Inside the new David Geffen Galleries at LA County Museum of Art

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has opened its new David Geffen Galleries, a $724 million building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The structure features a floating floor, floor-to-ceiling windows, and minimalist concrete interiors that create a calm, light-filled space. The inaugural exhibition presents 26 interconnected galleries with no set path, displaying artworks from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs to contemporary installations like Do Ho Suh's "Jagyeong Hall, Gyeongbok Palace" (2026), aiming to eliminate hierarchies of time, place, or genre.

"Bertille Bak: Voices from the Earth" exhibition at the Vincenzo Vela Museum

From 26 April 2026 to 10 January 2027, the Vincenzo Vela Museum in Ligornetto, Switzerland, presents "Bertille Bak: Voices from the Earth," the first major solo exhibition in Switzerland of French artist Bertille Bak. The show brings together works from the past fifteen years that combine cinema, visual arts, and field research, focusing on marginalized communities and themes of labor, identity, and resistance. Bak, born in Arras in 1983, creates video installations and narrative devices through long immersions in communities, with her work held in collections such as the Centre Pompidou and the Collection François Pinault.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art's new central building is a 'machine of discovery'

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has opened its new central building, the David Geffen Galleries, to the public. Designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor at a cost of $724 million, the 347,600-square-foot structure reorients the museum with a single, flowing second-story floor plan, eschewing a traditional main entrance or atrium to encourage wandering and serendipitous encounters with art. The galleries are named for major oceans and are designed to blend cultures and artworks from different eras.

History, Culture, and Place Ground LACMA’s Breathtaking New David Geffen Galleries

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has opened its new David Geffen Galleries, a long, elevated concrete structure designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The building, more than 20 years in the making, replaces much of LACMA's mid-century campus with a single winding gallery that hovers above Wilshire Boulevard. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on Sunday, followed by a two-week member preview, with the public opening scheduled for May 4. The project is the vision of longtime director Michael Govan, who sought to create a museum without hierarchy, placing objects from different geographies and time periods in dialogue. Artist Mariana Castillo Deball was commissioned to create a plaza installation that incorporates native animal tracks, Mesoamerican imagery, and the labor of migrant workers, reflecting themes of migration and cultural exchange.

Paris to host first museum devoted to Alberto Giacometti with more than 10,000 artworks and objects

The Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti has announced the 2028 opening of the Giacometti Museum and School in Paris’s 7th arrondissement. Housed in the former Invalides train station, the 6,000-square-meter facility will be the first museum dedicated entirely to the Swiss master, replacing the much smaller Institut Giacometti. The site will showcase a massive collection of over 10,000 items, including 400 sculptures and 100 paintings, many of which have never been exhibited.

Drawn to home: how landscape and locals inspired Alberto Giacometti

A new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in St. Moritz, titled "Alberto Giacometti: Faces and Landscapes of Home," explores the Swiss artist's deep connection to his birthplace, the Alpine village of Stampa. Curated by Tobia Bezzola, the show features around 20 paintings, sculptures, and drawings from 1918 through the 1960s, including portraits of Giacometti's family and depictions of the local landscape. It highlights how Giacometti, after initially escaping to Paris in 1922, returned increasingly to the Engadine valley from the 1950s onward, working in his father's studio and producing works distinct from his Parisian output.

Inside the museum that doesn’t exist

California-born artist Matt Mullican has created 'THAT NOTHING SHOULD EXIST: 55 Years of Work', the largest exhibition of his career, which will inaugurate the Roarington Art Center—a virtual museum in the metaverse. The museum, designed by Italian architect Benedetto Camerana, is embedded in the City of Roarington, a digital dreamland launched by Liechtenstein-based entrepreneur Fritz Kaiser through his non-profit The Classic Car Trust (TCCT). The exhibition is scheduled to open to the public in February next year, with viewers navigating the space like an immersive three-dimensional video game.

Van Gogh’s two pictures of the hospital in Arles—painted while he was recovering after cutting his ear—head to the Courtauld

Van Gogh's two paintings of the hospital in Arles, created after he mutilated his ear, are being lent from the Oskar Reinhart Collection in Winterthur, Switzerland, to the Courtauld Gallery in London for the exhibition "Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection" (14 February–26 May). The works—"The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles" and "The Ward in the Hospital at Arles"—were both acquired in the 1920s by Swiss collector Oskar Reinhart and have rarely been lent due to restrictions that have now been modified. The museum in Winterthur is temporarily closed for renovations, enabling this loan.

