The article titled "The Art Diary May 2026 – Revd Jonathan Evens" appears to be a diary or column by Revd Jonathan Evens, published on Artlyst, covering art-related events, reflections, or commentary for May 2026. The specific content is not provided in the snippet, but the format suggests a curated overview of exhibitions, cultural happenings, or personal observations from the author's perspective.
This article highlights three art exhibitions in Hong Kong for May 2026. 'Seeds of Wishes' at JPS Gallery features black-and-white and colorful drawings by thirteen-year-old artist Yat Long, created after his diagnosis with a life-threatening disease, with a related CASETiFY phone case collection. 'Dial-A-Poem Hong Kong' at M+ presents an interactive installation based on John Giorno's 1969 project, offering newly recorded poems in Cantonese, English, and Mandarin by thirty local poets. 'Fallen Angels' at Hauser & Wirth showcases Nicole Eisenman's paintings and sculptures exploring middle-class life, departing from her usual crowded scenes.
The article lists the best art exhibitions opening in Miami in May, including group shows at Voloshyn Gallery featuring musicians Brian Eno and Malibu, solo debuts at ICA Miami for Manoucher Yektai and Manuel Chavajay, a survey of Afro-Cuban art at Lowe Art Museum, a photography show at Dale Zine by Juanita Richards, and a landscape exhibition at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale. Other highlights include a World Cup-themed video installation at The Bass and Japanese woodblock prints at the Morikami.
A wave of Van Gogh exhibitions is scheduled for 2026 across the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands. Highlights include "Van Gogh’s Sunflowers: A Symphony in Blue and Yellow" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (June–October 2026), featuring a rare loan of London's National Gallery version alongside Philadelphia's own. Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum will present "Yellow: Beyond Van Gogh’s Colour" (February–May 2026), while the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo will display all 88 Van Gogh paintings for the first time since 1984 in "Van Gogh, All Our Paintings" (September 2026–January 2027). In Japan, the Kröller-Müller's "The Grand Van Gogh Exhibition" tours Kobe, Fukushima, and Tokyo, and the Van Gogh Museum's "Van Gogh’s Home" is at Nagoya's Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art. Smaller shows take place at the Van Gogh House in Zundert, the Maison du Dr Gachet in Auvers-sur-Oise, and the Foundation Vincent van Gogh Arles.
The article previews major New York City museum exhibitions opening in 2026, including a Carol Bove survey at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (March 5–August 2), the first U.S. Marcel Duchamp retrospective since 1973 at the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum's inaugural show in its OMA-designed expansion titled "New Humans: Memories of the Future," and a Goya exhibition at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library tied to the 250th anniversary of the United States. Each show highlights significant artistic milestones, from Bove's scrap-metal sculptures to Duchamp's readymades and Goya's war commentaries.
Five must-see UK exhibitions for Black History Month 2025 are highlighted, including 'Nigerian Modernism' at Tate Modern (8 Oct 2025–10 May 2026), which explores the development of Modern art in Nigeria through over 250 works by artists like Ben Enwonwu and El Anatsui; 'Stan Douglas: Birth of a Nation and The Enemy of All Mankind' at Victoria Miro (until 1 Nov 2025), a multi-channel video installation confronting racial perception; and 'Jennie Baptiste: Rhythm & Roots' at Somerset House (17 Oct 2025–4 Jan 2026), the photographer's first UK solo exhibition capturing Black diaspora life. Other shows include works addressing the Caribbean Windrush generation in Cambridge.
The May 2025 roundup of Black art news reports the deaths of two influential figures: international curator Koyo Kouoh and artist-curator Evangeline J. Montgomery, who died at 94. Montgomery's career spanned metalwork, fiber art, and photography, and she was a key advocate and mentor in the African American art community, later working at the U.S. Information Agency. Other highlights include historian Edda L. Fields-Black winning a Pulitzer Prize for her book on Harriet Tubman, the acquisition of Adam Pendleton's entire "Who is Queen" installation by MoMA, and Kapwani Kiwanga winning the Joan Miró Prize. The Met Gala also featured Black dandy style inspired by the Costume Institute's exhibition "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style."
