May Arts Calendar 2026

The May Arts Calendar 2026 highlights a wide range of visual art exhibitions and events in the Seattle area, including group and solo shows at galleries such as Gallery B612, Visual Arts Gallery No. 85, JG Art Gallery, Piano Nobile, ArtXContemporary Gallery, and Common Objects. Notable exhibitions include "Layered Being: A Celebration of AAPINH Heritage" at Gallery B612, "Moving As One" by Tetsuo Aoki, "Material Meditations" featuring woodworker Andy McConell, blacksmith Maria Cristalli, and mixed media artist Jill Kyong, and "TADAIMA: 'I'm Home'" at MOHAI, which explores Japanese American history through dolls. The calendar also features a solo show by Yaminee Patel and a group show titled "Moga" at Fresh Mochi, celebrating Japanese and Japanese American artists.

NEXT in the Gallery: Preview Pittsburgh summer with a 'Pity Party,' dog sculptures and so much more art

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.

EXPO CHICAGO 2026 Opens With Local Enthusiasm and Strong Institutional Sales

EXPO CHICAGO 2026 has launched at Navy Pier with a streamlined, highly curated format that emphasizes quality over quantity. The fair’s opening days have been defined by robust institutional engagement, with several major museums acquiring works for their permanent collections. This year’s edition features a diverse array of artists and galleries, reinforcing its position as the premier contemporary art platform in the American Midwest.

Boulder County art shows, gallery events this week

This week's Boulder County art scene features a wide array of exhibitions and gallery events across multiple venues. Highlights include the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art's group show "Yes &…" running through May 3, Jordan Wolfson's "Interiors" at BMoCA at Frasier, and "Black Futures in Art" at Bus Stop Gallery. Other notable shows include "Balance" by Studio Art Quilt Associates at Collective Community Arts Center, "Jamaican Portraits" by Albert Chong at East Window, and "Camp: Queer Arts and Crafts" at Kin Studio and Gallery. The Dairy Arts Center presents "Continuum" and "Polyglot," while the Museum of Boulder features "Blazing Trail for 150 Years at CU Boulder" and "Boulder Eats!"

New York Galleries: Openings and Closings (02/02-02/08)

A flurry of gallery activity is scheduled for the week of February 2-8, 2026, in New York City. Numerous exhibitions are opening, including "Interstice: Whirled Music" at Kiang Malingue, "Everything She Touches" by Alix Vernet at Eric Firestone Gallery, and "Anima" by Felipe Baeza at Print Center New York. Concurrently, many shows are in their final days, such as "A Retrospective by Ruth Asawa" at the Museum of Modern Art, "FDR Drive Musel, 1984" by Keith Haring at Martos Gallery, and "West Coast Women of Abstract Expressionism" at Berry Campbell.

Expo Chicago lines up 130 galleries for ‘a more focused’ fair

Expo Chicago, acquired by Frieze in 2023, will return to Navy Pier’s Festival Hall this April with around 130 galleries, a 23% reduction from the 170 exhibitors in recent editions. The fair frames this as a more focused, intentionally scaled format designed to deepen engagement, and it will be the first edition under new director Kate Sierzputowski, who succeeded longtime leader Tony Karman. The fair features a strong contingent of local Chicago dealers, international galleries from South Korea, Lagos, Milan, Dublin, and elsewhere, and partnerships with the Obama Presidential Center and the Galleries Association of Korea.

Photo London reveals details of tenth anniversary edition

Photo London will celebrate its tenth anniversary edition from May 15-18, 2025 at Somerset House, which is itself marking 25 years as an international arts destination. The fair will feature a strong roster of returning and new international galleries, the return of the Discovery section for emerging galleries, and a new Positions section for unrepresented photographers championed by collectors. Special programming includes a 'London Lives' exhibition showcasing around 30 leading photographers, a solo show by Colin Dodgson presented by Belmond, a new Book Market for independent publishers, a talks programme curated by Thames & Hudson, and awards such as the Photo London x Nikon Emerging Photographer of the Year and the Photo London x Hahnemühle Student Award.

