You Can Become an Artwork at This New York Museum—Thanks to Piero Manzoni

Magazzino Italian Art in Cold Spring, New York, is reactivating Piero Manzoni’s seminal conceptual work, "Magical Base" (1961). On April 10 and 11, visitors can stand on the artist's wooden pedestal to be documented as living sculptures, receiving a photograph and record of their participation. The activation is part of the larger exhibition "Piero Manzoni: Total Space," which also features the artist's "Achromes" and immersive, unrealized environments like the "Phosphorescent Room" and "Hairy Room."

A Brush With... Lorna Simpson—podcast

Artist Lorna Simpson joins the 'A Brush With...' podcast to discuss the vast array of cultural influences that have shaped her conceptual practice. From her early photo-text works to her recent large-scale paintings, Simpson details how she subverts conventional framing of identity and navigates the boundaries between reality, fiction, and historical archives. She highlights the specific impact of figures such as David Hammons, Francisco de Zurbarán, and filmmaker Chantal Akerman on her evolving visual language.

How Lillian Bassman Pushed Fashion Photography to the Edge of Abstraction

A new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Lillian Bassman: Harper's Bazaar and Beyond," highlights the pioneering work of fashion photographer Lillian Bassman. The show reveals how Bassman, through darkroom experimentation like selective exposure and blowing cigarette smoke under the enlarger, created moody, abstract images that often reduced clothing to mere suggestion, pushing the boundaries of commercial fashion photography in the 1940s and 1950s.

Exhibition explores how the US shaped Joan Miró—and he it

A major exhibition titled "Miró and the United States" opens at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, exploring the profound artistic dialogue between Catalan artist Joan Miró and the United States. The show features Miró's paintings, sculptures, and works on paper alongside pieces by American contemporaries like Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Alexander Calder, tracing how his visits and exposure to the New York art scene influenced his work and, in turn, inspired a generation of post-war American artists.

Tino Sehgal at Museo de Arte de Zapopan

tino sehgal

Renowned performance artist Tino Sehgal has launched a major self-titled exhibition at the Museo de Arte de Zapopan (MAZ) in Guadalajara, Mexico. The show’s centerpiece is 'Andador 20 de Noviembre,' a site-specific adaptation of his acclaimed 2012 work 'These Associations.' Staged on a historic pedestrian thoroughfare, the performance involves a 'hive mind' of participants who transition from slow-motion movements to jogging and engaging the public with intimate personal vignettes, creating an immersive experience that blurs the line between audience and performer.

goodman gallery laura lima

Brazilian artist Laura Lima is currently the subject of two major concurrent solo exhibitions in London. At Goodman Gallery, her show "Communal Nests for Windows, Balconies, Verandas, Gardens, and Forests" features woven, nest-like sculptures made from organic materials like jute and sisal, which she encourages collectors to install outdoors to be used by wildlife. Simultaneously, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is hosting "The Drawing Drawing," a career-spanning survey centered on a site-specific performance piece involving life models and artists on mechanized orbiting platforms.

art bites robert rauschenberg talking heads album cover

Robert Rauschenberg designed the cover for Talking Heads' 1983 album *Speaking in Tongues*, creating a limited-edition LP package with three plastic discs featuring cyan, magenta, and yellow designs that produced a full-color, kinetic composition when overlaid on the spinning record. The project stemmed from a friendship between Rauschenberg and frontman David Byrne, who met after Byrne saw Rauschenberg's photo collages in a New York gallery. Despite production challenges that limited the design to a special edition, the album won a Grammy for best album cover.

ralph lemon artnews awards 2025 lifetime achievement

Ralph Lemon has been awarded the 2025 ARTnews Lifetime Achievement Award for his multidisciplinary practice spanning dance, drawing, painting, installation, sculpture, and writing. The article highlights his career trajectory from founding the Ralph Lemon Dance Company to disbanding it in 1995 to focus on broader artistic collaborations. Central to his work is the Geography Trilogy (1996–2004) and his long-term collaboration with Walter Carter, a former Mississippi sharecropper, whose life and family became a recurring subject. Lemon's recent exhibition "Ceremonies Out of the Air: Ralph Lemon" at MoMA PS1 (November 14, 2024–March 24, 2025), curated by Connie Butler and Thomas Lax, featured videos, found African sculptures, drawings, and a four-channel performance piece, Rant (redux), with Kevin Beasley and Okwui Okpokwasili.