Amid geopolitical tensions, Pakistani and Indian art worlds unite in London exhibitions

Amid ongoing geopolitical tensions between India and Pakistan, multiple art exhibitions in London are fostering cross-border cultural exchange. The Barbican is showing Pakistani artist Huma Bhabha alongside Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, curated by Shanay Jhaveri. At SOAS, a South Asian group show organized by Pakistani artist Salima Hashmi and Indian curator Manmeet K. Walia features over 25 artists, including a collaborative textile work by Maheen Kazim and Purvai Rai. Two Indian galleries in central London have also exhibited Pakistani artists, though gallerists requested anonymity due to safety concerns in India.

Julian Charrière: ‘The deep sea is a phantasmagorical space’

French Swiss artist Julian Charrière presents 'Midnight Zone' at Museum Tinguely in Basel, an exhibition that plunges viewers into the oceanic abyss through four new commissions and earlier works. The show features video installations, sculptural works, and acoustic pieces that explore deep-sea ecologies, including a film set in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone targeted for deep-sea mining, and a rotating Fresnel lens installation that translates low-frequency noise pollution into vibration. Charrière’s multidisciplinary approach draws on fieldwork in extreme geographies like the Arctic and deep ocean.

Renewed Bern Kunsthalle works to reframe Switzerland's history

The Kunsthalle Bern has reopened after a year-long transformation led by director iLiana Fokianaki, marked by a new entrance designed by ALIAS architects and a trio of exhibitions by Black artists. The reopening follows a symbolic intervention by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama, who wrapped the building in jute sacks referencing the colonial history of Swiss cocoa extraction in Ghana, echoing Christo and Jeanne-Claude's 1968 wrapping of the same building. The inaugural shows feature solo exhibitions by Melvin Edwards, Tuli Mekondjo, and Tschabalala Self, with Edwards's retrospective traveling from the Fridericianum in Kassel to the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

Tanks, castles and Hodlers: Swiss foundation tackles a fervent collector’s legacy

The Swiss Foundation for Art, Culture and History (SKKG) has spent years cleaning, inventorying, and digitizing the chaotic collection of Bruno Stefanini, a real estate magnate and obsessive hoarder who died in 2018. His estate included over 100,000 objects—ranging from valuable paintings by Ferdinand Hodler and Cuno Amiet to a full-sized tank, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s portable washroom, and Charlie Chaplin’s pajamas—many contaminated with mildew, asbestos, or radioactivity. The collection is now searchable online, and the foundation, led by Stefanini’s daughter Bettina, is conducting provenance research and considering restitution of works with Nazi-era looting concerns.

‘The works I add to my collection need to give me goosebumps’: Nicola Erni on the art she collects and why

Swiss collector Nicola Erni discusses her private art collection built over 25 years, focusing on photography from the 1960s and 70s, fashion photography by Helmut Newton, Mario Testino, and Annie Leibovitz, and contemporary works by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol. She recounts acquiring Warhol's 'Sixty Last Suppers' (1986), now on loan to Fondation Beyeler, and reveals her emotional decision-making process for purchases, as well as a regret over missing a Basquiat-Warhol collaboration at auction.

"East-Northeast: Charting Moments in Maine" Presents Four Different Exhibitions of Maine-Focused Artists in Summer 2025

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art (BCMA) presents "East-Northeast: Charting Moments in Maine," a series of four exhibitions running in summer 2025 that highlight artists inspired by Maine. The shows include Gordon Parks’s previously unseen 1944 photographs of rural life, John McKee’s coastal series "As Maine Goes" (first public viewing since 1966), Ann Craven’s lunar paintings from 2020 and 2024, and films by Swiss-American artist Rudy Burckhardt. The exhibitions span from June 28 to November 9, 2025, with a keynote lecture by Philip Brookman on June 28.

Jean Tinguely’s 100th anniversary, migration museum opens in Rotterdam, Ben Shahn's social security mural—podcast

This episode of The Art Newspaper's podcast 'The Week in Art' covers three major stories. First, a host of exhibitions and events celebrating the 100th anniversary of Swiss kinetic artist Jean Tinguely, including shows at the Tinguely Museum in Basel, Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, and the Grand Palais in Paris. Second, the newly opened Fenix museum in Rotterdam, a museum dedicated to migration, featuring a dramatic stainless steel tornado staircase. Third, the episode's Work of the Week focuses on Ben Shahn's 1941 study 'Harvesting Wheat' for his mural 'The Meaning of Social Security,' discussed in conjunction with a major exhibition of Shahn's work at the Jewish Museum in New York.

