The Walters Art Museum has unveiled new Latin American galleries, opening with a work by Peruvian-born artist Kukuli Velarde titled "Wak'a del Agua" (2022-2023). The ceramic piece, inspired by the Inca tradition of stacking stones to mark sacred spaces, features five stacked forms painted in diverse styles that reflect different periods of Peruvian history, from ancient textile patterns to neon-colored figures.
The Grand Palais in Paris reopens after a €466m (£395m) four-year restoration led by Chatillon Architectes, the most significant transformation since its 1900 inauguration. The building will serve as a temporary venue for the Centre Pompidou while the museum undergoes its own renovation until 2030. The project restored original sightlines, added over 40 lifts and 30 staircases, and created modular exhibition spaces to meet contemporary curatorial demands.
Tate Liverpool has received a £12m grant from the UK government's Public Bodies Infrastructure Fund, bringing the Department of Culture, Media and Sport's total contribution to the gallery's redevelopment to £18.6m. The funding, combined with additional philanthropic donations from the Garfield Weston Foundation (£3m), the Wolfson Foundation (£1.25m), and the Ross Warburton Charitable Trust, plus a £10m award from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, has raised a minimum of £32.85m toward the project, now costed at £35m. The gallery, closed since October 2023, had postponed its planned 2025 reopening to 2027 due to fundraising difficulties.
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) is opening "Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California" on June 8, the first major museum survey of its vast African American quilt collection. The collection, bequeathed by Oakland collector Eli Leon in 2018, includes over 3,000 quilts, with 100 featured in the exhibition. The show focuses on migration during the Second Great Migration (1940–1970) and highlights artists like National Heritage Fellow Laverne Brackens, Rosie Lee Tompkins, and Arbie Williams, alongside multi-generational quilting families. The exhibition opens despite recent federal funding cuts for conservation work on the quilts.
Two Paris-based art dealers, Samy Ghiyati and Nicolas Nahab, have launched NG, a new multi-pronged art advisory business. The venture combines traditional advisory services with a roving exhibition programme, collection management, and foundation management. Nahab previously led Mendes Wood DM’s Paris gallery and worked at Marian Goodman and Yvon Lambert; Ghiyati was a director at David Zwirner’s Paris gallery after a stint at Kamel Mennour. Their first public project will be a selling exhibition of videos by Meriem Bennani in Essaouira, Morocco, opening in December.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has reopened its Oceania galleries after an extensive renovation and reimagining from an Indigenous perspective. The new Arts of Oceania installation features over 650 works representing 140 cultures from across the region, including Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand. Curated by Maia Nuku, the exhibition took eight years to plan and showcases artworks created in the last 500 years, emphasizing the ocean as a connective highway rather than a barrier. The reopening continues the legacy of the landmark 1984 exhibition Te Māori: Māori Art from New Zealand Collections, which set a benchmark for shared decision-making between museums and Indigenous communities.
The Denver Art Museum has announced the upcoming exhibition "Southwest Impressions: Prints from the Barbara J. Thompson Collection," opening June 29, 2025, and running through June 14, 2026. The show features works on paper by artists who lived or traveled in the American Southwest between the late 1800s and mid-1900s, drawn from a collection of over 100 prints gifted to the museum's Petrie Institute of Western American Art in 2024 by Barbara J. Thompson in honor of her grandfather, printmaker C. A. Seward. The exhibition will be presented in two rotations of about fifty prints each, covering intaglio, block printing, lithography, and serigraphy, with interpretive videos and a digital publication.
The Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) will present the 2025 Florida Prize in Contemporary Art exhibition, its biggest show of the year, celebrating the state's most innovative artists. The eleventh annual exhibition features ten selected artists: Nathalie Alfonso, Eddie Arroyo, Leo Castañeda, Kelly Joy Ladd, Amanda Linares, Kandy G. Lopez, Jiha Moon, Troy Simmons, Cornelius Tulloch, and Lisu Vega. An opening preview party on May 30 will include the announcement of one artist receiving a $20,000 prize, while a $5,000 "People's Choice" award will be decided by public vote throughout the summer, with the winner revealed at the closing ceremony on August 21.
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is reopening its Galleries of the Arts of Oceania to the public for the first time since 2021, following a major renovation that allowed curators to reimagine the presentation of art from the vast Pacific region. The galleries feature more than 600 artworks from Melanesia, Polynesia, Micronesia, Australia, and New Zealand, including the iconic Kwoma ceiling installation from Papua New Guinea, which has been reconfigured with input from the artists' descendants to accurately reflect clan groupings. The renovation is part of a broader $70 million overhaul of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, which also houses collections from the ancient Americas and Africa.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Michael C. Rockefeller Wing will reopen to the public on May 31 after a $70 million renovation. The wing houses the museum's collections of art from Africa, the Ancient Americas, and Oceania, and features a new sloped glass wall, a dedicated gallery for light-sensitive Andean textiles, and over 1,800 works spanning five continents. The reopening day celebration includes live music, art-making activities, and a conversation between Met director Max Hollein and architect Kulapat Yantrasast.
