alongside major biennials such as the 61st Venice Biennale, the 18th Lyon Biennale, and the 16th Gwangju Biennale.
Two exhibitions opening in January at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis explore themes of cultural origins, legacy, and preservation in California art. "Sahar Khoury: Weights & Measures" (Jan. 7–June 20) is the Bay Area sculptor's largest solo show to date, featuring works in ceramics, metal, papier-mâché, and found objects that interrogate value systems, personal and political symbols, and site sensitivity. The emotional centerpiece, "The Elephant in the Room," evokes ruins and marketplaces of North Africa and Southwest Asia. Concurrently, "Backstory: Digitizing the Museum Collection" (Jan. 21–May 2) turns the museum into a working digitization lab, displaying signature works from UC Davis’ Fine Art Collection while revealing the process of preserving art for posterity.
Vulture's 2026 Preview highlights ten highly anticipated art exhibitions across New York City museums and galleries. Featured shows include Raphael at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Marcel Duchamp retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Biennial, and solo presentations by artists such as Paul Chan at Greene Naftali, Carol Bove at the Whitney, and a MacArthur-winning artist at Marian Goodman Gallery. Other venues include the Morgan Library & Museum, The Drawing Center, the Guggenheim Museum, Canada gallery, and the New Museum, which is expected to reopen after delays.
Central Texas museums and arts organizations, including the Blanton Museum of Art, the Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the San Antonio Museum of Art, and The Contemporary at Blue Star, have announced a slate of spring 2026 exhibitions. Highlights include the Georgetown Art Center's four-show season featuring Print Austin (a salon-style invitational for juried-exhibition rejects), Neo Geo: Geometry and Color by Larry Akers and Janet Brooks, Chris Ireland's photo-based Dead Letter Office, and Seeing Double – Two Views of Texas. The Blanton will present Contemporary Project 16: Tammy Nguyen (January 17–September 20), American Modernism from the Charles Butt Collection (March 8–August 2), and Run the Code: Data-Driven Art Decoded, a collaboration with the Thoma Foundation showcasing digital and AI-generated works by artists like Jenny Holzer.
This article from Londonist provides a guide to regular late-night openings at London art galleries, focusing on venues that stay open until at least 7pm on specific weeknights without special events. It lists the ICA (open Tuesday-Sunday until 11pm), South London Gallery (open until 9pm on Wednesdays), Wellcome Collection (open until 8pm on Thursdays), Whitechapel Gallery (open until 9pm on Thursdays with free entry), and the National Portrait Gallery (open late on Fridays). The guide emphasizes quiet, after-hours access for people with nine-to-five jobs who find it hard to visit during standard hours.
The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard)’s Hessel Museum of Art will present "Betty Parsons: An Expanded World" from June 27 to October 18, 2026. It is the first major retrospective to examine Betty Parsons (1900-1982) as both a pioneering abstract artist and a trailblazing gallerist who launched the careers of Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock. Organized by curator Kelly Taxter with artist Amy Sillman, the exhibition features approximately 80 works spanning painting, sculpture, and works on paper, alongside a new film by G. Anthony Svatek and Kaija Siirala about the Betty Parsons Gallery.
The Argentine real-estate developer and collector Eduardo F. Costantini has acquired the entire Daros Latinamerica Collection, adding 1,233 works by 117 artists to his Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Malba). Previously housed in Zurich, the collection includes key pieces by artists such as Ana Mendieta, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, and Cildo Meireles. The acquisition brings 75 new artists to Malba's holdings, including Doris Salcedo and Jesús Rafael Soto, and strengthens existing ones like Guillermo Kuitca and León Ferrari. Plans for a museum expansion to accommodate the works are already underway.
The article highlights 10 galleries that achieved significant growth and recognition in 2025, despite a challenging market environment marked by tariffs and trade uncertainty. Featured galleries include Tokyo's CON__, which gained global visibility through standout presentations at Frieze Seoul and NADA New York; Munich and New York-based LOHAUS SOMINSKY, which debuted at Art Basel Miami Beach and opened a Tribeca outpost; and Chicago's Hans Goodrich, which quickly established itself with a cross-generational exhibition program and international fair appearances.
