Required Reading

This week's cultural roundup connects diverse stories from art conservation to literary analysis. Novelist Karma Brown draws parallels between restoring artworks and revising novels, inspired by visits to the Art Gallery of Ontario, while an interview with Namwali Serpell examines the complex "monumentalization" of Toni Morrison's legacy. The column also includes a poignant image from Tehran—a framed artwork hanging in a bomb-damaged apartment—and touches on topics ranging from celebrating Eid in Gaza to discussions about "girl games" and the Lindy West drama.

Rika Nakajima: A New Book of the Dead, Part 3

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.

Smithsonian Exhibition Spotlights Pahari Painting Traditions From The Himalayan Kingdoms

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C., has opened "Of the Hills: Pahari Paintings from India’s Himalayan Kingdoms," an exhibition featuring 48 paintings and colored drawings that trace the evolution of Pahari painting across three key periods between 1620 and 1830. The show highlights the genre’s ties to the region’s landscapes, courtly life, and devotional practices, with works created using opaque watercolors, beetle wings, and gold, many of which have not been publicly displayed before. The exhibition runs until July 26.

Linguistics

The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) announced a lecture by linguist Dr. Salikoko S. Mufwene, exploring the evolution of language and symbols, alongside an exhibition of Gelsy Verna's artwork "Mother, Father, Please Help Me" (May 7–September 27, 2026). Verna, a Haitian-born Canadian artist and former University of Wisconsin–Madison professor, created the piece as a palimpsest over several years in collaboration with David Dunlap; the reverse side has been reproduced for display. MMoCA has added the work to its permanent collection.

Iberdrola Celebrates 125th Anniversary With Major Art Exhibition At The Reopened Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

Iberdrola has opened the exhibition "Parallels and Meridians" at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum to celebrate its 125th anniversary. The show features over one hundred works from the company's corporate art collection and coincides with the museum's reopening after a major expansion and refurbishment. The opening ceremony was led by Iberdrola Executive Chairman Ignacio Galán and Lehendakari Imanol Pradales, with attendance from regional officials including Ibone Bengoetxea, Amaia Arregi, Elixabete Etxanobe, Ana Otadui, and museum director Miguel Zugaza. The exhibition runs until 30 August.

First Comprehensive Museum Retrospective For Detroit Artist And ‘Bead Man’ Olayami Dabls

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) will present "Olayami Dabls: Detroit Cosmologies," the first comprehensive museum retrospective for Detroit artist Olayami Dabls, running from April 25 to July 12, 2026. Dabls, who began his career as a curator at the Afro-American Museum in Detroit (now the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History), traces his artistic journey to a transformative moment in the 1970s when he opened a box of African masks that his colleagues feared to handle. This experience led him to investigate how Hollywood and popular culture had demonized African material culture, associating it with horror movies and voodoo, and inspired decades of work as an artist, storyteller, cultural historian, and civic champion.

In the Curator’s Words: James Hubbell and his brother Bert still united through art

The Oceanside Museum of Art has opened "Brothers in Arts: James Hubbell and Bert Hubbell," a poignant exhibition curated by Brennan Hubbell, the son of James and nephew of Bert. The show explores the parallel creative lives of the two brothers, who lived on opposite sides of the Pacific for sixty years—James in San Diego and Bert in Japan—yet maintained a deep spiritual and artistic connection through letters and shared philosophies. Both artists passed away within weeks of each other in 2024, shortly after a final video call that reconnected them after a period of silence.

FSU MoFA exhibition examines Indigenous relationships with water

Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts (MoFA) has opened "Water Ways: Indigenous Ecologies and Florida Heritage," an exhibition examining Indigenous relationships with water through historical artifacts and contemporary art. Curated by Elizabeth A. Cecil, the show features works by Harold García V (El Quinto), Samboleap Tol, and Wilson Bowers, alongside ancient cypress dugout canoes, ceramics, tools, and a mask from the New Orleans Museum of Art. The exhibition runs from September 18, 2025, to March 14, 2026, with accompanying events including artist talks, a symposium, and a book club.

