Monumental exhibition of works by Anselm Kiefer heads to the Saint Louis Art Museum

The Saint Louis Art Museum will host "Becoming the Sea," a monumental exhibition of works by German artist Anselm Kiefer, from October 18, 2025 through January 25, 2026. The show marks Kiefer's first U.S. retrospective in 20 years and features towering works up to 30 feet tall, including site-specific pieces inspired by the Mississippi and Rhine rivers. Curated by museum director Min Jung Kim and assistant curator Melissa Venator in direct collaboration with the 80-year-old artist, the exhibition will fill the museum's Sculpture Hall and contemporary galleries with over 30 loans from other collections, requiring custom installation systems and even the removal of a doorway to accommodate a large painting.

Pearlstein Gallery Opens Fall Exhibition Exploring Systems and Structures in Contemporary Art

The Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel University's Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design has announced its Fall 2025 exhibition, "Of the Grid: Systems + Structures in Contemporary Art," running from October 14 to December 15. The show features 36 artists working across media including photography, video, drawing, weaving, sculpture, embroidery, printmaking, painting, book arts, and interactive installation, with works that use the grid as a formal, conceptual, or narrative device. Co-curated by gallery director Mark Stockton and Cindy Stockton Moore, the exhibition includes a dynamic mix of Philadelphia-based and international artists, with highlighted pieces such as Jacob C. Hammes's IKEA-hacked fountain, Anne Schaefer's optical color window installation, and a suspended quilt by Jody Graff.

Oil Street Art Space stages "Eying East, Wondering West - Square Word Calligraphy Classroom on the Move" exhibition featuring world-renowned artist Xu Bing (with photos)

Oil Street Art Space (Oi!) in Hong Kong has opened the exhibition "Eying East, Wondering West - Square Word Calligraphy Classroom on the Move," featuring world-renowned artist Xu Bing. Running from September 29, 2025 to January 11, 2026, the show transforms the Oi! Glassie venue into an interactive classroom where visitors can learn and write Xu Bing's Square Word Calligraphy (Hong Kong Edition). The exhibition includes a specially designed textbook inspired by local student exercise books, brushes and copybooks, interactive digital installations, and workshops on seal carving and fan design. It was previously held at the Hong Kong Museum of Art and is presented by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, organized by the Art Promotion Office and Oi!.

Century-old art studio in need of urgent repairs

The Charleston Trust has launched a £250,000 fundraising campaign called Studio 100 to urgently repair a century-old studio at Charleston in Firle, East Sussex. The studio, originally built in a chicken shed in 1925 by artists Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Roger Fry, was intended as a temporary space but has become a globally significant site. The total project cost is about £470,000, with support already secured from Arts Council England. Repairs will focus on the roof, windows, doors, and fragile painted surfaces, along with installing climate control systems, scheduled from November 2026 to April 2027.

Exhibition as Séance at Seoul Mediacity Biennale with Anton Vidokle, Hallie Ayres, and Lukas Brasiskis

The 13th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, titled “Séance: Technology of the Spirit,” will open in August 2025 at the Seoul Museum of Art. The exhibition is curated by Anton Vidokle, Hallie Ayres, and Lukas Brasiskis of e-flux, who previously organized the Shanghai Biennale in 2023. The curators aim to structure a film program as an extension of the exhibition, engaging with themes of Cosmism and spiritual séance. They have collaborated with the Hong Kong-based architecture firm COLLECTIVE to transform the museum’s white-wall space into a scenography evoking different metaphysical realms, using color and light to enhance the experience.

Artist Amy Sherald has canceled her upcoming show at the Smithsonian

Artist Amy Sherald has canceled her upcoming solo exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, scheduled to open September 19. The cancellation stems from a dispute over her painting *Trans Forming Liberty* (2024), which depicts a trans woman with pink hair and a blue gown holding a torch. Sherald stated that the museum expressed concerns about including the portrait, leading to discussions about removing it. She claims the Smithsonian planned to replace the painting with a video of people reacting to it, which she opposed as it would debate the value of trans visibility. The Smithsonian denies the painting was to be replaced, saying the video was meant to provide context. Sherald's exhibition, *Amy Sherald: American Sublime*, was organized by SFMOMA and is currently on view at the Whitney Museum.

Why ‘devastating’ climate control rules for museum collections need a rethink

Museums are rethinking decades-old climate control standards that dictate strict temperature and humidity ranges for preserving collections. These guidelines, originally based on 1970s research for paintings in London, have been widely adopted globally despite being designed for temperate climates. Conservator Caitlin Southwick of Ki Culture argues this is a "big misunderstanding," as the standards were never intended for diverse collections like stone in Brazil or tapestries in Italy. Climate control systems now account for 60-70% of a typical museum's energy consumption, creating high costs and carbon footprints.

