In Venice, Hernan Bas Paints the Problem With Modern Tourism

American artist Hernan Bas has created a series of 40 paintings critiquing modern tourism, set to open in May at Ca' Pesaro–International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice during the Biennale. Titled "The Visitors," the exhibition depicts young white male American tourists engaging in objectionable behaviors worldwide—from begpacking to visiting disaster sites—painted with Bas's signature attention to clothing details. The works were developed during a residency in Venice, a city emblematic of overtourism, in collaboration with Victoria Miro, Lehmann Maupin, and Perrotin galleries.

Pussy Riot and FEMEN Join Forces in Punk Protest in Venice: ‘Russia Kills! Biennale Exhibits!’

On Wednesday morning, Pussy Riot and FEMEN led a protest outside the Russian Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, chanting slogans like “Russia kills! Biennale exhibits!” and “Blood is Russia’s art!” Dozens of protesters, some in pink balaclavas and others bare-chested with floral crowns, gathered in the Giardini under light rain, carrying guitars and blasting punk rock and hip-hop. The action was organized by Nadya Tolokonnikova and other Pussy Riot members alongside FEMEN, a Ukrainian-founded women’s movement. They released pink, yellow, and blue smoke, and Tolokonnikova criticized the Biennale for allowing Russian participation while artists who oppose the war in Ukraine are imprisoned. She proposed an alternative exhibition, “Resistance Imprisoned,” currently on view in Strasbourg, featuring incarcerated artists.

The Enigma of Alison Knowles

Lauren Moya Ford reviews the only book dedicated to Fluxus artist Alison Knowles, who died six months ago. The book, "Performing Chance: The Art of Alison Knowles In/Out of Fluxus" by Nicole L. Woods (2026), attempts to illuminate Knowles's life and work, but Ford notes that much of her personal life remains mysterious despite the author's efforts. The article is part of a broader books newsletter that also features new tomes on Hans Holbein’s portraits, Jan Staller’s photographs of Manhattan construction sites, and a discussion of a Black Panther family album at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Early 2026 Art Books From Yale University Press

Yale University Press has announced its early 2026 art book lineup, featuring exhibition catalogues such as "Raphael: Sublime Poetry" from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Gwen John: Strange Beauties" from the Yale Center for British Art, "Edward Steichen and the Garden" from the George Eastman Museum, and "Frederic Church: Global Artist" from Olana NY State Historic Site. New releases also include a biography of Anni Albers by Nicholas Fox Weber, a catalogue titled "Anni Albers: Constructing Textiles" accompanying a European traveling exhibition, and Alyce Mahon's "Dorothea Tanning: A Surrealist Life," named a Best New Art Book of 2026 by Christie's. The press will hold a 50% off annual sale in May.

Archie Rand On the Irreducibility of Painting in a Post-Digital Age

Archie Rand, now in his late 70s, recently held his first extensive solo show in years at Jarvis Art in New York, featuring his new body of work titled "Heads." The exhibition reclaims painting's primordial function, emphasizing the connection between brain and hands, imagination and reality. Rand, who emerged from the downtown New York scene in the late 1970s and early '80s, has witnessed the full postwar evolution of American art. His career includes a pivotal synagogue mural commission that led to backlash from the Orthodox community and a break with critic Clement Greenberg, pushing him toward representational forms. He found allies in figures like Philip Guston and John Ashbery, and after his wife's death ten years ago, began reflecting on mortality and childhood influences.

RC Foundation Project Space Exhibition Series 2025–27

The Hayward Gallery in London, in partnership with the RC Foundation in Taiwan, has announced a new exhibition series for its HENI Project Space running from October 2025 to March 2027. The series features five solo exhibitions by artists Val Lee, Samuel Laurence Cunnane, Kulpreet Singh, Musquiqui Chihying, and Andrius Arutiunian, each exploring themes ranging from political violence and surveillance to climate change, ritual, and alternative cosmologies. The exhibitions are curated by a team including Yung Ma, Rachel Thomas, and others.

Faces of Russian Art

Gesichter der russischen Kunst

On the Venice Biennale, the Russian Pavilion presents itself as a space for dialogue, while simultaneously a major exhibition in St. Petersburg titled "Russischer Imperativ" (Russian Imperative) opened on May 8 at the Manezh exhibition hall, glorifying war as a historical imperative of Russian identity. Curated by Anton Belikov, a Moscow artist and former Russian soldier who fought in Ukraine, the show features works from state museums like the Tretyakov Gallery, blending historical battles with the current war in Ukraine, and includes a monumental, fascistoid design with a ten-meter-tall installation of a soldier's head. The exhibition has sparked outrage on social media and in Russian exile media for its militaristic propaganda.

