“Lighting” exhibition by Mohamed Abdalla Otaybi at Swailam gallery is not to be missed

This article is a roundup of art exhibitions and cultural events in Cairo, Egypt, spanning multiple venues and dates. It highlights a photographic project titled "New Cairo, Do You Love Me?" by Judi Yassin and Tia Khalil at the American University in Cairo, which documents the disconnect between the promised luxury of New Cairo and its dehumanizing reality using 35mm black-and-white film. Other featured events include painting exhibitions by Osama Nashed and Alaa Hegazi at Dai, Mahmoud Hamdi's "Journey to the Core" at Difaf, the immersive "Beyond Van Gogh" experience at District 5, the permanent collection at Al-Fustat Centre for Ceramic, and the Empower Her Art Forum at the Grand Egyptian Museum.

Editor’s Letter: Still, Listening

The 61st Venice Biennale, titled "In Minor Keys" and curated by the late Koyo Kouoh, opens in May 2026, shifting focus from Eurocentric narratives to quieter, relational, and improvisational voices from the Global South. ArtAsiaPacific's May/June issue honors Kouoh's vision with features on artists including Gala Porras-Kim (a 2025 MacArthur Fellow), Khaled Sabsabi (representing Australia), and others like Liang Yuanwei, Yuko Mohri, Mona Hatoum, Tadanori Yokoo, Gayane Umerova, Li Yi-Fan, Hyeree Ro, and Ei Arakawa-Nash, with contributions from a curatorial team that carried Kouoh's work forward after her death in 2025.

Met Gala guests from Beyoncé to Nicole Kidman set to flaunt fashion as art

The article previews the 2025 Met Gala, where celebrities including Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams will ascend the Metropolitan Museum of Art's steps dressed according to the dress code "Fashion is art." The event, which raises funds for the museum's Costume Institute, encourages guests to treat fashion as an embodied art form, drawing on historical collaborations between designers and artists—such as Elsa Schiaparelli with Salvador Dalí, Yves Saint Laurent with Piet Mondrian, and Marc Jacobs with Takashi Murakami. The red carpet will be livestreamed by Vogue and the Associated Press.

Inside the New Madison Avenue Flagship of the Powerhouse Gagosian Gallery

Larry Gagosian has opened a new flagship gallery at 974 Madison Avenue (preferring the address 980 Madison at 76th Street) after Bloomberg Philanthropies took over the building's upper floors, which had housed Gagosian's New York flagship since the late 1980s. The megadealer relocated to the street level, creating a 12,000-square-foot complex with exhibition spaces, offices, meeting rooms, and private viewing areas designed by Jonathan Caplan of Caplan Colaku Architects. The gallery launched with a double-header presentation of works by Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg, and features ceilings just over 12 feet high, adaptable walls, and a vestibule display of art books.

14 artists having major museum moments in 2026

The article previews 14 artists who will have major museum exhibitions in 2026, highlighting key shows such as a long-awaited US retrospective of Marcel Duchamp, a Calder exhibition in Paris, and a Rothko show in Florence. It also details concurrent auction highlights at Christie's New York, including works from the S.I. Newhouse collection by Brancusi, Lichtenstein, Matisse, and Pollock. Specific exhibitions covered include "Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at the Whitney Museum, and multiple European shows for Constantin Brancusi's 150th anniversary.

Artists turn to textiles as they excavate history at Nada New York

At the New Art Dealers Alliance (Nada) New York fair, running until 17 May, multiple artists are presenting works that heavily incorporate textiles to explore themes of culture, belonging, and history. Artists such as Keith Lafuente (with SoMad), Polina Osipova (with JO-HS), and Griselda Rosas (with Luis De Jesus Los Angeles) use fabric and sewing techniques to examine histories of inequality, migration, and labor. Rosas embroiders over painted paper using imagery from Mexican codices, Osipova prints family photos onto traditional Chuvash fabric, and Lafuente repurposes scraps from Oscar de la Renta to comment on global labor inequalities. Other participants like Ruth Owens (with Voltz Clarke Gallery) use textiles in lightbox works to tell personal stories of migration and abduction.