ed ruscha collaborating andsons holiday chocolate bar

Ed Ruscha has collaborated with Los Angeles-based boutique chocolatier andSons to create a limited-edition chocolate bar. The bar is molded to resemble California's Central Valley topography and contains Peruvian dark chocolate, sea salt from Tomales Bay, and blood orange olive oil from Sonoma County. Packaged in an orange box with a reproduction of Ruscha's 1971 lithograph *Made in California*, only 300 bars will be produced, priced at $295 each, available starting early December 2025.

symbolism art institute chicag van gogh munch redon

The Art Institute of Chicago has opened an exhibition titled 'Strange Realities: The Symbolist Imagination,' drawn entirely from its own collection. The show features works by Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Odilon Redon, and lesser-known artists like Gustaf Fjaestad, aiming to present Symbolism through its visual output rather than its often vague literary manifestos. The exhibition sidesteps strict definitions of the movement, instead offering a broad range of works from the late 1880s to early 1900s that evoke mystery, doubt, and inner realities.

robert rauschenberg dance guggenheim

A gala performance at the Guggenheim Museum in New York marked what would have been Robert Rauschenberg's 100th birthday, featuring dancers performing Paul Taylor's 'Tracer' (1962), for which Rauschenberg created costumes and sets—including a spinning bicycle wheel that served as a portal to the exhibition above. The show, 'Robert Rauschenberg: Life Can’t Be Stopped,' opened in one of the museum's tower galleries and runs through May 3, presenting select works from the Guggenheim's collections and loans from the artist's foundation, including major pieces like 'Barge' (1962–63), the largest silkscreen painting Rauschenberg made in the early 1960s, back in New York for the first time in nearly 25 years.

ken jacobs film artist dead

Ken Jacobs, a pioneering experimental filmmaker who blurred the boundaries between cinema and visual art, died at 92 in New York from kidney failure, according to his son, filmmaker Azazel Jacobs. A key figure in the postwar New York underground alongside Jack Smith and Jonas Mekas, Jacobs challenged conventional filmmaking through works like "Blonde Cobra" (1963) and "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" (1969), using techniques such as live radio accompaniment, slow motion, and looping to deconstruct the medium. He studied painting under Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann and described his own work as "Abstract Expressionist cinema," often drawing direct comparisons between film and painting.

sam barsky sweaters kohler r u still painting

Sam Barsky, a self-taught knitter who learned from a library book in 1999 after dropping out of nursing school due to chronic illness, creates intricate pictorial sweaters entirely freehand without patterns. His sweaters depict landscapes and landmarks—such as Central Park, the London Bridge, and the Twin Towers—and he often photographs himself wearing them at the actual sites. His first museum solo exhibition, “It’s Not the Same Without You,” recently closed at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin, and his work also appeared in the group show “R U Still Painting???” in Manhattan alongside artists like assume vivid astro focus and Uri Aran.

elsa schiaparelli va museum show

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London will host "Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art" in March, the first major institutional exhibition in the U.K. dedicated to Italian couturier Elsa Schiaparelli. The show will feature around 200 objects, including garments, accessories, sculptures, and paintings, highlighting Schiaparelli's revolutionary use of color, surrealist collaborations with artists like Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, and Man Ray, and her impact on 20th-century fashion. Key pieces include the Skeleton Dress, Tears Dress, and Shoe Hat, alongside works by Picasso and others that contextualize her creative circle.

must see site santa fe international cecilia alemani once within a time

Curator Cecilia Alemani has organized the latest edition of the SITE Santa Fe International, titled "Once Within a Time," inspired by Godfrey Reggio's 2022 film of the same name. The exhibition, which opened in 2025, centers on storytelling and features Reggio's trippy 55-minute film alongside works by over a dozen artists, including Helen Cordero, D.H. Lawrence, Louise Bonnet, Norman Zammitt, Joseph Yoakum, John McCracken, Karla Knight, and Ali Cherri. The show extends beyond SITE Santa Fe to multiple venues across New Mexico, such as the New Mexico Military Museum, a hotel, and a cannabis shop, weaving together themes of eros, energy, the military, and the state's archetypes like UFOs, Land art, and Native spirituality.

curator xiaowen zhu interview

Xiaowen Zhu, director of Esea Contemporary in Manchester, discusses her journey and the evolving representation of Asian artists in the global art world. Born in Shanghai, Zhu reflects on her formative encounter with Ai Weiwei's *Fairytale* at Documenta 12 in 2007, which shaped her understanding of diaspora and belonging. She now leads the UK's only non-profit art center dedicated to East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) artists, and serves on the British Council’s Arts and Creative Economy Advisory Group.

