What’s on now at San Francisco museums, February 2026

Several San Francisco museums are experiencing a period of transition and challenge in February 2026. Key exhibitions are closing soon, including "Manet and Morisot" at the Legion of Honor and Suzanne Jackson's first career retrospective at SFMOMA, both ending March 1. New shows are opening, such as "Video Craft" at the Museum of Craft & Design and "Echoes in the Small Mountain: Park Dae-sung and the West Coast" at the Asian Art Museum. Meanwhile, the city's cultural landscape faces strain, with the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts suspending operations, representing a significant loss of community programming.

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.

Inside the 19th-century Parisian club that became a safe haven for female artists

Art historian Jennifer Dasal's new book "The Club" tells the story of the American Girls' Club, a Parisian safe haven founded in 1893 by Elisabeth Mills Reid at 4 Rue de Chevreuse in Montparnasse. The club provided affordable housing and meals for aspiring female American artists who faced obstacles their male counterparts did not, including societal pressure toward marriage, financial constraints, and safety concerns. Notable residents and participants included painters Anne Goldthwaite, Florence Lundborg, and sculptors Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller and Alice Morgan Wright, whose works and lives are chronicled in Dasal's account.

Tate Modern announces regular late openings

Tate Modern has announced it will extend its evening opening hours to 21:00 on Fridays and Saturdays, starting 26 September 2025. The decision follows the success of the Tate Modern Lates series, launched in 2016, which has attracted over 750,000 visitors and demonstrated strong demand for after-hours access, especially among young Londoners. Director Karin Hindsbo described the Lates as a cornerstone of London's nightlife, and Mayor Sadiq Khan welcomed the move as a boost to the city's night-time economy.

Miss Subway NYC is a landmark solo exhibition by trailblazing artist Lady Pink.

D'Stassi Art has opened "Miss Subway NYC," a landmark solo exhibition by trailblazing graffiti artist Lady Pink in Shoreditch, London. The show features a full-scale recreation of a graffiti-covered NYC subway station, displaying original works, new commissions, archival pieces, sketches, and ephemera from her early career. Lady Pink, one of the first women to break into New York's graffiti scene, began tagging trains at 17 and exhibited at MoMA PS1's landmark 1981 show "New York/New Wave" alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. The exhibition's title references the historic Miss Subways beauty pageant, and includes a self-portrait of Lady Pink as Miss Subways 2025.

Review: “Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The article reviews "Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the artist's first nationally touring retrospective in 20 years. Organized by the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, the exhibition features some 100 artworks from the 1950s until her death in 2011, including large-scale ceramics, weavings, and paintings. It traces Takaezu's journey from her childhood on a Maui watercress plantation to her transformative studies at Cranbrook Academy of Art and a pivotal trip to Japan, where she studied Zen Buddhism and worked under various ceramicists.

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Munich-based gallery Lohaus Sominsky, founded by Ingrid Lohaus and Sofia Sominsky, will open its first New York space at 62 White Street in Tribeca next month. The inaugural exhibition, featuring new paintings and a site-specific installation by Berlin-based artist Charlie Stein, opens December 11, shortly after the gallery participates in Art Basel Miami Beach for the first time. The expansion follows three years of operations in Munich, where the gallery has mounted over 18 exhibitions with an international roster including Vera Molnár and Phoebe Derlee.

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Suki Seokyeong Kang, a Korean sculptor known for reimagining traditional Korean artistic forms in contemporary sculpture, died on Sunday at age 48 after a years-long battle with cancer. Her passing was announced by Seoul’s Kukje Gallery and her New York representative, Tina Kim Gallery. Kang’s work drew from centuries-old practices such as Joseon Dynasty painting and 600-year-old musical notation, translating them into highly conceptual, visually seductive sculptures that appeared in biennials worldwide, including Gwangju and Venice, and in museum surveys such as a 2023 show at Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art. At the time of her death, her largest-ever US exhibition was on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, featuring her "Mountain" series inspired by the traditional Korean style si-seo-hwa.

