The article examines the current state of Bangkok's art scene, which is experiencing a surge of private investment and international attention. New institutions like UNITED Unlimited and Misiem's/bangkok are opening, and events like the Bangkok Art Biennale are gaining prominence, leading some international media to compare the city's potential to art hubs like Miami.
New York Art Week 2026 brings a major convergence of art events across the city, including several prominent art fairs such as Frieze New York, Independent New York, TEFAF New York, and NADA New York. The week also features gallery openings spanning from Tribeca to the Upper East Side, as well as auction previews ahead of key sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips.
The fifth annual High Desert Art Fair (HDAF) took place at the Pioneertown Motel in California's High Desert, featuring 20 galleries, nonprofits, studios, and publishers. Founded by Nicholas Fahey of Fahey/Klein Gallery and artist manager Candice Lawler, the fair leverages the area's existing artistic community and natural beauty to attract visitors from Los Angeles and beyond.
The Turner Prize shortlist for 2026 has been announced, featuring four artists: Simeon Barclay, nominated for his spoken-word performance 'The Ruin'; Tanoa Sasraku, recognized for her solo exhibition 'Morale Patch' exploring the political history of oil; Kira Freije, shortlisted for her first major solo show 'Unspeak the Chorus'; and Marguerite Humeau, nominated for her exhibition 'Torches'. The shortlist was selected by a jury chaired by Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain, who praised the diverse range of work spanning installation, performance, and sculpture. An exhibition of the shortlisted artists will be held at Teesside University's Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (Mima) from September 2026 to March 2027, with the winner announced on December 10, 2026, receiving £25,000.
The Guardian's weekly entertainment guide includes a section on art exhibitions, highlighting two shows opening in the UK. Godfried Donkor's solo exhibition at Firstsite in Colchester runs from 22 May to 30 August, weaving stories of resistance from Boudicca to Yaa Asantewaa through collage, painting, and textile. Delcy Morelos's installation at the Barbican in London, running until 31 July, fills the space with huge mounds of earth, clay, and spices to create immersive environments based on Andean and Amazonian knowledge. The guide also mentions Phantasmagoria at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, exploring video games and digital art.
Art Dubai opened its 20th edition at Madinat Jumeirah with a significantly reduced number of exhibitors—50 largely regional galleries, down from the originally expected 120—after being delayed from mid-April due to geopolitical tensions following the U.S.-Iran ceasefire on April 8. The fair, which offered free entry for the first time and refunded booth costs for participating galleries, saw strong attendance from Gulf and Middle Eastern collectors, with an upbeat mood and a more intimate atmosphere reminiscent of pre-Covid editions. Galleries from Lebanon and other conflict-affected regions were present, emphasizing art as a form of resilience and cultural identity.
The article reports on the opening of the 61st Venice Biennale, highlighting the central exhibition "In Minor Keys" conceived by the late Koyo Kouoh, along with national pavilions and collateral events. It notes standout contributions from artists such as Alvaro Barrington, Kaloki Nyamai, Florentina Holzinger, Ei Arakawa-Nash, Li Yi-Fan, and Dries Verhoeven, while describing the American pavilion as lackluster and the overall commercial offerings as uneven. The text also covers performances and exhibitions featuring nudity and body horror, including Tino Sehgal's "The Kiss" and Maja Malou Lyse's video with the collective DIS.
Valie Export, the pioneering Austrian feminist artist known for challenging the conventions of art and cinema through body-centered, tactile works, died on May 14 at age 85, three days before her birthday. Her death was confirmed by Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, which represents her. Over six decades, Export created influential works such as "TAP and TOUCH CINEMA" (1968) and "Action Pants: Genital Panic" (1968), using her own body to question gender norms and the nature of film. Born Waltraud Lehner in Linz, she reinvented herself as VALIE EXPORT in 1967, a name symbolizing her exportation of personal ideas. She was associated with the Viennese Actionists but developed her own expanded cinema practice, producing works like "Abstract Film No. 1" (1967–68) that redefined the medium.
