An art exhibition is being organized to celebrate the working community of Bedford. The event aims to highlight the contributions and stories of local workers through visual art, bringing together artists and community members to showcase the region's industrial and labor heritage.
The Qianlong Garden in Beijing's Palace Museum (Forbidden City) has reopened to the public after a 25-year, $20 million conservation project in partnership with the World Monuments Fund (WMF). The 1.6-hectare garden, built between 1771 and 1776, features 27 buildings with elaborate decorations including rare silk trompe l'oeil murals, jade inlays, and bamboo thread marquetry. The restoration began with the Juanqinzhai pavilion in 2002 and was completed in 2008, followed by work on three other structures. The project also involved recreating traditional materials and techniques that had fallen out of practice.
An exhibition showcasing the work of Basingstoke-based artist Sam Sopwith will open on October 8 at the Osborne Studio Gallery in Belgravia, London. The show features 45 new pieces by the painter and sculptor, who specializes in portraying wild and domesticated animals. It marks Sopwith's first solo exhibition in six years and her debut at the gallery. Her clients include HRH Princess Alexandra and perfumer Jo Malone. Sopwith works in oils, pastels, charcoal, and bronze, drawing inspiration from her travels to Africa, Sri Lanka, and South Africa. She studied in Vancouver, trained under animal portraitist Neil Forster in England, and completed her education in Florence.
Krannert Art Museum has reopened its reimagined exhibition 'Fragmented Histories: Andean Art before 1600' after a year-long closure, following nearly a decade of collaborative research. Co-curators Allyson Purpura and Kasia Szremski worked with pre-contact Andean art historians and Peruvian archaeologists to restore context to looted artifacts from the Fred Olsen Collection, donated in 1967. The exhibition is organized into four themes—Unfinished Stories, The Mobile Life of Objects, Powerful Images, and Object Biographies—and includes digital displays that acknowledge the violent histories of looting and aim to share knowledge with descendant communities in Peru.
Several Confederate monuments removed from Richmond, Virginia, including the Vindicatrix sculpture from the Jefferson Davis Monument and the Matthew Fontaine Maury sculpture and globe, are being loaned to a national temporary art exhibition in Los Angeles. The Valentine and the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia are sending these artifacts, along with granite slabs from various monument bases, to be part of a show running from October to May that reimagines their place in history. More than 15 monuments from across the U.S. will be featured, and the museums have gathered over 6,000 survey responses from the community to guide future decisions.
Artspace111 in Fort Worth has announced the 52 artists selected for its 2025 Texas Juried Exhibition, the gallery's 12th annual showcase. Texas artist Jon Flaming served as juror, choosing 55 artworks from across the state. The exhibition opens July 26 and runs through August 23, with $15,000 in prizes awarded, including the $10,000 Edmund Craig Memorial Award, which offers a future exhibition opportunity at the gallery.
Renowned artists have opened a new gallery in Enderby, British Columbia, as reported in a segment titled 'This is BC' by Global News. The video feature, published on June 10, 2025, highlights the establishment of this gallery by well-known visual artists in the small community of Enderby, located in the North Okanagan region. The artists are bringing their expertise and creative works to a local venue, aiming to enrich the area's cultural landscape.
Hattie Grimm, artist-in-residence at the Charles Allis Art Museum in Milwaukee, has created a new exhibition titled "BIRD BODY" featuring 20 original wooden paintings and sculptures. Inspired by her personal relationship with birds formed during a difficult time, the works explore birds as symbols of freedom, intuition, and bodily wisdom. The exhibit includes interactive elements such as drawing activities and storytelling stations, encouraging visitors to reflect on their own connections to birds and their bodies.
