Monet, grand voyageur
The publishing house Cinabre has launched a new book series called 'Partance' that explores the influence of travel on artists' work. The inaugural volume, 'Partance. Claude Monet,' published in 2026, marks the centenary of Claude Monet's death by comprehensively tracing all of his foreign travels for the first time and analyzing their impact on his art.
20e édition des Journées Marteau
The 20th edition of the Journées Marteau (Hammer Days) will take place from May 26 to 31, 2026, across Paris and France. Organized by the Symev, the event invites the public to discover how auctions work and to have objects, jewelry, and artworks appraised. For this anniversary edition, auctioneers are highlighting the color red through a curated selection of lots, while workshops, conferences, and meetings will illuminate the mechanisms of the art market.
Rubens en chantier au Louvre
The Louvre Museum has launched a major four-year restoration project for the monumental 24-canvas 'Cycle of Marie de Médicis' by Peter Paul Rubens. The initiative, funded by the Société des Amis du Louvre with a budget of 4 million euros, aims to restore the works' chromatic power and stabilize their fragile paint layers. The Medici Gallery will close to the public in May, though some stages of the process will be viewable.
JR signe l’affiche de Roland-Garros 2026
The French artist JR has been commissioned to create the official poster for the 2026 Roland-Garros tennis tournament. His design blends photography with an illusionistic device, transforming the tennis court into an expanded, almost architectural space, aiming to give the sporting event a more contemporary visual dimension.
Photographer Paula Hornickel captured a moment between an elderly care home resident named Waltraud and a social robot named Emma in Albershausen, Germany. The robot, designed for companionship in settings with staff shortages, engages residents in conversation, tells jokes, and discusses topics like favorite flowers, simulating social interaction.
Ndéyé Kouagou has opened her first solo exhibition in Italy at Collezione Maramotti, presented in conjunction with the Fotografia Europea 2026 festival. The exhibition, titled 'Ghosts of the Moment', features recent works and new commissions that showcase her language-driven practice, blending text, performance, and image to explore unstable meaning and contemporary subjectivity.
COLECCIONAR EN MADRID: 50 FORMAS DE CONSTRUIR LO CONTEMPORÁNEO
The exhibition 'Madrid Colecciona. 50 colecciones de arte contemporáneo' opened at CentroCentro, showcasing a hundred works from fifty private collections in Madrid. It shifts focus from the artwork and artist to the often-opaque figure of the collector, allowing each collector to present two pieces: one of personal significance and one recent acquisition, accompanied by their own explanatory texts.
L’art aborigène déploie ses couleurs et ses messages codés dans une grande expo à Lodève
A major exhibition of Aboriginal art has opened at the Musée de Lodève in France, featuring over one hundred works primarily from the collection of Alison and Peter Klein. The show presents paintings, painted totems, and trunks, showcasing the rich colors, hypnotic dot painting techniques, and coded symbolism characteristic of this art form.
A series of new gallery and community art exhibitions are opening across the Hamptons and Montauk. Highlights include Timothy Tibus's solo painting show "Live Forever" at The Lucore Art in Montauk, the group exhibition "Echoes of Matisse" at The Drawing Room in East Hampton, Ann Pibal's solo show at Halsey McKay Gallery, and a one-week solo exhibition for Marcie Honerkamp at the Springs Community Library.
Brazil's 2026 Venice Biennale pavilion, curated by Diane Lima, presents a radical, sensorial exhibition titled 'Comigo ninguém pode' featuring artists Adriana Varejão and Rosana Paulino. The show transforms the modernist pavilion into an active participant, where historical and new works by the two artists create friction and resonance, exploring themes of colonial violence, the Black female body as archive, and spiritual resistance.
The International Jury for the Biennale Arte 2026 has been announced, with Solange Oliveira Farkas serving as president. The jury includes curators Zoe Butt and Elvira Dyangani Ose, each bringing extensive experience in contemporary art from the Global South, biennial curation, and institutional leadership. Farkas is the founder of Associação Cultural Videobrasil, Butt founded the in-tangible institute, and Dyangani Ose is artistic director of the 2nd Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial and former director of MACBA Barcelona.
The University of Chicago is hosting a diverse slate of art exhibitions across its campus this spring. Highlights include 'A Bestiary of Ancient Nubia' at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, 'Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art' and 'Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas' at the Smart Museum of Art, the photography exhibition 'Black Culture in Chicago' at the Logan Center, and 'History on the Edges: Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Caribbean' at the Regenstein Library.
