Chinese artist Cao Fei has opened a new solo exhibition titled "Dash" at the Fondazione Prada in Milan. The exhibition presents a new body of work, including video installations and sculptures, continuing her exploration of digital realities, urban transformation, and the human condition in a rapidly changing world.
The Museum Rietberg in Zürich has opened the exhibition 'A Kind of Paradise,' which critically reexamines colonial-era photography through the work of 20 contemporary artists from the global diaspora. The show is structured into four thematic sections—Shapeshifters, Confrontation, Care, and In the Photo Fantastic—and transforms archival images from tools of colonial power into sites of reinterpretation and resistance.
The University of Colorado Boulder's Department of Art and Art History has announced a series of spring events, including the 'Art History Showcase' featuring scholarship by Tylyn King, Bella Malherbe, and Felicity Wong. The program also highlights the second group of the 2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition featuring Ethan Cherry, Brionna Garcia, and Cal Young, alongside a visiting artist lecture by Rutgers professor Barbara Madsen and a symposium on Black Queer Aesthetics.
The Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) has announced its 200th Annual Exhibition, a landmark event running from May 9 to June 14, 2026, in Edinburgh. This bicentenary edition features a massive survey of contemporary Scottish art and architecture, including works by Academicians and selections from an open call. To celebrate the milestone, the RSA will host a "Big Birthday Party" on May 27 and has introduced three major new prizes, including the RSA Jack Vettriano Award, bringing the total prize fund to over £25,000.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is set to unveil a massive 12,000-square-foot expansion of its Costume Institute galleries on May 10, 2026. The inaugural exhibition, "Costume Art," will explore the relationship between fashion and the human body by pairing historic garments with fine art from the museum's diverse collection. This high-profile opening will be preceded by the annual Met Gala, co-chaired by global icons including Beyoncé and Anna Wintour.
The Museum of Modern Art has launched 'Noguchi's New York,' a comprehensive retrospective dedicated to the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi. The exhibition utilizes photographs, architectural models, and archival materials to document his extensive footprint across the city, from the Ford Foundation’s Sunken Garden to the Challenger memorial. By focusing on his public installations, the show highlights Noguchi’s unique ability to blend natural materials with abstract forms within the urban grid.
The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth is presenting 'The Holy Sepulcher: Treasures From the Terra Sancta Museum, Jerusalem,' an exhibition of opulent 17th-century liturgical objects from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The collection, featuring gifts from European rulers like King Louis XIII of France and King Philip IV of Spain, includes gold, silver, and jewel-encrusted pieces such as vestments, a throne, and a sanctuary lamp, and is on view from March 15 to June 28.
The Denver Art Museum (DAM) will present "Conversation Pieces: Stories from the Fashion Archives" in spring 2026, an exhibition drawn from its permanent fashion collection. Curated by Jill D’Alessandro, the show pairs historic and contemporary garments—such as an 1896 House of Worth ballgown with a Rick Owens piece from Spring/Summer 2020—to highlight fashion as an artistic discipline. It also features a section on the little black dress, including a 1926 Chanel shift dress, and an interactive installation by Denver-based KaraKara Blooms. The exhibition precedes a blockbuster show, "DIVA," organized with the V&A Museum in London, which will have its exclusive U.S. venue at DAM in fall 2026.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will host "Raphael: Sublime Poetry," the largest-ever U.S. exhibition dedicated to the Renaissance master, opening March 29, 2026. Featuring over 200 works, the show includes loans from major institutions such as the Uffizi, Prado, Galleria Borghese, British Museum, Louvre, and National Gallery of Art. Curated by Carmen Bambach, who previously organized the Met's blockbuster 2017 Michelangelo exhibition, the show spans Raphael's three career periods—Urbino, Florence, and Rome—and highlights recent scientific discoveries and his portrayal of women. A centerpiece is the reunion of Raphael's preparatory sketches with his painting *The Alba Madonna*.