Stühle, die zum Reden zwingen

The article examines a peculiar three-seat sofa called the "Indiscret" on display in the Louvre, designed in 19th-century France under Napoleon III to force conversation among sitters. This "Conversation Chair" reflects an era when furniture was deliberately crafted to create social intimacy and control guest behavior, in stark contrast to modern public seating that often discourages lingering through hostile architecture.

Watching the Great Form Shatter

Der großen Form beim Zerbrechen zuschauen

Marc Brandenburg, a Berlin-based artist born in 1965, is the subject of a comprehensive survey exhibition titled "20th Century Debris" at the Berlinische Galerie. The show presents his meticulous pencil drawings on paper, which invert light and dark and are viewed under blacklight to create ghostly, dissolving images. Brandenburg's works fragment urban spaces, faces, and everyday objects into shimmering, unstable forms, drawing on photography and photocopying to produce a sense of eerie stillness and motion. The exhibition also includes his first films, tracing his stylistic evolution from early 1990s fragmented portraits to large-scale panoramic works with metallic surfaces.

Valie Export ist tot

Valie Export, the pioneering Austrian media and performance artist, has died at age 85 in Vienna. Born Waltraud Lehner in Linz in 1940, she adopted the name Valie Export in the late 1960s, derived from a cigarette brand, and became internationally known for provocative works such as "Tapp- und Tastkino" (1968) and "Aktionshose: Genitalpanik." Her practice critically examined gender roles, power structures, and the representation of the female body through film, video, photography, and performance. She participated in major exhibitions including Documenta, the Centre Pompidou, and the Museum of Modern Art, and represented Austria at the Venice Biennale in 1980 alongside Maria Lassnig. She also taught as a professor of media and performance art in Berlin and Cologne, and the VALIE EXPORT Center opened in Linz in 2017.

Überraschende Begegnungen

The ninth edition of the "Various Others" festival in Munich brings together institutions, off-spaces, and galleries for a city-wide series of exhibitions in May. Highlights include Walter Storms Galerie presenting Anselm Reyle's first Munich solo show with Istanbul's Dirimart; Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler collaborating with Rome's T293 to show Simon Denny's tech-critical works; Max Goelitz pairing Lukas Heerich and Rindon Johnson with Eva Hesse in dialogue with Hauser & Wirth; Lohaus Sominsky and Paris's Mennour featuring Ilit Azoulay and Alicja Kwade; and Rüdiger Schöttle hosting Milena Muzquiz and Elif Saydam. A new parcours exhibition, "Vectors," inspired by Jan Hoet's "Chambres d'Amis," places contemporary art in tech company offices across Munich.

"Man besitzt Kunst nicht, man ist nur ihr Verwalter"

The 61st Venice Biennale opened on Saturday without ceremony or an opening celebration, amid political turmoil over the participation of Russia and Israel. Italy's Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli criticized Biennale director Pietrangelo Buttafuoco for not informing the government about Russia's participation request, suggesting it could have been used as leverage for a ceasefire in Ukraine. The entire jury resigned after attempting to exclude both Russia and Israel from prize awards, leading to the cancellation of the traditional jury decision in favor of a public vote, which over 70 participating artists have protested by withdrawing from this year's prizes. Separately, a rare photograph from the early 1940s has surfaced showing Lucas Cranach the Elder's painting "Venus with Cupid as Honey Thief" in Adolf Hitler's Munich apartment, raising unresolved questions about whether the work was looted from Jewish owners before 1935.

How Tech Billionaires Turn Couture into Content

Wie Tech-Milliardäre Couture zu Content machen

The Met Gala, long considered the premier event for fashion and cultural influence, has become increasingly dominated by tech billionaires. This year, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos purchased their role as co-hosts, sparking protests in New York and raising questions about whether money alone now buys entry into the highest echelons of fashion. Individual tickets cost $10,000 and a table $350,000, with sponsors including OpenAI, Snapchat, and Meta. The event, organized by Anna Wintour to raise funds for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, raised $31 million last year but has transformed from a benefit into a spectacle optimized for viral moments and algorithmic appeal.

Gropius Bau öffnet abends länger

The Gropius Bau in Berlin has extended its evening opening hours by one hour, now open until 8 PM (closed Tuesdays), due to high demand for its exhibition of performance artist Marina Abramović. The show, titled "Balkan Erotic Epic," opened two weeks ago and drew long queues from the start. It features both new and older works, including performances where Abramović carved a star into her abdomen or lay in a burning installation until losing consciousness. The exhibition explores eroticism, politics, Balkan folklore, sexual energy, death, the political dimension of the body, and the Yugoslav wars.

