The Henry Moore Foundation has reopened the Sheep Field Barn gallery at Moore's former home and studio in Perry Green after a major architectural redesign by DSDHA. The reopening is marked by an exhibition of Moore's seminal Shelter Drawings, created when he first arrived at the estate during the Second World War.
Hong Kong’s art scene experienced a massive surge of activity in March 2026, anchored by Art Basel Hong Kong and Art Central. The city hosted 240 galleries at the main fair, drawing over 91,000 visitors, alongside numerous boutique fairs, auction previews, and major institutional exhibitions. Highlights included a reassembled 1964 Yayoi Kusama installation at Art Intelligence Global, a lecture by Zhang Xiaogang at Asia Art Archive, and a poignant solo show by artist duo Chow and Lin at SC Gallery.
Guillaume Cerutti has been dismissed from his role as president of the Pinault Collection, the vast private art collection of French billionaire François Pinault, after only 13 months in the position. The departure is sudden and unexplained, with the 89-year-old Pinault reportedly set to assume the duties himself. Separately, a long-forgotten bicorn hat belonging to Napoleon Bonaparte has been rediscovered in storage and will be displayed at the Musée Condé in France.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced a landmark exhibition titled "Giacometti in the Temple of Dendur," which will place the Swiss sculptor’s slender, modernist figures within the museum’s iconic 1st-century B.C.E. Egyptian temple. Opening in June, the show features fourteen loans from the Fondation Giacometti alongside works from the Met’s permanent collection, including the placement of "Walking Woman (I)" inside the temple’s offering hall to mimic ancient cult statuary.
Andrew Durbin’s new dual biography, *The Wonderful World That Almost Was*, explores the profound and volatile relationship between photographer Peter Hujar and artist Paul Thek. Spanning from their meeting in the late 1950s to their deaths from AIDS-related complications in the 1980s, the book details how their shared experiences—most notably a 1963 visit to the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo—fundamentally shaped their artistic trajectories. While Hujar captured the mummified remains in haunting photographs, Thek translated the encounter into his visceral "meat pieces" and wax effigies.
The Asian art landscape is undergoing significant shifts, headlined by the launch of Hive Art Fair in Seoul, which introduces a fee-free booth model focused on B2B corporate collaborations. Major institutional moves include the appointment of Melissa Chiu as the new director of the Guggenheim Museum and the opening of the Black Gold Museum in Riyadh. Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Museum of History has reopened with a controversial thematic revamp that emphasizes Chinese heritage over colonial history.
Art critic Martha Schwendener has released a new book titled 'The Society of the Screen: Vilém Flusser’s Radical Prescience,' exploring the prophetic theories of the late philosopher Vilém Flusser. Flusser, a Prague-born thinker who lived in Brazil and Europe, argued in the 1980s that society was transitioning from a text-based culture to one dominated by 'technical images,' a shift he believed would fundamentally alter human consciousness and the function of the 'apparatus' in daily life.
The Gelman Collection, featuring 11 essential masterpieces by Frida Kahlo, is at the center of a heated legal and cultural dispute following news of its transfer from Mexico to Spain. Acquired by the Zambrano family and managed by the Banco Santander Foundation, the collection is slated for a multi-year residency at the new Faro Santander cultural hub. Critics and historians argue the move potentially violates Mexico’s strict heritage laws, which designate Kahlo’s works as national monuments subject to permanent export bans.
German artist Bettina Pousttchi has unveiled a monumental steel sculpture titled "Vertical Highways V03" at New York’s Rockefeller Center. Crafted from repurposed roadway guardrails that have been bent and colored, the vertical installation stands in dialogue with the surrounding Art Deco architecture. The work, which has previously been exhibited in Paris, Berlin, and Istanbul, will remain on public display in Midtown Manhattan through April 17, 2026.
An exhibition titled "Churchill the Artist" has opened at Chartwell, Winston Churchill's former home in Kent, England. The show features personal artifacts like his paint-spattered Savile Row overalls and spectacles, alongside paintings, including the first U.K. display of his work "Quiet Waters," a gift to his friend Lord Beaverbrook.