Art Basel unveils gallery list and key highlights for its 2025 Miami Beach show

Art Basel has announced the gallery list for its 2025 Miami Beach edition, featuring 283 premier galleries from 43 countries and territories. The fair, taking place December 5-7 at the Miami Beach Convention Center, includes 48 debut exhibitors and will debut the new Art Basel Awards, presented in partnership with BOSS. The event will highlight Latinx, Indigenous, and diasporic artistic positions, with a strong focus on the Americas, including galleries from New York, Los Angeles, and Latin America.

Wereldmuseum Amsterdam ponders space to ‘respectfully’ house human remains

The Wereldmuseum Amsterdam has announced it will no longer publicly exhibit any human remains from its colonial-era collection, which includes around 4,000 body parts such as skulls and a preserved Surinamese newborn. At the opening of the exhibition "Unfinished past: return, keep, or…?", director of content Wayne Modest suggested the museum may create a dedicated space for "ritual practices" where descendants can respectfully engage with ancestral remains until a permanent repatriation solution is found. The exhibition features contemporary artworks, including Pansee Atta's "To Make One Particle," which reproduces each body part as a small wooden token, and draws on a four-year research program called Pressing Matter.

Conservation of Tintoretto painting in UK reveals ‘layer of history hiding under the surface’

A two-year conservation project by the National Trust has uncovered significant compositional changes in Jacopo Tintoretto's painting *The Wise and Foolish Virgins* (around 1546), which returns to public display at Upton House in Warwickshire, UK on 28 April. X-ray imaging revealed a hidden stone balcony beneath the final architectural setting, matching a balcony in a related version at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. Infrared scanning and paint analysis also showed that Tintoretto removed criss-cross elements and a balcony section, replacing them with a servant laying a table, while previous restorers had misinterpreted these pentimenti as part of the intended composition.

Internationally acclaimed glass artist makes return to Meijer Gardens with 'deeply personal' exhibition

Internationally acclaimed glass artist Dale Chihuly has returned to Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the first time in over a decade with the exhibition "Chihuly at Meijer Gardens," running from May 2 to November 1, 2026. The show spans 12 outdoor locations and includes an indoor component, "Chihuly: Radiant Forms," making it the largest Chihuly exhibition in the venue's history. The artwork was built in Chihuly's Seattle studio, disassembled, shipped, and reassembled on site over two weeks.

Clash of the Renaissance titans: an intriguing double biography of Titian and Michelangelo

Art historian William E. Wallace explores the parallel lives and artistic philosophies of the two greatest masters of the Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo and Titian. The narrative examines the traditional art-historical divide between the Florentine emphasis on 'disegno' (structured drawing and design) and the Venetian mastery of 'colore' (spontaneous, painterly execution), while highlighting how these two titans influenced one another despite their distinct approaches.

Icons of American art arrive at the OSU Museum of Art

The OSU Museum of Art at Oklahoma State University has opened "Guild Hall: An Adventure in the Arts," an exhibition featuring works borrowed from the Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York. The show includes iconic American artists such as Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, and Miriam Schapiro, spanning 126 years of artistic production across portraits, landscapes, photography, prints, sculpture, and abstract paintings. The exhibition runs from January 20 to May 16, 2026, with a reception on March 5.

Comment | Fine balance: fairs up the exclusivity while appealing to younger clients

Art Basel Paris in October introduced a new ultra-exclusive preview called Avant Première, catering to top-tier galleries with seven- and eight-figure works, while some emerging exhibitors felt sidelined. Meanwhile, the fair's organizers dropped the term "VIP," renaming its dedicated department to "collector and institutional relations," as CEO Noah Horowitz explained that the term could be off-putting to a new generation of buyers. Parallel events like Trauma, a curatorial platform founded by artist Adrian Ghenie, and the Basel Social Club offered more inclusive, youth-driven alternatives, though they still maintained guest lists.

