Naked jetskiers, giant bells and a celebrity seagull! Venice Biennale’s wildest moments – in pictures

The Guardian presents a photo essay capturing the most eccentric and memorable moments from the 61st Venice Biennale, running until 22 November 2026. Photographer David Levene documents installations including a concrete 'Origami Deer' evacuated from war-torn Pokrovsk, Ukraine, by artist Zhanna Kadyrova; a seagull that became a minor celebrity after nesting outside the Polish pavilion; and the Holy See pavilion's immersive sound installation curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers. Other highlights include the Egyptian pavilion's touch-and-smell 'Silence Pavilion' and a Polish pavilion film featuring deaf and hearing singers.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera are given a voice by New York's Metropolitan Opera

New York is experiencing a wave of Frida Kahlo-related events this spring, including a new book from Rizzoli about her childhood home museum in Mexico City and a small exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) featuring works by Kahlo and Diego Rivera. The centerpiece is the Metropolitan Opera's new production of *El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego*, with music by Gabriela Lena Frank and libretto by Nilo Cruz, both Pulitzer Prize winners. The opera, which premiered in San Diego in 2022, opens on 14 May and features set and costume design by Jon Bausor, who also co-curated the MoMA exhibition alongside curator Beverly Adams. The production imagines Kahlo's spirit rising from the underworld on the Day of the Dead to reunite with Rivera, blending Mexican musical elements with a dreamlike, visually rich aesthetic.

For Fashion Iconoclast Iris van Herpen, ‘Nature Is the Best Artist’

The Brooklyn Museum has opened "Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses," a major exhibition surveying two decades of the Dutch designer's avant-garde fashion. Curated by Matthew Yokobosky and Imani Williford, the show features over 140 of van Herpen's biomorphic couture pieces, including designs worn by Lady Gaga and Björk, alongside works by contemporary artists like Agostino Arrivabene and Tara Donovan. The exhibition, which originated at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2023, highlights van Herpen's use of cutting-edge technology such as 3D printing and magnetic sculpting, as well as her deep inspiration from natural phenomena like fossils, coral, and water.

pilar zeta miami paris

Argentinian artist Pilar Zeta has unveiled 'The Observer Effect', a monumental public sculpture installed on Miami Beach during Art Basel Miami Beach. The work, presented by the Shelborne by Proper, features a colonnade of columns and arches with a matte automotive paint finish that shifts appearance with light and weather. Zeta activated the piece with sunrise and sunset performances by musician Laraaji. The self-taught artist, who moved to Miami at 19 and previously created album art for Coldplay, has also announced a follow-up installation opening next month at Place du Louvre in Paris.

louvre closes offices gallery structural concerns

The Louvre has temporarily closed employee offices and the Campana Gallery in the southern Sully wing due to structural concerns identified in a November 14 building assessment report, which warned of fragile floor beams. The closure affects 65 staff members and a nine-room gallery of ancient Greek ceramics. The museum has launched an investigation and plans repairs, following a year of challenges including a staff walkout in June and a dramatic theft of imperial jewels from the Gallery of Apollo in October.

gunther uecker german artist died

German artist Günther Uecker, renowned for his spiritual approach to art and innovative use of nails as a sculptural material, died on Tuesday at age 95 in a Düsseldorf hospital. His family confirmed the death to German news agency dpa, though no cause was given. Uecker was a key member of the Zero Group, which sought to reset art to a "zero base," and his work ranged from nail-covered surfaces to pianos, chairs, and television sets. He also designed a prayer room for Berlin's Reichstag and participated in major exhibitions including Documenta 4 and the Venice Biennale.

pope francis contemporary art obituary

Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, has died at age 88. A Jesuit priest from Argentina, he was the first pope from the Americas and the first from outside Europe since the 8th century. During his papacy, he took progressive stances on social justice, migrants, the environment, and the LGBTQ community, and also engaged deeply with contemporary art. He oversaw the Vatican Museums, ordered the return of Parthenon marble fragments to Greece, restored Raphael frescoes, and became the first pope to visit the Venice Biennale, where the Vatican had its first-ever pavilion in 2013.

pope francis legacy art venice biennale restitution

Pope Francis died on April 20 at age 88, ending a transformative papacy that began in 2013. He was the first Jesuit pope, first from the southern hemisphere, and took his name from St. Francis of Assisi. Known for austerity and advocacy for the oppressed, he criticized wars in Gaza and Ukraine, apologized to Indigenous communities in Canada, and made history in 2024 by attending the Venice Biennale—the first pope to do so—visiting the Holy See Pavilion at the Women's Prison on Giudecca.