Future Fair returns for its fifth anniversary from May 7-10 at Chelsea Industrial in Manhattan, featuring 67 exhibitors. The fair is impacted by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, with one Bologna-based gallery, Magazzeno Art Gaze, displaying a sign that its shipment is stuck at JFK customs, showing only works brought in luggage. Montreal’s Wishbone Gallery narrowly avoided a similar fate after its artist consulted a psychic, and the works arrived just in time. Despite trade disruptions, the fair continues its focus on portraiture, showcasing artists such as Saki Sonoda (depicting Bushwick club House of Yes), Émile Brunet (Dutch Golden Age-inspired portraits), Izere Antoine (impastoed Black women), Matthew Rosenquist (wooden reliefs of Americana), Katie Commodore (digital textile tapestries), and Catie Cook (animal stand-ins for Southern womanhood).
Vittoria Matarrese nouvelle directrice du Magasin de Grenoble
Vittoria Matarrese has been appointed as the new director of the Magasin, the National Center for Contemporary Art in Grenoble. The Italian architect and curator, who previously held positions at the Villa Medici in Rome, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and the Bally Foundation in Lugano, and most recently led the first Art Week Riyadh, succeeds Céline Kopp. Her appointment comes as the institution seeks a new direction after a prolonged period of crisis.
King Street Arts in Lancaster is hosting an exhibition titled 'Not all Rainbows and Sunshine' featuring paintings and drawings by self-taught artist Thom Draven. The show runs from May 27 to June 6 and includes works like 'Disconnection,' created as part of Draven's ongoing mental health journey.
From June 25 to September 21, 2026, the Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee presents the exhibition "Maria Lai: Being is Weaving" at the Madre museum in Naples, curated by Monica Amor and Carlos Basualdo in collaboration with the Archivio and Fondazione Maria Lai. The show traces the artist's six-decade career, highlighting her experimentation with sewing, collage, textiles, and orality, and includes a catalogue with contributions from multiple scholars. Concurrently, the museum hosts "Living Collapse," the second exhibition of the Premio Meridiana, curated by Samuele Piazza, featuring artists Andrea Bolognino, Effe Minelli, and Raffaela Naldi Rossano, which reinterprets the nativity scene tradition through contemporary practices.
The Beijing Dangdai Art Fair opened on Thursday at the National Agricultural Exhibition Center, running through Sunday. It features a wide range of works from late artist Zao Wou-ki’s tiny sketch drafts to large-scale installation art and robot pieces co-developed by artists and tech companies. Galleries from Beijing’s 798 art zone, other Chinese cities, and international institutions are participating. The fair also marks the launch of the 2026 Beijing Art Season, which includes Beijing Design Week and Gallery Weekend Beijing, and offers an off-site exhibition at WONDER · China World Mall through May 31.
Jia Art, a new gallery designed by Foster + Partners, has opened in Shanghai's Putuo District as part of the Changfeng mixed-use development. The 5,000-square-meter building features flexible exhibition, event, and educational spaces, with a design inspired by spring blessing flowers found in the local park. Its petal-like form, tubular glass ribs, and central glass skylight create a dynamic, light-filled environment that houses both contemporary and traditional art.
The Italian Cultural Institute in Beijing hosted a lecture on May 12, 2026, featuring Zhou Zhiwei, a Chinese painter based in Italy, who shared his four-decade artistic journey. Zhou, born in Shanghai in 1954, studied under renowned oil painters Yu Yunjie and Liu Kemin before entering the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice in 1980, where he learned from masters like Bruno Saetti and Emilio Vedova. He also trained with Pietro Annigoni and Riccardo Tommasi Ferroni, mastering fresco and tempera grassa techniques. The event was chaired by Federico Antonelli, cultural counselor of the Italian Embassy in China, who recalled Zhou's first exhibition at the institute in 1984. Zhou discussed his solo exhibition 'Notes along the Way,' which explores the Mediterranean through an Eastern lens, blending classical Italian painting with Chinese tradition.
Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul is presenting "Inside Other Spaces: Environments by Women Artists, 1956–1976," an exhibition that reconstructs immersive environmental artworks by 11 pioneering women artists. Originally curated in 2023 at Haus der Kunst Munich and later shown at MAXXI in Rome and M+ in Hong Kong, the show features restored pieces including Judy Chicago's "Feather Room" (filled with 136 kg of white goose feathers), Jung Kangja's "Muchejeon" (restored after 56 years), Lygia Clark's "House Is Body: Penetration, Ovulation, Germination, Expulsion," and Marian Zazila, La Monte Young, and Jung Hee Choi's "Dream House: Environment of Sound and Light" (shown in Asia for the first time).
The FOMU photography museum in Antwerp has opened a new exhibition titled 'Families', curated by Anne Ruygt. The show explores the evolving concept of family through historical and contemporary photography, featuring works by artists such as Mous Lamrabat, Cecil Beaton, Omar Victor Diop, Mayara Ferrão, Peter Hujar, Carmen Winant, and Seiichi Furuya. It includes diverse perspectives, from 'hidden mother portraits' and post-mortem photography to AI-generated images of queer Black and Indigenous women, questioning traditional notions of kinship and representation.
More than 200 works by the elusive British street artist Banksy will go on display in Austin, Texas, this summer. The traveling exhibition, titled "The Art of Banksy Without Limits," opens at Fair Market on May 29 and runs through September 7. It features certified original prints, photos, sculptures, and reproduced murals, along with video mapping, an infinity room, and a hologram installation. A portion of ticket sales will support the Banksy-founded Louise Michel organization, which operates a rescue vessel in the Mediterranean.
The Hall Art Foundation is reopening its Vermont campus for the 2026 season with three major exhibitions running through November 29. The centerpiece, "A Farewell to the Western World," is a group show of roughly 70 works exploring global power shifts and political instability, featuring artists such as Ai Weiwei, Aleksandra Mir, and Philip Guston. Also on view are Christian Marclay's video installation "Made To Be Destroyed," which compiles film scenes of artworks being damaged or destroyed, and Piotr Uklański's photographic installation "The Nazis," examining how film and popular culture have shaped representations of the Third Reich. The campus, set on a former dairy farm in Reading, includes converted gallery buildings and outdoor sculptures by Olafur Eliasson, Antony Gormley, Richard Long, and Marc Quinn.
Anthony Lister, once called "Australia's Banksy," is staging a comeback with a new exhibition titled "Circus of Life" after being acquitted of sexual assault charges. The six-year legal battle, which began with a police raid on his Sydney home in 2020, led to the cancellation of his shows, financial ruin, and public vilification. Despite being found not guilty on all counts by a jury in under a minute, Lister says his reputation and career were destroyed, and he now challenges the art world and Australian public to accept him back.
Deborah Roberts presents her newest body of work in the exhibition "Consequences of being" at The FLAG Art Foundation, featuring eight canvases and nine mixed-media works on paper that blend collage, painting, and drawing. The works explore the postcolonial landscape of Europe and Africa, using fragmented imagery of Black children against stark-white backgrounds to address themes of colonialism, commerce, and identity. Key pieces include "Have a seat, this may take a while" (2025), which incorporates miniature sailing ships and a collaged tiara from Queen Elizabeth II, and "Hands in the air," which critiques racist packaging from a German ice cream company. The exhibition also includes a series of eight collages titled "Many thousands gone" and a sculptural edition, "Zuri," a ceramic bust with metallic glaze.
Art collector Christoph Müller has gifted approximately 200 works on paper—drawings, prints, and watercolours—to the Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings) in Berlin. The gift is being presented in four successive exhibitions at the Gemäldegalerie under the title "Das alles bin ich" (I am all that!), with the final installment, "Leaf by leaf – A life with art," running from 10 March to 14 June 2026. The works span five centuries and originate from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and France, covering themes such as nature, portraits, landscapes, history, and everyday life.