Sotheby’s closed its May marquee auction week with $186.1 million in combined contemporary sales across three sessions on May 16. The evening began with a white-glove sale of 12 works from Barbara Gladstone’s personal collection, fetching $18.8 million, followed by a $40.4 million sale from Daniella Luxembourg’s collection, which signaled revived appetite for Italian postwar art. The main Contemporary Evening Auction saw strong bidding for emerging artists like Danielle Mckinney and Mohammed Sami, though some high-profile lots like Richard Prince’s Man Crazy Nurse fell short of estimates.
Hong Gyu Shin, a New York-based gallery owner originally from Ulsan, South Korea, became the first named Korean to purchase a Van Gogh when he acquired *Head of a Peasant* (January-March 1885) at Sotheby’s in May 2024 for $787,000—well below its estimate. The painting has now gone on display at the newly opened KAIST Art Museum (KAM) in Daejeon, South Korea, as part of Shin's exhibition *The Vault of Masterpieces* (until 30 August). The show features 49 works from his personal collection, including a recreation of his New York apartment, and marks the first time a Van Gogh has been exhibited on loan from a Korean collector.
Galerie magazine has curated a list of eight must-see solo gallery shows across the United States for May, spanning from New York to Miami and Los Angeles. Featured artists include Takako Yamaguchi at Ortuzar in New York, Enzo Cucchi at Vito Schnabel Gallery, Iván Argote at Perrotin, and Kang Seung Lee, among others, with exhibitions showcasing a range of styles from hybrid transnational paintings to Neo-expressionist works and conceptual installations.
International gallery Pace has partnered with Galerie Judin to open a new arts hub in a converted 1950s gas station in Berlin's Schöneberg neighborhood. The venue, called Die Tankstelle, features exhibition spaces for both galleries, a café, and a Die ZEIT-branded bookshop. The inaugural exhibition, 'Reverse Alchemy,' runs from May 2 to June 14, 2025, and brings together works on paper by Jean Dubuffet, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Robert Nava. The gas station, originally built in 1954 and abandoned in 1986, was purchased by Juerg Judin in 2007 and renovated by Thomas Brakel and bfs design, with landscape architect Guido Hager adding a garden. It previously housed Das Kleine Grosz Museum from 2022 to 2024.
Gallery Weekend Berlin returns for its 21st edition from May 2-4, 2025, featuring fifty-two galleries showcasing established and emerging artists. Antonia Ruder, who joined the event in 2023 and is now preparing her second full edition as director, discusses the festival's origins as a private initiative by five art dealers in 2005, its growth to become a global art calendar highlight, and its role as a premier platform for contemporary art in Germany in the absence of an international art fair in Berlin.
Chicago's Intuit Art Museum has completed a two-year, $10 million renovation that triples its footprint and adds a lower level featuring the Henry Darger Room, a permanent installation recreating the artist's apartment. The museum will preview publicly on April 25 during Expo Chicago and officially reopen on May 23. The renovation, led by president and CEO Debra Kerr and local architecture firm Doyle & Associates, balances improved accessibility and natural light with preservation of the building's historic character. The inaugural exhibition, "Catalyst: Im/migration and Self-taught Art in Chicago" (May 23–January 11, 2026), features 75 works by 22 artists exploring migrant and immigrant contributions to outsider art from the 1930s to today.
A federal jury in Manhattan has ordered Michael McKenzie and his company American Image Art to pay $102 million (€95 million) to the Morgan Art Foundation for unauthorized exploitation of works by artist Robert Indiana (1928-2018), including his iconic LOVE image. The case, filed in May 2018 just before Indiana's death, alleged that McKenzie—a former agent of the artist—produced and sold unauthorized editions, sculptures, and merchandise under Indiana's name, violating exclusive reproduction and commercialization rights granted to the foundation in the 1990s. The jury found McKenzie guilty of trademark infringement, copyright violation, and contractual interference, with $6.2 million specifically tied to 44 LOVE works. The defense, weakened by sanctions for hiding evidence and refusing to cooperate, plans to appeal.