Tefaf New York returns to the Park Avenue Armory from 15 to 19 May, bringing together 88 exhibitors from 14 countries. The fair, which launched in 2016 as a two-part event and consolidated into a single annual edition in 2022, spans Greco-Roman antiquities, jewellery, 20th-century design, and contemporary art. This year’s edition includes nine new exhibitors such as David Lévy, Larkin Erdmann, Piano Nobile, Macklowe Gallery, and ML Fine Art, and sees the return of John Berggruen after a three-year absence. Fair leadership, including director Leanne Jagtiani and head of fairs Will Korner, emphasize the fair’s distinctive focus on Modern art, which they say differentiates it from other spring fairs in New York that are more heavily weighted toward contemporary work.
The Adelaide Salon, a new arts organization founded in 2024 by Pascal Dowers and Paulina Anzorge, is staging a ticketed contemporary art event at Brighton's Royal Pavilion on 30 May, featuring live art and performance. This follows the organization's earlier exhibitions at their home in Adelaide Crescent and a current takeover of the Founders Room at Brighton Dome with the exhibition Act O (until 25 May), part of the Brighton Festival. The salon aims to revive Brighton's art scene after notable losses, including the 2023 closure of Brighton University's Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) and the withdrawal of Arts Council funding at Fabrica gallery.
Patrick Sun founded the Sunpride Foundation in 2014 to support LGBTQ+ communities through art, combining his passion for contemporary queer Asian art with philanthropy. The foundation's flagship "Spectrosynthesis" exhibition series has been staged at major institutions across Asia, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, and the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre. The latest iteration, "Spectrosynthesis Seoul," opened at Seoul's Art Sonje Center and runs through June 28, 2026. Sun, a Hong Kong-born real estate developer and longtime art collector, built the foundation's collection with a focus on works suitable for museum exhibitions about queer identity.
The Aspen Art Fair has announced more than 35 exhibitors for its third edition, returning to the Hotel Jerome from July 29 through August 1, 2026. This will be the first edition under director Kelly Cornell, who also leads the Dallas Art Fair. Newcomers include Albertz Benda, Friedman Benda, Library Street Collective, Monique Meloche Gallery, and R & Company, alongside returning galleries such as Marianne Boesky Gallery, Perrotin, Sean Kelly, and Galerie Gmurzynska. The fair will debut an outdoor sculpture garden and continue its Art Prize Program with residencies and commissions through Anderson Ranch Arts Center and Buckhorn Public Arts. It also coincides with the AIR festival organized by the Aspen Art Museum and partners with the Aspen Education Foundation to support local student artists.
Loïc Gouzer's auction platform Fair Warning will sell Banksy's *Girl and Balloon on Found Landscape* from the 'Crude Oils' series in an invitation-only live auction at Tiffany & Co.'s Fifth Avenue flagship store on May 20. The work, which carries a $13 to $18 million estimate, modifies a thrifted landscape painting with the artist's signature red heart-shaped balloon. It will be publicly viewable in the store before the sale.
Cuban-American artist Hernan Bas has been living in Venice, painting tourists while reflecting on the ironies of mass tourism and his own status as a visitor. His new series, titled "The Visitors," comprises 30 paintings that will be exhibited at Ca' Pesaro, Venice's modern art museum, alongside the Venice Biennale. The works range from bleak to satirical, depicting young white men in tourist scenarios—such as a grinning youth at Holi in India or another cradling a koala—and explore themes of alienation, innocence, and the uncanny. Bas, who is gay, acknowledges that his subjects are often the kind of people he is attracted to, and he emphasizes narrative as central to his practice, aiming to be a conceptual artist who happens to paint.