The Fondation Cartier, a contemporary art gallery in Paris for the past 30 years, is opening a new flagship location at 2, place du Palais-Royal, opposite the Louvre and near the Ministry of Culture. Occupying an 8,500-square-meter space in a building dating to 1852, the interior has been redesigned by architect Jean Nouvel. The new venue, set to open on October 25, 2025, will be the largest private art center in Paris, with half its space dedicated to exhibitions and the other half housing a restaurant, bookshop, auditorium, and offices. The inaugural exhibition, 'Exposition Générale,' will feature nearly 600 works from the foundation's collection of over 2,500 pieces.
The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV) opens its summer season with three contemporary exhibitions centered on Indigenous perspectives, identity, and land. The anchor show is Meryl McMaster's "Bloodline," opening June 18, featuring large-scale photographs, sculptural elements, and immersive video that trace her mixed Plains Cree, Métis, Dutch, and British heritage through the lives of her grandmothers from the Red Pheasant Cree Nation. Alongside it, "Lekwungen: Place to Smoke Herring" by Brianna Bear and Eli Hirtle presents a film installation on Songhees Nation language and land stewardship, while "Architectures of Protection," curated by Dr. Toby Lawrence, features works by Dana Claxton, Jessica Karuhanga, Emilio Rojas, Beth Stuart, and France Trépanier exploring care and resistance.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis attended the opening of the art exhibition 'Thalatta' at the United Nations in New York on May 20, coinciding with Greece's Presidency of the UN Security Council. The exhibition features 11 contemporary paintings by Greek artists from the National Gallery in Athens, curated around the theme of the sea. Ambassador Evangelos Sekeris delivered welcoming remarks, and Syrago Tsiara, Director of the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum, spoke about the sea's role in cultural diplomacy and international cooperation.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Michael C. Rockefeller Wing reopened in May 2025 after a multiyear renovation, presenting reimagined galleries for the arts of Africa, the ancient Americas, and Oceania. The 40,000-square-foot space, designed by Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY Architecture, now houses the three collections as independent entities, featuring digital features, commissioned films, new wall text, and objects on view for the first time—including major acquisitions of historic and contemporary works, a gallery for light-sensitive ancient Andean textiles, and contemporary commissions by Indigenous Pacific artists.
This episode of The Art Newspaper's 'The Week in Art' podcast, hosted by Ben Luke, covers three major stories. First, the National Gallery in London reopens its Sainsbury Wing after a two-year closure, featuring a major architectural overhaul by Annabelle Selldorf and a complete rehang of the collection; Luke tours the space with director Gabriele Finaldi. Second, Tate Modern celebrates its 25th anniversary, with Luke discussing its impact and future with Louisa Buck and Dale Berning Sawa. Third, the Work of the Week segment highlights Inge Mahn's sculpture 'Balancing Towers' (1989), featured in the exhibition 'Are we still up to it?' – Art & Democracy at Herrenchiemsee Palace, discussed with co-curator Oliver Kase.
The United States' participation in the 2026 Venice Biennale is in jeopardy due to the Trump administration's campaign to defund the arts. According to a Vanity Fair report by Nate Freeman, the US government's preparation is behind schedule, with the typical 18-month planning timeline now reduced to just 12 months before the opening. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) faces funding cuts, staff reductions, and a vacant position for coordinating biennale affairs, while the application process has been altered to emphasize "American values" and remove references to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The Warburg Institute in London is opening an exhibition titled "Art & the Book" (16 May–2 August) and organizing the Biblioteka Art Book Fair (20–21 June) to explore the medium of artists' books. Curated by Arnaud Desjardin and Hlib Velyhorskyi, the show spans examples from the 1960s to today. To help readers understand the genre, Desjardin—author of the reference work *The Book on Books on Artists Books* (2013)—recommends four key publications: Lucy Lippard's *Six Years* (1973), the exhibition catalogue *Looking Telling Thinking Collecting* (2004) edited by Anne Moeglin-Delcroix and others, Clive Phillpot's essay collection *Booktrek* (2013), and Michael Lailach's *Printed Matter: Die Sammlung Marzona/The Marzona Collection* (2005).
Two masterworks from the collection of the late Jacob Rothschild—Guercino's *King David* (1651) and John Deare's *Edward and Eleanor* (1790)—have been allocated to London's National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) respectively under the UK's acceptance in lieu (AIL) scheme. The Guercino painting settles £5.6 million in inheritance tax, and will be reunited with two related Guercino works already at the National Gallery. The marble relief by Deare enters the V&A's collection.
The National Gallery in London has purchased a 500-year-old altarpiece, *The Virgin and Child with Saints Louis and Margaret and Two Angels*, for £16.4 million from an anonymous owner. The painting, created between 1500 and 1510, is of unknown authorship—experts cannot agree whether the artist was Netherlandish or French, with candidates including Jan Gossaert and Jean Hey. The oak panel was felled around 1483, and the work was first documented at the priory of Drongen in Ghent in 1602. It was sold through Sotheby’s with support from the American Friends of the National Gallery London and had been kept at the Lulworth Estate in Dorset, home of the Weld family.