London’s art scene prepares for a major influx of high-profile exhibitions in May 2026, headlined by a comprehensive survey of Francisco de Zurbarán at the National Gallery and the grand opening of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in Clerkenwell. Other significant highlights include a sprawling outdoor installation of Henry Moore’s monumental bronzes at Kew Gardens, the debut of the 'Rising Voices' contemporary art exhibition at the newly opened V&A East, and a rare European retrospective of James McNeill Whistler at Tate Britain featuring the iconic 'Whistler's Mother'.
Sophie Calle's retrospective exhibition 'Overshare' has opened at the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) in January 2026, running through May 24. The show, which first debuted at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in October 2024, spans five decades of Calle's work, including photographs, text pieces, physical installations, and video works. It explores themes of intimacy, surveillance, and personal disclosure, featuring iconic pieces such as following strangers, inviting people to sleep in her bed, and documenting her mother's final moments.
CFA in Milan presents "No Hay Banda," a group exhibition running from 29 May to 26 June 2026, featuring four international artists: Vandria Borari (Brazil/Germany), Petra Feriancová (Slovakia), Karoliina Hellberg (Finland), and Sofia Silva. The show brings together ceramicist and Indigenous activist Borari, whose work includes the Yupirungáwa series and the Fluid Forest project; Feriancová, a Slovak artist who represented the Czech and Slovak Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale; and Hellberg, a Finnish artist who recently won the Visual Artist Award from the Marcus Collins Memorial Fund. The private view is scheduled for 28 May 2026.
This article from a Seattle arts publication rounds up May visual art events, including the Seattle Art Book Fair (May 9–10) at Washington Hall featuring over 85 artists and free admission; Timothy White Eagle's exhibition "Once Wild River" (May 9–June 21) at Mini Mart City Park, culminating his EPA artist-in-residency; "Monochrome: Calder and Tara Donovan" (May 13–Jan 17, 2027) at the Seattle Art Museum, where Donovan responds to Alexander Calder's black works; "Rebels + Icons: The Photography of Janette Beckman" opening May 15 at MoPOP, the largest collection of her iconic musician portraits; and Drie Chapek's "Then Is Now" (May 21–June 27).
Hmong-American artist Pao Houa Her is currently presenting a solo exhibition at Midway Contemporary Art in Chicago, running through May 2, 2026. The show explores themes of displacement, identity, and cultural memory through Her's photographs and installations, which blend personal narrative with broader social commentary on the Hmong diaspora experience post-Vietnam War. Born in Laos and raised in Minnesota, Her's work challenges viewers to confront the complexities of migration and belonging, using staged portraits and intimate compositions to subvert expectations of representation.
Carrie Mae Weems is featured in the Pérez Art Museum Miami's upcoming exhibition 'This Is America,' which celebrates the United States' 250th anniversary. The show opens May 23 and runs through 2027, including works by Alfredo Jaar, Judy Chicago, and Rashid Johnson alongside local artists. Weems, known for series like 'Kitchen Table' and 'From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,' uses photography and staged scenes to explore race, gender, and power.
Ocula's global team of editors has curated a list of the top 10 exhibitions to see worldwide in May, highlighting diverse shows from Rio de Janeiro to New York. Featured exhibitions include Jungjin Lee's photographic works blending Icelandic landscapes and intimate objects on traditional Korean paper, a millennial-themed group show titled "Genuine Premium Fake Economy" examining precarity through artists like Jasmine Gregory and Buck Ellis, Joan Semmel's solo exhibition "Continuities" at Xavier Hufkens and Alexander Gray Associates showcasing her erotic self-portraiture at age 93, and Wynnie Mynerva's Berlin Gallery Weekend show addressing colonial violence and Andean mythology.
Paula Cooper Gallery in New York will present an exhibition of large-scale sculptures and drawings by Mark di Suvero from May 2 through July 17. The show features the debut of the kinetic sculpture 'Avanti!' (c. late 1990s), a human-intervention piece with a suspended beam that viewers can rock with their body weight, alongside the 1986 work 'Nelly' and the stainless steel 'Tables Turn’d' (2004), as well as a selection of works on paper including interactive "sliding drawings."
