Spring 2026 Exhibitions Opening Celebration

The Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University has announced its Spring 2026 exhibitions lineup, featuring works by Vitória Cribb, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, Eric N. Mack, Hew Locke, and Naeem Mohaiemen. Highlights include Cribb's 'echoes of a wet finger,' commissioned by Sharjah Art Biennial 16 and Mercosul Biennial 14, and solo presentations by Garrido-Lecca, Mack, and Locke, as well as Mohaiemen's film and video works. The season is supported by a range of funders including the American Electric Power Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Explore the Studio Museum in Harlem’s Legacy of Artistic Innovation and Impact Through These Archival Gems

The Studio Museum in Harlem reopened its newly renovated space in Harlem on November 15, 2025, marking a new chapter for the 57-year-old institution. The article highlights archival gems from the museum's history, including the 1969 exhibition "Harlem Artists 69," which featured over 100 works by 53 local Black artists, and the long-running Artist-in-Residence program launched in 1969. These moments underscore the museum's role in championing Black artistic innovation and community engagement, supported by partnerships with Columbia University and local nonprofits.

The Woman Question 1550–2025 The City of Women

The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (MSN Warsaw) will launch two concurrent exhibitions, "The Woman Question 1550–2025" and "The City of Women," running from November 21, 2025, to May 3, 2026. Featuring nearly 200 women artists from around the world—spanning from Artemisia Gentileschi and Frida Kahlo to Yoko Ono and Tala Madani—the shows aim to present five centuries of art by women, curated by Alison M. Gingeras and a team of researchers including Julia Bryan-Wilson, Michalina Sablik, Vera Zalutskaya, Karolina Gembara, and Wiktoria Szczupacka. The exhibitions include works borrowed from major international institutions such as the Uffizi Gallery, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and the Nasjonalmuseet.

On the ground at Art Week Tokyo: amid shifting national politics, Japan’s ‘sleeping beauty’ art scene is waking up

The fifth edition of Art Week Tokyo (AWT) took place from November 5-9, bringing together over 50 commercial galleries and museums across the city in a hybrid "post-art fair" model. The event unfolded against the backdrop of Sanae Takaichi becoming Japan's first female prime minister, a political shift that has sparked mixed reactions in the Japanese art world, with calls for improved tax incentives, international promotion, and stronger public collections. AWT, directed by Atsuko Ninagawa and organized in collaboration with Art Basel, featured museum shows including "What is Real?" at the Okura Museum of Art, curated by Adam Szymczyk, and "Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989-2010" at the National Art Center, Tokyo.

A new hope: Lucas Museum of Narrative Art sets September 2026 opening date

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles has announced its opening date of September 22, 2026, more than a decade after the project was first conceived by filmmaker George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson. The museum, which moved from San Francisco to Chicago before settling in Los Angeles's Exposition Park, has grown from a $700 million budget to a reported $1 billion and will house over 40,000 works across 100,000 square feet of exhibition space. The collection spans ancient artifacts, canonical artists like Frida Kahlo and John Singer Sargent, comic book legends such as Jack Kirby and Alison Bechdel, photography by Gordon Parks and Dorothea Lange, and the Lucas Archives of film memorabilia.

Rediscovering Roger Fry, the overlooked Bloomsbury artist who helped bring Cézanne and Van Gogh to the world

The Charleston museum in Firle, East Sussex, will mount a major solo exhibition of paintings by Roger Fry (1866-1934) from 15 November 2025 to 15 March 2026. Fry, a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group, was a polymath who introduced Post-Impressionists like Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin to British and American audiences, co-founded the Omega Workshops and the Burlington Magazine, taught at Cambridge, and curated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show brings together nearly 80 works, over 60 from private collections, including portraits of friends like E.M. Forster and Vanessa Bell, and landscapes that reveal his experimental range from Gauguin-esque outlines to Cubism.

59th Carnegie International's inaugural artist commissions revealed

Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh has announced the first 14 artists for its 59th Carnegie International, running from May 2026 to January 2027. Participants include Torkwase Dyson, Alia Farid, Sanchayan Ghosh, Jonathan González, Abraham González Pacheco, Eric Gyamfi, G. Peter Jemison, Liz Johnson Artur, Arturo Kameya, Claudia Martínez Garay, Cinthia Marcelle, Shala Miller, Brooke O’Harra, Sofu Teshigahara, and Ginger Brooks Takahashi. The exhibition, curated by Ryan Inouye, Liz Park, and Danielle A. Jackson, will feature commissions across multiple disciplines, including a planetarium animation, sound installations, photography, performance, and public outdoor works. Venues include the Carnegie Museum of Art, Children’s Museum, Kamin Science Center, Mattress Factory, and Thelma Lovette YMCA.