The Worcester Art Museum is opening a new exhibition, "From the Vault: Collecting Tapestries at the Worcester Art Museum," on May 3, 2025, running through July 27. The show features nearly 30 works, including 12 large-scale tapestries and 18 fragments, many unseen for decades. The centerpiece is the museum's iconic 16th-century "The Last Judgment" tapestry, restored after 35 years in storage. Other highlights include a contemporary piece by Diedrick Brackens, a Flemish tapestry depicting Emperor Titus, and works by Jean Lurçat.
King Charles III will open a unique exhibition at Buckingham Palace from July 10 to September 28, showcasing 70 artworks by 42 artists who accompanied him on overseas royal tours. The tradition began in 1985 when the then Prince of Wales invited British artist John Ward to document a visit to Italy, and has continued unbroken ever since. Featured artists include Fraser Scarfe, who captured Charles's recent Rome visit on an iPad, Richard Foster, who painted the King and Queen Camilla in the Galápagos in 2009, and Susannah Fiennes, who documented the 1997 Hong Kong handover. The exhibition was conceived by the Earl of Rosslyn, who also edited the companion book 'The Art of Royal Travel: Journeys with The King'.
The article reports on the opening of the Museum of Cacao & Chocolate in Mexico City, which combines a colonial-era house with a contemporary architectural addition. The museum is built on a site that was once an Aztec monument, adding layers of historical significance to the institution dedicated to the history and culture of cacao.
KidSTREAM, a new $7 million children's museum, has launched in Camarillo, California, transforming a former library site into an interactive educational hub. Founded by Kristie Akl, a former teacher, the museum focuses on hands-on learning across science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) to engage young learners through play.
New York's art, design, and philanthropic leaders gathered at the Park Avenue Armory for the Winter Show's Opening Night Preview, marking the fair's 72nd edition and honoring Caroline Kennedy. The event featured 75 international exhibitors, with co-hosts including Executive Director Helen Allen, East Side House Settlement Executive Director Daniel Diaz, Honorary Co-Chair Wendy Goodman, and designers Noz Nozawa, Ben Pentreath, Jane Keltner de Valle, Giancarlo Valle, Michael Bargo, and CULTURED Editor-in-Chief Sarah Harrelson. Attendees included fashion designer Cynthia Rowley, interior designers Reed and Delphine Krakoff, and architect Peter Marino, among others.
EAT/ART Space, a collaborative project merging food and visual art, will take over ETSU's Tipton-Ashe Galleries. The initiative transforms the gallery into an interactive environment where visitors can engage with art through culinary experiences, blurring the lines between gallery viewing and dining.
Branchport Galleries in Long Branch, New Jersey, presents "The New Botanical," an exhibition curated by Ellen Martin that reimagines traditional botanical art through contemporary works by Suzan Globus, Kevin Hinkle/Ellen Martin, Daniel Sroka, and Gao Yuan. The show, on view from May 14 to June 30, 2026, features techniques such as flower-pounding, extreme close-up photography, and photo-based wall sculptures, moving away from classical precision toward essence and abstraction. An opening reception and artist talk are scheduled.
Art House Productions in Jersey City, NJ, presents "Playing Favorites," a solo exhibition by artist Bryant Small, curated by Andrea McKenna. The show runs from May 2 to May 31, 2026, at the Art House Gallery, featuring a selection of Small's most cherished works, many never publicly exhibited before. The exhibition includes an opening reception on May 2 and an artist talk on April 17, with all artwork available for purchase in person and online.
A major exhibition titled 'Lillian Pitt: Art, Memory, Home' opens at The Museum at Warm Springs on May 21, featuring the contemporary art of celebrated Pacific Northwest Native artist Lillian Pitt alongside works from her personal collection and other institutions. The show, curated by Angela Anne Smith with contributions from Rebecca Dobkins, explores six themes in Pitt's life and work and includes an opening reception sponsored by The Ford Family Foundation.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art will present “Into the Waters with Senju and Bingyi: Two Contemporary Paintings,” a new exhibition opening April 2 and running through Aug. 23. It features two recent paintings by Hiroshi Senju (born 1958) and Bingyi (born 1975), each offering hypnotic visualizations of water. Senju’s pair of folding screens reimagines waterfalls using traditional Japanese techniques and contemporary methods, while Bingyi’s hanging scrolls, created with cloth and paper wrapped around an uprooted tree, incorporate natural elements like sea breeze and humidity. The exhibition marks the first showing of these works, which were acquired to expand the museum’s contemporary collections.
The contemporary art market in 2025 is experiencing a paradox: traditional indicators show cooling, but online sales are booming and attracting new, younger collectors. According to the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025, online sales now account for 22% of dealer transactions, with 46% of online sales in 2024 going to first-time buyers—up from 35% the previous year. High-net-worth individuals increasingly prefer purchasing through digital channels like dealer websites or Instagram, and established collectors are also buying sight unseen. This shift is driven by greater access to authenticated limited editions and prints by blue-chip artists such as Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Banksy, David Hockney, and Damien Hirst, offered by galleries like Calder Contemporary in London with transparent pricing and provenance.