natural history museum vca cosmos

Ruth Angus, associate curator of the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History, leads a tour of the exhibition "Cosmic Splendor: Jewelry from the Collections of Van Cleef & Arpels," running through January 4, 2026, in the Melissa and Keith Meister Gallery. The show features over 60 pieces from the Parisian maison's archives and private collections, each inspired by cosmic phenomena such as galaxies, stars, and planetary nebulae. Angus served as curatorial advisor alongside Denton Ebel, Kate Kiseeva, and Alexandrine Maviel-Sonet, with thematic sections covering the Moon, Sun, distant galaxies, meteorites, and the Zodiac. Highlights include the Trappist transformable necklace (2021) inspired by the TRAPPIST-1 star system and the Explosion Stellaire necklace (2021) depicting a supernova.

Sculptor Thaddeus Mosley dies at 99.

Sculptor Thaddeus Mosley dies at 99.

Sculptor Thaddeus Mosley, a self-taught artist renowned for his monumental abstract wood sculptures, has died at the age of 99. Working for decades in his Pittsburgh basement, Mosley used locally sourced felled trees and traditional hand tools to create dynamic, asymmetrical forms that channeled both modernist principles and African artistic traditions. His prolific career, which began in his 30s, gained significant institutional recognition only in his later decades, culminating in a major 2022 solo exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Photographer Zanele Muholi is named the 2026 Hasselblad Award laureate.

South African visual activist Zanele Muholi has won the prestigious 2026 Hasselblad Award, one of the highest honors in photography. The award, which includes a cash prize and a major exhibition at the Hasselblad Foundation in Gothenburg, Sweden, recognizes Muholi's decades-long dedication to documenting and celebrating Black LGBTQIA+ communities in South Africa and beyond. Their powerful portraits and self-portraits challenge historical erasure and create a profound visual archive of resistance and existence.

Edgar Calel Honored with $75,000 Sam Gilliam Award

The Dia Art Foundation and the Sam Gilliam Foundation have announced Edgar Calel as the winner of the 2026 Sam Gilliam Award. The Guatemala-based artist and poet, born in 1987 in Chi Xot (San Juan Comalapa), will receive $75,000 and participate in a public program at a Dia location this fall. Calel, of Maya Kaqchikel heritage, works across painting, drawing, sculpture, and performance, and is known for monumental installations reflecting Mayan cosmovision and themes of ownership and stewardship. He was selected by a panel including Dia curators Jordan Carter and Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Annie Gawlak, Shanay Jhaveri, and Clara Kim.

Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit reopens, with the local community front and centre

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Mocad) reopened on 25 April after over a year of renovations, unveiling upgrades to its 22,000-square-foot Midtown space—including a new learning space, air conditioning, and a large street-facing window—just in time for its 20th anniversary. The main building has been renamed after co-founder Julia Reyes Taubman. Co-directors Marie Madison-Patton and Jova Lynne have repositioned the institution as a civic space, emphasizing community engagement and local artists, with exhibitions such as Olayami Dabls: Detroit Cosmologies, Martha Mysko's Retail Therapy, and Carole Harris's This Side of the River.

d lan galleries tefaf maastricht

D Lan Galleries is returning to TEFAF Maastricht in 2026 following a landmark debut that generated nearly $1.4 million in sales. The Melbourne and New York-based gallery will showcase 13 masterworks by prominent First Nations Australian artists, including Emily Kam Kngwarray, Sally Gabori, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula, and Gordon Bennett. The presentation spans works from the 1970s to the present, highlighting the evolution of Indigenous Australian art on the global stage.

ali eyal mohn award 2025 made in la biennial hammer museum

The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles has announced the prize winners for its 2025 Made in L.A. biennial. Ali Eyal received the $100,000 Mohn Award, Carl Cheng won the $25,000 Career Achievement Award, and Greg Breda was selected by public vote for the $25,000 Public Recognition Award. The winners were chosen by a jury of curators from prominent institutions.

claudia alarcon silat artnews awards 2025 emerging artist

Claudia Alarcón, an Indigenous Wichí artist from Argentina, made her U.S. debut at James Cohan Gallery in New York with an exhibition co-organized with Cecilia Brunson Projects. The show features weavings created collaboratively with Silät, an all-women weaving collective formed by curator Andrei Fernández, using traditional Wichí techniques and the yica stitch. The works draw on Wichí cosmology, including a centuries-old tale of women descending from stars, and challenge the distinction between craft and fine art. Alarcón is recognized as the first Indigenous woman to exhibit her work as art at Argentina's foremost art fair.