A Roma c’è la mostra di un’artista 40enne californiana che ci racconta il valore della lentezza

Erica Mahinay, a 40-year-old California-born artist based in Los Angeles, is the subject of a solo exhibition titled "Rhythms" at T293 gallery in Rome. The show presents 24 intimate-scale works that explore the artist's physical, process-driven approach to abstract painting, where she manipulates pigment through pouring, dripping, and erasing to create layered, luminous surfaces. Mahinay, who holds degrees from the Kansas City Art Institute and Cranbrook Academy of Art, has work in the Marciano Art Foundation and Pinault Collection, and was included in the Hammer Museum's 2023 biennial "Made in L.A.: Acts of Living."

Art Basel Hong Kong 2026: Where The World Comes To See

Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 returned to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from March 25–27, featuring 240 galleries from 42 countries and territories. The 13th edition introduced new sectors including Echoes, dedicated to works made within the past five years, and Zero 10, a digital art initiative making its Asia debut. The fair also transformed its Encounters sector with a collective curatorial framework based on the Five Elements, led by Mami Kataoka and three other Asia-based curators. Robb Report India covered the event through the perspectives of Indian artists Siddharth Kerkar and Jayesh Sachdev.

Playinghouse Presented the Téte-a-Téte Exhibition at MDW 2026

Playinghouse, an emergent New York art and design platform, presented the group exhibition "téte-a-téte" at two locations during Milan Design Week 2026: Villa Pestarini and Certosa District. Curated by Margherita Dosi Delfini, assistant curator at the Design Museum, the show featured site-responsive works by independent talents including Anna Dawson, Romain Basile Petrot, Caleb Engstrom, Liyang Zhang, Atelier Fomenta, Maha Alavi, and Francesco Rosati. The exhibition emphasized contextualized domestic settings over sterile white cubes, with pieces in eggshell, glass, rubber, and metals that responded to each venue's architectural history.

And We Shall Go Through Their Hills Without Much Delay

This article documents three journeys into and out of Yunnan, China, spanning from 1874 to 2023. It begins with British interpreter Augustus Raymond Margary's failed colonial expedition to establish a trade route, which ended in his violent death and contributed to unequal treaties opening Southwest China. It then follows a Naxi student named Xueshan in 1937, whose railway journey introduced modern timekeeping to the region, and finally describes the construction of the Burma Road, a critical WWII supply route. The narrative concludes with the artist Cheng Xinhao retracing these routes on foot from Kunming toward Burma over a year and a half, reflecting on history, bodily experience, and the layers of infrastructure that have reshaped the landscape.

Marcel Duchamp Is Stripped Bare at MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art in New York has opened "Marcel Duchamp," the first retrospective of the artist on this continent in over 50 years. Curated by Ann Temkin, Michelle Kuo, and Matthew Affron, the exhibition is organized strictly chronologically and features Duchamp's most famous works—including his revolutionary readymades like *Fountain* (1917) and *Bicycle Wheel* (1913)—often shown only in photographic reproduction or as later refabricated copies, replicas, and miniatures from his *Box in a Valise* series. The show highlights how Duchamp's original objects have been lost or dematerialized, forcing viewers to confront the very definition of an artwork.

Insider’s Look at Curating a Show Inspired by the Declaration of Independence’s 250th Anniversary [Interview]

The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FVM) in Philadelphia has opened "Some American Dreams," an exhibition marking the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Curated by Hilde Nelson, FVM curatorial fellow, the show features 27 works by 20 artists created during the museum's Artist-in-Residence Program over four decades. The exhibition includes pieces in furniture, sculpture, textiles, clothing, video, and photography, and is on view until June 14, 2026. In an interview with My Modern Met, Nelson discusses her curatorial approach, which poses the question, "What if 'America' is not one project, but many?" and explores how these multiple Americas are affirmed, resisted, or remade through the artworks.