jennie c jones met roof commission

Artist Jennie C. Jones has unveiled "Ensemble" (2025), a rooftop commission at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art featuring three monumental, wind-activated stringed instruments—an Aeolian harp, zither, and one-string—that visitors are asked not to touch. The sculptures, coated in deep red powdered aluminum and concrete panels, are designed to be played by the breeze, though wind did not cooperate during the press preview. Jones drew inspiration from the Met's collection of 5,000 musical instruments, African American folk instrument makers like Moses Williams and Louis Dotson, and Minimalist abstraction, creating a work that explores anticipation and the sonic potential of untouchable objects.

trial ron perelman insurance claim warhol ruscha twombly

The trial between billionaire collector Ron Perelman and a group of insurers began Monday in New York Supreme Court, nearly seven years after a 2018 fire at his Hamptons estate, the Creeks. Perelman claims the fire damaged five paintings—two by Andy Warhol, two by Ed Ruscha, and one by Cy Twombly—insured for a collective $400 million, arguing the works lost their "oomph" due to smoke, humidity, and relocation during the fire. The insurers, including Lloyd's of London, Chubb, and AIG, contend the works sustained no detectable damage and that Perelman's claim is a "money grab" filed amid serious financial difficulties, including margin calls and the sale of 71 artworks for $963 million between 2020 and 2022.

isp alumni open letter whitney museum palestine performance

On Monday, Whitney Museum director Scott Rothkopf announced via email that the museum would "pause" the 2025–26 academic year of its Independent Study Program (ISP), citing a lack of a director and strained operations. The announcement coincided with an open letter from high-profile ISP alumni—including artists Emily Jacir, Andrea Fraser, Mark Dion, and others—denouncing the museum's cancellation of a pro-Palestine performance titled "No Aesthetics Outside My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance" by artists Fadl Fakhouri, Noel Maghathe, and Fargo Tbakhi. The performance was canceled two days before it was to be part of an ISP curatorial exhibition, after the museum accused the artists of "valorizing specific acts of violence" and singling out community members based on belief systems. The letter also referenced the earlier demotion of ISP director Gregg Bordowitz in February.

lorde man of the year new york earth room

Lorde released a music video for her song "Man Of The Year," the second single from her upcoming album *Virgin*. The video features the singer in a room filled with dirt, which fans quickly noted resembles Walter De Maria's iconic installation *New York Earth Room*. Lorde has acknowledged the homage, describing the work as an inspiration for the song's sound and her personal rebirth. The video was not filmed in the actual installation, which is permanently housed in SoHo and managed by the Dia Art Foundation.

bill horrigan curator video wexner center dead

Bill Horrigan, a pioneering curator who transformed Ohio's Wexner Center for the Arts into a leading destination for film and video art, died on May 15 after a long battle with amyloidosis. Over 34 years at the Columbus museum, he built a celebrated film and video program that attracted world-renowned artists like Chris Marker and Julia Scher, and organized landmark exhibitions for Mark Dion, Gretchen Bender, and Shirin Neshat. He also served as a curatorial adviser for the 2008 Whitney Biennial, helped program the Video Data Bank, and led the 1989 edition of Video Against AIDS.

valparaiso university brauer museum can sell paintings

The Porter County Superior Court has approved Valparaiso University's plan to sell three valuable paintings from the Brauer Museum of Art—works by Frederic Edwin Church, Childe Hassam, and Georgia O'Keeffe valued at around $20 million—to fund renovations to freshman dormitories. The decision follows a year and a half of controversy, including a lawsuit from the museum's founding director Richard Brauer and condemnation from major museum professional organizations, who argue that deaccessioning art for non-collection purposes violates ethical standards.

yasunao tone fluxus dead

Yasunao Tone, a composer, theorist, and artist associated with the Fluxus movement, has died at age 90. Artists Space, which hosted his first US retrospective in 2023, announced his passing due to age-related complications. Tone was known for experimental music that used unorthodox methods such as altering instruments with ice, scratching CDs to create white noise, and producing graphic scores that resembled abstract artworks. He co-founded Group Ongaku in 1961, collaborated with key figures like Nam June Paik, George Maciunas, and Yoko Ono, and later explored digital corruption of audio files and AI. His work influenced experimental music and sound art, with a 2023 profile in AnOther Magazine stating he "changed music forever."