NEXTpittsburgh's May 2026 gallery preview highlights a packed month of art events leading into the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Key offerings include the 59th Carnegie International at Carnegie Museum of Art, opening May 2 with works by 61 artists from 24 countries and four new commissions at local institutions. Other featured shows include 'Down to Earth: Revealing the Natural World' at James Gallery, Jody Shell's 'Shoebox Memories,' Dominique Swift's 'Uli Awakened,' and a three-artist exhibition at Irma Freeman Center featuring Laura Jean McLaughlin, James Simon, and Robert Qualters.
A roundup article lists numerous exhibitions closing in May 2026 across Paris and the Île-de-France region, including shows at the Fondation Louis Vuitton (Nocturne Calder #1) and Perrotin Gallery (Soulages–Hartung: Elective Affinities, Lee Mingwei's When Beauty Appears, and Susumu Kamijo's When I Think of You in Spring). The piece also highlights free-entry days at castles and museums in Yvelines and Seine-et-Marne, and the Parcours d’art de la Boucle de Seine open-studio event.
Auckland Art Gallery is presenting 'Forever Tomorrow: Chinese Art Now,' a major survey of Chinese contemporary art featuring 67 works by 42 artists, running from May 2 to August 23, 2026. The exhibition includes Xiao Lu's iconic 1989 work 'Dialogue,' which she famously shot with a gun hours after its opening, an act later linked to the Tiananmen Square protests. Xiao Lu comments on the political resonance of the show in New Zealand amid global shifts in democracy and US-centric world order.
Yoko Ono's first solo museum exhibition in Southern California, 'Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,' opens at The Broad in Los Angeles on May 23, 2026. The exhibition, organized with Tate Modern, features interactive works from the 1950s onward, including the outdoor Wish Tree installation, text-based pieces from her book 'Grapefruit,' and collaborative anti-war works with John Lennon like 'Bed Peace.'
Yoko Ono will present her first solo museum exhibition in Southern California at the Broad museum in Los Angeles, opening May 23 and running through October 11, 2026. Titled “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,” the interactive show is organized in collaboration with Tate Modern in London and will feature outdoor “wish trees” made from the museum’s olive trees, instruction-based works from the mid-1950s to the present, and materials from her peace campaigns with John Lennon.
The Broad museum in Los Angeles will present 'Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,' the artist's first solo museum exhibition in Southern California, from May 23 to October 11, 2026. Organized in collaboration with Tate Modern, London, the show spans Ono's seven-decade career, featuring interactive instruction works, participatory installations like 'Wish Trees for Los Angeles,' films such as 'Cut Piece' (1964) and 'FILM NO. 4 (BOTTOMS)' (1967), and collaborative pieces with John Lennon including 'Bed Peace' (1969). Visitors will be invited to engage directly with works that turn simple acts into expressions of peace and connection.
Amanda Precourt is opening the Cookie Factory, a new art space in Denver's Baker neighborhood, on May 24. Housed in a former fortune cookie factory that Precourt purchased in 2017, the 5,700-square-foot venue features four exhibition rooms, two solo shows per year, and monthly activations. The inaugural activation on June 21 will include yoga and sound baths led by local healers. Precourt, a Denver native and philanthropist, has transformed the dilapidated building with her partner, artist Andrew Jensdotter, and added a second-story apartment for her personal contemporary art collection. The space will not display her collection but will commission new works inspired by Colorado's environment.
London's galleries and museums are opening a wave of major exhibitions in May 2025. Highlights include a 30-year survey of South Korean artist Do Ho Suh at Tate Modern, featuring fabric corridors replicating his former homes; two blockbuster shows at the British Museum—Hiroshige's prints of a transforming Japan and an exploration of ancient Indian religious art; a tech-and-nature residency by physicist-artist Jasmine Pradissitto at the London Museum of Water & Steam; and an immersive tree visualization by Marshmallow Laser Feast at Kew Gardens. The Francis Crick Institute also hosts the final weeks of its free multisensory exhibition "Hello Brain!"