La situation du Muséum national d’Histoire Naturelle
The New Museum in New York is undergoing a significant physical and institutional expansion, signaling a new chapter for the contemporary art landmark. This 'change of scale' involves architectural developments designed to increase exhibition space and enhance the visitor experience, reflecting the institution's growing influence in the global art scene.
American photojournalist Carol Guzy won the 2026 World Press Photo of the Year for her image "Separated by ICE," which captures a tearful family torn apart by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after an immigration court hearing in New York amid President Trump's broader crackdown. The contest, established in 1955, selected 42 global winners from over 57,000 photographs submitted by nearly 3,800 photographers across 141 countries. Finalists included Saber Nuraldin's "Aid Emergency in Gaza" and Victor J. Blue's "The Trials of the Achi Women," while other winners addressed displacement, war, and environmental crises.
A nostalgic art exhibition opened at the South End Museum in Nelson Mandela Bay, featuring canvas paintings that recreate historical black-and-white images of the former South End neighborhood. The exhibition and sale, organized by local framing company Frame Art and artist/trustee Michael Barry, showcases works primarily by Vincent Olivier, based on a collection amassed by the late Frame Art founder Salie Wackie.
Cal State Fullerton recently hosted its biannual Associated Students Inc. (ASI) Art Show at the Titan Student Union Center Gallery, centered on the theme of "Memory and Nostalgia." The exhibition showcased 20 student works spanning traditional oil paintings, digital illustrations, and 3D-printed media. Awards were presented across multiple categories, highlighting pieces such as Michael Butorac’s acrylic painting "Unforgotten Friday’s" and Victor Castaneda’s digital photograph "Becoming."
“Lo straniero” di François Ozon. Un film tra estetica delle superfici e rilettura politica
Director François Ozon has adapted Albert Camus’s existentialist masterpiece 'The Stranger' into a new feature film, premiering at the 82nd Venice Film Festival. Shot in stark black and white by cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, the film departs from the 1967 Luchino Visconti adaptation by leaning into a cold, clinical aesthetic inspired by Michelangelo Antonioni. The narrative follows Meursault, an emotionally detached clerk in colonial Algiers, whose impassive reaction to his mother's death and the subsequent senseless murder of an Arab man leads to his legal and moral condemnation.
DDR-Frauen ohne Filter
The Kunsthaus Apolda in Thuringia is presenting a posthumous retrospective of Günter Rössler, the East German photographer who defined nude and fashion photography in the GDR, on what would have been his 100th birthday. The exhibition features 130 works spanning six decades, including fashion assignments, reportage from his travels abroad, and large-format black-and-white nudes. It is curated by his widow and estate manager Kirsten Schlegel, and complemented by an audio guide in which Rössler's models reflect on their collaboration with him.
Der letzte lebende Surrealist
Alejandro Jodorowsky, the 97-year-old Chilean-French artist and filmmaker, is profiled in his Paris apartment as the last living Surrealist. The article reflects on his century-spanning career, from his early pantomime work with Marcel Marceau in the 1950s to his cult films like "El Topo" and "The Holy Mountain," as well as his famously unrealized adaptation of Frank Herbert's "Dune." Jodorowsky shares his philosophy that true art has a beginning but no end, offering a retrospective on a life lived at the intersection of performance, cinema, and visionary creativity.
Le rapprochement entre Artnet et Artsy prend corps
Artnet and Artsy, two major online art market platforms, have announced a strategic merger under the common ownership of British investment fund Beowolff Capital. The companies will retain their distinct brands and websites but will be led by a unified management team, with Artsy's CEO Jeffrey Yin taking the helm. The consolidation has already resulted in dozens of job cuts, particularly at Artnet News, and follows a period of economic strain for Artnet, which reported a 12% revenue drop in the first half of 2025.
Jean-Gabriel Peyre (1941-2026)
Jean-Gabriel Peyre, a distinguished French art dealer and expert in antique ceramics, passed away on March 27 at the age of 85. Originally a fashion professional who worked for Jacques Esterel, Peyre transitioned to the art world in the late 1960s, establishing himself as a preeminent specialist in European ceramics from the 16th to 18th centuries. Based in Paris and later Aix-en-Provence, he was particularly renowned for his expertise in French faience and his significant personal collection of Apt ceramics.
Emmy Award-winning director and photographer Daniel Sackheim is set to release a new photography book titled 'The City Unseen,' which explores the noir aesthetic of Los Angeles. Moving away from the city's sunny stereotypes, Sackheim utilizes high-contrast black-and-white photography to capture a gritty, cinematic underbelly inspired by hardboiled detective novels and historic urban architecture. The project features dramatic silhouettes and deep shadows that create a sense of timeless mystery across iconic L.A. locales.