lupe fiasco ghotiing mit public art

Lupe Fiasco, the Grammy-winning rapper and MIT visiting scholar, has created "GHOTIING MIT," an audio tour featuring seven tracks improvised and recorded on-site at public artworks around the MIT List Visual Arts Center campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Using an iPad, microphone, and solar panels, Fiasco responds to sculptures by Alexander Calder, Antony Gormley, Jacques Lipchitz, and Jaume Plensa, among others, blending rap with field recordings to capture the immediacy of each piece. He terms this spontaneous creative process "ghotiing" (pronounced "fishing"), likening it to the Impressionist practice of painting en plein air.

mexico francisco toledo dobel tequila

Francisco Toledo, the renowned Mexican artist, collaborated with Maestro Dobel Tequila on a limited-edition luxury tequila vessel before his death. The Dobel Tequila Grandes Maestros Collection: The Francisco Toledo Edition features the world's first extra añejo tequila finished in mezcal barrels, housed in a hand-engraved bottle with a sculptural wooden cube display. Only 15 of the 281 editions are available in the U.S. market, each priced at $5,000, and are now being auctioned via Artnet.

ArtReview April & May 2026 Issue Out Now

ArtReview's April & May 2026 issue explores boundaries and limitations in art, with a focus on the 61st Venice Biennale opening amid global conflicts. The cover features Japanese-American performance artist Ei Arakawa-Nash with his husband and twin babies, whose collaborative installation at the Japanese Pavilion incorporates the unpredictability of childcare. The issue includes coverage of controversial national pavilions (Russian, Israeli, American), profiles of artists representing Mongolia and Singapore, and features on Beverly Buchanan, Arthur Jafa, Richard Prince, and Zehra Doğan's report from Rojava. It also reviews the 82nd Whitney Biennial, the 25th Biennale of Sydney, and the 15th Shanghai Biennale.

Jon Batiste, Troye Sivan, and Amy Sherald lead a Met Gala 2026 rooted in art-historical homage.

The 2026 Met Gala, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, centered on the theme "Fashion Is Art," marking the opening of the Costume Institute's spring exhibition "Costume Art." Attendees including Jon Batiste, Troye Sivan, and artist Amy Sherald interpreted the dress code through art-historical references, with Sivan wearing Prada to channel Robert Mapplethorpe. The event brought together fashion, art, entertainment, and high society to make a deliberate case for fashion as a legitimate art form.

Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker and Kim Sion to curate 2027 Hepworth Wakefield show.

Musician Jarvis Cocker, best known as the frontman of the band Pulp, and his wife Kim Sion, a creative consultant, will curate a group exhibition titled “The Hodge Podge” at The Hepworth Wakefield in the UK in 2027. The show will feature a diverse range of artworks across different eras and media, focusing on artists who challenge conventional definitions of art. This marks Cocker’s first curatorial project at a major institution.

Valie Export, Avant-Garde Icon and Feminist Trailblazer, Dies at 85

Valie Export, the Austrian avant-garde artist known for her radical feminist performances, films, and sculptures, has died at age 85. Her gallery, Thaddaeus Ropac, announced her death, noting her groundbreaking work in the 1960s and 1970s introduced a new form of embodied feminism to Europe. Export, born Waltraud Lehner in Linz, Austria, changed her name in 1967 and became known for provocative works such as "Aktionshose: Genitalpanik" (1969) and "Tap and Touch Cinema" (1968–1971), which challenged voyeurism and the sexualization of women's bodies. She also co-founded the Austrian Filmmakers Cooperative in 1968 and was commissioned by the Austrian Broadcast Corporation for her film "Facing the Family" (1971).

Still in Sound

The Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado, has opened a new exhibition titled "Still in Sound," which pairs abstract paintings by Clyfford Still with original sonic interpretations by contemporary sound artists. Co-curated by Bailey Placzek, the museum's curator of collections, and British multidisciplinary artist Ben Coleman, the exhibition features works by artists Maria Chávez, Maya Dunietz, Kalyn Heffernan, Matana Roberts, and Michael Schumacher. Each artist selected a Still painting and composed a sound piece in response, with the compositions playing in shuffled order to create a non-linear, immersive experience. A digital guide offers full recordings, and Denver artist Phillip David Stearns designed an interactive component based on Still's pastel drawings. The exhibition runs through February 2027.