Napoles Marty, a US painter and sculptor based between Connecticut and Rhode Island, has won the 2026 Frieze Los Angeles Impact Prize. The award includes $25,000 and a solo stand at the fair, which opens in late February at Santa Monica Airport. Marty, whose work draws on dream imagery and his Cuban heritage, was selected by a jury including collectors Allison K. Berg and Maisha C. Clark. He will collaborate with fair organizers and Diana Nawi, curator of special projects at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, on his presentation. Marty was previously a member of the sixth cohort of Nxthvn, a Connecticut-based arts incubator founded by artist Titus Kaphar and impact investor Jason Price.
Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson's major survey exhibition 'Presence' has opened at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in Brisbane, Australia. Curated by Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow, the show synthesizes three decades of Eliasson's immersive installations, photography, and sculpture, including iconic works like 'Riverbed' (2014) and 'The cubic structural evolution project' (2004), both from QAGOMA's permanent collection. A spectacular new installation also titled 'Presence' features a pulsing artificial sun using mirrors and monofrequency light to create an illusion of infinite space.
A new Olafur Eliasson exhibition, 'Olafur Eliasson: Presence,' opens December 6, 2025, at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) and runs through July 12, 2026. The immersive show transforms GOMA’s ground floor with multi-sensory installations spanning over three decades of the artist’s career, including early works like 'Beauty' (1993) and 'Riverbed' (2014), alongside new commissions such as the large-scale 'Presence 2025' and the magnetic sculpture 'Lost compass' (2013). Visitors are invited to become co-creators, navigating environments that play with light, mist, mirrors, and even a LEGO city.
Hyperallergic's staff and contributors present their picks for the best New York City exhibitions of 2025, highlighting a year marked by major museum reopenings, including the Studio Museum in Harlem after a seven-year hiatus and the Frick's expansion. Notable shows include Amy Sherald's 'American Sublime' at the Whitney Museum, Rashid Johnson at the Guggenheim, Wifredo Lam at MoMA, and surveys of Indigenous design at the Ford Foundation Gallery, Seydou Keïta at the Brooklyn Museum, and hometown heroes like Jack Whitten at MoMA and Coco Fusco at El Museo del Barrio. The list also features Saya Woolfalk at the Museum of Arts and Design, Nayland Blake at Matthew Marks Gallery, and Ben Shahn at the Jewish Museum.
The article offers a behind-the-scenes look at British artist David Shrigley’s Brighton studio, where he prepares for a London exhibition titled 'Exhibition of Old Rope' at Stephen Friedman Gallery. Shrigley, known for his humorous, naive-style paintings and conceptual approach, describes his process of working from word lists generated by assistants, producing up to 12 paintings a day, and embracing absurdity and chance. The studio, a former office building he bought two years ago, is filled with recent large-scale works, a guitar collection, and studio paraphernalia, reflecting his playful yet disciplined practice.
A roundup of the best art shows of 2025 highlights standout exhibitions across New York galleries and museums. Notable shows include Reverend Joyce McDonald's first major exhibition at the Bronx Museum, Laura Owens' interactive takeover at Matthew Marks Gallery, and Harkawik's refrigerator-mounted photo display featuring 280 artists. Other featured shows include Maxwell Gallery's unsold works, Elisabeth Kley's curator-driven show at White Columns, Cady Noland's sculpture at Gagosian, and Falcon Art Collective's group show in an unfinished midtown building. The article also mentions Alannah Farrell's trans-themed work in Chinatown, Bradford's blue-field paintings at Canada gallery, and the reopening of institutions like the Frick Collection.
Inman Gallery in Houston is relocating to a new 8,500-square-foot space at 1502 Alabama Street in the Midtown neighborhood, after 20 years at its North Main Street location. Owner Kerry Inman will celebrate the move with a group exhibition titled *The Long View*, opening December 6, featuring 37 artists including JooYoung Choi, Erika Blumenfeld, and Angela Fraleigh. The building, originally an auto-body shop and later the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, was renovated by Dillon Kyle Architects to include three exhibition galleries, with a design concept likened to a geode—rough exterior, jewel-like interior.