Artist Hillary Waters Fayle has developed a unique series titled 'Portraits of Place,' which utilizes foraged botanicals to create intricate cyanotypes. By collecting and drying seeds, petals, and foliage from specific locations like Grace Farms and Maymont Park, Fayle arranges them into symmetrical, mandala-like compositions on UV-sensitive paper. The resulting bright blue prints serve as a botanical record of a specific geography and moment in time.
Une exposition autour du Champollion de Bartholdi, déposé à Nogent-sur-Seine
The Musée Camille Claudel in Nogent-sur-Seine is hosting a new exhibition centered around Auguste Bartholdi’s monument to Jean-François Champollion. The statue, recently transferred from the courtyard of the Collège de France by the Fonds national d’art contemporain, serves as the focal point for a display that explores the history and significance of the work. The exhibition provides a scholarly counter-narrative to recent ideological criticisms surrounding the monument's iconography.
Salomé. Henner et Moreau face au mythe
The Musée National Jean-Jacques Henner in Paris is hosting a focused exhibition exploring the iconographic myth of Salomé through the lenses of Jean-Jacques Henner and Gustave Moreau. The show examines how these two 19th-century masters interpreted the biblical figure who demanded the head of John the Baptist, contrasting their stylistic approaches to her seductive and fatal power. While the Gospels provide no physical description of Salomé, the exhibition highlights how these artists moved away from traditional fleshy depictions to create more ethereal, haunting versions of the femme fatale.
Curator Simon Njami discusses his exhibition 'NAFRICA–MASCHERE' at the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, which juxtaposes the fascist anthropological archives of Lidio Cipriani with contemporary artworks. The show utilizes the metaphor of the mask to explore the tension between how individuals are perceived and how they project themselves, specifically addressing the persistence of colonial logic in the modern world. By including artists from Africa, America, and Italy, Njami seeks to move beyond a binary 'colonizer vs. colonized' narrative toward a broader inquiry into human representation and power.
Artist Emily Drew Miller has created a series of collograph prints titled "Matzot" by running sheets of matzah through a printing press. The resulting black-and-white impressions capture the intricate textures and cracks of the unleavened bread, transforming the traditional Passover food into a medium for her grid-based painting practice. The series began as a personal ritual around the holiday and has evolved into a decade-long exploration.
A photo essay showcases fashion and decorative arts associated with Marie Antoinette, drawn from multiple museum exhibitions in France. Images include an English-style dress and skirt (circa 1780-1790) from the Palais Galliera-Paris Musées, a shoe from 1895 at the Musée des Beaux Arts de Caen, a pug on a cushion from the Berlin Manufactory (circa 1760) courtesy of Les Arts Décoratifs, and a painting titled "The Bad News" by Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre. The collection also features a French-style dress (circa 1755-1765), a formal corset attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette (circa 1770-1780), and a view of the exhibition "Fashion in the 18th Century: A Fantasized Legacy" at the Palais Galliera fashion museum in Paris.
Artist Raili Jänese, an Estonian-born painter now based in Kirkland, Washington, creates colorful acrylic works that capture everyday human and animal behaviors with humor and tenderness. Her practice, which began after a corporate career, focuses on observation of mundane moments—people eating, drinking coffee, riding transit, and animals in urban settings. Her upcoming solo exhibition, "E.L.U," will be on view at Ryan James Fine Arts from May 1–31, 2025, with a Gallery Night on May 22. Jänese has shown work regionally at venues including Happy Time Studio Gallery, Oxbow Montlake, and the Seattle Art Fair, and has completed public art projects in Bellevue, Kent, Kirkland, and Seattle.
Gunjan Tyagi, a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Schenectady, New York, has been selected to exhibit at Pen + Brush, one of New York's oldest nonprofit galleries, during Women's History Month. Tyagi's work spans painting, sculpture, site-specific installation, nature art, video, photography, and mixed media, often incorporating unconventional materials like cow dung and found objects to explore identity, cultural exchange, and humanity's relationship with nature. She also serves as organizer of the India chapter of the Global Nomadic Art Project and as a jury member at the Biennale of Seychelles.
Photographer Rusty Costanza opened an exhibition of his black-and-white photographs at the Art House in Covington, documenting his life and perspective since being diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). The show was the featured exhibit of the annual Spring for Art celebration, with a special preview for friends, family, and patrons.