Julian Charrière: ‘The deep sea is a phantasmagorical space’

French Swiss artist Julian Charrière presents 'Midnight Zone' at Museum Tinguely in Basel, an exhibition that plunges viewers into the oceanic abyss through four new commissions and earlier works. The show features video installations, sculptural works, and acoustic pieces that explore deep-sea ecologies, including a film set in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone targeted for deep-sea mining, and a rotating Fresnel lens installation that translates low-frequency noise pollution into vibration. Charrière’s multidisciplinary approach draws on fieldwork in extreme geographies like the Arctic and deep ocean.

New Ringling Museum exhibit asks if you believe in magic

The Ringling Museum in Sarasota has opened a new exhibition titled "Conjuring the Spirit World: Art, Magic, and Mediums," which explores the art and artifacts of the Spiritualist movement. The show is structured in two acts, first providing historical context and then displaying images, posters, and objects that spiritualists used to promote their work and communicate with the spirit world.

THE BIOMUSEO SCIENCE AND ARCHITECTURE OF THE FIRST LEVEL

The Biomuseo, a striking museum of biodiversity designed by architect Frank Gehry, stands on the Amador Causeway at the entrance to the Panama Canal. Its avant-garde, deconstructivist structure, featuring chaotic shapes and vivid colors, is designed to narrate the geological formation of the Isthmus of Panama and its impact on global biodiversity. Inside, it houses large sculptures, mineral exhibitions, and audiovisual projections about Panamanian ecosystems, alongside temporary science exhibitions like the current 'Eyes in Space' show about NASA technology.

46th annual Cerro Gordo Photo Show open at Charles H. MacNider Art Museum

The 46th Annual Cerro Gordo Photo Show has opened at the Charles H. MacNider Art Museum's Center Space Gallery in Mason City, Iowa. The exhibition features 36 photographs by 20 artists from Cerro Gordo County and North Iowa Area Community College, selected by a panel of judges from 62 entries. Artists include Alec Heggen, Brad Janson, Wendy Janson, Dennis Nettifee, Margo Underwood, Lisa Wolf, and many others from Clear Lake, Mason City, and Plymouth. The show is sponsored by the Safford and Lena Lock Photo Endowment Fund, with an opening reception and awards ceremony scheduled for May 7, offering cash prizes including $125 for Best in Show.

Artist in Focus: Louis Pohl Koseda. Constructing the City as Memory.

British artist Louis Pohl Koseda is gaining attention for his intricate works that blend drawing, painting, and architectural theory to explore the city as a psychological structure. His practice, which he terms 'metafictionism,' utilizes fine-line drawing to create layered compositions where figures navigate unstable, theatrical urban environments. Influenced by his upbringing in an East London Hare Krishna community, Koseda’s work focuses on how belief systems and social fabrics are mapped onto the physical and imagined spaces of the city.

The Ireland Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Art Biennale Speaks of Dreams and Pays Homage to Aldo Manuzio

Il Padiglione Irlanda alla Biennale Arte 2026 di Venezia parla di sogni e omaggia Aldo Manuzio

The Ireland Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale will present "Dreamshook," a project by Irish artist Isabel Nolan. The exhibition explores dream states and pays homage to the Venetian printer Aldo Manuzio, drawing on the humanist revolution between the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Nolan, who works across sculpture, embroidery, photography, and text, will create new tapestries, drawings, and sculptures that engage with classicism, Christianity, humanism, Irish heritage (including the Book of Kells), and the invention of printing. The project is curated by Georgina Jackson and produced by Cian O'Brien, with support from Culture Ireland and the Arts Council.

Gallery hopping: A new way to experience & engage with art

The article reports on the rise of gallery hopping in Delhi, particularly in neighborhoods like Lado Sarai, Defence Colony, and Okhla, where galleries cluster together. The Defence Colony Galleries Association, founded by Pristine Contemporary owners Arjun Butani and Arjun Sawhney, launched the monthly Def Col Art Night, keeping 10 galleries open until 9pm on the third Thursday with openings, music, and performances. Gallery directors and owners note that these events attract a broader audience beyond traditional collectors, making art more accessible and fostering community.

