[Interview] Framing Space Through the Human Experience: Michael Najjar x Samsung Art Store

German artist and future astronaut Michael Najjar has partnered with the Samsung Art Store to feature his work "europa" (2016) as part of the Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 Collection. Najjar, who is scheduled to become the first contemporary artist in space via a 2027 Virgin Galactic flight, uses his practice to explore the intersection of technology, space exploration, and human ambition. The collaboration allows his large-scale digital constructions to be displayed on Samsung Art TVs, bridging the gap between the physical art fair and domestic environments.

World-class exhibition showcases the complete Rugby Collection of contemporary art

Rugby Art Gallery and Museum has launched "UNVEILED - The Rugby Art Collection in Full," a landmark exhibition featuring all 257 artworks from its permanent collection. This marks the first time in decades that the entire body of work has been displayed together, celebrating the 80th anniversary of the collection's founding in 1946. The show includes a prestigious roster of British masters such as L.S. Lowry, Lucian Freud, Barbara Hepworth, and Paula Rego, alongside Turner Prize winners Lubaina Himid and Gillian Wearing.

Here's what's happening for First Friday in May

Juneau's First Friday in May 2026 features a diverse array of events, including a storytelling project called "Tambayan at Kwentuhan" that shares oral histories from Filipino elders, an exhibition titled "Dizzy Hooligan" by Kiyana Fonua recalling Kava gatherings in Anchorage, and a retrospective of Indigenous fashion designer Dorothy Grant at the Alaska State Museum. Other offerings include a chamber music concert by Taku Winds, a "Critter Trek" exhibition at the Juneau-Douglas City Museum featuring local wildlife art, planetarium explorations, a book release by author Corinna Cook, and displays of woodworking by Phil Paramore and jewelry by Colleen Goldrich.

LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries offers a seductive art-viewing experience

The article discusses the newly opened David Geffen Galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), describing the viewing experience as seductive. The galleries are a major component of LACMA's ongoing transformation, designed by architect Peter Zumthor.

Global Retrospective Exhibitions

A major retrospective titled "NIGO: From Japan with Love" opens at the Design Museum in London on May 1, 2026, marking the designer's first major exhibition outside Japan. The show features over 700 objects spanning three decades, including around 600 items from NIGO's personal archive, a reconstruction of his teenage bedroom, vintage clothing, early designs, collaborations, hand-thrown ceramics, and a life-size glass tea house created for the exhibition. The display traces his career from Harajuku street culture through founding A Bathing Ape to his current role as artistic director of Kenzo.

"Homage to the Virtuosos" exhibition opens in Beijing

An exhibition titled "Homage to the Virtuosos: From Leonardo da Vinci to Caravaggio -- Masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance" has opened at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. The show features 36 masterpieces by more than 20 renowned Italian artists from the 15th to the 17th centuries, including Botticelli, da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, with most works on display in China for the first time. Chinese painter Jin Shangyi was present to introduce Bronzino's "The Portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent" to visitors.

'Tough Stuff' Women in the American Glass Studio opens May 16 at CMoG

The Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG) will open 'Tough Stuff: Women in the American Glass Studio' on May 16, 2026, running through January 10, 2027. This is the first survey exhibition dedicated to women artists working in glass during the 1960s and 1970s, featuring over 200 objects from artists including Claire Falkenstein, Audrey Handler, Margie Jervis, Susie Krasnican, Kathleen Mulcahy, Ginny Ruffner, Ruth Tamura, and Toots Zynsky. Curated by Tami Landis, the show draws from CMoG's permanent collection, the Rakow Research Library, and notable loans, presenting works that have never been displayed before.

Seattle May art shows include speakeasy-style gallery attached to house

A series of diverse art exhibitions are opening across Seattle in May. Highlights include a show exploring the influence of Japanese woodblock prints on Northwest artists at the Cascadia Art Museum, a site-specific installation in a private garage gallery called Double Garage, and a large-scale display of drawings on sticky notes by Clare Johnson at Gallery 4Culture. Other featured shows include Emma Bergman's surreal multimedia installation at Specialist Gallery and a landmark retrospective of light artist Tom Lloyd at the Frye Art Museum.

The Costume Institute Will Debut 25 Mannequins at the 2026 Met Gala in a Move to Embrace Body Positivity

The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art will debut 25 new mannequins for its 2026 Met Gala exhibition, "Costume Art." The mannequins are modeled on a diverse range of real body types, including individuals with disabilities, and are intended to challenge the fashion industry's historical reliance on standardized, thin display figures.

Size 2 who? Starry Met costume show features pregnant people, plus size models and dwarves for first time

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's upcoming Costume Institute exhibition, 'Costume Art,' will feature mannequins representing a diverse range of body types, including pregnant, disabled, and plus-size figures, instead of the traditional sample size 2. The mannequins were created using photogrammetry scans of real people, such as artist Michaela Stark and disability activist Sinéad Burke, and have reflective steel faces intended to allow visitors to see themselves in the display.