Art Around Town

This article is a roundup of current and upcoming art exhibitions and events in and around Athens, Georgia, published under the title 'Art Around Town.' It lists shows at numerous venues including ATHICA@CINÉ Gallery, the Georgia Museum of Art, Lyndon House Arts Center, and others, featuring artists such as Greg Benson, Jon Swindler, Beverly Buchanan, and Rachel B. Hayes. Exhibits range from landscape works and Civil War-era illustrations to installations exploring bathrooms, cosmic themes, and discarded objects, with many running through May, June, or later in 2025.

There Is No Separation. In Conversation with Alice Maher   by Frank Wasser

Alice Maher, one of several Irish artists at the 61st Venice Biennale, presents three works in the Arsenale as part of the group exhibition “In Minor Keys,” curated by the late Koyo Kouoh. Her presentation includes a reconstructed 1996 installation *Les Filles d’Ouranos*, a new series of drawings and sculptures titled “The Sibyls” (2025), and a collaborative textile piece *The Map* (2021) made with Rachel Fallon. In a conversation with Frank Wasser, Maher discusses the political conditions surrounding this year’s Biennale, including institutional resignations, debates over national representation, and the inclusion of the Israeli and Russian pavilions.

Marcel Duchamp and the MoMA Exhibition That Didn’t Ask Questions

Marcel Duchamp's 1917 readymade *Fountain* and its radical questioning of art's definition are the focus of a new retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, curated by Matthew Affron, Michelle Kuo, and Ann Temkin. The exhibition, the first major Duchamp show in the U.S. since 1973, assembles three hundred objects and presents them chronologically, tracing Duchamp's evolution from early paintings to his conceptual breakthroughs. The article highlights how *Fountain* was originally submitted to a no-jury exhibition by the Society of Independent Artists, sparking a debate that ultimately led to its rejection and Duchamp's resignation, a pivotal moment in art history.

Inside Frieze New York 2026: The Best Booths and Standout Moments of the Art Fair

Frieze New York 2026 opened at the Shed in Hudson Yards, drawing a record crowd of collectors, artists, and celebrities on preview day. The fair featured over 65 international galleries, with a strong presence of Latin American artists and a notable shift toward textile-based works, sculpture, and paper pieces. Highlights included the Ruinart Art Lounge with preparatory studies by Tadashi Kawamata, and the Focus section spotlighting emerging galleries. Notable attendees included Leonardo DiCaprio, gallerist Almine Rech, and Sotheby's senior vice president Ralph DeLuca.

Amid ceasefire, Tehran museum opens ‘Art & War’ exhibit spotlighting US Jewish artist

Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art has opened an exhibition titled 'Art & War' featuring works by American Jewish artist Peter Saul, amid a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. The show includes Saul's provocative paintings that critique war and political violence, marking a rare cultural exchange in a country where official rhetoric often opposes Israel and the United States.

4 exhibitions to visit this summer in London, Kyoto and Venice

The article highlights four art exhibitions to visit this summer across London, Kyoto, and Venice. In London, the Design Museum presents "Nigo: From Japan with Love," showcasing over 700 objects from the Japanese designer's three-decade career, including collaborations with Nike and Louis Vuitton. In Kyoto, the Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art hosts "YBA & Beyond: British art in the 1990s from the Tate Collection," featuring works by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, and other Young British Artists. At the Venice Biennale, Hong Kong artist Wallace Chan presents "Vessels of the Other World," a show of titanium sculptures inspired by sacred Catholic oils, curated by James Putman.