Matt Dillon’s New Paintings Trace a Journey Across West Africa

Actor Matt Dillon presents his first solo exhibition at The Journal Gallery in New York, titled "Porto Novo to Abomey," opening April 24. The series of paintings was inspired by Dillon's travels through Senegal and Benin after filming Claire Denis's movie *The Fence* (2025). Dillon, who began painting about a decade ago with little formal training, creates spontaneous, textured works featuring bold figures, symbols, and words. The show's title traces a 100-mile journey from Benin's capital to the historic Kingdom of Dahomey, reflecting the artist's impressions of local textiles, architecture, and landscapes.

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The article excerpts a book about Indian artist Lalitha Lajmi, exploring her creative struggles, loneliness, and distinctive use of blue and red in watercolors. It draws from her dream journals and interviews, describing how she often painted herself in red against blue landscapes, symbolizing desire and isolation, and how her works resemble raw underpaintings that reveal subconscious imagery.

‘Street culture is about revolution’: Brazilian ‘hip-hop’ painter Paulo Nimer Pjota

Brazilian artist Paulo Nimer Pjota, now 37, is preparing for his first UK institutional exhibition, 'Encantados (Enchanted),' at the South London Gallery. The show features 11 new paintings on canvas alongside a large wall drawing, drawing on imagery from ancient civilizations, Brazilian folklore, art history, and children's literature. Pjota, who began painting at age 12 and sold his first work at 15, describes his process as akin to a hip-hop producer sampling diverse sources. His background includes graffiti and hip-hop culture in São José do Rio Prêto, where he trained at a local hip-hop school and collaborated with renowned Brazilian graffiti artists like Os Gêmeos, Ise, and Nunca.

Has A.I. Solved the Mystery of This El Greco Painting?

New research using artificial intelligence has challenged the long-held belief that El Greco's altarpiece *The Baptism of Christ* was largely painted by his son and workshop assistants. A machine-learning model called Patch, developed by researchers at Western Reserve University, analyzed the painting's microscopic surface texture and found underlying connections suggesting El Greco himself painted the majority of the work, with only a small region at the bottom attributed to other hands.

Comment | What the art market doesn’t allow, branded content does for Tom Sachs

Tom Sachs has signed with The Lede Company, a US public relations firm, for agency representation, while Thaddaeus Ropac continues to represent him for gallery and fine art inquiries. This arrangement highlights Sachs's expanding activities beyond the traditional art market, including collaborations with Nike and Levi's, such as a Nike app promoting the Mars Yard 3.0 trainers. The announcement came in August, amidst other art-world movements like Jeff Koons's return to Gagosian from Pace Gallery.

Taxidermists—prized by Damien Hirst—open museum in Amsterdam

Two artist-taxidermists, Ferry van Tongeren and Jaap Sinke, have opened the Art Zoo Museum in a restored canal house in Amsterdam, in partnership with the Vrije Academie cultural education institute. The museum, opening on 26 June, is described as a "modern wunderkammer"—a contemporary cabinet of curiosities—featuring taxidermied animals that died natural deaths, arranged in surreal poses alongside preserved flowers and ornate interiors. Van Tongeren, a former advertising agency owner who retrained as a taxidermist, gained international fame after he and Sinke sold their first collection to Damien Hirst in 2016. Their collective is named Darwin, Sinke & Van Tongeren, reflecting the influence of Charles Darwin.

Beyond the prompt: when the medium is generative AI, the artist becomes a systemic director

Oltre il prompt: quando il medium è l’AI generativa l’artista diventa regista sistemico

The article argues that as AI-generated images become more spectacular, the role of the artist is often misunderstood as merely writing prompts. Instead, the author contends that the most significant generative artworks are systems—predetermined rule-based environments where the artist designs the conditions for images to emerge. Works like Hans Haacke's "Condensation Cube" (1963-1965) and Refik Anadol's "Unsupervised" (2022) exemplify this shift from object to process, where the artwork is the behavior or architecture itself.