Looking for art, culture? See the latest Central Illinois exhibits

Central Illinois is hosting a diverse array of art exhibitions and cultural displays across several regional institutions. Key highlights include the 18th Annual Peoria Area Juried High School Art Exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center of Peoria and a showcase of works by Richard Kirchgessner. Local galleries and museums, such as the Eaton Studio Gallery and the McLean County Arts Center, are actively engaging the community through student tours and rotating exhibits of area artists.

Jewelry artist Douriean Fletcher’s exhibition opens at Walters Art Museum this weekend

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore is set to open "Douriean Fletcher: Jewelry of the Afrofuture," a major exhibition featuring over 100 works by the renowned jewelry artist. Fletcher, who gained international acclaim for her costume design work on Marvel’s "Black Panther" franchise, will see her contemporary Afrofuturistic pieces displayed alongside ancient artifacts from the museum's permanent collection, including items from Ancient Egypt and Ethiopia.

This New Britain art exhibit is a call to decolonize Puerto Rico

Artist Pablo Delano has brought his provocative installation, “The Museum of the Old Colony,” to New Britain, Connecticut, a region with a significant Puerto Rican population. The exhibition utilizes enlarged archival photographs, historical texts, and consumer goods to document the United States' colonial relationship with Puerto Rico since 1898. By juxtaposing derogatory 19th-century media captions with images of mass sterilization, military enlistment, and the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Delano challenges viewers to confront a legacy of systemic racism and exploitation.

Artist Ana Teresa Fernandez exhibit, 'Under Pressure,' now on display at National Museum of Mexican Art, a call to climate action

The National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago is currently hosting "Under Pressure," a solo exhibition by Mexican-born artist Ana Teresa Fernández. The show features a diverse range of media, including oil paintings, sculptures like a silver-feathered Quetzalcoatl made from a hose, and performance-based works that use metaphors like expanding balloons to illustrate the fragility of the environment. A central component of the project involved a community-led "social monument" at Ohio Street Beach, where hundreds of participants used mirrors to signal an S.O.S. in Morse code toward the horizon.

Sanctus Artem Hosts “The MET MU” Art Exhibition

The Sanctus Artem club at Manhattan University recently hosted "The MET MU," a formal art exhibition held in Smith Auditorium. Designed to emulate the high-end atmosphere of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the event showcased a diverse array of student and alumni work, including 2D and 3D art, digital media, and fashion-related projects. The exhibition featured contributions from over a dozen artists and offered a professional gallery experience complete with formal attire and refreshments.

Artist displays big ideas with Alpharetta exhibit

The Alpharetta Arts Center is hosting a solo exhibition of works by Cuban-born, Atlanta-based artist Alexi Torres through April 18. The showcase features a diverse range of media, including intricate oil paintings that mimic woven textures, bronze sculptures, and embroideries that explore themes of spiritual connection and human consciousness. Torres, who follows lunar cycles for his creative process, utilizes symbolic imagery such as a scarlet wicker Buddha and a Statue of Liberty rendered in baseball stitching to convey complex narratives.

How Delilah Montoya’s art confronts ICE detention abuses

The Albuquerque Museum is hosting a retrospective of Chicana artist Delilah Montoya, titled "Delilah Montoya: Activating Chicana Resistance." The exhibition's centerpiece is "Detention Nation," an immersive installation created in collaboration with the Sin Huellas Artist Collective that simulates the conditions of ICE detention centers. The work features cyanotype images of detainees on prison cots, chain-link fencing, and displays of meager government-issued personal items alongside the official National Detainee Handbook.

8 Deer Park Students Featured In LI Museum Art Exhibit

Eight students from the Deer Park School District have been selected to feature their work in the annual "Colors of Long Island" student art exhibition at the Long Island Museum. The participants range from primary school first graders to high school juniors, with their pieces curated by district art teachers Briana Fayans, Samantha Racano, Ashley Woolsley, and Rebecca Yackel.

Inside de Young Museum’s New Indigenous American Art Galleries

The de Young Museum in San Francisco has unveiled its completely reimagined Arts of Indigenous America galleries, featuring nearly 2,000 objects from across North, Central, and South America. Developed in close collaboration with Indigenous scholars and community advisors, the new installation moves away from traditional chronological or ethnographic displays. Instead, it integrates historical artifacts with contemporary works to emphasize the continuity and living nature of Indigenous artistic traditions across four regional sections.

‘OC Made’ at Fullerton Museum Center showcases local artists

The Fullerton Museum Center has launched "OC Made," a new biennial juried exhibition dedicated exclusively to artists living and working in Orange County. Curated by Georgette Collard and Jasmine McNeal, the inaugural show features over 130 artworks by more than 100 local artists selected from a pool of 260 submissions. The exhibition includes a diverse range of mediums, from glass sculptures and ceramics to photorealistic paintings of local landmarks, and awarded top honors to artists Ramón Vargas, Jaime “Germs” Zacarias, and Mahta Jafari.