For its 10th edition Photo London aims to look beyond the notorious ‘Kate Moss Index’

Photo London, the UK's leading photography fair, is preparing for its 10th edition from 15 to 18 May at Somerset House under new director Sophie Parker. Parker, the fair's first female director and a longtime staff member, aims to move beyond the so-called 'Kate Moss Index'—industry slang for the prevalence of safe, traditional photographic subjects like supermodel portraits—by rewarding galleries that take risks with more experimental work. The fair has cycled through several directors in recent years, including Roderick van der Lee and Kamiar Maleki, but Parker brings an insider's perspective and a working-class background to the role.

laura de gunzburg gabriel chipperfield art family young collectors

Laura de Gunzburg, a 35-year-old cultural advisor and daughter of arts patron Nathalie de Gunzburg, and Gabriel Chipperfield, a 36-year-old developer and son of architect David Chipperfield, discuss their art collection and collecting philosophy in an interview. The couple, who support institutions like the Dia Art Foundation, Serpentine Galleries, and Turner Contemporary, share insights on their first purchases, rookie mistakes, and the artists they follow, including Alvaro Barrington, Alicja Kwade, and Mary Stephenson.

​​​​Art Movements: Curators Named for El Museo's Latine Art Survey

El Museo del Barrio has announced the curatorial team for the 2027 edition of La Trienal, its landmark survey of Latine contemporary art. The show will be organized by Susanna V. Temkin, interim chief curator at the museum; Zuna Maza, assistant curator; and guest curator Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, formerly of Socrates Sculpture Park. In other biennial news, Amanda Carneiro and Raphael Fonseca were named chief curators of the 37th Bienal de São Paulo, the jury of the 61st Venice Biennale resigned after omitting Russia and Israel from awards consideration, and Marcello Dantas was appointed senior curator of the Vancouver Biennale. Hedwig Fijen will step down as director of Manifesta, with Emilia van Lynden and Catherine Nichols taking over in a new co-leadership model. Janne Sirén will resign as director of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Kate Kraczon was named chief curator at the Montclair Art Museum, and Charlie White was appointed dean of WashU’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Marina Abramović has designed wine labels for the Ornellaia estate, with limited-edition bottles to be auctioned by Bonhams to benefit the Guggenheim Pop exhibition.

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SCOPE Miami Beach 2024 features a playful, pop-culture-infused atmosphere with works ranging from a plane-crash installation by Brazilian artist Marcos Amaro at Andrea Rehder Gallery to a marble sculpture by Matthias Contzen at Callan Contemporary. British artist Lucy Sparrow presents a fully stocked fabric deli at Lawrence Alkin Gallery, while other highlights include beaded sculptures by Jan Huling at Duane Reed Gallery and thread paintings by Chris Roberts-Antieau at Heron Arts. The fair also showcases embroidered-style paintings by Joan Salo at Michele Mariaud and a hyperrealistic bust of Picasso by Jamie Salmon at Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts.

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The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens has opened "Why Look at Animals: A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives," a major exhibition curated by Katerina Gregos that spans seven floors and features over 60 artists. The show confronts animal exploitation through works such as Ang Siew Ching's video "High-Rise Pigs" (2025), depicting a 26-story factory farm in China, and Art Orienté Objet's charcoal map of endangered species slowly erased by a robotic arm. Other artists include Sue Coe, Igor Grubić, and Janis Rafa, with the exhibition taking its title from a John Berger essay.

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Artist Brian Donnelly, known as KAWS, won a $900,000 damages award from a U.S. District Court on May 2 against Dylan Joy An Leong Yi Zhi and two Singapore-based companies, the Penthouse Theory and the Penthouse Collective, for counterfeiting replicas of KAWS's signature "Companion" figure, toys, skateboards, and artworks. The court also ordered the defendants to stop producing the knockoffs, with KAWS's attorney Aaron Richard Golub calling it a significant international case that can now be enforced globally, including in Singapore.

Was in den Museen läuft

Munich's art festival "Various Others" kicks off this week with major city museums participating. The Pinakothek der Moderne presents "Reflexion," a group show of 100 works across fine art, architecture, graphic design, and design by artists including Isa Genzken, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Piet Zwart, and Ettore Sottsass. The Alexander-Tutsek-Stiftung celebrates its 25th anniversary with a glass-focused exhibition featuring Monica Bonvicini, Tony Cragg, and Laure Prouvost. The Villa Stuck reopens after renovation with four shows: Philipp Messner's sculptures, Ilit Azoulay's macro-film installation, a returning Franz von Stuck painting, and Delschad Numan Khorschid and Jan-Hendrik Pelz's migration-themed "Zehn Leben." The Lenbachhaus presents "Ein Ferngespräch. Szenen aus der Weimarer Republik" with works by Jeanne Mammen, Gabriele Münter, and Christian Schad. Museum Brandhorst's "Carrying" addresses the history of the Maxvorstadt art district, once site of a military barracks built by Ottoman prisoners. The Eres Stiftung continues "Seeing the Unseen" on quantum physics. The Flux meeting space, designed by Morag Myerscough, moves indoors at the Pinakothek der Moderne.