Art Museum Honors 150 Years of Fine Arts Education in New Exhibition

Syracuse University's College of Fine Arts, the first degree-conferring fine arts program in the United States, opened in 1873, and the Art Students League of New York opened in 1875. To mark 150 years of parallel fine arts education, the University Art Museum presents "Depicting the Everyday: A Legacy of Fine Arts Education at the Art Students League" at the Bernard and Louise Palitz Gallery in Manhattan. The exhibition draws from the museum's collection, featuring works by artists who taught at the League, including Morton Kaish, and explores everyday subject matter from urban scenes to intimate portraits. A reception and gallery talk with League assistant curator Esther Moerdler is scheduled for October 29, 2025.

Knockin’ on Halcyon’s door: Bob Dylan's latest artworks on show in London gallery

Bob Dylan is presenting 97 new paintings at London's Halcyon Gallery in a show titled "Point Blank," running until July 6. The works, created between 2021 and 2022, began as sketches that the musician later painted over, depicting subjects like Zurich, a piano player, and breakfast scenes. The gallery describes the pieces as masterful expressions of a dynamic imagination, noting that some monochromatic studies draw inspiration from Picasso's Blue Period.

After Going Through the Darkness Part 1: Kōta Takeuchi Exhibition "Nononononomatsuri" @ Ichihara Lakeside Museum

暗闇をくぐってみたら Part1 竹内公太展「のののののまつり」@ 市原湖畔美術館

The Ichihara Lakeside Museum, currently under renovation since late 2025, will partially reopen on May 1, 2026, with a theater-style series of solo exhibitions titled "Kōta Takeuchi: Nononononomatsuri" as its first installment. Artist Kōta Takeuchi, born in 1982 in Hyogo Prefecture and based in Fukushima, presents new video installations created during a four-month residency in Ichihara, where he visited over 70 stone monuments across the city—including horse-headed Kannon statues, Koyasu statues, and war memorials—to explore themes of parallel bodies and possession. The exhibition features works such as "Disassembly of the Sansha-za" (2013–2023), "Cement Thief" (2024), and "Sigh of the Ground" (2022), with a map showing the locations of the documented stone monuments.

The project that brings Michelangelo's David to the Swiss Alps: a full-scale copy will be installed among the mountains

Il progetto che porta il David di Michelangelo sulle Alpi della Svizzera: verrà installata tra le montagne una copia a grandezza naturale

A full-scale marble replica of Michelangelo's David will be installed in the Swiss Alpine village of Klosters (Canton of Grisons) starting July 2, 2026. The copy, carved in 2017 from Michelangelo's preferred Polvaccio marble in Carrara, weighs over nine tons and was produced by Studi d’Arte Cave Michelangelo under Franco Barattini. The project is organized by Scultura Viva, a cultural initiative based in Klosters that focuses on reactivating sculptural heritage through public installations and educational programs.

A Roma fotoromanzi e cliché sono i protagonisti di una mostra femminista a Villa Medici

A retrospective exhibition titled "Fotoromanzo" by French artist Nicole Gravier (born 1949) is on view at Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome. The show explores Gravier's semiotic dissection of Italian photo-romance magazines from the 1970s, using irony and staged self-portraiture to deconstruct the fabrication of femininity and patriarchal narratives. The exhibition runs concurrently with a separate show dedicated to filmmaker Agnès Varda at the same venue, highlighting parallel feminist inquiries into women's representation.

Dismantling Orbán's 16-Year Grip on Hungary's Art World

Following the recent electoral defeat of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP coalition by the opposition party Tisza, the Hungarian art world faces a monumental task of institutional restoration. For 16 years, the regime’s 'System of National Cooperation' (NER) systematically co-opted cultural institutions, installing loyalists in leadership roles at major venues like the Kunsthalle and Ludwig Museum to promote an ethno-nationalist agenda. This period was marked by the exodus of independent curators, the occupation of museums by activists, and a fractured ecosystem where state funding was tied to political compliance.

Rawya El Chab Tends to the Wounds of Lebanon's Civil War

Lebanese performance artist Rawya El Chab has debuted the second installment of her trilogy, "Crossing the Water," at The Brick in Brooklyn. The performance explores the collective trauma of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and her family's subsequent flight to the Ivory Coast, blending personal memory with political satire and mythology. By embodying various roles—from suspicious neighbors to puppet-like politicians—El Chab navigates the complexities of life under military occupation and the persistent feeling of surveillance.