Monopol gives away 5 × 2 tickets for Peter Hujar and Liz Deschenes at the Gropius Bau

Monopol verlost 5 × 2 Tickets für Peter Hujar und Liz Deschenes im Gropius Bau

Monopol magazine is giving away 5 × 2 tickets to the exhibition "Peter Hujar / Liz Deschenes: Persistence of Vision" at the Gropius Bau in Berlin. The show pairs Hujar's iconic black-and-white photographs of New York's downtown scene—featuring figures like Susan Sontag, Divine, and David Wojnarowicz—with Liz Deschenes' abstract, material-focused works on glass and photosensitive paper. To enter, readers must email their name with the subject line "Hujar" by May 30.

La Biennale de Venise s’ouvre dans un climat houleux

The 61st Venice Biennale opened amid intense controversy after its president, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, announced the return of the Russian pavilion, which had been absent since the start of the Ukraine war. The European Commission suspended its €2 million subsidy for the 2028 edition, and the entire Biennale jury resigned on April 30. Buttafuoco later declared the Russian pavilion would remain closed, but protests erupted during the pre-opening days (May 6–8), drawing 28,000 professionals. Pussy Riot members, Femen activists, and the Free Nations League staged demonstrations, while the Israeli pavilion remained open despite a letter signed by nearly 200 artists calling for its exclusion.

Au musée Marmottan Monet, la peinture de Giovanni Segantini hisse la modernité au sommet des Alpes

The Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris is hosting the first retrospective in France of Giovanni Segantini (1858–1899), a major but little-known figure of Symbolism. The exhibition traces his career through the lens of his geographical ascent into the Alps, from his early success with "Ave Maria à la traversée" (1886–1888) to his final triptych "La Vie, La Nature, La Mort," which he was working on when he died at age 41. Segantini's divisionist technique, which Vassily Kandinsky considered a precursor to abstraction, is highlighted as a means of expressing a dematerialized vision of the world.

Georg Baselitz, grande figure de l’art allemand, est mort à l’âge de 88 ans : retour sur sa vie et son œuvre

Georg Baselitz, one of Germany's most significant post-war artists, has died at age 88. Born Hans-Georg Kern in 1938, he grew up in Nazi-era Saxony and later rejected his father's ideology, fleeing to West Berlin in 1957. Known for his provocative, expressionist works and signature upside-down paintings, Baselitz challenged artistic conventions with brutalist techniques—attacking wood with chainsaws and axes—and created scandalous pieces like "Die große Nacht im Eimer" (1962–1963), which was banned from exhibition. His career included major retrospectives at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2011) and Centre Pompidou (2021), and commissions for the Reichstag.

Lee Miller in Wide Angle

Lee Miller en grand angle

The Musée d'Art moderne de Paris (MAM) has opened a major retrospective of photographer Lee Miller (1907-1977), featuring nearly 250 prints—many vintage and previously unseen. The exhibition originated at Tate Britain, where it drew over 250,000 visitors, and was co-organized with MAM and the Art Institute of Chicago. Curated by Michal Goldschmidt (former Tate Britain curator) and Fanny Schulmann of MAM, with new research led by Hilary Floe, the show emphasizes Miller's ties to Paris, her technical mastery, and her wartime reporting, including contact sheets from Dachau and Buchenwald never before shown in France.

Massive Buddha sculpture by Tuan Andrew Nguyen opens on New York’s High Line Plinth.

Vietnamese sculptor and visual artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen has unveiled a 27-foot-tall sandstone Buddha sculpture titled *The Light That Shines Through the Universe* (2026) on New York's High Line Plinth, at the intersection of 10th Avenue and 30th Street. The monumental work is the newest commission for the elevated park's public art program and will remain on view for the next 18 months.

Julia Heyward “Miracles in Reverse” at Kunstverein Nürnberg

Kunstverein Nürnberg – Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft is presenting "Miracles in Reverse," the first institutional solo exhibition in Europe by American artist Julia Heyward (born 1949). Heyward was a central figure in New York's downtown art scene during the 1970s and 1980s, and her work anticipated major developments in art history. The exhibition showcases her distinctive practice developed over five decades.

Whitney Biennial 2026: Care, Catastrophe, and Private Gestures

The Whitney Biennial 2026, the 82nd edition of the longest-running survey of American art, opened with a stripped-down, self-referential title and no subtitle, reflecting a moment of national self-questioning. The exhibition features 56 artists, duos, and collectives, with highlights including Agosto Machado's shrine sculptures dedicated to friends lost to AIDS, Emilie Louise Gossiaux's tender works about her guide dog London, and Michelle Lopez's apocalyptic video projection *Pandemonium*. Machado, a longtime downtown New York artist and caregiver, died shortly after the biennial opened, and his ashes are to be mixed with those of Marsha P. Johnson and spread in the Hudson River.

