The article reports on several developments in the art world: the Centre des Monuments Nationaux (CMN) loses management of Mont-Saint-Michel; the Venice Biennale opens amid controversy; a law on the restitution of cultural property looted during colonization is definitively adopted; the V&A East museum targets younger audiences; in Giverny, the Monet legacy does not benefit everyone; and the market for the Nabis artists is becoming more structured.
The latest issue of Le Journal des Arts (No. 677, May 15, 2026) leads with the opening of the Venice Biennale amid a tense climate. Other top stories include the final adoption of a French law on the restitution of cultural property looted during colonization, the V&A East museum's strategy to attract younger audiences, tensions in Giverny over the uneven economic benefits of Monet's legacy, and a market analysis showing the structuring of the Nabis art market.
Maximilien Durand has been reappointed as head of the Department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Arts at the Louvre Museum, a role that carries both internal museum responsibilities and national duties on behalf of the French state. Two decrees signed by Culture Minister Catherine Pégard formalize his renewal: one as head of the museum department, and another as head of the corresponding major heritage department, a status held by only nine of the Louvre's departments.
Le Lacma inaugure son nouveau bâtiment
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has inaugurated its new David Geffen Galleries building, a massive horizontal structure spanning Wilshire Boulevard. Designed by architect Peter Zumthor, the $720 million project features 32,000 square meters of exhibition space across 90 non-hierarchical galleries, a free public park level, and a radical departure from traditional museum departmental organization.
Un Centre Pompidou en Corée
The Centre Pompidou has officially announced the opening date for its new satellite branch in Seoul, South Korea, scheduled for June 26, 2026. This international expansion is being developed in partnership with the Hanwha Foundation of Culture, a philanthropic arm of the South Korean conglomerate Hanwha, and will be housed in a space designed by architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte.
Renoir : un festival de prêts pour une double exposition
The Musée d'Orsay in Paris has launched a major two-part exhibition dedicated to Auguste Renoir, titled "Renoir dessinateur" (Renoir as a Draughtsman) and "Renoir et l'amour" (Renoir and Love). The initiative began with a study for Renoir's controversial painting *Les Grandes Baigneuses* and has grown into an international loan effort, featuring over 150 rarely seen drawings, watercolors, pastels, and paintings from major museums and private collections worldwide, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the MET, and the Barnes Foundation.
Dartmouth College students have reignited a campaign to rename the Black Family Visual Arts Center, a campus facility funded by billionaire investor Leon Black. The movement, led by freshman Oscar Rempe-Hiam and supported by student government, criticizes the administration's lack of urgency in distancing the institution from Black, whose long-standing ties to Jeffrey Epstein and personal allegations of sexual misconduct have sparked years of controversy.
New York City's spring auction week generated approximately $2.1 billion in sales across Christie's, Sotheby's, and Phillips, more than doubling the $1 billion total from May 2024. Christie's led with a $1.3 billion haul, driven by the $630.8 million S.I. Newhouse collection and record prices for works by Jackson Pollock ($181.2 million) and Constantin Brancusi ($107.6 million). Sotheby's netted around $737 million, including a Rothko from the Robert Mnuchin collection, while Phillips rebounded with $115.2 million in a white-glove sale, its strongest New York spring result since 2022.
Grayson Perry’s life story is being adapted into a stage musical titled *Grayson the Musical*, co-created with Richard Thomas, composer of *Jerry Springer: The Opera*. The show follows Perry from his childhood in Chelmsford to his rise as a Turner Prize-winning ceramicist and tapestry-maker, featuring his iconic dresses and his teddy bear Alan Measles. Perry wrote the lyrics, with a book by screenwriter Sara-Ella Ozbek and direction by Sean Foley. A workshop production will run for five performances in July at Soho Theatre Walthamstow, the east London borough where Perry once kept a studio and which inspired his famous work *The Walthamstow Tapestry*.
Russian-born, New York-based artist Sanya Kantarovsky presents his new exhibition "Basic Failure" at Venice's Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts, timed to coincide with the Venice Biennale. The show features his signature dishevelled, otherworldly figures—including a pallid boy with a cigarette, a child spinning in innocence, and a glass bust of a young boy with a dead spider under its eye—that explore tension, alienation, and the supernatural. Kantarovsky describes his process as listening to the painting like a Ouija board, and the exhibition includes works that confound narrative expectations, such as a scruffy toy panda and a recreation of Antonello Gagini's 16th-century sculpture.