Venice Biennale chief under pressure

Venedig-Biennale-Chef unter Druck

Just before the opening of the Venice Art Biennale, its president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco is facing mounting criticism after the entire jury resigned. Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli accused Buttafuoco of pursuing a form of "parallel foreign policy" by readmitting Russia to the six-month exhibition, calling him a "victim of a pacifist fantasy." The opening ceremony and the traditional Golden Lion awards have been canceled; prizes will now be decided by visitor vote at the end of the Biennale in November.

culture theater alexander molochnikov nadia conners

Filmmaker Nadia Conners interviews Russian theater director Alexander Molochnikov about his life and work following his exile from Russia. Molochnikov left Russia after receiving death threats from the Wagner Group for supporting Ukraine. He discusses his career at the Moscow Art Theater and Bolshoi Theater, his award-winning ballet that won the Golden Mask award during the war, and his current production of *Seagull: True Story*, which parallels his own immigration to the U.S. The play, staged at LaMaMa in New York and now running at the Marylebone Theater in London, explores censorship and repression faced by a director fleeing Russia.

Torbay’s art scene swipes right on creativity in bold new exhibition

A new exhibition titled SwipeRight4Art has opened at Artizan Gallery in Torquay, running until 4 May. Inspired by dating apps, the show invites visitors to engage with artworks as if swiping through profiles, using “matchmaker cards” to indicate which pieces they would “pass” or “match” with. The exhibition is the first project from Sienna Editions, a publishing and art venture co-founded by charcoal artist Hannah Leadbetter and landscape photographer Kevin Cowell, with backing from local studio Print2Wall and funding from Innovate UK. It features works by local artists including Szabotage, David Norman, Francesca Lawrence, Rosie Rowell, Peter Blakesley, and Sally Loxton, alongside pieces by the founders.

De Sarthe to open new 10,000-square-foot gallery in Hong Kong’s Southside art district.

Hong Kong gallery De Sarthe has announced it will relocate to a larger 10,000-square-foot space in the Wong Chuk Hang neighborhood, opening September 20th in Vita Tower within the city’s Southside art district. The new gallery will feature separate exhibition areas for contemporary art and 20th-century masterworks, marking a major expansion as the gallery celebrates its 15th anniversary in Hong Kong. Founder Pascal de Sarthe emphasized the continued importance of physical gallery spaces for meaningful dialogue between artists and audiences, even in a digital age.

us holocaust museum canceled programming angering trump 1234780080

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) has reportedly removed educational content and canceled programming to avoid potential conflict with the Trump administration. Former employees allege that the museum preemptively scrubbed web pages linking Jim Crow laws to Nazi-era policies and rebranded or canceled workshops on the "fragility of democracy" to avoid being labeled as "woke." While the museum claims these decisions were based on funding challenges, internal records show a significant increase in net assets during the same period.

Statue Removed from Delaware During Black Lives Matter Protests to Be Reinstated in Washington D.C.

A statue of Caesar Rodney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who enslaved over 200 people, is set to be reinstated in Washington D.C.'s Freedom Plaza. The National Park Service plans to place the statue as part of the nation's 250th birthday celebrations, six years after it was removed from Wilmington, Delaware, during Black Lives Matter protests.

Iconic ‘Star Trek’ Costumes and Props Beam Into London’s Science Museum

London's Science Museum has opened a free exhibition titled 'Star Trek Warp Trail' to celebrate the franchise's 60th anniversary. The display features iconic costumes, props, and models from various Star Trek series and films, including uniforms worn by characters like Captain Pike and Jean-Luc Picard, the prototype android B-4 prop head, and a model of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Magnum Gallery Celebrates the Enduring Vision of Martin Parr

Magnum Gallery in Paris is opening a solo exhibition titled "Martin Parr: In Plain View" from March 28 to June 6, 2026, dedicated to the late English photographer Martin Parr. The show features works from his three-decade tenure with the Magnum Photos cooperative, tracing his evolution from black-and-white documentary work to his influential color photography, and includes archival materials and interactive experiences.