Critic Aruna D’Souza responds to a viral essay by artist Josh Kline regarding the extreme financial pressures of living and working in New York City. While Kline suggests that artists should abandon the city due to the affordability crisis, D’Souza argues that leaving is not a viable long-term solution and calls for a more proactive approach to systemic change within the urban art ecosystem.
The St. Louis-based triennial Counterpublic has unveiled the artist list for its third edition, titled "Coyote Time," scheduled to run from September 12 to December 12, 2025. The exhibition features 47 artists and collectives, including major figures such as Glenn Ligon, Rebecca Belmore, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, alongside posthumous presentations of works by Juanita McNeely and Benjamin Patterson. Curated by a five-person international team, the triennial will activate various sites across the city, including the Mississippi Riverfront and the historically Black neighborhood of The Ville.
Artist Jill Magid has transformed her solo exhibition at Various Small Fires in Los Angeles into a platform for her dealer Esther Kim Varet’s congressional campaign. The show, titled “Heart of a Citizen,” features a replica of the White House Press Briefing Room podium, which Kim Varet uses to deliver stump speeches. Other works include a neon sign quoting a stenographer’s note and concrete casts of Magid’s heart, inspired by the White House Rose Garden. Magid emphasizes the show is not an endorsement but an exploration of power, free speech, and democracy.
The Hayward Gallery in London, in partnership with the RC Foundation in Taiwan, has announced a new exhibition series for its HENI Project Space running from October 2025 to March 2027. The series features five solo exhibitions by artists Val Lee, Samuel Laurence Cunnane, Kulpreet Singh, Musquiqui Chihying, and Andrius Arutiunian, each exploring themes ranging from political violence and surveillance to climate change, ritual, and alternative cosmologies. The exhibitions are curated by a team including Yung Ma, Rachel Thomas, and others.
The ninth edition of the "Various Others" festival in Munich brings together institutions, off-spaces, and galleries for a city-wide series of exhibitions in May. Highlights include Walter Storms Galerie presenting Anselm Reyle's first Munich solo show with Istanbul's Dirimart; Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler collaborating with Rome's T293 to show Simon Denny's tech-critical works; Max Goelitz pairing Lukas Heerich and Rindon Johnson with Eva Hesse in dialogue with Hauser & Wirth; Lohaus Sominsky and Paris's Mennour featuring Ilit Azoulay and Alicja Kwade; and Rüdiger Schöttle hosting Milena Muzquiz and Elif Saydam. A new parcours exhibition, "Vectors," inspired by Jan Hoet's "Chambres d'Amis," places contemporary art in tech company offices across Munich.
"Nachahmungen eines mittelmäßigen Teenagers auf Tranquilizern"
The Victoria & Albert Museum has reportedly censored exhibition catalogs following pressure from Chinese printing firms, removing images and maps related to sensitive topics like Tibet and Tiananmen Square. This editorial roundup also highlights artist Molly Crabapple’s sharp critique of generative AI as a massive intellectual property theft and a profile of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s communal home in Thailand, which functions as a social sculpture.
Au musée du Louvre, ORLAN donnera ce vendredi un cours d’histoire de l’art (gratuit)
French artist ORLAN will deliver a free art history lecture at the Musée du Louvre on Friday, May 22, 2026, as part of the fourth edition of the museum's "Leçons d'artiste" lecture series. Titled "Le musée et l'histoire de l'art cellules souches de nos nouvelles images," the talk will examine how museums like the Louvre shape art history—with its omissions, censures, and rewritings—and how new technologies, including artificial intelligence, feed on existing imagery. Two additional lectures will follow on June 12 (on body representation) and September 25 (on artists' responsibility in times of war and oppression).
Nuit des musées, Photomobiles… 10 idées de sorties à faire au mois de mai
Beaux Arts Magazine presents a curated list of ten cultural outings across France for May 2026, highlighting events such as the Nouveau Printemps festival in Toulouse directed by Rossy de Palma, the Interstice festival in Caen focusing on emerging art and technology, the L'art est dans le pré festival in Troyes featuring contemporary art in rural villages, an immersive installation at the Musée d'Orsay tied to the Renoir exhibition, and the Cœurs-Volants kite festival in Essonne where architecture students create flying artworks. Other suggestions include outdoor art trails, heritage site sports programs, and literary festivals in Épinal and Seine-Maritime.
Les expos et visites immersives à ne pas rater du printemps à l’été en France
The article from Beaux Arts Magazine highlights a selection of immersive art exhibitions and experiences across France for spring and summer 2026. Featured attractions include "Passion Japon" at Parc de la Villette in Paris, a journey through Japanese culture with Hokusai and Hiroshige projections; "L'Odyssée Céleste" at Église Saint-Eustache, a 3D light spectacle with live choral music; "Frissons" at the Musée d'Orsay, an interactive light installation by artist Adrien M responding to visitors' movements; and a Picasso immersive experience at Les Baux-de-Provence.
Alexander Calder, génial sculpteur de l’air et de la couleur célébré à la fondation Vuitton
The Fondation Louis Vuitton is hosting a major celebration of Alexander Calder, the American sculptor who revolutionized 20th-century art by introducing movement and play into the medium. The article traces Calder's formative years in Paris starting in 1926, where the young engineer-turned-artist gained avant-garde fame with his 'Cirque Calder'—a miniature circus of wire and fabric figurines. This period marked his transition from traditional painting to his signature 'drawings in space,' featuring wire sculptures of figures like Josephine Baker that projected dancing shadows and captured the kinetic energy of the era.