The Bank of Art Gallery in Brazil, Indiana, is launching an immersive spring-themed exhibition titled "Bloom/Hum/Glow." Featuring the work of seven artists, the show transforms the gallery space into a sensory meadow through a combination of glasswork, floral prints, and a unique sound installation. A central highlight is a haptic audio experience by artist Kevin Naylor that replicates the vibrations and sounds of a beehive, allowing visitors to feel as though they are enveloped within a hive.
Painter Bill Gallagher opens his solo exhibition “The State of Florida” on May 2 at Jane’s Art Center in New Smyrna Beach, featuring a new body of realistic oil paintings that capture everyday Florida scenes—cafés, coastlines, parking lots, sidewalks, and public spaces. The works explore subtle tensions between presence and distraction, connection and isolation, using a classical realist approach to transform the state into a psychological stage. Gallagher, who began exhibiting in his 20s in New York, Orlando, Los Angeles, and Milan, left the gallery world for a successful advertising career before returning to painting two years ago, earning multiple awards including first place at the Artists’ Workshop NSB Members Show for his painting “Release.”
McRae Art Studios, Orlando's oldest and largest professional artist collective, is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a spring open house on April 25 at its 10,000-square-foot converted garage space in urban Orlando. Founded in 1986 by George and Marty Whipple, the studio has hosted over 100 award-winning artists across five locations. The event features studio visits, original artwork sales, live music, and a cash bar, along with a new exhibition of self-portraits titled "The Faces of McRae" created by the current 22 member artists. The collective is also reorganizing as a nonprofit to strengthen the local arts community.
Two new exhibitions will open at the Brno House of Arts on Tuesday, 28 April, with a public vernissage at 6pm. The first, 'Distorted Image: Chapters from the Beginnings of Video Art', is an international show examining how artists in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary from the 1960s to the 1990s manipulated analogue and digital images to question truth in media, featuring experimental films, early animations, and independent video magazines. The second, 'Words of Dalibor Chatrný', is a retrospective marking the centenary of the Czech artist's birth, focusing on his 'word works' that explore language and the interplay between reading and seeing, while retaining painterly qualities.
Artist Debra Wick is presenting a new series of hyper-realistic watercolor paintings focused on the intricate physics of raindrops at the Redlands Art Association. The exhibition, running from April 18 to May 15, showcases Wick’s unique self-taught technique involving masking fluid and layered washes to capture atmospheric reflections, alongside her earlier works and functional art pieces like painted umbrellas and pillows.
Conroe-based artist Dirk Strangely is set to debut a new series of portraits titled "Souls of the Titanic" during a commemorative exhibition and dinner in Texas. The artworks are created using a unique process the artist calls "Artifactism," which incorporates authenticated coal recovered from the Titanic wreckage in 1994. By grinding the coal into a pigment through levigation, Strangely has produced watercolor paintings of notable figures such as Captain Edward John Smith and Molly Brown, accented with 24k gold leaf and 1912-era paper.
Cornwall-based artist David Mankin is set to debut a major solo exhibition at the Vanner Gallery in Salisbury, featuring over 30 abstract landscape paintings. The collection spans a diverse range of scales, from intimate works on wooden panels to expansive, dramatic canvases, showcasing both new and existing pieces that capture the rugged beauty of the Cornish coast.
Lakota artist Dyani White Hawk is presenting a solo exhibition that bridges the gap between traditional Indigenous art forms and contemporary abstraction. The showcase features a range of media, including painting, photography, and video, all centered on the enduring power of Lakota storytelling and the preservation of cultural heritage through visual language.
The Museum of the Southwest in Midland, Texas, is launching a diverse spring season featuring a blend of regional art and scientific exploration. Key highlights include the "West Texas Triangle" exhibition showcasing local talent, a specialized exhibit on space exploration at the Blakemore Planetarium, and the annual "Septemberfest" community fundraiser. The programming aims to bridge the gap between fine arts and the region's scientific interests.
Joseph Cyr, a language teacher and avid trail runner, captured a rare crested saguaro cactus while running in Saguaro National Park near Tucson, Arizona. The photograph highlights a unique mutation found in only about 75 of the park's estimated two million saguaros, featuring a fan-like growth that gives the plant a distinct, human-like silhouette.
The Navajo Nation is currently navigating a complex struggle to preserve its cultural heritage against the lingering effects of colonial-era boarding schools and the modern pressures of social media and urbanization. While elders like Virginia Brown recount the trauma of forced assimilation and language suppression, a new generation is grappling with a decline in Navajo fluency, which UNESCO now classifies as a vulnerable language. Despite these hurdles, community members are utilizing local schools and traditional practices to reclaim their identity.