The Victoria and Albert Museum is expanding its footprint with the opening of V&A East Museum in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on April 18. Led by Director Gus Casely-Hayford, the new five-story institution joins the recently opened V&A East Storehouse as part of the East Bank cultural quarter. The museum will debut with the "Why We Make" galleries, featuring over 500 objects and new commissions by artists such as Tania Bruguera, Carrie Mae Weems, and Thomas J. Price, whose 18-foot bronze sculpture anchors the museum's entrance.
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is launching the first major U.S. survey of Marcel Duchamp in over 50 years, organized in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The exhibition features approximately 300 works, including iconic pieces like "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" and "Fountain," organized in a strict linear chronology. This approach highlights Duchamp’s practice of remaking and replicating his own work, presenting replicas only at the point in time they were physically created rather than as stand-ins for lost originals.
The National Gallery in Athens is hosting a major exhibition celebrating the legacy of George Costakis, the visionary collector who rescued thousands of Russian and Soviet avant-garde works from state-sponsored oblivion. Born in Moscow to Greek parents, Costakis spent decades acquiring pieces by artists like Kazimir Malevich and Liubov Popova at a time when such art was vilified by the Soviet regime. The new exhibition reinterprets these works through the lens of humanity's relationship with the environment, marking 30 years since the collection was first shown in Greece.
The 2026 edition of Expo Chicago marks a strategic shift under the leadership of new director Kate Sierzputowski, featuring a leaner roster of 130 galleries at Navy Pier. The fair has introduced a more spacious layout and a new curatorial role, filled by Essence Harden, to deepen institutional ties and scholarly rigor. Notable participants include local mainstays like Monique Meloche Gallery and Gray, alongside international exhibitors from South Korea, South Africa, and Nigeria, as well as high-profile New York newcomers like Karma.
The Art Newspaper's 2025 survey of the world's 100 most visited art museums reveals a strong but uneven recovery from the pandemic, with total visits reaching over 200 million. New museums in the Middle East, East Asia, and major Western cities have been major hits with the public, driving significant attendance.
A once-common sales tactic in the contemporary art market, known as "buy-one, give-one" or "bogo," has significantly declined. Under this arrangement, collectors gained preferential access to in-demand artists' paintings by agreeing to purchase two works and donating one to a museum. The practice peaked from 2021 to 2023, with institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, acquiring works this way.
A major retrospective of Beryl Cook's work, titled "Pride and Joy," is on view at The Box in Plymouth, UK. The exhibition showcases the self-taught artist's vibrant paintings of plus-sized, joyful women in social settings, challenging the long-held art-world snobbery that previously excluded her work from major institutions like the Tate.
Two Renoir exhibitions at Musée d’Orsay explore the joy of human connection
The Musée d’Orsay in Paris is opening two concurrent exhibitions dedicated to Pierre-Auguste Renoir, titled 'Renoir and Love: A Joyful Modernity (1865-85)' and 'Renoir Drawings'. The shows focus on the first two decades of his career, featuring major works like 'Luncheon of the Boating Party' and rarely seen pieces from private collections, such as 'Confidence'. The exhibitions will later travel to the National Gallery in London and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is set to open its long-awaited and highly debated new building, the David Geffen Galleries. Designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, the $720 million concrete structure spans Wilshire Boulevard and replaces several older buildings with a single, elevated exhibition level. The opening marks the culmination of a decade-long project spearheaded by Director Michael Govan, featuring a non-linear layout that integrates the museum's encyclopedic collection into thematic displays rather than traditional chronological or regional divisions.
Scholar Thierry de Duve discusses the legacy of Marcel Duchamp in conjunction with a new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) featuring seven of the artist’s “boîtes-en-valise.” These portable miniature museums, created decades before Duchamp’s first formal retrospective, are framed as evidence of his genius in anticipating the institutional logic of the modern museum. The conversation explores how Duchamp’s provocative works, such as the readymade "Fountain," fundamentally altered the trajectory of art history and defined the "post-Duchamp" era.