The Victoria & Albert Museum in London will host "Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art" at the Sainsbury Gallery from March 21 to November 1, 2026. The exhibition traces the legacy of founder Elsa Schiaparelli from the 1920s to the present, under current owner Diego Della Valle and creative director Daniel Roseberry. It will feature over 200 objects spanning Paris, London, and New York, including garments, accessories, jewelry, paintings, photographs, and archive material. Highlights include the Skeleton dress (1938) and the Tears dress (1938), created in collaboration with Salvador Dalí. The show also explores Schiaparelli's relationships with clients like Wallis Simpson and artists such as Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and Man Ray.
Korean artist Lee Ufan, a key figure in the Mono-ha movement, has donated eight paintings from the 1970s to the 1990s to the Dia Art Foundation in New York. The works, from his From Point, From Line, and With Winds series, will be featured in a spring 2026 exhibition at Dia Beacon alongside sculptural installations already in the foundation's collection. Lee is also collaborating with Avant Arte on a limited-edition print release to support Dia's programming.
Art historian and author James Hall, writing in The Art Newspaper, reviews Nicola Moorby's new book "Turner and Constable: Art, Life, Landscape" and uses it as a springboard to argue that art historians should not shy away from making value judgments about artists. He compares the legacies of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, noting that Turner currently dominates popular and institutional esteem—appearing on banknotes, celebrated by Tate Britain as the greatest British artist, and fitting modern conceptions of the artist as a rebellious, eccentric genius. Hall contrasts this with Constable's more conservative image and declining presence in commercial culture.
The Casa Santa Ana Foundation in Panama is hosting Zanele Muholi's first exhibition in the country, titled 'Amalanga awafani (Days Are Not the Same).' The show features major photographic series including 'Somnyama Ngonyama' and 'Faces and Phases,' and includes a new chapter of portraits of Panama's local LGBTQ+ community, integrated into the global archive. The exhibition is free to the public and runs until April 2026, supported by Panama's Ministry of Culture.
The Italian State has acquired Caravaggio's "Ritratto di Monsignor Maffeo Barberini" for €30 million, concluding a negotiation that lasted over a year. The painting, executed around 1600, will be on free public display from May 28 to June 21, 2026, in the Sala Capitolare of the Biblioteca del Senato in Rome, before its permanent transfer to the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica at Palazzo Barberini. The exhibition also features a selection of documents from the Archivio di Stato di Roma, including judicial records that shed light on Caravaggio's legal troubles.
Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts (VCUarts) is presenting its 2026 Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition in two parts at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Richmond. The exhibition showcases the culminating work of 28 MFA candidates across disciplines including Craft/Material Studies, Graphic Design, Painting + Printmaking, and Sculpture + Extended Media, curated by Egbert Vongmalaithong of the ICA and guest curator Taylor Jasper from the Walker Art Center.
Julie Mehretu's latest exhibition, "Our Days, Like a Shadow (a non-abiding hauntology)," is on view at Marian Goodman Gallery in New York from April 14 to June 6, 2026. The show presents paintings that push beyond traditional representation, creating immersive perceptual environments through dense layers of abstraction, cartographic traces, and architectural fragments. The works, including the TRANSpaintings series created with Nairy Baghramian, extend Mehretu's practice into spatial expansion, where painting behaves like infrastructure without becoming literal architecture.
The Art Gallery of Burlington is hosting a Spring Exhibition Opening & Closing Reception on Saturday, May 16, 2026, celebrating the opening of Celina Eceiza's exhibition "A material called Earth, Volume 1: The life of corners" in the Lee-Chin Family Gallery, curated by Sylvie Fortin and on view from May 16 to August 16, 2026. The event also marks the closing of Phuong Nguyen's exhibition "she died a death of a thousand cuts" in the Perry Gallery, which runs from January 31 to May 17, 2026.
The Bonnier Gallery in Miami's Little River neighborhood is presenting "Jean-Michel Basquiat: Selected Works, 1978–1988," a major exhibition featuring approximately 100 works spanning the artist's entire career. Curated by Grant Bonnier, the show runs through June 30, 2026, and includes paintings, works on paper, sculpture, photography, collaborative works with Andy Warhol, and rare ephemera, tracing Basquiat's evolution from teenage postcards to late-period masterpieces.