10 Highlights You Shouldn't Miss in Venice

10 Highlights, die Sie in Venedig nicht verpassen sollten

The article presents ten must-see highlights of the 61st Venice Biennale, curated by the editors of Monopol magazine. It covers the main exhibition at the Arsenale, national pavilions, and collateral events, including Sandra Knecht's beehouse installation, Isabel Nolan's Irish Pavilion exploring dreams and late medieval humanism, Chiara Camoni's Italian Pavilion blending ceramics and found materials, and Asim Waqif's bamboo construction in the Indian Pavilion. Other featured works include a church filled with surveillance cameras and the new Fondazione Dries Van Noten.

Lee Miller in Wide Angle

Lee Miller en grand angle

The Musée d'Art moderne de Paris (MAM) has opened a major retrospective of photographer Lee Miller (1907-1977), featuring nearly 250 prints—many vintage and previously unseen. The exhibition originated at Tate Britain, where it drew over 250,000 visitors, and was co-organized with MAM and the Art Institute of Chicago. Curated by Michal Goldschmidt (former Tate Britain curator) and Fanny Schulmann of MAM, with new research led by Hilary Floe, the show emphasizes Miller's ties to Paris, her technical mastery, and her wartime reporting, including contact sheets from Dachau and Buchenwald never before shown in France.

American Artist and Sonya Clark among Guggenheim Fellows 2026.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced its 101st class of Guggenheim Fellows, awarding grants to 223 individuals across 55 disciplines. Among the 30 fine artists selected for the 2026 cohort are Brooklyn-based conceptual artist American Artist, textile artist and educator Sonya Clark, and interdisciplinary artist Allison Janae Hamilton. Each fellow receives a financial stipend designed to provide the creative and intellectual freedom necessary to pursue their work without restrictive conditions.

A Giant Wool Form by Nicola Turner Heaves and Skitters Through an 18th-Century Chapel

Artist Nicola Turner has unveiled a site-specific installation titled "Time’s Scythe" within an 18th-century chapel at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The work features massive, creature-like forms made from hand-stitched recycled wool and horsehair that appear to crawl and surge through the building's architectural openings, spilling from balconies and wrapping around the exterior.

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The article examines the art market's struggle to attract new wealthy buyers despite a surge in global wealth. Marc Spiegler, former global director of Art Basel, argues that galleries have failed to recruit the newly wealthy, noting that inflation-adjusted art sales have declined over the past 15 years. He suggests the industry needs to reposition art as 'magical' and transformative to appeal to potential patrons.

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The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., will debut an exhibition titled “Portrait of a Nation: 2025 Honorees” on December 12, featuring newly commissioned and acquired portraits of filmmaker Steven Spielberg, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, scientist Temple Grandin, and poet Joy Harjo. The show follows a fundraising gala and includes works by Kate Capshaw, Jason Alden, Joel Daniel Phillips, and David Lenz, with the Spielberg portrait combining oil painting and film projection.

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The RISD Museum in Providence has opened "Liz Collins: Motherlode," the first U.S. survey dedicated to fiber and textile artist Liz Collins. Curated by Kate Irvin, the exhibition spans Collins's multi-decade career, from her early fashion label to her recent cross-disciplinary experiments, and includes works like "Cosmic Explosion" (2008–18). Collins, a double RISD graduate and former professor there, describes the show as a homecoming rooted in her deep ties to the school and museum.

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Carl Kahler's 1891 painting *My Wife's Lovers*, a monumental portrait of 42 cats commissioned by San Francisco millionaire Kate Birdsall Johnson, has resurfaced in popularity thanks to social media and a record-breaking sale at Sotheby's in 2016, where it fetched $826,000—more than double its high estimate. The article details Kahler's background as a horse-racing painter from Austria, his three-year stay at Johnson's Buena Vista Castle sketching her feline menagerie, and the painting's debut at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Johnson, an eccentric art collector and philanthropist, owned hundreds of cats and named the work after her late husband's nickname for them.