gabriel chaile inteview sculptures adobe

Gabriel Chaile's adobe sculptures are currently on view at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, as part of a world tour that has seen his work exhibited across multiple continents. The artist, who draws inspiration from pre-Columbian communities in northwest Argentina, creates towering, creature-like forms coated in adobe that leave dust everywhere during installation. His career has expanded rapidly since his inclusion in Cecilia Alemani's 2022 Venice Biennale, with recent commissions in Montana, Uruguay, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and Berlin, and an upcoming participation in the Biennale of Sydney.

arte popular brazil artists rediscovered

Earlier this spring, artist Julia Isídrez led a guided tour at São Paulo's Gomide & Co. gallery for a joint exhibition with Maria Lira. The show highlights two artists from different generations and mediums—Lira from Brazil (painting) and Isídrez from Paraguay (sculpture, featured in the 2024 Venice Biennale)—who both engage Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous traditions from a contemporary perspective. Gallerist Thiago Gomide rejects labels like 'folk' or 'popular,' insisting it is simply an art exhibition. The article profiles a network of Brazilian dealers, including Vilma Eid of Galeria Estação and Antonio Almeida of Almeida & Dale, who have worked to revive interest in arte popular, a category historically applied to self-taught, Indigenous, and Black artists.

joe chialo resigns as berlins culture senator creative australia funding questioned napoleon sword heading to auction

Berlin's culture senator, Joe Chialo, has resigned due to a dispute over deep budget cuts to the city's arts sector. He stated that the planned cuts would force the closure of nationally renowned cultural institutions, and he stepped down to allow for new perspectives. Meanwhile, Australia's center-right Liberal-National Coalition has proposed cutting over 10 percent of funding to Creative Australia, the body that organizes the country's Venice Biennale pavilion, redirecting the money to support Jewish arts and broadcasting in Melbourne. This follows controversy over Creative Australia's decision to drop artist Khaled Sabsabi as Australia's Venice Biennale representative.

sarah meyohas desert x nft

Artist Sarah Meyohas has unveiled her first public art installation, "Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams" (2025), for the 2025 edition of Desert X in California's Coachella Valley. The monumental curved structure uses no electricity; instead, precisely milled mirrored discs reflect sunlight onto a white wall to form legible patterns and messages through the optical phenomenon of caustics. The work was created in collaboration with the Swiss company Rayform, which specializes in calculating caustic light patterns, pushing their technology to its largest scale yet.

art alex da corte kermit the frog paul thek

Alex Da Corte has resurrected his inflatable sculpture "Kermit the Frog, Even" for Art Basel Paris, displayed at Place Vendôme through October 26. The work references the 1991 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade incident where the Kermit float was deflated by a lamppost or tree, leaving its head sagging. Da Corte first debuted the piece in Buenos Aires in 2018 for the Art Basel Cities exhibition curated by Cecilia Alemani. The artist, known for mining children's media like Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street, also activated the sculpture with performers for the first time in Paris, navigating wind and rain during the performance.

Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Author of Uncategorizable Abstractions, Dies at 84

Mary Lovelace O’Neal, an activist, educator, and artist known for her monumental lampblack paintings that expanded the possibilities of abstraction, died on May 10 in Mérida, Mexico, at age 84. Despite a six-decade career, she was long considered an "artist's artist" before gaining international acclaim in recent years, with major exhibitions at Mnuchin Gallery, Marianne Boesky Gallery, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and inclusion in the 2024 Whitney Biennial and the 2025 group show "Paris Noir" at the Centre Pompidou.

labubu kasing lung art market

The article examines the meteoric rise and current cooling of the market for Labubu, the Nordic fanged monster character created by artist Kasing Lung. After a decade of slow development, Labubu exploded in popularity through Chinese toy blind-box manufacturer Pop Mart, leading to record auction sales in 2025. Yongle Auction in Beijing organized the world's first themed Labubu sale, where a mint-green sculpture sold for RMB 1.242 million and a painting, 'Pure' (2021), fetched RMB 1.61 million, setting successive records. The frenzy attracted a diverse range of buyers, from streetwear collectors to traditional ceramics enthusiasts, many of whom share their purchases on social media platforms like Douyin.