Arts Playlist: Delaware Art Museum's 'Imprinted: Illustrating Race'

The Delaware Art Museum has opened 'Imprinted: Illustrating Race,' an exhibition co-curated by University of Delaware professor Robyn Phillips-Pendleton that examines how race and identity have been depicted in popular illustration over more than a century. The show, which previously ran at the Norman Rockwell Museum, features works from books, magazines, advertising, trade cards, posters, and even a cookie jar, tracing the evolution of racial representation in American visual culture. It includes a notable shift by Norman Rockwell, who after decades of depicting predominantly white family scenes for the Saturday Evening Post, turned to socially relevant topics like civil rights in the 1950s.

Opening date for London’s V&A East Museum announced

The V&A East Museum in London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will open on 18 April 2026, completing the institution's east London cultural campus. Designed by O'Donnell + Tuomey, the five-story museum will feature two free permanent "Why We Make" galleries co-curated with local youth groups, showcasing over 500 objects from the V&A collection alongside contemporary works by artists including Yinka Ilori, Tania Bruguera, Carrie Mae Weems, and Thomas J. Price. The opening exhibition, "The Music Is Black: A British Story," will chart the influence of Black British music from 1900 to the present.

Exhibition explores two transformative decades of innovative art created in Japan, for the world

The exhibition "Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989-2010" at the National Art Center, Tokyo, examines two transformative decades of Japanese art framed by the death of Emperor Hirohito in 1989 and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and Fukushima disaster. It features works by artists such as Yasumasa Morimura, Tadasu Takamine, Lieko Shiga, and Shimabuku, alongside international figures like Pierre Huyghe and Rirkrit Tiravanija, challenging fixed notions of national identity and highlighting global exchanges.

New York Galleries: Openings and Closings of the Week (11/03—11/09)

Women in the Arts museum brings golden age artists into focus

The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., has opened a new exhibition titled "Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600-1750," which showcases works by largely forgotten female masters of the Dutch Golden Age, including Judith Leyster, Maria van Oosterwijck, Clara Peeters, and Rachel Ruysch. The show features over a dozen artists and highlights paintings rich in symbolism, such as van Oosterwijck's "Vanitas Still Life" and Leyster's "The Concert," while also addressing how many of these women were celebrated in their own time but later misattributed or omitted from art history.

Seattle Art Museum exhibit explores France's food identity

The Seattle Art Museum has opened a new exhibition titled "Farm to Table: Food and Identity in the Age of Impressionism," featuring over 50 works by Impressionist artists such as Claude Monet and Paul Gauguin. The show explores how late 19th-century France, emerging from the Franco-Prussian War and social upheaval, turned to food imagery in art as a symbol of national pride and resilience. Curator Theresa Papanikolas highlights scenes of farmers, food workers, and markets like Les Halles, which also depict class interactions. The exhibition includes a dining table installation with prompt cards to encourage conversation, and Seattle is the final stop on its national tour, running through Jan. 18, 2026.

With the help of exhibitions, Jeanne Lanvin's eponymous fashion house is keeping her legacy alive

Jeanne Lanvin, a trailblazer in 20th-century French fashion and interiors, is being honored through exhibitions that explore her legacy. The article features a conversation between Peter Copping, Lanvin's current artistic director, and Olivier Gabet, director of the Department of Objets d'Art at the Musée du Louvre. Gabet curated the exhibition "Louvre Couture" featuring 99 looks from 45 fashion houses, while Copping has drawn inspiration from the Lanvin archive and the preserved rooms of Jeanne Lanvin's apartment now on permanent display at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

Curator Conversation: Behind The Honest Eye

On October 25, 2025, co-curators Clarisse Fava-Piz, Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts, and Nerina Santorius will host a conversation at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the exhibition "Pissarro’s Impressionism." The talk will explore Camille Pissarro’s life and legacy, from his Caribbean roots to his role in Impressionism, and detail how over 80 works were assembled for the first major U.S. retrospective of the artist in over 40 years. The event is sold out in person but will be livestreamed.