Swiss Bührle Foundation reaches settlement with heirs of Jewish collector over Manet’s ‘La Sultane’

The foundation overseeing the Bührle collection has reached a settlement with the heirs of Jewish collector Max Silberberg, allowing Édouard Manet's painting 'La Sultane' (c. 1871) to remain on display at the Kunsthaus Zurich. The painting was purchased in 1953 by Emil Bührle, a Swiss arms dealer who sold to both Allies and Nazis during WWII and benefited from slave labor. Silberberg, forced to sell his villa to the SS in 1935 and later deported to Auschwitz, had consigned the work in 1932, but his heirs argue the 1937 sale to dealer Paul Rosenberg was a consequence of Nazi persecution. The settlement terms are confidential.

Artists Pay Tribute to Koyo Kouoh in Poetry Caravan at Venice Biennale

At the Venice Biennale on May 7, 2026, Cuban artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons led a poetry caravan across seven locations in the Giardini to honor Koyo Kouoh, the late curator of the Biennale's main exhibition "In Minor Keys," who died of cancer at age 57 in 2025. The procession, inspired by a 1999 voyage Kouoh took with nine African poets from Dakar to Timbuktu, featured performances by poets Natalie Diaz, Robin Coste Lewis, Batool Abu Akleen, and Anne Waldman, kora player Saliou Cissokho, and Kouoh's husband, Swiss saxophonist Philippe Mall, who played a composition dedicated to her. The event was organized by a team of Kouoh's assistants and advisers, including Marie Hélène Pereira, who served as stand-in lead of the 2026 Biennale.

For the 61st Venice Biennale, a quest for beauty despite a troubled world

Pour la 61e Biennale de Venise, une quête de beauté malgré un monde troublé

Koyo Kouoh, the Swiss-Cameroonian curator who was set to become the first African woman to direct the Venice Biennale, died suddenly on May 10, 2025, at age 57, just weeks before the opening of the 61st edition she had conceived. Titled "In Minor Keys," the exhibition at the Giardini and Arsenale will proceed posthumously based on her detailed directives, featuring 111 artists including Laurie Anderson, Wangechi Mutu, and Kader Attia, with a focus on beauty, resilience, and radical emotional connection amid global turmoil.

Passages at Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg

Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg presents "Passages," a group exhibition running from March 14 to May 17, 2026. The show features works by Nat Faulkner, Solomon Garçon, Keta Gavasheli, Gaylen Gerber with Leah Ke Yi Zheng, Hervé Guibert, Nour Mobarak, Henrik Olesen, B. Ingrid Olson, Anastasia Pavlou, Matthew Peers, Cora Pongracz, Pope.L, Ariana Reines and Oscar Tuazon, Dieter Roth, and Sava Sekulić. The exhibition is documented with 51 images and a floor plan, with photos by Cedric Mussano.

Walter Pfeiffer “In Good Company” at Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin

Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin will present "Walter Pfeiffer: In Good Company," the first institutional survey in Italy dedicated to the Swiss artist's photographic work, running from April 30 to September 13, 2026. The exhibition features over one hundred photographs spanning from the 1970s to the present, exploring themes of artifice, desire, and the everyday.

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Sotheby's will auction approximately 100 lots from the private collection of French antiques collector Pierre-Jean Chalençon on June 25 in Paris, including Napoleon Bonaparte's iconic bicorne hat (estimated at €800,000), a herald sword and stick from his 1804 coronation, his personal gold and ebony seal, worn stockings, and a portable camp bed. The sale, described as one of the most significant offerings of Napoleonic material ever to come to market, spans imperial furniture, Old Master paintings, and personal relics. Chalençon, who has amassed the collection over four decades, is reportedly selling the items to repay a €10 million loan from Swiss Life Banque Privée, though he has denied being deeply in debt.

art shen xin young artist

Shen Xin, a 35-year-old artist based in Saint Paul, Minnesota and Portree, Isle of Skye, is featured in Cultured's 2025 Young Artists list. Born in Chengdu, China, Shen earned an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2014 and centers their practice on language, personal history, myth, and scientific research through moving image, performance, and writing. Their work has been exhibited at the Swiss Institute, Walker Art Center, and through December 21 at Edinburgh's Collective. The profile highlights their recent 16mm black-and-white film "Bearing Fruit of Fondness," developed using leaves from a cotoneaster plant on the Isle of Skye, which explores mother-child patterns and belonging.

can art act as silent diplomacy these sculptors think so 2652392

A 4.9-meter stainless steel sculpture titled "Chaînes de Lumière" was unveiled on March 15, 2025, in Bikfaya, Lebanon, by artist duo Pierre and Cedric Koukjian. The work, composed of seven monumental links, was inaugurated in the presence of local officials including Bikfaya Mayor Nicole Gemayel, former President Amine Gemayel, Swiss Ambassador Marion Weichelt, and several UN envoys. It is part of a series of chain-motif sculptures installed globally, with previous works like "X-Link" (2022) in Geneva, Switzerland, and future installations planned for London and Bristol.