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An exhibition titled "The King's Tour Artists" will open at Buckingham Palace on July 10, showcasing over 70 works created by 42 artists who accompanied King Charles on international royal tours over the past four decades. The tradition began in 1985 when the then-Prince of Charles invited artist John Ward to join his tour of Italy, and has continued unbroken ever since, with artists capturing landscapes, figure studies, and historic moments such as the British handover of Hong Kong in 1997. Featured works include Richard Foster's depiction of Charles and Camilla on North Seymour Island in the Galápagos, and Susannah Fiennes's painting of sailors lowering the flag on HMY Britannia.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 to Lenny Henry: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

The Guardian's weekly entertainment guide highlights two major art exhibitions opening in May 2025: 'Aleksandra Kasuba' at Tate St Ives (2 May to 4 October) and 'Zurbarán' at the National Gallery, London (2 May to 23 August). The Kasuba show is the first UK presentation of the Lithuanian American artist's proto-immersive 'spatial environments,' featuring early paintings, mosaics, and installations focused on utopian social harmony. The Zurbarán exhibition presents a blockbuster survey of the 17th-century Spanish Baroque master, known for his intense religious subjects and dramatic chiaroscuro.

fondazione dries van noten opens with inaugural exhibition at palazzo pisani moretta, venice

Fondazione Dries Van Noten has opened at Palazzo Pisani Moretta in Venice with its inaugural exhibition, "The Only True Protest Is Beauty," running from April 25 to October 4, 2026. Curated by Dries Van Noten himself, the show features over 200 works across twenty rooms, blending fashion, art, design, ceramics, glass, and photography. Highlights include archival pieces by Christian Lacroix and Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons, alongside works by emerging and established artists such as Ayham Hassan, Peter Buggenhout, Ritsue Mishima, and Misha Kahn. The exhibition avoids a fixed curatorial logic, instead using instinctive juxtapositions to explore beauty as tension and disruption.

Montclair Art Museum Hires New Chief Curator Kate Kraczon

The Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey has hired Kate Kraczon as its new chief curator, replacing Gail Stavitsky. Kraczon previously served as director of exhibitions and chief curator at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, where she was terminated last December amid university layoffs. At the Bell, she organized the only US screening of "Prisoners of Love, 2025" by Palestinian artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, and an exhibition of Julien Creuzet's work originally shown at the French Pavilion in the 2024 Venice Biennale. Before Brown, she worked as a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Philadelphia, where she organized the 2018 show "Ree Morton: The Plant That Heals May Also Poison."

Art Collector and ‘Galerie’ Magazine Founder Lisa Fayne Cohen Fawned Over Jeffrey Epstein in Emails: ‘There Is No One Else Like You’

Newly released documents from the Justice Department's Epstein files reveal that New York art collector and Galerie magazine founder Lisa Fayne Cohen and her husband, real estate developer Jimmy Cohen, were in close contact with financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2015 and 2016. The emails show Cohen seeking Epstein's advice and arranging to photograph his Paris apartment for her magazine, which later featured the residence anonymously in its second issue.

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Photographer Dan Bannino has created a series titled "Still Diet," in which he photographs bizarre celebrity fad diets in the style of Old Master still life paintings. The series features diets associated with figures such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Charles Saatchi, Beyoncé Knowles, Henry VIII, and others, using carefully arranged food items and props to mimic classical compositions.

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This episode of the Art Angle podcast, hosted by Kate Brown with co-hosts Ben Davis and Andrew Russeth, covers three major art-world stories: crypto collector Justin Sun’s escalating legal battle with billionaire David Geffen over a Giacometti sculpture; Jeff Koons’ trio of massive Hulk sculptures that debuted at Frieze New York; and the first round of the new Art Basel Awards. The discussion weaves together legal disputes, market signals, and institutional recognition.

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The Art Institute of Chicago has partnered with the Tuscany-based sculpting studio Ten X to create two marble reimaginations of a rare 8th-century Tang dynasty Bodhisattva. The original limestone sculpture, a centerpiece of the museum’s Asian art collection, has been missing its left arm since it was acquired in 1930, leaving its meditative gesture a mystery. Rather than attempting a traditional restoration, curator Dr. Tao Wang commissioned two distinct versions that explore different historical possibilities for the figure's hand placement based on extensive cross-cultural research.