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is launching the first comprehensive U.S. exhibition of Marcel Duchamp’s work in over 50 years. In an interview regarding the opening, renowned scholar Thierry de Duve discusses the artist's enduring legacy, from his infamous readymades like "Fountain" to his complex, labor-intensive works like the "Large Glass." The exhibition seeks to reconcile Duchamp’s identity as both a conceptual provocateur and a meticulous craftsman.
This week's obituary column honors several significant figures from the art world who recently passed away. The list includes celebrated New Yorker art writer Calvin Tomkins, Houston art patrons Brad and Leslie Bucher, British airbrush artist Philip Castle, master jeweler Thomas Gentille, art historian Charlotte Gere, Alabama sculptor Robert L. "Larry" Godwin, comic artist Sam Kieth, photographer Carol Kitman, and Russian-Italian artist Swietlan Nicholas Kraczyna.
The Palaces of Memory
The article reports that Israeli and US airstrikes on Isfahan, Iran, damaged several centuries-old palaces and cultural buildings. It draws a parallel to the destruction of cultural heritage in Gaza, suggesting this may be a targeted strategy to erase cultural identity and history, which are seen as threats to occupying forces.
A small non-commercial gallery in Brooklyn, Subtitled NYC, is hosting an exhibition by artists Pap Souleye Fall and Char Jeré that intentionally embraces "friction"—the slow, bumpy, and human experience—as a rejection of optimization culture in the art world. In other news, the Pentagon has reportedly banned press photographers after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth complained about unflattering images, and over 200 artists, including Brian Eno, have petitioned the British Museum to stop altering texts related to Palestine.
Over 350 Mexican cultural professionals have signed an open letter demanding greater transparency from the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL) regarding the management and export of the Gelman Collection. The collection, recently acquired by the Zambrano family and rebranded as the Gelman Santander Collection, includes 18 works by Frida Kahlo and other major 20th-century Mexican artists, with 30 pieces designated as national artistic monuments requiring state oversight.
Author and Frieze Magazine editor-in-chief Andrew Durbin has released a dual biography titled 'The Wonderful World That Almost Was,' chronicling the lives and creative partnership of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek. The book focuses on their relationship from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, detailing their collaborative influence and the development of their respective practices in photography and sculpture before both died of AIDS-related complications in the late 1980s.
The Camden Art Centre in London is hosting a significant survey of the late Guyanese-British artist Donald Locke, marking the final stop of a UK touring exhibition. Locke is celebrated for blending the formal language of minimalism and modernism with the potent symbols of Guyanese and Black American culture, effectively challenging the traditional art world's Eurocentric perspectives through his work in ceramics, painting, and sculpture.
The National Gallery in London has selected Japanese architect Kengo Kuma to design a major new wing as part of its ambitious £750m "Project Domani." Kuma, known for the Tokyo Olympic stadium and V&A Dundee, beat out high-profile competitors including Norman Foster and Renzo Piano. The expansion will occupy a site near Trafalgar Square currently housing a hotel and office complex, and is supported by record-breaking £150m donations from both the Julia Rausing Trust and the Crankstart foundation.
Cartoonist and surrealist Glen Baxter has died at the age of 82. He was celebrated for his distinctive style, which blended deadpan captions with pop art-inspired scenes featuring characters like cowboys and spacemen in bizarre situations. His work appeared in major publications like the New Yorker and the Observer, and he was also a staple of humorous greeting cards.
The article is a weekly art roundup highlighting several major exhibitions opening in London and Cambridge. It spotlights a new show of nature-themed paintings by Cecily Brown at the Serpentine Gallery, ceramics by Phoebe Collings-James at Pitzhanger Manor, a career survey of Turner Prize-winner Veronica Ryan at the Whitechapel Gallery, a Frank Bowling retrospective at The Fitzwilliam Museum, and a presentation of Aboriginal Australian art at Edel Assanti. The piece also features a powerful war photograph from Iraq and includes brief news items on topics ranging from a Matisse retrospective to potential museum entry fees.