This episode of The Art Newspaper's podcast covers three major art events opening this weekend. The largest career survey of 17th-century Spanish master Francisco de Zurbarán since the 1980s opens at the National Gallery in London, co-curated by Francesca Whitlum-Cooper. The 59th Carnegie International, titled "If the word we," opens at the Carnegie Museum of Art and other venues in Pittsburgh, directed by Eric Crosby. The Work of the Week is Walter Sickert's "Ennui" (c.1914), featured in the exhibition "Walter Sickert: Working Notes" at Charleston in Lewes, curated by Robert Travers of Piano Nobile in partnership with Charleston.
Philadelphia gallerist Megan Galardi is launching a new art fair called Elsewhere, set to debut June 4–6 at the Yowie Hotel on South Street. The fair will feature 27 exhibitors from cities including London, New York, and Philadelphia, with seven local dealers such as Fleisher/Ollman, Blah Blah Gallery, and Fjord. Galardi, who founded Blah Blah Gallery in 2023 and has participated in small New York fairs like Spring/Break and Future Fair, designed Elsewhere as a boutique, hotel-based event that offers a lower-cost, more intimate alternative to large-scale art fairs.
The 61st edition of the Venice Biennale, the world's oldest and most prestigious art biennial, will open on 9 May 2026 and run through 22 November. The main exhibition follows the curatorial plan of the late Koyo Kouoh, while national pavilions have been announcing their participating artists and organizers. The article provides a comprehensive list of confirmed pavilions so far, including artists such as Genti Korini (Albania), Matías Duville (Argentina), Khaled Sabsabi (Australia), Florentina Holzinger (Austria), Faig Ahmed (Azerbaijan), and many others, with details on venues and organizers.
Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata created a temporary wooden vortex sculpture titled "Tornado" inside the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, made from 5,000 individual pieces of wood and installed on the grand staircase for just two weeks in February. The work was commissioned by Ruinart as part of its "Conversations with Nature" series, which presents a piece in Paris before permanently installing it at the champagne house's headquarters in Reims. Kawamata, who has lived in Paris for 18 years, is known for using found materials and creating site-specific, temporary interventions on or inside architecture, emphasizing spontaneity and impermanence.
Art Basel has launched a "Basel Exclusive" initiative to curb pre-fair PDF sales, encouraging galleries to withhold works from previews to drive in-person discovery at its flagship Swiss event (June 16–21). Around 170 of 232 exhibitors have opted in. Meanwhile, Volta returns to Basel with a new "5,000 Edit" section for works under CHF 5,000 to attract younger collectors, and the alternative fair Esther will hold its third edition in New York during Frieze Week. In other news, Sotheby's set a U.S. record for design auctions with the Jean and Terry de Gunzburg collection totaling $96 million, and billionaire collector Mitchell P. Rales pledged $116 million to the National Gallery of Art to fund loans to smaller museums. The Smithsonian American Art Museum named Lynda Roscoe Hartigan as its new director, and Gladstone Gallery plans a new Seoul space for 2026.
Art Brussels, now in its 42nd edition (April 23–26), has downsized from 164 to 138 participating galleries, a 15% reduction that allows the fair to fit entirely within one hall of Brussels Expo. Director Nele Verhaeren openly acknowledged the shift, framing it as a deliberate move toward a 'quality-first' approach that prioritizes visitor experience over sheer scale. The fair introduces a new section called Horizons, curated by Devrim Bayar of the upcoming Kanal-Pompidou museum, featuring seven large-scale works in the freed-up space. Dealers like Xavier Hufkens and Nadja Vilenne support the strategy, noting that galleries must now carefully choose which fairs to attend amid rising costs and geopolitical tensions.
This article is a weekly entertainment guide from The Guardian, covering cinema, gigs, art, stage, streaming, games, albums, and brain food. In the art section, it highlights two exhibitions: "Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today" at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, featuring artists like Henri Rousseau and Lubaina Himid; and a show of South African photographer George Hallett's work at the John Lennon School of Art and Design in Liverpool, documenting black resistance in 1970s Britain. It also mentions an open house for Lonnie Holley's new works at Edel Assanti gallery in London.