Basquiat Comes to Bonnier Gallery in Little River

The Bonnier Gallery in Miami's Little River neighborhood is presenting "Jean-Michel Basquiat: Selected Works, 1978–1988," a major exhibition featuring approximately 100 works spanning the artist's entire career. Curated by Grant Bonnier, the show runs through June 30, 2026, and includes paintings, works on paper, sculpture, photography, collaborative works with Andy Warhol, and rare ephemera, tracing Basquiat's evolution from teenage postcards to late-period masterpieces.

Hear! Hear! Kimball Art Center’s (Re)sounding

The Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah, is preparing to open its upcoming exhibition "(Re)sounding" on May 15, curated by Nancy Stoaks. The show explores the relationship between sound and visual art through immersive installations, interactive systems, and soundscape sculptures by artists including Jon Bernson, Christine Sun Kim, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Yuri Suzuki, Mary Toscano, and Andrew Rease Shaw. The exhibition coincides with the center's 50th anniversary and its ongoing mission to make contemporary art accessible and personal.

Exhibition | Megan Jenkinson, 'Secateur / Sequitur' at Two Rooms, Auckland, New Zealand

Artist Megan Jenkinson presents her latest body of work, 'Secateur / Sequitur', at Two Rooms in Auckland. The exhibition features intricate photocollages that blend botanical elements with man-made materials like wire, drawing inspiration from classical philosophy and the Japanese art of ikebana. Jenkinson’s meticulously structured compositions explore the tension between the natural world and human systems of order.

Time as Witness: Ai Weiwei at Nature Morte

Ai Weiwei has launched his first major solo exhibition in India at Nature Morte gallery in New Delhi, timed to coincide with the India Art Fair 2026. The show features a range of works spanning three decades, including his signature large-scale Lego compositions and porcelain sculptures. Notably, the artist debuted new pieces that engage specifically with Indian art history, reimagining works by modernists SH Raza and VS Gaitonde, as well as traditional Rajasthani Pichwai paintings, through his modular toy-brick medium.

Art’s new hybrid economy: who is making creative waves in a sector where analogue and digital media exist together?

The article examines how contemporary artists are navigating a hybrid art economy where analogue and digital media converge, particularly in the age of AI. It profiles Simon Denny, recently appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, whose machine-assisted paintings at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler in Berlin address the illegibility of AI-generated images and the militarized rhetoric of Italian Futurism. Other artists featured include Sara Ludy, whose postdigital paintings at Smart Objects, Los Angeles, reflect screen-based perception, and Chris Dorland, whose exhibition at Nicoletti Contemporary, London, exposes the limits of technical systems through glitch aesthetics. Hito Steyerl's new book *Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat* (2025) is also discussed, questioning the role of images in an era of operational, nonhuman vision.

Engineering a bold new chapter for the historic Buffalo AKG Art Museum

The article details the transformation of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum through its AK360 expansion project, led by engineering firm Buro Happold in partnership with OMA and Cooper Robertson. The centerpiece is the new Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, a 29,000-square-foot structure adding three levels of gallery space, along with flexible event spaces, educational classrooms, and public areas like the Town Square and sculpture gardens. Buro Happold provided MEPFP engineering, IT/AV systems, security, and sustainability consulting to integrate modern infrastructure while preserving the historic campus.

Photographer Who Scales Buildings to Get the Perfect Shot Arrested at Opening Night of His First Solo Exhibition

Photographer Isaac Wright, known as Drift, was arrested at the opening night of his first solo exhibition, “Coming Home,” at the Robert Mann Gallery in New York City on May 15, 2025. A plainclothes officer tapped him on the shoulder while he was speaking with the crowd, and uniformed officers then led him out in handcuffs. The arrest stems from a misdemeanor criminal trespassing charge linked to a photograph in the show, which Wright took after climbing the spire of the Empire State Building in 2024. Wright, a former Army soldier who began climbing buildings to cope with PTSD, has faced previous legal trouble for rooftop trespassing, including a 2020 arrest in Arizona.

Aux Catacombes, une visite réinventée

After five months of closure, the Catacombs of Paris have reopened with a major modernization project. The site now features a new immersive audio guide narrated by the voice of its historical founder, Louis Étienne Héricart de Thury, along with improved lighting that highlights previously invisible details and a revamped climate-control system to better preserve the bones. The €5.5 million renovation, led by Paris Musées and funded by the City of Paris, also included structural repairs to the bone stacks using dry-stone techniques instead of cement.