Take a rare chance to see the astonishing Ringier Collection of artworks in Düsseldorf

The Langen Foundation in Neuss, outside Düsseldorf, is hosting a rare public exhibition of the Ringier Collection, featuring 500 works from artists including Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, John Baldessari, and Sylvie Fleury. Titled 'Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Sound', the show was curated by Beatrix Ruf and artist Wade Guyton, and spans sketches to large-scale oils and photographic works from the 1960s to the present. The collection is owned by Swiss publishing mogul Michael Ringier, who began collecting 30 years ago and now holds 5,000 works.

switzerland reject inheritance tax billionaires collectors 1234764622

Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed inheritance tax on Sunday, with 78% voting no. The tax, introduced by the Social Democrats, would have applied a 50% rate to inheritances and gifts exceeding 50 million Swiss francs (about $62.3 million). Billionaire Peter Spuhler threatened to leave the country if the tax passed, and Swiss wealth managers warned that other ultra-wealthy individuals would follow, citing their mobility and options to optimize taxes.

Painting LACMA's David Geffen Galleries with Light, Shadow, and Color

LACMA's new David Geffen Galleries, designed by architect Peter Zumthor, feature custom-tinted concrete walls that break from traditional museum aesthetics. The walls are coated with a transparent, nano-scale mineral glaze developed by Zumthor and Swiss craftsman Marius Fontana, manufactured by German company Keim. The palette—dusky red, vibrant blue, and nuanced black—was inspired by ancient Indigenous American pigments prepared by artist Porfirio Gutiérrez for the museum's exhibition "We Live in Painting: The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art." Diana Magaloni, LACMA's Senior Deputy Director for Conservation, Curatorial and Exhibitions, led the conceptualization and application of the glazes, which are designed to enhance the building's interplay of light and shadow without obscuring its raw concrete surfaces.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art Opens New Innovative Exhibition Space

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has opened its new David Geffen Galleries, a landmark building designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The structure features floor-to-ceiling windows, spans Wilshire Boulevard 30 feet above the Miracle Mile, and houses galleries organized around maritime trade routes. The museum celebrated its inaugural events with a gala and ribbon-cutting, opening to the public on April 20, 2026. The new space displays over 155,000 art objects from the permanent collection, spanning ancient civilizations to contemporary works.

LACMA’s US$720m David Geffen Galleries expansion to open in 2026

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has announced that its long-awaited David Geffen Galleries expansion will open in April 2026, over two decades after the project was first announced in 2001. Designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, the $720 million serpentine structure spans Wilshire Boulevard and replaces several older buildings, increasing gallery space from 130,000 to 220,000 square feet. The project faced numerous setbacks, including public criticism of the design, concerns over the nearby La Brea Tar Pits, the discovery of sabre-toothed tiger skulls during construction, pandemic delays, the departure of longtime donor The Ahmanson Foundation, and Zumthor's distancing from the project in 2023 due to cost compromises. A series of soft openings are planned for summer 2025 before the full public debut.

Photos reveal Peter Zumthor's LACMA museum ahead of opening

Photographer Iwan Baan has released images of the completed David Geffen Galleries, the long-awaited Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) expansion designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The undulating, glass-and-concrete building stretches along Wilshire Boulevard, elevated 30 feet above street level, and is set to open fully in April 2026. Major construction finished at the end of 2024, with some lower-level spaces already open. The single-level design eliminates traditional hierarchies, placing all artworks on the same plane, and the building aims for LEED Gold certification with low-carbon concrete and natural ventilation.

artdiscovery launches insured authenticity guarantee 1234760977

ArtDiscovery, a scientific art analysis firm with offices in London and New York, has launched what it calls the world's first insured authenticity guarantee for artworks. The service combines connoisseurship, provenance research, laboratory science, and proprietary AI, then backs the conclusion with an insurance policy from an A+ rated global insurer. If a certified attribution is later proven incorrect, the policy covers financial loss to the artwork's owner. The company's CEO, Denis Moiseev, and CFO, Steven Maslow, explained that the insured certificate is priced at 60 basis points of the certified value and travels with the artwork as a transferable warranty. The launch follows ArtDiscovery's acquisition by Hephaestus Analytical, a London-based tech company that uses AI, provenance research, and chemical analysis for authentication.