The University of Melbourne's Buxton Contemporary has opened a new exhibition titled "Poetry goes no further than language," which examines the emergence of conceptual art in China during the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Featuring works by the Beijing collective New Measurement Group and Shanghai artist Qian Weikang, the show also includes a new commission by Victorian College of the Arts graduate Darcey Bella Arnold. Curated by Dr. Carol Yinghua Lu, Director of Beijing's Inside-Out Art Museum, together with artist Liu Ding, the exhibition brings previously inaccessible or little-known works to Australia for the first time.
The University of Melbourne's Buxton Contemporary has opened "Poetry goes no further than language: A historical moment of art becoming art again," an exhibition examining the emergence of conceptual art in China during the mid-1980s and early 1990s. It features works by the Beijing collective New Measurement Group and Shanghai artist Qian Weikang, alongside a new commission by Victorian College of the Arts graduate Darcey Bella Arnold. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Carol Yinghua Lu, Director of Beijing's Inside-Out Art Museum, and artist Liu Ding.
The New Mexico Watercolor Society is hosting its annual juried Spring Exhibition at Expo New Mexico's Fine Arts Building from May 2 through May 23, featuring approximately 100 watercolors by over 300 society members. The show includes works by artists like Marcia Birmingham, Tom Cassidy, and Junko Nakao, who paint subjects ranging from old grain elevators to historic rail yard interiors and Japanese shrines. The society holds free monthly meetings open to anyone interested in learning watercolor techniques.
The Davis Arts Center (DAC) has donated approximately 100 artworks from its permanent collection to the Friends of the Davis Public Library for a sale starting this weekend. The works, mostly from the 1960s-1980s, include pieces by notable Davis-area artists such as Richard Nelson, Robert Arneson, Margery Mann, and Roland Petersen, and are priced under $100. The donation follows DAC's 2019 transformation from an exhibition space to a studio-focused nonprofit offering classes and camps, which led to most of its collection being placed in storage. DAC executive director Sam King enlisted Davis High School art teacher Luke Turner—a former museum professional—to help curate and place select pieces with institutions like the Mills College Art Museum and the Manetti Shrem Museum, while the remaining works are now being offered to the community at bargain prices.
Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) in Astoria, New York, announced record attendance of 311,000 visitors in 2025, a 105% increase from 2024 and a 147% increase from 2023. The opening day of the exhibition 'Stories and Set Design for the Sopranos' on February 14, 2026, marked the highest single-day attendance in the museum's history, with 3,600 visitors. Growth was driven by special programs like the 'Open Worlds' initiative, community events such as Lunar New Year and Iftar celebrations, and popular exhibitions including 'Mission: Impossible—Story and Spectacle,' which drew over 81,500 guests. The museum also hosted more than 500 screenings in its upgraded Sumner M. Redstone Theater.
Poly Auction Hong Kong concluded its Spring 2026 auction series with total sales exceeding HKD 255 million, representing a 23% increase over the previous autumn season. The sales were led by Liu Wei’s 1995 masterpiece "You Like Pork?", which fetched HKD 27.6 million, and a Ming Dynasty Blue and White 'Grapes' Dish that realized HKD 24.6 million. The auction saw participation from collectors across 17 countries, with significant growth in the Modern and Contemporary Art segment, which rose over 63% compared to the prior season.
Renowned York-based artist Mark Hearld is hosting an independent five-day exhibition at his private residence in The Mount. The showcase features twenty new collages and a series of prints, including works inspired by a recent trip to Jaipur and a collaborative screenprint with Penfold Press. The event is notable for being held outside the official York Open Studios program, a circuit Hearld has participated in for two decades but was not selected for this year.
Carrie Mae Weems has introduced a new photographic work titled 'Ocean Line' (2026). The piece is being presented in multiple dimensions, ranging from 11 x 14 inches to 20 x 24 inches, through a platform that partners with elite, vetted galleries to showcase contemporary artists to a global network of collectors and advisors.