Art Basel’s Swiss Fair Will Include a New Initiative Where Galleries Will Withhold Works from Their PDF Previews

Art Basel has announced a new initiative called "Basel Exclusive" for its upcoming Swiss fair, running June 18–21 with VIP previews June 16–17. Under the program, participating galleries will withhold at least one artwork—or even their entire booth—from the PDF previews sent to clients ahead of the fair, encouraging collectors to visit in person. So far, 170 of 232 exhibitors (nearly 75%) have signed on, including major galleries like Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace Gallery, David Zwirner, Gladstone, Lehmann Maupin, Lisson, Matthew Marks, Paula Cooper, Thaddaeus Ropac, and White Cube, as well as secondary-market dealers such as Galerie 1900-2000, Helly Nahmad, Landau, Mayoral, Pace Di Donna Schrader, and Van de Weghe. Art Basel’s chief artistic officer Vincenzo de Bellis described it as a "gallery-led process" developed from conversations with exhibitors, formalized during Art Basel Hong Kong.

Fair Warning Bets Big on a Banksy That Could Realize $18 Million

Fair Warning, the members-only online sales platform founded by former Christie's rainmaker Loïc Gouzer, is staging a rare live auction on May 20 at Tiffany & Co.'s flagship store in New York. The centerpiece is Banksy's *Girl and Balloon on Found Landscape* (2012), a work from the artist's 'Crude Oils' series that has never been publicly exhibited. Consigned by a private collector, the painting carries an ambitious estimate of $13 million–$18 million, one of the highest ever for a Banksy. Gouzer argues that Banksy is among the most consequential artists of our time, comparing his trajectory to Jean-Michel Basquiat, and sees this sale as a landmark moment for the artist's market.

Fairfield University Art Museum invites readers to private tour

Fairfield University Art Museum is offering an exclusive private tour to readers, as reported by the Westport Journal. The event provides a behind-the-scenes look at the museum's collections and exhibitions, allowing attendees to engage directly with curators and artworks in an intimate setting.

Marietta Museum of Art & Whimsy closing for summer, but 37 other exhibitions on view at museums in May

The article provides a roundup of museum exhibitions on view in Southwest Florida during May, highlighting five new openings, eight closings, and 25 continuing shows across museums from Sarasota to Naples. Featured exhibitions include Molly Hatch's site-specific ceramic installation "Amalgam" at Sarasota Art Museum, Jillian Mayer's interactive "Slumpies" sculptures, a group show "Something Borrowed, Something New" with works by Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, David Hockney, Yoko Ono, Kara Walker, and Ai Weiwei, and Maria A. Guzman Capron's solo textile exhibition "Penumbra." The Marietta Museum of Art & Whimsy is noted as closing for the summer.

Meet the London Perfumer Building a Collection Around Humor and Instinct

Cherry Cheng, a London-based perfumer, has curated a personal art collection in her Notting Hill flat that reflects her instinctive and humorous approach to collecting. The collection features works by artists such as Beau Gabriel, Miranda Keyes, Sarah Pucci, Juliette Teste, Araki Nobuyoshi, Katrien de Blauwer, Lucile Littot, Leo Costelloe, Sebastian Espejo, and Joline Kwakkenbos, displayed throughout her home like a diary of her tastes.

Evelyn Taocheng Wang ”Sweet Landscape” at MUSEION, Bolzano

Museion in Bolzano, Italy, presents the first institutional solo exhibition in Italy by Evelyn Taocheng Wang, a Rotterdam-based artist born in 1981 in Chengdu. The exhibition, titled "Sweet Landscape," showcases her work across painting, writing, installation, performance, and fashion, featuring a visual language that blends poetry, subtle humor, and critical depth while intertwining art historical traditions and fragments.

‘Anchors of Light’ reframes 30 years of MOCA North Miami

The Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (MOCA) celebrates its 30th anniversary with a new exhibition, “Anchors of Light,” which opened on April 15. Curated by Miami native Catherine Camargo, founder of Queue Gallery, the show features nearly 50 artists from the museum’s collection, including historical figures like Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg, past retrospective subjects such as Maryan S. Maryan and Edouard Duval-Carrie, and local favorites Purvis Young and Pepe Mar. The exhibition includes a video corridor for multiple video works, addressing space constraints, and highlights Camargo’s preference for dark, muted colors and unconventional materials, exemplified by Will Boone’s painting “Widowmaker.”

'Something Borrowed, Something New' at Sarasota Art Museum features 85 works from 10 private collections

Ten art collectors from Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota have loaned 85 works from their private collections to the Sarasota Art Museum for the exhibition 'Something Borrowed, Something New.' The show features pieces by renowned artists including Kara Walker, Ai Weiwei, Alex Katz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Chuck Close, Hank Willis Thomas, and Yoko Ono, with many prints coming from Graphicstudio at the University of South Florida. The exhibition was conceived by executive director Virginia Shearer after visiting collectors' homes and was inspired by a trip to the Renwick Museum at the Smithsonian.