Yoko Ono's first solo museum exhibition in Southern California, titled "Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind," opens at The Broad in Los Angeles from May 23 to October 11, 2026. The show traces the evolution of her practice from early Fluxus experiments in the 1950s to her participatory installations of the 2000s, highlighting how her instruction-based works transformed spectators into collaborators.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has opened its new David Geffen Galleries, a radical reinvention of the museum experience. The installation, conceived by director Michael Govan and architect Peter Zumthor, abandons traditional chronological and departmental silos, instead creating a continuous, curving flow of art from across time, place, and medium. Visitors are encouraged to wander and get lost, forging their own connections between works.
The Singapore Art Museum is hosting "Form Is Emptiness," the first major Southeast Asian exhibition dedicated to the acclaimed Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto. The showcase features 63 works spanning five decades of his career, including 11 distinct series and 14 fossils from his personal collection, all arranged within a mandala-inspired layout designed by the artist himself.
A major retrospective of Gwen John, one of Britain's greatest 20th-century artists, is opening at National Museum Cardiff on the 150th anniversary of her birth. The exhibition, titled 'Gwen John: Strange Beauties,' brings together works from across the UK and the USA for the first time, including a significant collection acquired from her nephew Edwin in 1976 that has never been extensively researched or exhibited. John, born in 1876 in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, was long overshadowed by her younger brother, the artist Augustus John, and was often dismissed as a 'reclusive spinster.' However, curators and biographers now challenge that myth, revealing her as a socially engaged, determined artist who pursued her own path despite Victorian-era constraints on women.
The Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers-New Brunswick presents *Andy Warhol: On Repeat*, an exhibition featuring nearly 70 black-and-white photographs and color Polaroids from its collection—some shown for the first time—alongside a suite of films on loan from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Organized by chief curator Jeremiah William McCarthy, the show runs from February 11 to July 31, 2026, in the Voorhees Gallery, and examines repetition and duration as central forces in Warhol’s art, with large-scale projections, vertical Polaroid towers, and bean bags encouraging visitors to linger.
The Musée du Louvre in Paris has opened a major retrospective of Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), the greatest Neoclassical artist, marking his biggest survey in nearly four decades. The exhibition, mounted for the 200th anniversary of his death, comprises just over 100 works, including strategic loans from France and eight other countries, and complements the Louvre's own holdings. The show aims to redefine David beyond the Neoclassical label, presenting him instead as both a "realist" and an "idealist," and is compared to blockbusters like the Rijksmuseum's Vermeer show.
Late December offers a rare slowdown in New York's commercial art world, with most galleries closing around December 20, but museums remaining open. This creates an opportunity for visitors to spend quality time with exhibitions that often get lost in the city's relentless cultural calendar. The article highlights ten must-see museum shows in New York City, including "Wifredo Lam: When I Don't Sleep, I Dream" at MoMA—the first major U.S. survey of the Cuban artist's surreal, decolonial paintings—and "Anish Kapoor: Early Works" at the Jewish Museum, showcasing his pigment sculptures and Vantablack works.
Pablo Picasso remains one of the most prolific and studied artists in history. This article presents a curated reading list of five essential books focused on the second half of his career, timed to coincide with the exhibition 'Late Picasso' at Stockholm's Moderna Museet. The books, selected by curators Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer, include 'Picasso: Painting Against Time' (2006), 'A Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932' (2008), 'Picasso: Endlessly Drawing' (2024), 'Picasso's Animals' (2014), and 'Pablo Picasso: A Retrospective' (1980), each offering unique insights into his later works, personal life, and artistic evolution.
An exhibition opening at Frankfurt's Städel Museum focuses on Max Beckmann's drawings, featuring 80 works that trace the emergence of his hard-edged signature style. Curated by Regina Freyberger, Stephan von Wiese, and Hedda Finke, the show spans from before World War I to the artist's final years in the US, including loans from major collections. It highlights how Beckmann's drawing evolved from preparatory studies to autonomous artworks, with key pieces like a 1928 portrait of his wife Quappi and the eerie watercolor 'The Murder' (1933).
Tate Britain will present "Turner and Constable," a major exhibition spanning 2025–2026 that explores the intertwined careers and rivalry of J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837). For the first time, a show is devoted to both artists, featuring historical reconstructions such as the famous 1831 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition pairing of Turner's *Caligula’s Palace and Bridge* (1831) and Constable's *Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows* (1829–31). Curated by Amy Concannon, the exhibition includes loans from private collections and rarely seen works, including Turner's *The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October 1834* (1835) from the Cleveland Museum of Art, on show in the UK for the first time since 1883.
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.
Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, West Sussex, is staging the first full survey of British painter William Nicholson (1872-1949) in 25 years, running from 22 November 2025 to 10 May 2026. The exhibition aims to present Nicholson's diverse output—including posters made with the Beggarstaff Brothers, woodcuts, book illustrations, theatre costumes, portraits, still lifes, and landscapes—as an integrated whole, rather than isolating individual media as past shows have done.
Agustín Arteaga, the new Mort and Marcy Friedman director and CEO of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, discusses his first months on the job, including extensive meetings with staff, board members, and community stakeholders. Arteaga, who previously led the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City, and the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, emphasizes the need to balance fundraising, donor relations, educational programming, and political transparency while maintaining the museum's relevance as the oldest art museum in the American West.
James Turrell's largest Skyspace to date, titled "As Seen Below – The Dome," will open at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in Denmark on June 19, 2026, timed for the summer solstice. The dome-shaped underground chamber, over 50 feet high and 130 feet in diameter, frames the sky and is housed within a grassy mound as part of the museum's subterranean expansion, The Next Level. The project, first announced in 2015, faced financial and technical delays, including a supplier bankruptcy, and required additional funding of 6.7 million kroner this year.
The Delaware Art Museum (DelArt) will present "Imprinted: Illustrating Race," an exhibition assembled by the Norman Rockwell Museum and co-curated by Robyn Phillips-Pendleton of the University of Delaware. Opening October 18, 2025, the show features over 200 works originally commissioned for newspapers, magazines, books, trade cards, posters, packaging, and advertising, tracing how illustration reflected and shaped perceptions of race in the United States from the 19th century onward. It places Norman Rockwell’s Civil Rights–era images alongside works by artists such as Faith Ringgold, Emory Douglas, Howard Pyle, and Loveis Wise, highlighting both harmful racial stereotypes and the efforts of artists and publishers who used illustration to challenge those narratives.
The Marianne and Edward Gibson Art Museum, a new 12,100-square-foot facility on the Simon Fraser University Burnaby campus in British Columbia, has officially opened to the public. Designed by Siamak Hariri of Hariri Pontarini Architects, the museum features B.C.-sourced mass timber beams, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a layout that integrates with the surrounding forest. Its inaugural exhibition, "Edge Effects," includes works by artists such as Debra Sparrow, Cindy Mochizuki, Patrick Cruz, Lorna Brown, and Jin-me Yoon, and the museum also houses approximately 5,900 works from the Simon Fraser University Art Collection.
Two new galleries specializing in digital art have opened in New York's Lower East Side: Offline, a physical marketplace launched by the NFT platform SuperRare, and Heft Gallery, founded by curator and artist Adam Heft Berninger. Offline debuted in April with the exhibition "Mythologies for a Spiritually Void Time," featuring works by artists like Neal Cashman, while Heft Gallery focuses on artists using AI, code, and algorithms, with works such as Margaret Murphy's AI-generated photograph. Both spaces aim to bridge Web3 and traditional art venues, offering physical experiences for digital art.
The McNay Art Museum in San Antonio will open "Sandy Skoglund: Enchanting Nature" on September 11, 2025, running through February 2026. The exhibition features an unconventional mix of sculptures, photographs, and installations by artist Sandy Skoglund, including never-before-exhibited works and large-scale photographic enlargements. Known for her meticulous tableaux using handmade objects, found materials, and live models, Skoglund explores the tension between human-made environments and the natural world.
Iranian artist Farhad Moshiri passed away on July 17, 2024, at age 61. A pioneering figure in Middle Eastern contemporary art, Moshiri made history as the first artist from the region to sell a work at auction for over one million USD, achieving this milestone twice—first with "Love" at Bonhams Dubai in 2008 and later with "Secret Garden" at Christie's Dubai in 2013. The article highlights his work "Toothpicker" (2008), now part of the Raha Gallery Collection, which was exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2010 and sold at Christie's Middle East in 2014. Moshiri's practice combined pop art, kitsch, and precious materials like crystals and glitter, earning him a solo exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum in 2017.
Abu Dhabi's Zayed National Museum, designed by Foster + Partners on Saadiyat Island, will open in December 2025. The museum will feature star exhibits including the world's oldest natural pearl (the 8,000-year-old Abu Dhabi Pearl) and an 1,100-year-old Blue Qur'an. Centered on the life of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the first president of the UAE, its galleries explore his values such as religious tolerance and trace the country's history from ancient times to the present. The museum aims to become a research powerhouse, supported by a dedicated research fund and collaborations with institutions like the British Museum.