Arario Gallery Seoul presents 'Discarded Host', a solo exhibition by South Korean artist Kang Cheolgyu (b. 1990), running from May 1 to June 20, 2026. The show features new paintings that transform personal emotions and psychological sensations into visual narratives, exploring themes of anxiety, tension, identity, and transformation through fictional environments and indirect self-confrontation.
Konferenz: Baselitz, Immendorff, Lüpertz, Penck Group exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg
The Kunstmuseum Schloss Derneburg in Holle, Germany, has opened a major group exhibition titled "Konferenz: Baselitz, Immendorff, Lüpertz, Penck." The show features over 50 significant works by the four celebrated post-war German artists, exploring their unique approaches to national identity during a period of political division. It includes pieces from Georg Baselitz's personal collection of his contemporaries' work, supplemented by archival photographs by Edward Quinn from the 1980s.
The Alzueta Gallery in Madrid will present a two-person exhibition featuring artists David Macho and Juan Narowé from May 7 to June 8, 2026. The show highlights the work of these two contemporary artists, bringing their practices to a significant gallery platform in the Spanish capital.
Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei will open his first solo exhibition in India at Nature Morte in New Delhi, running from January 15 to February 22, 2026. The show spans over four decades of his work, featuring large-scale Lego pieces reinterpreting art history icons like Hokusai and Monet, new Lego compositions inspired by Hindu Pichwai paintings, homages to Indian modernists V.S. Gaitonde and S.H. Raza, the installation "Whitewashed Remnants of History of the State of Emerging Future Works," and the textile work "F.U.C.K." (2024). The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Galleria Continua.
The Middletown Arts Center is currently hosting the Garden State Watercolor Society’s 56th Annual Open Juried Exhibition alongside the 8th Annual Art Installation Exhibition. Juried by Joseph Gyurcsak, the main showcase features 64 selected watercolor paintings, while a special installation titled "Revolution as Reinvention" presents 55 miniature works exploring the history of artistic rebellion. The exhibition is open to the public through May 30, 2026, with a digital version available online.
Selome Muleta presents a solo exhibition at b-side gallery in Jakarta, running from April 1 to May 3, 2026. Curated by 47 Canal, the show features works by the artist, with images provided courtesy of Muleta and Roh Projects, Jakarta. The exhibition is documented on Contemporary Art Daily with five images and no videos.
NIKA Project Space in Paris presents "Sour Things: The Door," a new installation by Palestinian artist Mirna Bamieh, on view from April 17 to May 23, 2026. Curated by Anne Davidian, the exhibition marks Bamieh's return to the gallery following her solo presentation that inaugurated NIKA's Paris space in 2024, and serves as the latest chapter in her ongoing "Sour" series.
Wen Wu's exhibition "The Body Thinks in Colour" opens at Paul Smith's Westbourne House in Notting Hill, London, running from 14 May to 28 September 2026. Curated by Virginia Damtsa and Katie Heller, the show presents Wu's paintings that explore the body as a site of consciousness, memory, and emotional intelligence, using gesture and color to create psychological space within a fashion retail environment.
King's Leap gallery in New York presents "There were gardens," a group exhibition running from April 3 to May 9, 2026, featuring works by Dara Birnbaum, Gina Folly, Collin Leitch, Chris Marker, Jeff Preiss, Julia Scher, Jason Simon, and Mira M. Yang. The show includes 37 images documented in the Contemporary Art Library, with photography by Stephen Faught.
David Petersen Gallery in Minneapolis is presenting a two-person exhibition featuring artists Jay Heikes and J. Parker Valentine, titled "Salvador Dalí’s Birthday Party." The show runs from March 6 to April 26, 2026, and is documented with 40 installation images.
Artist Mungo Thomson presented a solo exhibition titled "Fireplace" at the gallery Further Down the Line in Liverpool. The show ran from March 4 to April 4, 2026, and was documented with a series of images.
A group exhibition titled "Stamina" opened at DREI gallery in Cologne, featuring works by artists Stephan Dillemuth, Matthias Groebel, and Julia Scher. The show ran from February 28 to April 4, 2026, and was documented extensively with 41 installation images.