‘I can use it, I can abuse it’: Tony Albert spent decades collecting racist ‘Aboriginalia’. Now he wants to turn yours into art

Tony Albert, a 45-year-old artist of Girramay, Yidinji, and Kuku-Yalanji heritage, has spent decades collecting thousands of objects he terms 'Aboriginalia'—kitsch, caricatured, and often racist depictions of Aboriginal people created by non-Indigenous Australians. His solo exhibition 'Not a Souvenir' opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney on 21 May, showcasing over 3,000 items from his collection alongside transformed artworks. The MCA is inviting the public to donate additional Aboriginalia items to Albert's collection, which is housed in his Brisbane studio.

What does a woman swimming in urine tell us about the state of the world? Lots! – Venice Biennale review

The 2026 Venice Biennale, curated by the late Koyo Kouoh under the theme "In Minor Keys," has been plagued by months of turmoil including countries withdrawing, artists being fired, exhibitions cancelled, funding pulled, and protests during the preview. A five-person curatorial team took over after Kouoh's death, resulting in what the critic describes as a disjointed, committee-driven exhibition that prioritizes quiet contemplation and healing over direct political engagement. The central shows in the Giardini and Arsenale feature a vast, poorly explained array of art from the global south, with installations of ceramics, textiles, slide projectors, and serene natural scenes that the critic finds anachronistic and dull.

open letter demanding more curatorial independence at ago after non acquisition of nan godin work collects 500 signatures

An open letter demanding curatorial independence at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) has gathered over 500 signatures after trustee Judy Schulich reportedly blocked the acquisition of Nan Goldin's moving-image work *Stendhal Syndrome* (2024), calling the Jewish American photographer “antisemitic.” The AGO had planned to acquire the work jointly with the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Walker Art Center, but the vote was 11–9 against acquisition. In response, curator John Zeppetelli resigned, two volunteer committee members stepped down, and Goldin herself criticized the decision as censorship driven by donor influence. The AGO has since announced a restructuring of its modern and contemporary curatorial committee, splitting it into two groups for 20th- and 21st-century art, effective in 2026.

art gallery of ontario nan goldin acquisition gaza comments

The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) chose not to acquire Nan Goldin's 2024 video "Stendhal Syndrome" due to the artist's comments on Israel's war in Gaza, according to a report by the Globe and Mail. The work, which shows blurred images of semi-nude figures and sculptures, was instead purchased by the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. An AGO acquisitions committee voted against the acquisition, with internal memos citing Goldin's past statements—including her description of the war as a "genocide" and her criticism of weaponized antisemitism—as the reason. The decision led to the resignation of curator John Zeppetelli and two unnamed committee members, and prompted director Stephan Jost to call for a review of the committee's processes.

barbican centre close one year renovation

The Barbican Centre in London will close for one year starting in June 2028 as part of a five-year "Barbican Renewal Programme" to renovate its three gallery spaces and other infrastructure. The City of London Corporation has committed £191 million (about $255.8 million) toward the £240 million ($321.3 million) project, with the remainder to be raised through a fundraising campaign. During the closure, the Barbican plans to collaborate with partners and present programming beyond its walls.

biennale de arte paiz el arbol del mundo

The 24th edition of the Biennale de Arte Paiz, titled "El Arból del Mundo" ("The Tree of Life"), has opened in Guatemala City and Antigua Guatemala. Under Italian curator Eugenio Viola, the biennial has expanded from 30 to 46 artists and doubled its venues from 5 to 10, including the Museo Nacional de Arte de Guatemala (MUNAG) and La Nueva Fabrica. The dates have shifted to December to attract visitors from Miami Art Week and Zona Maco in Mexico City. The show features textile works, research-based art, and ecological themes, with highlights including a street installation by Erick Boror.

portland art museum expansion renovation

The Portland Art Museum has completed a $116 million expansion and renovation, integrating two neighboring buildings and adding nearly 100,000 square feet of public and gallery space. The centerpiece is a 21,000-square-foot glass pavilion named after Mark Rothko, who grew up in Portland and attended the museum's art school. The project, largely privately funded, unites the original 1932 Belluschi building with the 1927 Mark Building (a former Masonic Temple) via a transparent, 24-hour pedestrian tunnel. Director Brian Ferriso led the capital campaign, which also raised $30 million for the endowment, and recruited Hennebery Eddy Architects and Vinci Hamp Architects as designers.