Manhattan block where Basquiat lived and worked renamed in his honour

A block of Great Jones Street in downtown Manhattan, between Bowery and Lafayette Street, has been officially renamed Jean-Michel Basquiat Way in honor of the late Neo-Expressionist artist. Basquiat lived and worked at 57 Great Jones Street from 1983 until his death from a heroin overdose at age 27 in 1988, renting the space from his friend Andy Warhol. On October 21, New York city council members and Basquiat's family, including his sister Lisane Basquiat, unveiled the street signs. The building now features a commemorative plaque and has been rented by actress Angelina Jolie as a showroom and curatorial space for her fashion brand Jolie Atelier.

Remembering Sylvio Perlstein, the Belgian art collector and jeweller, who died aged 94

Sylvio Perlstein, the Belgian art collector and jeweller, died at age 94 in Antwerp, where he was born in 1931. A third-generation gem-cutter from a diamond dynasty, he fled the Nazis with his Jewish family to Brazil as an infant, reinventing himself as "Sylvio." His collecting began as an adolescent in Rio, where he bought a strange painting from a florist. Over decades, he amassed a major collection of 20th-century avant-garde art, befriending artists like Man Ray and Yves Klein, and acquiring works by René Magritte, Marcel Broodthaers, and Pablo Picasso. He was known for his discerning eye, seeking works that were "esquisito"—weird, strange, and different—rather than conventionally beautiful.

Extravagant Munich museum dedicated to Symbolist Franz von Stuck to reopen after €13.5m renovation

Munich's Museum Villa Stuck, the former home of Symbolist artist Franz von Stuck, reopens on 18 October after a €13.5m renovation. The project upgraded infrastructure, restored the facade, and renewed historical rooms, including music and reception salons with restored Pompeii-inspired wall paintings and new silk curtains. The museum's display of Stuck's paintings has been reconfigured, with fresh exhibits such as a recently donated work, and the total number of Stuck paintings on view has increased. The reopening coincides with a contemporary art exhibition, 'A Song of Ascents,' featuring Manchester-based artist Louise Giovanelli.

Indigenous artists transform works at Metropolitan Museum in unsanctioned augmented reality project

On Indigenous Peoples’ Day (13 October), 17 Native artists staged an unsanctioned augmented reality intervention inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing. The project, titled ENCODED: Change the Story, Change the Future (through 31 December), digitally overlays cosmological figures, pow-wow dancers, and ivy onto 19th-century paintings and sculptures, challenging the museum’s narratives. Co-curated by filmmaker Tracy Renée Rector and an anonymous Indigenous co-curator in collaboration with the non-profit Amplifier, the intervention coincides with the American Wing’s centenary.

Memorial Art Gallery Announces Frontiers of Impressionism: Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum Opening Nov. 2

The Memorial Art Gallery (MAG) in Rochester, NY, will present "Frontiers of Impressionism: Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum" from November 2, 2025, through March 1, 2026. The exhibition features fifty-two masterworks from the Worcester Art Museum's collection, including Claude Monet's 1908 painting "Nymphéas (Water Lilies)"—the first water lily painting ever purchased by an art museum. More than thirty European and American artists are represented, such as Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, and John Singer Sargent.

Gwen John: Strange Beauties

The article announces 'Gwen John: Strange Beauties,' a major exhibition running from July 30 to November 28, 2027, that brings together the artist's celebrated oil paintings with rarely seen drawings and watercolors. Spanning her early student days to her immersion in French modernism, the show is the most comprehensive survey dedicated to Gwen John in over 40 years, organized by Amgueddfa Cymru in partnership with National Galleries of Scotland, the Yale Center for British Art, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Paradigm Shift – a major exhibition exploring new dimensions in Moving Image.

180 Studios presents 'Paradigm Shift', a major exhibition at 180 Strand in London that transforms the venue's subterranean spaces to showcase acclaimed moving image works from the 1970s to the present. Curated by Jefferson Hack and Mark Wadhwa, the show features over a dozen artists including Ryan Trecartin, Nan Goldin, Andy Warhol, Pipilotti Rist, and Arthur Jafa, drawing from avant-garde cinema, TV, music video, performance, fashion, gaming, and internet culture. New commissions by 180 Studios sit alongside iconic historical works, tracing revolutions in moving image culture from Warhol's 1970s 'Fashion TV' to TELFAR TV today.

In a new biography, Vanessa Bell is cast as the Bloomsbury Group's leading light—and as central to 20th-century visual culture

Wendy Hitchmough’s new biography, *Vanessa Bell: The Life and Art of a Bloomsbury Radical*, argues that Vanessa Bell (1879–1961) was a central figure in 20th-century visual culture, both as an artist and designer. The book details how Bell navigated sexism through collaboration and anonymity, with works like *Dancing Couple* only attributed to her in 1999. Hitchmough, a former curator of Charleston, presents Bell’s life with a matter-of-fact tone, weaving in the complex personal and professional entanglements of the Bloomsbury Group, including her relationships with Clive Bell, Roger Fry, and Molly MacCarthy.