In Warsaw, “The Woman Question” Dismantles Art History’s Greatest Myth

The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw presents "The Woman Question 1550-2025," a major exhibition curated by Alison Gingeras that dismantles the myth that women have only recently become artists. Featuring 199 works spanning centuries, the show includes pieces by Lubaina Himid, Alina Szapocznikow, Gina Birch, Macena Barton, Betty Tompkins, and Artemisia Gentileschi, among others. The exhibition is organized into nine chapters examining themes such as Baroque women, motherhood, and war, and is accompanied by a catalogue with contributions from museum director Joana Mytkowska and other scholars.

What’s Left to Learn from Marcel Duchamp?

The article examines Marcel Duchamp's enduring influence on contemporary art, focusing on his readymades such as "Fountain" (1917) and "Bicycle Wheel" (1913/1951). It notes that a major survey co-organized by the Museum of Modern Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 70 years after Duchamp predicted his true public would emerge in 50 to 100 years, reaffirms his status as the most influential artist of the past century. The piece discusses how Duchamp's practice of selecting and presenting ordinary objects as art—from a urinal to a snow shovel—once shocked the art world but now seems quaint compared to later works like Maurizio Cattelan's taped banana.

“Drifting Until Caught” at Brooklyn Navy Yard: Three Artists and the Objectivity of Method

Three artists—Veronika Georgieva, Stephen j Shanabrook, and Shura Skaya—have transformed an industrial venue at the Brooklyn Navy Yard into a pop-up exhibition titled “Drifting Until Caught.” The show, accessible only by appointment, features works that range from pressed plastic sculptures and chocolate casts to wax crayon drawings and acrylic paintings, all exploring the boundary between figuration and abstraction. Each artist employs mechanical or chance-based methods, such as Shanabrook’s hydraulic press or Georgieva’s video projections, to create images that embrace distortion and materiality.

‘Just Dudes Hanging Out’: Dustin Yellin and Paul Rudd on Making the Artist’s First Film

Dustin Yellin, known for his glass sculptures and as founder of Pioneer Works, has made his first film, *Goodnight Lamby*, produced by Darren Aronofsky's A.I.-focused studio Primordial Soup. The short film, a hero's journey to rescue his daughter Zia's favorite stuffed animal, premiered at Cannes. Yellin discusses the project with his friend actor Paul Rudd, who voices the character "Papa," exploring how fatherhood and his existing artistic practice of "frozen cinema" inspired the animation.

parties cult100 cultured magazine guggenheim

CULTURED magazine hosted its second annual CULT100 party at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, in exclusive partnership with Valentino and Valentino Beauty. The event celebrated the magazine's spring issue, a 400-page edition honoring 100 luminaries and rising talents across food, film, art, fashion, and more. Guests including Keke Palmer, Lena Dunham, Naomi Watts, Adam Scott, and Anne Imhof gathered in the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda for cocktails, a Valentino Beauty lounge, and a program that coincided with artist Carol Bove's ongoing museum survey exhibition at the Guggenheim.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Appoints Essence Harden as Senior Curator

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco has appointed Essence Harden as senior curator, effective May 18. Harden currently serves as curator of Expo Chicago and has organized the Focus section of Frieze Los Angeles since 2024, roles they will continue with YBCA's support. An independent curator, Harden recently co-curated the 2025 Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum and previously held positions at the California African American Museum, Orange County Museum of Art, Art + Practice, Museum of the African Diaspora, and Oakland Museum of California. A Bay Area native, Harden's hiring marks a homecoming.

art criticism lynne tillman paying attention book

Lynne Tillman celebrated the publication of her new collection, *Paying Attention: Essays on Art and Culture*, from David Zwirner Books, at an event hosted by Coco’s at Colette. The article features a conversation between Tillman and the author, in which she discusses her origin story as a critic, her background in fiction writing, and her unconventional entry into art criticism through an invitation from Craig Owens at *Art in America*. She recounts writing a Madame Realism story about a Renoir exhibition after eavesdropping on museum tours, a piece that angered some art historians.