Streetwear brand Hurley, known for surf and swim apparel, has released a capsule collection inspired by the late artist Keith Haring. The collection includes T-shirts, board shirts, hats, bathing suits, and sweatshirts for men and women, with prices ranging from $28 to $100. Haring, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1990 at age 31, was internationally known for his graffiti-inspired artworks and recurring motifs like radiant babies and dancing figures.
The article examines the megayachts docked outside the Venice Biennale, focusing on the 170-foot vessel 'Private GG' owned by Giancarlo Giammetti, cofounder of the Valentino fashion house. Giammetti, a serious art collector, was in Venice for the Biennale opening, posting photos of artworks and a dinner with actress Salma Hayek and her husband François-Henri Pinault, a major art collector. The yacht, built in 2022 by CRN, features luxury amenities including a jacuzzi, cinema saloon, and beach club.
British artist Arch Hades has transformed the Scoletta Battioro e Tiraoro di Venezia, a historic palazzo on Venice's Grand Canal, into an immersive solo exhibition titled “Arch Hades: Return | Ritorno,” timed to the 61st Venice Biennale. The show features site-specific paintings, sculptures, and a soundscape, anchored by the monumental 22-panel painting *Return* (2025), which draws on Greco-Roman sculpture, Symbolism, Surrealism, and Romanticism, and echoes Gustav Klimt's lost “Faculty Paintings.” New works from Hades's “Confessions” series and the mirrored chrome piece *Sphinx* (2026) further explore themes of memory, connection, and existentialism.
The 61st Venice Biennale, titled "In Minor Keys," opens amid turmoil: its curator Koyo Kouoh died of cancer during planning, and the festival jury resigned after a controversial statement about excluding Israel and Russia from prizes, replaced by a Eurovision-style people's choice award. The main exhibition, completed by a team of five collaborators using Kouoh's plans, features over 110 artists and collectives, with highlights including works by Big Chief Demond Melanchon, Tammy Nguyen, Guadalupe Maravilla, Ayrson Heráclito, and a section focused on Michael Armitage's Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute.
The Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA) has announced a 24-hour strike and rally on May 8, the day before the 2026 Venice Biennale opens to the public, in protest of the Israeli Pavilion. ANGA, formed in opposition to Israel's inclusion in the 2024 Biennale, refers to the current Israeli presentation—featuring Haifa-based artist Belu-Simion Fainaru—as the "Genocide Pavilion." Over 200 artists, curators, and culture workers have signed an open letter demanding Israel's exclusion, and a separate action called Solidarity Drone Chorus involved 60 artists. ANGA is collaborating with local labor and culture organizations including Biennalocene, Vogliamo Tutt'altro, S.a.L.E. Docks, and Mi Riconosci.
David Nahmad's lawyers are asking a New York court to reconsider its April 3 decision in the restitution case over Amedeo Modigliani's *Seated Man with a Cane* (1918), which awarded the painting to the estate of dealer Oscar Stettiner. They cite new eyewitness testimony from Frédéric Allain, who recalls a different Modigliani—smaller, darker, and without a seated man or cane—hidden by the Van der Klip family in Paris during World War II, suggesting the wrong painting may have been the focus of the case. The filing also references a 1946 report describing the missing work as a self-portrait and a new catalogue raisonné by Marc Restellini that finds no link between the painting and Stettiner. Mondex, representing Stettiner's heirs, rejects the claims, asserting that *Seated Man with a Cane* bears Stettiner's name and was in the family's possession from 1944 to 1996.
Heritage Auctions will sell a trove of artifacts from Matthew Perry's estate starting June 5, including scripts and memorabilia from the sitcom *Friends*, artworks by Banksy and Mel Bochner, and personal items like a 3D portrait of his invented superhero "Mattman." Proceeds benefit the Matthew Perry Foundation, a nonprofit focused on ending addiction stigma and expanding access to evidence-based care, founded after the actor's death in 2023.
Lubaina Himid's installation at the British pavilion of the Venice Biennale presents monumental paintings and a wall of painted oars depicting tailors, cooks, architects, gardeners, and sailors—figures who shape Britain. The work is accompanied by an audio piece of bucolic country sounds, but the black figures in the paintings exchange sideways glances of discomfort, questioning whether they truly belong. The exhibition is anchored by 26 philosophical questions on the wall, such as "Can flies settle here?" and "Can poison taste delicious?"
The 61st Venice Biennale is embroiled in geopolitical controversy over Russia's return to the event in 2026, which has sparked widespread backlash. Nearly 10,000 artists and cultural leaders signed an open letter opposing Russia's participation, and the European Union withdrew €2 million in funding for the 2028 edition. Leaked emails reveal Biennale officials worked with Russian pavilion commissioner Anastasia Karneeva to circumvent EU sanctions, while Italy's culture minister Alessandro Giuli plans to boycott the opening week. Meanwhile, activists continue to push for Israel's removal from the Biennale, though Israel will be accommodated in the Arsenale this year.