New York museums are launching a significant slate of spring exhibitions, featuring major retrospectives and thematic surveys. Highlights include "Noguchi's New York" at the Noguchi Museum, exploring the sculptor's unrealized urban projects; "Raphael: Sublime Poetry" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a comprehensive look at the Renaissance master; and "Gothic by Design: The Dawn of Architectural Draftsmanship," also at the Met, focusing on medieval architectural drawings.
The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (Aipad) has opened the 45th edition of The Photography Show at New York's Park Avenue Armory. The fair features around 65 exhibitors in its main section, with a new Focal Point sector highlighting 13 solo presentations by boundary-pushing artists. Returning participants include major New York photography galleries, alongside first-time exhibitors and galleries returning after an absence.
The article presents a curated list of 13 seminal Western artworks featuring the nude form, highlighting how each piece shifted artistic conventions and cultural perceptions. It begins with the Paleolithic Venus of Willendorf and moves chronologically through works by artists including Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Lavinia Fontana, and Édouard Manet, analyzing their groundbreaking approaches to depicting the human body.
The Art Cologne Palma Mallorca fair has been successfully revived at the Palau de Congressos, attracting 88 exhibitors with a heavy concentration of Spanish and German galleries. The event capitalizes on Mallorca's status as a premier second-home destination for wealthy Europeans, particularly Germans, and benefits from significant local government backing of €500,000. Early sales reports indicate strong performance in the lower and mid-market price brackets, with artists like Neo Rauch and Brian Eno finding quick buyers, though seven-figure works by Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz moved more slowly.
The article is a weekly art roundup highlighting several major exhibitions opening in London and Cambridge. It spotlights a new show of nature-themed paintings by Cecily Brown at the Serpentine Gallery, ceramics by Phoebe Collings-James at Pitzhanger Manor, a career survey of Turner Prize-winner Veronica Ryan at the Whitechapel Gallery, a Frank Bowling retrospective at The Fitzwilliam Museum, and a presentation of Aboriginal Australian art at Edel Assanti. The piece also features a powerful war photograph from Iraq and includes brief news items on topics ranging from a Matisse retrospective to potential museum entry fees.
The inaugural Making Their Mark forum convened 350 art world professionals at the National Museum of Women in the Arts to address systemic gender inequity. Organized by collector Komal Shah and the Making Their Mark Foundation, the event featured panels with artists, curators, and public figures like Chelsea Clinton and Ava DuVernay. The forum served as a call to action to dismantle the male-dominated art historical canon and reform the systems governing visibility and valuation.
The Making Their Mark Forum recently convened 350 women in the arts—including artists, curators, and over 20 museum directors—at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C. Organized by collector Komal Shah alongside Cecilia Alemani and Loring Randolph, the invitation-only conference coincided with a traveling exhibition of Shah’s collection at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The event featured high-profile speakers like Chelsea Clinton and Ava DuVernay, focusing on dismantling structural gender inequities and celebrating the foundational contributions of women to art history.
The UK government has issued a temporary export ban on Howard Hodgkin’s painting "Mrs Acton in Delhi" (1967–71) following its record-breaking £1.7 million sale at Bonhams. The Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) intervened after the buyer applied for an export license, triggering a deferral period that allows British museums or galleries until June 4 to match the auction price and keep the work within the country.
The Golestan Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Tehran, has sustained damage following US-Israeli airstrikes targeting the Iranian capital. According to Iran’s cultural heritage minister, Reza Salehi-Amiri, the Qajar-era complex suffered damage to its historic windows, doors, and mirrors due to blast shockwaves and debris. The escalation of the regional conflict has further impacted cultural hubs across the Middle East, with debris falling near Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island and major institutions in Qatar and the UAE temporarily closing their doors.