Painting from Elmhurst U. Collection Tours Prestigious Museums

Elmhurst University’s painting "Tree at Aledo" by Gertrude Abercrombie is currently on a national tour as part of the retrospective exhibition "Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery." The work is presently on display at the Milwaukee Art Museum following stops at the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Colby College Museum of Art, with a final scheduled stop at the Norton Museum of Art through early 2027.

Inside LACMA’s Eye-Popping New Home, How Do You Find the Art?

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has opened its new David Geffen Galleries building, a major architectural project designed to be a glamorous cultural beacon. The building itself is a striking landmark, but the exhibition spaces within present significant challenges for the display of art, creating a complex, maze-like environment for visitors.

Wisconsin’s Chazen Museum of Art Explores New Ways to Display Its Collection

The Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is implementing a radical reinstallation of its permanent collection galleries. This new curatorial strategy centers each gallery around a single "focus object," which is then surrounded by a "constellation" of supporting artworks designed to highlight specific thematic, historical, or technical connections rather than following a traditional chronological or geographical layout.

The tiniest event can tear a hole. Sara MacKillop by Margaret Kross

Sara MacKillop's exhibition "The Cutaway View" at Good Weather in Chicago presents sculptures made from humble analog materials like blank wall calendars, empty shopping bags, and gift wrapping. The London-based artist alters these objects with minimal interventions—such as surgically cut holes in shopping bags to accommodate vinyl records—drawing attention to the ephemera and texture of retail culture. Her series "Calendar Houses" (2021–ongoing) uses archive boxes and wall calendars to create miniature modernist dwellings that critique systems of order and self-optimization.

Venus Lespugue

The Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens presents "Jeff Koons: Venus Lespugue," an exhibition pairing Jeff Koons' monumental stainless steel sculpture *Balloon Venus Lespugue (Orange)* (2013–2019) with ten certified copies of Paleolithic Venus figurines from major European museums. The Koons work, on public display for the first time, is loaned from the Homem Sonnabend Collection and directly references the 28,000-year-old Venus of Lespugue carved from mammoth tusk ivory.

Collectors' collective: Private art enthusiasts work together to bring world-renowned artists to Daejeon

Fourteen Korean collectors have formed a collective called Arche II to jointly acquire and display works by world-renowned artists in Daejeon, a city 140 km from Seoul. Their exhibition "Tracing the Unfinished" at the multidisciplinary complex Heredium features 30 works, including 14 jointly owned pieces, by artists such as Le Corbusier, Robert Longo, Olafur Eliasson, David Hockney, Yang Hae-gue, Anicka Yi, and Choi Byung-so. The group, founded in 2017 by business leaders including a radiologist and a former prosecutor, contributes a fixed annual budget to purchase three to five works at major art fairs, focusing on emerging artists rather than established names.

Where to see artworks in Marin

A comprehensive listing of art exhibitions and gallery shows across Marin County, California, for spring 2025. The article highlights dozens of venues including Robert Green Fine Arts in Mill Valley, which will display John Grillo's works from the 1940s beginning in May, alongside shows at Anthony Meier, Art Works Downtown, Bolinas Museum, and many local libraries and cultural centers. Exhibits range from abstract works and pop art to photography, ceramics, and sculptures by artists such as Saif Azzuz, Drew Frazier, Lenore Golub, and Sonny Smith.

Lucas Museum unveils inaugural exhibitions curated by George Lucas himself

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles will open to the public on September 22, 2026, with about 20 inaugural exhibitions curated by George Lucas himself across more than 30 galleries. The $1-billion, 300,000-square-foot museum in Exposition Park, designed by Ma Yansong of Mad Architects, will display over 1,200 objects from Lucas's collection of more than 40,000 works, including manga, comics, children's illustrations, and narrative art by artists such as Norman Rockwell, Beatrix Potter, and Dorothea Lange, with only one exhibition focused on "Star Wars" memorabilia.

Una delle opere più importante esposte alla Galleria Nazionale di Roma sta ammuffendo

An article by Laura Carlotta Cortoni on Artribune reports that Pino Pascali's iconic 1967 work "32 mq di mare circa" ("32 square meters of sea approximately"), on display at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GNAMC) in Rome, is covered in mold, dust, and insects due to a total lack of maintenance. The author describes the installation as resembling a neglected warehouse and notes that visitors unfamiliar with the piece mistake the decay for an intentional environmental statement, creating a critical paradox given Pascali's own series of works titled "Muffe" (Molds).

One of Milan's most unique and peculiar museums is full of works that are not beautiful

Uno dei musei più unici e particolari di Milano è pieno di opere che non sono belle

The Casa Museo Boschi Di Stefano in Milan, housed in a building designed by Piero Portaluppi, showcases a massive collection of 20th-century Italian art donated by Antonio Boschi and Marieda Di Stefano. The apartment displays approximately 300 works by masters such as Lucio Fontana, Giorgio de Chirico, and Mario Sironi, arranged in the intimate domestic setting where the collectors once lived.