Kent County Council, led by the Reform party, has removed and sold Antony Gormley's early public sculpture 'Two Stones' (1979-81) from outside the Kent History and Library Centre in Maidstone. The council sold the work back to the artist himself in a private sale to raise funds, citing severe financial pressures and a need to avoid increasing costs for residents. The council's most recent accounts valued the work at £859,000, but the final sale price remains confidential.
Anche per questo 2026 il Fuorisalone è pieno di moda. Ecco gli eventi a metà strada tra fashion e design
The 2026 Fuorisalone in Milan continues to be a major platform for the convergence of fashion and design. Numerous fashion brands are presenting immersive installations, special collections, and cultural formats across the city, transforming urban spaces into narrative environments. Key presentations include YOOX's digital installation with Keta Bart, Gucci's archival project by Demna, Prada's symposium curated by Formafantasma, and new collections from Armani, Fendi, Dior Maison, and Louis Vuitton.
Oman has chosen artist, architect, and curator Haitham Al Busafi to represent the country at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026. Al Busafi will curate and present his own monumental installation, Zīnah, in the national pavilion, commissioned by the Omani Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth. The work transforms a traditional Omani horse harness into an interactive spatial experience using sand, metal, and sound.
La letteratura oggi: la crisi del romanzo come sintomo di un cambiamento sociale
The article examines the perceived crisis of the novel as a literary form, tracing its historical rise alongside the bourgeoisie in the 17th and 18th centuries. It argues the novel functioned as a mirror for a coherent social class with shared values, serving as a device for collective representation. The form's foundational premise of a recognizable community began to fracture in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, as societies atomized and grand ideological narratives collapsed.
Artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino discuss their project 'conference of one’s self' for the Australia Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale. Sabsabi explains how the work draws on the twelfth-century Sufi poem 'The Conference of the Birds' by Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, mapping its seven spiritual valleys and adding an eighth level of 'wholeness and completeness'. He also reflects on his childhood in Lebanon, migration to Australia, and how his return to Lebanon in 2002 reconnected him with his Sufi lineage, which informs his artistic practice focused on memory, displacement, and social justice.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has opened its new David Geffen Galleries building, a major architectural project designed to be a glamorous cultural beacon. The building itself is a striking landmark, but the exhibition spaces within present significant challenges for the display of art, creating a complex, maze-like environment for visitors.
The Gemäldegalerie in Berlin has completed the digitization of its high-resolution glass-negative archive, which documents hundreds of Old Master paintings destroyed in a fire at the end of the Second World War. The collection includes lost works by Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Paolo Veronese, which were stored in a flak tower for protection and burned in May 1945.
Kuala Lumpur is experiencing a wave of new museum and gallery openings in 2025, marking a significant cultural expansion for the Malaysian capital. Key developments include the Merdeka Textile Museum, set to open in August within the Merdeka 118 tower and billed as Asia's first state-of-the-art textile museum; Muara Arts, a public gallery project by Creador Foundation opening in September in the historic Medan Pasar district; and recent openings such as the heritage building Seri Negara and restored gallery spaces at Bangunan Sultan Abdul Samad. These join earlier private collector-led spaces like Ur-Mu (2022), Toffee (2023), and +N (2025), as well as the established Ilham Gallery (2015).
Le Lacma inaugure son nouveau bâtiment
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has inaugurated its new David Geffen Galleries building, a massive horizontal structure spanning Wilshire Boulevard. Designed by architect Peter Zumthor, the $720 million project features 32,000 square meters of exhibition space across 90 non-hierarchical galleries, a free public park level, and a radical departure from traditional museum departmental organization.
Five new exhibitions opened at the Yale Schwarzman Center on April 7, featuring work from 53 young artists including New Haven high school students, Yale undergraduates, and graduate students. The shows explore themes of identity, unity, memory, nature, and emotion through visual art, photography, installation, digital work, and multimedia. Highlights include "Call-to-Connect," an interactive payphone installation by Soleil Piverger; "The View From Here: Accessing Art Through Photography," a smartphone photography exhibition in collaboration with the Yale Center for British Art; and "Rooted in Heritage: Art Across Yale’s Cultural Centers," curated by Carlynne Robinson, featuring works reflecting multicultural communities at Yale.