Leading French Gallery Air de Paris Is Declaring Bankruptcy and Closing After 36 Years

Air de Paris, a leading French gallery, is declaring bankruptcy and closing after 36 years, as announced by cofounders Florence Bonnefous and Edouard Merino to Cultured. The gallery owes money only to its landlord and bank, not to its artists. The closure is attributed to fragile finances and health issues, including Bonnefous's Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. The gallery's farewell exhibition, “Oh What a Time,” featured artists such as Trisha Donnelly, Joseph Grigely, Pati Hill, Pierre Joseph, Allen Ruppersberg, Lily van der Stokker, Mona Varichon, and Amy Vogel. Bonnefous will continue to manage the estates of Guy de Cointet, Pati Hill, Dorothy Iannone, Bruno Pelassy, and Sarah Pucci, and work as a curator.

In the Principality of Monaco, an exhibition where the great painter Poussin dialogues with contemporary art

Nel Principato di Monaco una mostra dove il grande pittore Poussin dialoga con l’arte contemporanea

The Nouveau Musée National de Monaco presents an exhibition titled "Le Sentiment de la Nature," which juxtaposes works by 17th-century French painter Nicolas Poussin and his followers with pieces by about thirty contemporary and 20th-century artists. The show is organized into six thematic sections—storms and nights, forests and gardens, seas and waterfalls, deserts and volcanoes, mountains, and flowers and butterflies—each exploring the ancient concept of "miracula naturae" (wonders of nature). Featured contemporary artists include Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Demand, Sarah Moon, Mimmo Jodice, Giulio Paolini, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, and Fausto Melotti, with works spanning photography, painting, video, and sculpture. The exhibition runs until May 25, 2026, and is accompanied by a catalog published by Italian publisher Humboldt Books in collaboration with the museum.

Rediscovering the Eternal City of the 1500s in the drawings of Maarten van Heemskerck. The exhibition in Rome

Riscoprire la Città Eterna del ‘500 nei disegni di Maarten van Heemskerck. La mostra a Roma

A major exhibition at Palazzo Poli in Rome, hosted by the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, showcases a selection of drawings by Dutch artist Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574) from his so-called 'little sketchbook,' now held at the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin. The show, titled 'Maarten van Heemskerck e il fascino di Roma' and running until June 7, presents the artist's meticulous studies of Roman antiquities made during his four-year stay in the city from 1532, offering a rare visual record of Renaissance Rome's ancient collections before and after the 1527 Sack of Rome.

A Roma è tutto pronto per il weekend delle gallerie d’arte: mostre, progetti speciali, inaugurazioni. Il programma

The fourth edition of Roma Gallery Weekend will take place from May 15 to 17, 2026, featuring 31 galleries across Rome. The event kicks off with a new Gallery Night on May 14, where simultaneous openings and special projects serve as a concentrated prologue. Participating galleries include established names like Gagosian, Galleria Continua, and Lorcan O'Neill, as well as emerging spaces such as Amanita and Cantadora. Highlights include exhibitions of Francesca Woodman, Tracey Emin, Friedrich Kunath, and Carlos Garaicoa, alongside site-specific interventions and group shows.

All the complexity of Cézanne on display at the legendary Fondation Beyeler in Basel

Tutta la complessità di Cézanne in mostra alla mitica Fondation Beyeler di Basilea

The Fondation Beyeler in Basel has opened a major exhibition dedicated to Paul Cézanne, marking the 120th anniversary of his death. Curated by senior curator Ulf Küster, the show features 80 works—58 paintings and 21 watercolors—drawn from public and private collections across Switzerland, Germany, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark, and the United States. Highlights include nine versions of Mont Sainte-Victoire, rare comparisons of two watercolor versions of "Boy in a Red Waistcoat," and two versions of "The Card Players" from the Courtauld Gallery and the Musée d'Orsay. The exhibition runs until May 25, 2026, and is accompanied by a catalog published by Hatje Cantz Verlag.