Daegu Photo Biennale tackles the Anthropocene

The Daegu Photo Biennale in South Korea, now in its 10th edition, tackles the Anthropocene through the lens of symbiosis, featuring three main exhibitions: 'The Pulse of Life', 'The Origin of the World', and a solo show by Rinko Kawauchi titled 'M/E On this Sphere Endlessly Interlinking'. Artistic director Emmanuelle de l’Ecotais, a former curator at Centre Pompidou and Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, leads the biennale, which includes 80 artists in the main exhibition and 75 in the special exhibition, alongside emerging artist showcases, a symposium, a photobook exhibition, and a portfolio review, all spread across 4,000 square meters at the Daegu Culture and Arts Center.

Powerhouse Museum builds ‘tower to stars’ for $18 million opening show

The Powerhouse Museum in Parramatta is constructing a six-storey tower inside its largest exhibition hall for an $18 million opening show titled "Task Eternal," set for September 2026. The exhibition explores humanity's fascination with stars, flight, and space, featuring 290 loans from international institutions including the British Museum and NASA, as well as Australian astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg's spacesuit on public display for the first time. Designed by Beijing-based firm OPEN architecture, the show includes a steel tower inspired by Ted Chiang's novella "Tower of Babylon," with installations by Thai artist Torlarp Larpjaroensook and US artist James Turrell.

Ruth Orkin: Women on the Move | Exhibition

The National Museum of Women in the Arts is presenting "Ruth Orkin: Women on the Move," an exhibition of 21 vintage photographs by the mid-20th-century American photographer Ruth Orkin (1921–1985). Drawn from the museum's collection, the show highlights Orkin's depictions of women in diverse settings—from Hollywood celebrities and Broadway stars to Women's Army Auxiliary Corps members, tourists in Europe, and families in an Israeli kibbutz. Orkin, who was barred from joining the cinematographers' union due to her gender, turned her narrative eye to photography, often collaborating with her subjects to invert the conventional male gaze. The exhibition runs from December 12, 2025, to April 19, 2026.

Ai Weiwei: ‘Nothing scares me anymore—being terrified does not help’

Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has unveiled a major new commission in Kyiv, Ukraine, titled 'Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Camouflage Uniforms Painted White,' on view until November 30. The site-specific installation, commissioned by the non-profit cultural platform Ribbon International, features three spheres wrapped in camouflaged fabric dotted with animal images, responding to escalating global armed conflicts. Ai recently traveled to the front line of the war in eastern Ukraine near Kharkiv, meeting Ukrainian fighters and cultural figures, and also planted sunflower seeds and buttons in a field there as a ceremonial act.

Ten essential works of art to see at the Museum of Modern Art, New York

The article presents a curated list of ten essential artworks at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, coinciding with the departure of longtime director Glenn Lowry after 30 years and the appointment of Christophe Cherix as his successor. It highlights iconic pieces such as Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907) and Matisse's "The Red Studio" (1911), while reflecting on MoMA's history, its founding vision by Alfred Barr, and its evolution through expansions including the incorporation of PS1 and the $450 million renovation of its 53rd Street building.

Nicholas Galanin pulls out of Smithsonian event, claiming censorship

Nicholas Galanin, a multidisciplinary artist and member of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, withdrew from a symposium hosted by the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM), citing government censorship. The symposium accompanies the exhibition *The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture*, which President Donald Trump labeled as “divisive” and “race-centred” in a March 27 executive order. Galanin alleged that the event was made private with a curated guest list and that he was asked not to record or share it on social media. SAAM denied the censorship claims, stating the event was never publicly listed and that participants were encouraged to share with their networks. Galanin’s 2016 work *The Imaginary Indian (Totem Pole)* is featured in the exhibition.

Plan Your Visit to Pissarro's Impressionism

The Denver Art Museum has announced ticketing and visitor details for its upcoming exhibition "The Honest Eye: Camille Pissarro's Impressionism," running from October 26, 2025, to February 8, 2026. The show features over 100 paintings by the Impressionist master, including works from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Joslyn Art Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Ordrupgaard. Tickets are now on sale, with timed entry every ten minutes; adult nonmember tickets start at $27, while members pay $5 and children's tickets are also $5. The museum provides practical guidance on parking, entry points, audio guides in English and Spanish, and recommends quieter visiting times such as Tuesday evenings.