National Gallery Singapore has opened its first R18 exhibition, 'Passion Is Volcanic: Desire In South-east Asian Art', featuring around 60% of works from the national collection, many shown for the first time, alongside regional loans. The show includes a 14th-15th century tantric Buddhist sculpture of kissing buddhas, a pastel painting by pioneering gay Singaporean artist Tan Peng, Liu Kang's 1953 painting 'Scene In Bali', and long-exposure photography by Lavender Chang originally commissioned for a Viagra campaign. Co-curators Adele Tan and Kathleen Ditzig contextualize the exhibition with pre-modern works to demonstrate that artists' interest in the body, desire, and sex is enduring in Asia.
V&A East Museum, a major new branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum, opened on 18 April in London's Olympic Park as part of the East Bank cultural quarter. The free-entry museum features permanent galleries and temporary exhibitions, launching with a landmark show titled 'The Music is Black: A British Story,' which traces over a century of Black British music through more than 200 objects. Developed with BBC Music, the exhibition includes items from artists like Winifred Atwell, Little Simz, Skepta, and Mis-Teeq. The museum's permanent display, 'Why We Make,' was co-created with the V&A East Youth Collective and explores global creative motivations. The opening was marked by a star-studded event with performances by AJ Tracey, Beverley Knight, and MNEK.
Sotheby's Paris achieved a new French auction record for Claude Monet on April 16, 2026, with 'Vétheuil, effet du matin' (1901) selling for €10.2 million, far above its €6-8 million estimate. The evening sale generated €35 million total, an 84% increase over the 2025 session, also featuring strong results for Marc Chagall, Lucio Fontana, and Rembrandt Bugatti. Meanwhile, Christie's Paris celebrated the 25th anniversary of its 'Thinking Italian' section with a complete sell-out of 11 lots, including a new auction record for Ettore Spalletti's 'Mobile' (1974) at €203,200. The overall Paris modern and contemporary art week reached a record €80.9 million, up 39% year-on-year.
Der letzte lebende Surrealist
Alejandro Jodorowsky, the 97-year-old Chilean-French artist and filmmaker, is profiled in his Paris apartment as the last living Surrealist. The article reflects on his century-spanning career, from his early pantomime work with Marcel Marceau in the 1950s to his cult films like "El Topo" and "The Holy Mountain," as well as his famously unrealized adaptation of Frank Herbert's "Dune." Jodorowsky shares his philosophy that true art has a beginning but no end, offering a retrospective on a life lived at the intersection of performance, cinema, and visionary creativity.
Robert Koch Gallery, a founding member of AIPAD, will present a group exhibition at The Photography Show 2026, held at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City from April 22–26. The gallery's booth B6 will feature the premiere of key early Edward Burtynsky images in a larger 48 × 60–72 inch format, previously unavailable at that scale, along with recent mine tailing images shown for the first time. Also on view will be photographs from Matt Black's American Geography and New World Atlas series, works by Mimi Plumb, whose retrospective is currently at the High Museum of Art, and pieces by historic photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Helen Levitt, and Man Ray.
Haitham Al-Busafi will represent Oman at the 61st Venice Biennale, serving as both artist and curator. His installation, titled "Zinah," transforms the tradition of Omani silver horse adornment (Al-zaanah) into an immersive environment of sand, suspended metal, and collectively generated sound. Located in the Arsenale Artiglierie and commissioned by Oman's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth, the work was developed through a community workshop in Muscat where participants inscribed marks into silver forms. The exhibition runs from May 9 to November 22, 2025.
連載 中島りか 新しい死者の書 第三回
Japanese artist Rika Nakajima reflects on the trial of Tetsuya Yamagami, who assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022, weaving together her own experience running the project space "Datsuisho – (a) place to be naked" in Tokyo's Yanaka district. As the space faced demolition in late 2025, Nakajima draws parallels between the trial's timing and the closure of her venue, recalling earlier events at the space that discussed the state funeral controversy and the cult issues exposed by the assassination. She describes attending the trial in Nara, observing Yamagami's demeanor, and connecting the case to broader themes of political aesthetics, fascism, and the theatricality of the judicial system.
Polly Samson, acclaimed author and wife of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, presents her first solo photography exhibition at Leica Gallery London, featuring intimate images taken over two decades of Gilmour on tour and in the studio. The show, titled 'Polly Samson – Between This Breath and Then,' runs until 7 May 2026 and coincides with the release of her book 'David Gilmour: Luck and Strange – Studio/Live,' published by Thames & Hudson. Samson's photographs capture candid moments of Gilmour, their family, and the creative process behind albums including 'Luck and Strange.'