The article argues against the theory that Vincent van Gogh was murdered, asserting that he died by suicide on July 27, 1890. The murder theory, popularized by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith's 2011 biography "Van Gogh: The Life," claims that 16-year-old René Secrétan shot the artist, and that van Gogh protected him by claiming suicide. The author counters this with ten reasons, including that van Gogh's doctor Paul Gachet, his brother Theo, friends like Emile Bernard, and Paul Gauguin all believed it was suicide, and that police records support this conclusion.
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth has opened “Alex Da Corte, The Whale,” a solo exhibition dedicated to the painting practice of artist Alex Da Corte (b. 1980). Featuring more than forty paintings, the show highlights Da Corte’s lesser-known work in two dimensions, as he is more widely recognized for his installations and video pieces. The exhibition includes works such as *Siren (After E K Charter)* (2015) and *Electronic Renaissance* (2021), and places Da Corte’s paintings alongside those of Robert Mapplethorpe and Vija Celmins to explore themes of self-representation and perception.
The Getty Center in Los Angeles has opened a new exhibition titled "Symbols and Signs: Decoding Medieval Manuscripts," which runs from May 20 to August 10. The show features illuminated manuscripts from the 9th to 17th centuries, including the Rothschild Pentateuch, a 700-year-old Hebrew manuscript with over 1,000 pages. Curator Orsolya Mednyánszky explains that the exhibition aims to demystify the codes—words, images, and schematic symbols—that medieval readers would have understood intuitively, pairing the manuscripts with modern photographs from the Getty’s collection to highlight parallels in visual communication.
The Arlington Museum of Art has opened "M.C. Escher: Infinite Variations," an exhibition featuring nearly 150 of the Dutch artist's prints, including his famous lithograph "Relativity" (1953). The show spans Escher's career from the early 1930s to the late 1960s, with themed galleries covering his early works, book illustrations, tessellations, and impossible worlds. The exhibition runs through August 3 and includes an Infinity Mirrored Room as an immersive finale.
The article explores the evolution of art galleries in Scottsdale, Arizona, over the past several decades. It traces how the local gallery scene has transformed from a small, desert-focused art community into a diverse and sophisticated hub for contemporary, Native American, and Western art, attracting both local collectors and international visitors.
The Arlington Museum of Art will host "M.C. Escher: Infinite Variations" from April 26 to August 3, 2025, featuring over 150 works from the largest private collection of M.C. Escher's art. The exhibition includes iconic pieces like "Snakes" (1969), his final print, alongside early bookplates, tessellations, and impossible constructions, with interactive and digital elements designed to immerse visitors in Escher's perceptual puzzles.
À la BnF, des merveilles de cartes pour imaginer des mondes nouveaux
The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) is presenting an exhibition of extraordinary maps that blend imagination with cartography, tracing the evolution of maps from ancient tools of navigation to fantastical creations that fueled exploration and myth. The show features rare works including Renaissance sea monsters, cosmological paintings, and literary maps from Tolkien's Middle-earth and George R.R. Martin's Westeros, alongside contemporary artists like Alighiero Boetti, Sergio Aquindo, and Michael Druks who use maps to express personal and political visions.
Chris Kraus's latest novel, *The Four Spent the Day Together*, reimagines the true crime genre by shifting focus from individual villains to systemic forces like addiction, poverty, and broken treatment systems. Set in Minnesota's Iron Range, the story follows autofictional avatar Catt Greene and her husband as they confront a lost day, a potentially violated girl, methamphetamine, and a gun, with confessions coming easily but answers remaining elusive. Kraus draws on her own childhood and a marriage unraveling amid alcoholism and cancel culture, using wordplay and chance to restore nuanced meaning to stories often reduced to predestined narratives.
Alla Biennale di Venezia c’è anche Taiwan. Con un evento collaterale sulla malinconia
Taiwan will present a collateral event at the 2026 Venice Biennale titled "Screen Melancholy," curated by Raphael Fonseca and featuring artist Li Yi-Fan. The exhibition, organized by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, will be held at Palazzo delle Prigioni and run until November 22, 2026. It explores anxieties of the digital age through a site-specific installation combining a single-channel video and monumental human sculptures, reflecting on information overload, fragmented perception, and the limits of human knowledge.
Alla Casa di Goethe di Roma due episodi controversi della storia della scienza nelle installazioni di luce di Mischa Kuball
The Casa di Goethe in Rome is hosting a solo exhibition of German conceptual artist Mischa Kuball from April 30 to October 4, 2026. The show features two light installations: "Newton/Goethe luce nera," which contrasts Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's and Isaac Newton's opposing theories on color and light refraction, and "five suns / after Galileo," which visualizes Galileo Galilei's observations of sunspots and his conflict with the Catholic Church. The exhibition is curated by the museum's director, Gregor H. Lersch.