A father and daughter from New Jersey, Erwin Bankowski and Karoline Bankowska, pleaded guilty in federal court on April 28 to running a counterfeit art scheme that sold fake works attributed to Andy Warhol, Banksy, Pablo Picasso, Richard Mayhew, and others. Between 2020 and 2025, they placed over 200 counterfeit pieces, many made by an artist in Poland, into galleries and auction houses across the U.S., defrauding buyers of at least $2 million. They fabricated provenance, forged gallery stamps and certificates of authenticity, and misrepresented Native American heritage works, violating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act. They face up to 20 years in prison, restitution of at least $1.9 million, and deportation after serving their sentences.
Online-only sales of fine art at Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Phillips, Bonhams, and Artnet Auctions reached $423.9 million in 2025, an 8 percent increase from 2024. The number of lots sold remained steady at 29,623, but the average price per work rose 8.6 percent to $14,309. Sales were 270 percent higher than in 2019, before the pandemic accelerated the shift to digital auctions. Christie’s reported that 63 percent of new buyers in 2025 made their first purchase online.
The inaugural edition of Art Cologne Palma Mallorca took place from April 9–12, 2026, attracting 88 galleries from 20 countries and over 10,000 visitors to the Mediterranean island. The fair, held at the Palau de Congressos Convention Centre, reported strong sales and sold-out weekend days, with Artistic Director Daniel Hug praising the high level of engagement and positive response from both exhibitors and attendees. A second edition has already been scheduled for April 1–4, 2027.
Berlin's Gemäldegalerie is digitally reconstructing hundreds of Old Master paintings by artists like Rubens, Veronese, van Dyck, and Caravaggio that were destroyed in fires near the end of World War II. The project uses high-resolution scans of glass negatives, primarily photographed by Gustav Schwarz between 1925 and 1944, to create detailed online renderings that will be publicly accessible for viewing and download later this year.
Art Fund director Jenny Waldman responds to a philosophical article about art's intrinsic value, arguing that while art should be enjoyed for its own sake, promoting its measurable health benefits can serve as a crucial entry point for new audiences. She cites the organization's National Art Pass adverts and recent research with King's College London, which demonstrated immediate physiological responses to viewing original art, as tools to invite people who might otherwise feel excluded from cultural institutions.
Jennifer Gilbert, the Detroit-based entrepreneur and philanthropist, is auctioning a selection of Modernist masterpieces from her private collection to fund Lumana, a new nonprofit arts organization. The sales, scheduled for May and June at Sotheby’s New York, include high-profile works by Joan Mitchell and Kenneth Noland, with an overall fundraising goal exceeding $10 million.
A bronze statue of the iconic literary and film character Bridget Jones has been granted permanent residency in London’s Leicester Square. Originally intended for a three-year temporary stay, the sculpture was unveiled in November as part of Westminster Council’s 'Scenes in the Square' trail, joining other cinematic figures like Harry Potter and Mary Poppins. The decision to make the installation permanent coincides with the 25th anniversary of the first film's release.
Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson presented 'A symphony of disappearing sounds for the Great Salt Lake,' a large-scale multimedia installation in Salt Lake City’s Memory Grove Park. The work featured a three-story luminous sphere projecting visuals of wind currents and geothermal light, accompanied by a soundscape of migratory birds, brine flies, and frogs. Commissioned by the Salt Lake City Arts Council and Bloomberg Philanthropies, the ten-day public event served as a creative wake for the rapidly receding lake.
Australian designer Marc Newson is presenting a comprehensive survey of his four-decade career at Château La Coste in Provence. The exhibition, housed in a pavilion designed by Oscar Niemeyer, features fifteen seminal works including the iconic 1988 Lockheed Lounge and a complex 2017 glass armchair. A highlight of the show is the 6-meter-tall sculpture 'Electra,' originally commissioned for the 1996 Olympics but never installed, which has been restored and recently acquired by collector Philip Serafim.
The Museum für Fotografie in Berlin is hosting a major exhibition titled "New Woman, New Vision," featuring approximately 300 photographs by 29 women associated with the Bauhaus. The show aims to dismantle the persistent myth that female students at the influential German school were restricted to the weaving workshop. By showcasing works from figures like Lucia Moholy, Ise Gropius, and Marianne Brandt, the exhibition highlights how women were integral to the school’s photographic documentation and its development as a standalone artistic medium.