Untitled Art, Miami Beach 2025 opened for VIP day on December 2nd under the Miami sun, featuring 160 galleries from 29 countries—a slight decrease from 2024's 176 exhibitors. The fair introduced a new Artist Spotlight sector for solo booths and a curated Nest sector led by Jonny Tanna, grouping 36 emerging galleries like Cierra Britton Gallery and Sorondo in an open-format layout. Highlights include Carvalho's booth with works by Élise Peroi, Rosalind Tallmadge, Yulia Iosilzon, and Rachel Mica Weiss, and SGR Galería's solo presentation of Colombian artist Lorena Torres. The fair's director, Clara Andrade Pereira, emphasized championing emerging talent and strengthening community.
NADA Miami and Untitled Art opened on December 2, 2024, in Miami Beach, both targeting the mid-tier and emerging art markets. The fairs saw strong early sales and a predominantly American and local audience, with fewer European and Asian collectors than in previous years. Dealers reported a rebound in market confidence, with sales activity signaling a recovery in the mid-career and emerging segments, though not reaching the frenzy of earlier boom periods. The fairs also showcased a shift away from bright figuration and identity politics toward deeper reflections on reality, mediatization, and materiality.
Woody De Othello, a self-described '90s kid from North Miami Beach now based in Oakland, California, is preparing for his largest museum exhibition to date at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), on view through June 28, 2026. The exhibition, titled 'Coming Forth by Day,' marks a homecoming for the artist, whose Funk Art–inflected ceramic and bronze sculptures of animated household objects—telephones, clocks, fans—have gained significant attention. Othello's work, which blends cartoonish aesthetics with personal narrative, has been featured in biennials at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Orange County Museum of Art. He works out of two East Bay studios, one a former gym for painting and ceramics, the other a woodshop for frames and pedestals, and has been represented by San Francisco dealer Jessica Silverman since 2018.
The third edition of Art Mumbai (13-16 November) saw strong sales and record auction prices for Indian Modernists, including MF Husain's *Gram Yatra* (1953) becoming the first Indian painting to sell for over $10 million. The fair, held amid surging private wealth in India, featured leading contemporary galleries reporting up to 90% sales on opening day, with works priced from $1,000 to $300,000. A recent reduction in India's goods and service tax on art from 12% to 5% has further boosted the market.
San Francisco museums are presenting a wide array of exhibitions in November 2025, with several closing soon and others opening in the coming months. At SFMOMA, major shows include "Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules" (through April 19), "KAWS: Family" (through May 3, 2026), the photography exhibition "(Re)Constructing History" featuring Carrie Mae Weems, Nona Faustine, Carla Williams, and Dawoud Bey, and "Suzanne Jackson: What is Love," the artist's first retrospective. The Institute for Contemporary Art hosts "Midnight March" by Masako Miki and "stay, take your time, my love" by David Antonio Cruz, both closing Dec. 7. The Asian Art Museum presents "Rave into the Future: Art in Motion" closing Jan. 12, and the Legion of Honor will open "Drawn to Venice" from Jan. 24 to Aug. 2, 2026. The Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Awards Exhibition, a collaboration with the San Francisco Foundation and SOMarts, closes Dec. 7.
The Portland Art Museum (PAM) will reopen its completely renovated campus on November 20 after nine years and $111 million in construction. The centerpiece is the Mark Rothko Pavilion, a glass structure that connects the museum's two historic buildings—the Main Building (1932) and the Mark Building (1924)—replacing a confusing underground tunnel that often caused visitors to miss entire exhibitions. The renovation touches 100,000 square feet total, including a new media gallery, upgraded spaces, and a 24/7 public passageway through the pavilion. An exhibition of eight paintings by Mark Rothko, who spent his childhood in Portland, will open alongside the pavilion.
The fifth edition of 'Forever is Now' has transformed the Giza Plateau in Cairo into an open-air gallery, featuring 10 large-scale contemporary art installations by international artists. Running until December 6, the exhibition is organized by the cultural platform Art D’Egypte and invites artists to explore the theme of immortality, sparking a dialogue between ancient Egyptian heritage and contemporary art. Notable participants include 92-year-old Nobel Peace Prize nominee Michelangelo Pistoletto, Portuguese artist Vhils (Alexandre Farto), US-based Alex Proba, the Russian Recycle Group, Lebanese artist Nadim Karam, Franco-Beninese ceramicist King Houdekpinkou, and Turkish sculptor Mert Ege Köse, among others.