Plains Art Museum exhibit celebrates women artists

Plains Art Museum in Fargo has opened "Women Artists: Four Centuries of Creativity," a major exhibition running through March 1, 2026, in the Jane L. Stern Gallery. The show features 40 works from the museum's permanent collection alongside 37 works on loan from the Reading Public Museum, spanning etchings, engravings, lithographs, drawings, watercolors, woodblock prints, and photographs by canonical women artists. Highlights include a 1650 piece by Elisabetta Sirani, one of the earliest renowned female Renaissance artists. Students from Minnesota State University Moorhead's Women and Art course contributed original research and curatorial support.

Henry Moore Foundation awards £100,000 in unrestricted grants

The Henry Moore Foundation has awarded £100,000 in unrestricted grants to fifty sculptors across the UK, each receiving £2,000 through its Artist Award Scheme. The funding, announced amid the cost-of-living crisis and cultural sector cuts, can be used for materials, studio rent, or bridging gaps. Recipients were nominated by a panel of 25 arts professionals from UK regions and Northern Ireland, including Viviana Checchia of Void in Derry and Nicole Yip of Spike Island in Bristol. Notable past recipients include 2024 Turner Prize winner Jasleen Kaur and Manon Awst, who will represent Wales at the 2026 Venice Biennale.

The Sistine Chapel Is Coming to a Mall in Suburban New Jersey

A traveling exhibition featuring high-definition, full-scale replicas of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes is opening for an indefinite run at the Westfield Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, New Jersey. The show, "Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition," presents all 34 ceiling and altar masterpieces using advanced printing techniques, allowing visitors to view the works up close without the crowds and time constraints of the Vatican.

Raphael: Sublime Poetry

This article announces the first comprehensive U.S. exhibition on Raphael, titled "Raphael: Sublime Poetry," which offers an immersive look at the artist's meteoric career through drawings, paintings, prints, and tapestries. It traces Raphael's journey from his birth in Urbino in 1483, through his training under his poet-painter father Giovanni Santi and later Pietro Perugino, to his rise as a peer to Leonardo and Michelangelo in Florence and his final decade as the favorite artist of the popes in Rome, where he was celebrated as the "prince of painters."

This sprawling free NYC art show just opened at MoMA PS1

MoMA PS1 has officially launched "Greater New York 2026," a massive building-wide exhibition featuring over 150 works by 53 artists and collectives. This quinquennial survey, which coincides with the institution’s 50th anniversary, showcases a diverse range of mediums including large-scale installations, painting, animation, and performance art. For the first time, the exhibition was organized by the museum’s entire curatorial team, resulting in a broad cross-section of the city's contemporary creative output.

Anna Park's new show at Lehmann Maupin in London offers a voyeuristic mix of the abstract and the figurative

Artist Anna Park is preparing for her first major solo exhibition at Lehmann Maupin’s London space, titled 'Hot Honey'. The show features her signature large-scale charcoal and ink works that blend traditional figurative techniques with chaotic abstraction. Drawing from a diverse range of influences including vintage comics, pin-up culture, and her upbringing as an outsider in Utah, Park’s new pieces explore the 'male gaze' and female archetypes through a satirical, voyeuristic lens.

From politics to painting: works by Albanian prime minister Edi Rama are new art fair favourites

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, a trained artist who studied at Tirana's Academy of Fine Arts and worked in Paris before entering politics, has been added to the roster of Berlin gallery Société. The gallery debuted his colorful pen-and-oil drawings and painted bronze sculptures at Frieze London in October 2025 and Art Basel Paris, where around half of the drawings sold. Rama, who has exhibited at the Centre Pompidou and twice at the Venice Biennale, continues to create art while serving his fourth term as prime minister.