Forgers, One-Way Mirrors of the Art Market

Les faussaires, miroirs sans tain du marché de l’art

Anthropologist Monique Jeudy-Ballini has published a new book, "Peintres de l’ombre. Les faussaires à l’œuvre," in which she examines art forgers through an ethnographic lens. Drawing on autobiographical accounts, published interviews, and expert writings—including those of notorious forgers Wolfgang Beltracchi, Eric Hebborn, and Guy Ribes—she explores the motivations and practices of these clandestine figures, arguing that their work involves not only technical skill but also the creation of elaborate narratives and pedigrees for their forgeries. The book is part of the Ethnologiques series edited by Philippe Descola and published by Éditions Mimésis.

The Tiny Brooklyn Project Space Resisting the Gallery Machine

The Tiny Brooklyn Project Space Resisting the Gallery Machine

Subtitled NYC, a small non-commercial project space in Brooklyn's Greenpoint, is hosting the exhibition 'On Other Terms' by artists Pap Souleye Fall and Char Jeré. The immersive, multi-sensory installation, filled with intricate assemblages, analog objects, and digital elements, creates an overwhelming environment that mimics the friction and complexity of urban life.

The Future Will Be Neither Good Nor Bad, But Strange

"Die Zukunft wird nicht gut oder schlecht, sondern seltsam"

Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, has brought his "Regular Animals" series to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. The works feature digital creatures that blend pop-culture figures like Mark Zuckerberg with art-historical references such as Picasso, continuing Beeple's signature style of satirical, software-generated imagery. The exhibition marks a significant institutional debut for the artist, who rose to fame by selling the most expensive NFT ever and posting daily digital art online.

What We Throw Away Does Not Disappear

Was wir wegwerfen, verschwindet nicht

The Museum Ostwall at the Dortmunder U in Dortmund has opened a new exhibition titled "Müll – die globalen Wege des Abfalls" ("Waste – The Global Paths of Garbage"), curated by Christina Danick and Michael Griff. Featuring around 50 international artworks from the 20th and 21st centuries, including two newly commissioned pieces, the show uses art to explore waste as material, motif, and aesthetic strategy. Key works include Kader Attia's "Los de Arriba y Los de Abajo," which addresses power imbalances through the lens of garbage in Hebron, and historical pieces by César Baldaccini, Arman, and HA Schult. The exhibition also highlights contemporary issues such as e-waste, global waste trafficking, and the environmental impact of industrial nations on the Global South.

Ballets of Repetition

Ballette der Wiederholung

Vivien Zhang, a painter whose work blends botany, mathematics, and migration, is now exhibiting in Berlin. Her paintings feature tongue-like petals, crystalline butterflies, dewdrops, seed capsules, chromosomes, and frozen brushstrokes, all arranged in grid-like patterns that create a ballet of repetition. The forms are technoid-organic and three-dimensional, presenting enigmatic visual puzzles that explore how shapes, identities, and systems emerge anew.

How Much Change Can Society Endure?

Wie viel Veränderung hält die Gesellschaft aus?

Artist Julius von Bismarck and SPD politician Rita Schwarzelühr-Sutter engaged in a deep dialogue about the societal transition from a fossil-fuel-based to a post-fossil society. During a live podcast hosted by Monopol editor-in-chief Elke Buhr at the BMW Foundation in Berlin, von Bismarck challenged traditional notions of environmental protection, arguing that the very concept of "nature" should be abolished to foster a new relationship with the world. The discussion bridged the gap between artistic radicalism and political pragmatism, touching on existential threats, global inequality, and the role of technology like AI.

Stories in Copper and Vinyl

Geschichten in Kupfer und Vinyl

The UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing is hosting "Hundreds and Thousands," the first institutional retrospective of the late American conceptual artist Rutherford Chang. The exhibition showcases Chang’s career-long obsession with collecting and cataloging mass-produced objects, most notably featuring his collection of over 3,700 first-pressings of the Beatles’ "White Album." Other significant works include a 31-kilogram copper cube created from 10,000 pre-1982 pennies and a digital archive of over 2,000 of the artist's own Game Boy Tetris sessions.

Li Yi-Fan: Error and Effigy

Taiwanese artist Li Yi-Fan, born in 1989 and based between Taipei and Amsterdam, creates unsettling digital marionettes using modified game engines and digital puppetry. His pale, chalky figures with uncanny proportions discuss voyeurism, sexual fantasies, philosophy, memes, and computer programming, often resembling the artist himself. Li works a nine-to-five schedule, spends hours on computer games as research, and describes himself as 'probably the most boring artist.' His practice relies on free or subscription software and purchased digital assets, staging what it feels like to make digital art within platform systems and corporate infrastructure.