Is This the Breaking Point for Museums?

Museums across the West are facing a severe funding crisis as governments slash public support. In the U.S., President Donald Trump’s deep cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in lost funding, while stock market volatility and increased endowment taxes further strain budgets. In Europe, Berlin cut €130 million from cultural funding in December 2024, and other countries face similar pressures, forcing museums to confront dwindling subsidies and shifting philanthropy.

With Nearly 30,000 Clay Earth Bricks, Dana Awartani Remakes History in the Saudi Arabia Pavilion

Dana Awartani, a Jeddah- and New York-based artist of mixed Palestinian, Saudi, Jordanian, and Syrian descent, has created the Saudi Arabia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale using nearly 30,000 clay earth bricks. The installation, titled "May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones," replicates traditional mosaic motifs sourced from over 20 cultural heritage sites across the Arab world that have been destroyed by human conflict. Awartani emphasizes collaboration, crediting numerous skilled craftsmen—economic migrants to Saudi Arabia—who worked alongside her, and her practice blends formal training at Central St. Martins with Islamic geometry and illumination studies in Turkey.

Prehistoric Stone Altar with Human Remains Discovered in Central Mexico

Archaeologists conducting salvage work for a new passenger train line between Querétaro and Mexico City have unearthed a 1,000-year-old Toltec stone altar. Located within the Tula Archaeological Monument Zone in Hidalgo, the three-level structure was found alongside four human skulls, long bones, a black ceramic bowl, and obsidian blades. Preliminary assessments by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) suggest the remains belong to individuals offered as ritual sacrifices.

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French President Emmanuel Macron has appointed Catherine Pégard as the nation’s new Culture Minister, succeeding Rachida Dati. Pégard, a former political journalist and longtime president of the Château de Versailles, moves into the role after serving as Macron’s cultural advisor since 2024. Dati is stepping down from the post to focus on her candidacy for the Paris mayoral election in March.

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Isaiah Zagar, the visionary mosaic artist behind the landmark Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, died on February 19 at age 86 due to complications from heart failure and Parkinson’s Disease. A Pratt Institute graduate and former Peace Corps volunteer, Zagar transformed Philadelphia’s South Street neighborhood over five decades, creating more than 200 public murals and a sprawling, immersive environment of tunnels and grottos made from glass, tile, and found objects.

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UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced a £1.5 billion arts funding package on Wednesday, urging London-based national institutions like the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery to extend their reach across the country. The package includes £600 million for national institutions, £425 million for a Creative Foundations Fund supporting capital projects at arts venues nationwide, £160 million for local and regional museums, £230 million for the heritage sector, £27.5 million for public libraries, and an additional £80 million for national portfolio organizations. Nandy praised the Royal Shakespeare Company’s outreach as a model and framed the investment as the largest reset in the arts for a generation, comparable to post-World War Two cultural rebuilding.

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Artist, designer, architect, and Olympian skateboarder Alexis Sablone has been inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame as part of its Class of 2026, announced on January 15. The 18 inductees were selected for shaping skateboarding culture and global impact, with the ceremony set for May 15 at Vans Headquarters in Costa Mesa, California. Sablone is known to the art world for skateboarding down the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's spiral ramp in 2023 to promote her first sneaker design for Converse, and for creating skateable public art like 'Lady in the Square' in Sweden and 'Candy Courts' in New Jersey.

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Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares inaugurated an exhibition titled “Half the World: Women in Indigenous Mexico” at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid, featuring over 400 works on loan from the Mexican government. At the press conference, Albares acknowledged that Spain's colonization of Mexico caused “pain and injustice” toward indigenous peoples, but stopped short of issuing a full apology. This follows a 2019 letter from former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador demanding an apology from Spain and the Catholic Church for the conquest, which Spain rejected. Current Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has reiterated the demand, calling the original letter “very diplomatic” and criticizing Spain's response as “undiplomatic.”