Des chefs-d’œuvre de l’art modélisés et imprimés en très haute définition : le défi relevé par LITO
Beaux Arts Magazine partnered with the Austrian printing and publishing company LITO to stage a challenge at its 500th-issue launch party. Guests were asked to identify the authentic 15th-century painting by Giovanni Bellini's circle from among four seemingly identical works, three of which were ultra-high-definition reproductions created by LITO. The company's patented modeling and printing technology replicates the texture of brushstrokes, varnish sheen, canvas grain, and even craquelure with unprecedented precision.
The Counterpublic Triennial has unveiled the artist list for its third edition, titled "Coyote Time," scheduled to run from September 12 to December 12 in Saint Louis. Curated by a five-member international team, the exhibition features forty-seven artists and collectives, including prominent figures like Glenn Ligon and Rebecca Belmore alongside local Saint Louis practitioners. The triennial will feature nearly fifty commissions, with a significant focus on site-responsive works installed along the Mississippi riverfront and the Gateway Arch.
Viral Beeple robot dogs to go on display at Berlin museum.
A set of robotic dog sculptures by digital artist Beeple, which became a viral sensation online, have been acquired by Berlin’s König Galerie for its permanent collection and will go on public display. The four lifelike, animatronic canines, titled "S.2122," are modeled on Boston Dynamics' "Spot" robots but are weathered and decaying, with exposed wires and organic growths. This marks Beeple's first major physical sculpture series to enter a prominent institutional collection, following his landmark $69 million NFT sale in 2021.
The Brooklyn Museum is opening a new edition of 'Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses,' building on a 2023 retrospective at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. The exhibition features over 140 haute couture designs by Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen, known for merging high-tech materials like laser-cut Plexiglas with biological elements such as glowing algae and plastic bubbles. It includes recent collections like 'Sympoiesis' and works by artists including Kenny Nguyen, Wim Delvoye, and Tara Donovan, alongside a soundscape by Salvador Breed. The show runs from May 16 to December 6.
Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo presents "Grammars of Light," a major exhibition featuring immersive works by Cerith Wyn Evans, Ann Lislegaard, and P. Staff. The show includes architecturally scaled video projections and luminous sculptures made from repurposed consumer, medical, and industrial lighting, transforming the museum's galleries into sensory environments that challenge perception.
Milan's art scene is currently anchored by a series of high-profile exhibitions coinciding with the Miart fair, featuring a diverse range of international talent. Highlights include Joy Labinjo’s vibrant figurative paintings at Tiwani Contemporary, which explore Black domesticity and sisterhood, and Cao Fei’s multimedia investigation into the intersection of technology and global agriculture at Pirelli HangarBicocca. Other notable presentations include Anselm Kiefer’s monumental tributes to female alchemists and historical figures, marking a significant moment for contemporary art in the city.
The Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) is hosting "Proximities: Contemporary Art from the United Arab Emirates," a major survey featuring over 110 works by 47 artists. Co-curated by Maya El Khalil and Eunju Kim in collaboration with the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation (ADMAF), the exhibition eschews traditional chronological narratives in favor of a dense, non-linear exploration of Emirati identity. The show is organized into thematic chapters led by artist-curators, featuring works ranging from Shaikha Al Mazrou’s precarious sculptures to Raja’a Khalid’s olfactory installations.
British artist Es Devlin has launched a participatory public artwork titled "A National Portrait for the National Portrait Gallery," inviting all 69 million U.K. residents to upload selfies that are transformed into charcoal-and-chalk-style portraits using an AI model trained on Devlin’s drawings. The portraits appear on a framed screen in the museum’s History Makers gallery, and the project runs through October 27, accompanied by online and onsite drawing classes.
Artist Es Devlin has created a new installation at the National Portrait Gallery in London titled 'A National Portrait for the National Portrait Gallery,' made in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture Lab. The work invites people across the UK to upload selfies, which are transformed into charcoal-and-chalk-style portraits using an AI model trained on Devlin's own hand-drawn works. These portraits then appear on a constantly evolving projected carousel, blending and dissolving into one another. Devlin, known for designing visual worlds for Beyoncé, Adele, and the London Olympics closing ceremony, describes the piece as a non-verbal space for coexistence amid national division.
Cooper Jacoby's sculptures at the Whitney Biennial explore how AI corporations and other companies turn personal data into financial assets. His five works, displayed in a green-carpeted space he describes as "almost like a rat trap," include the 2026 piece *Estate (July 10, 2022)*—a folding screen with an intercom that uses AI trained on social media posts from deceased creatives to generate vocal outputs. Another series, *Mutual Life*, features eye-like sculptures with clock hands that spin based on the biological age of anonymous individuals in the artist's network. Jacoby's work highlights the lack of regulation around digital life and death, and the opaque nature of AI systems.
Researchers using AI have analyzed two Renaissance sketches by Hans Holbein from the Royal Collection, known as the Windsor sketch and the Unidentified Woman. The AI model, developed by Professor Hassan Ugail at the University of Bradford, compared the entire Holbein corpus and found that the Unidentified Woman may actually be Anne Boleyn, while the Windsor sketch—long thought to depict Boleyn—may instead show her mother, Elizabeth Howard. The study suggests the works were incorrectly inscribed in the 1700s, leading to centuries of misidentification.
Artist Natasha Tontey will unveil a major immersive installation titled "The Phantom Combatants and the Metabolism of Disobedient Organs" during the Venice Biennale at the Ateneo Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. Jointly commissioned by Berlin’s LAS Art Foundation and Helsinki’s Amos Rex, the work combines video, sound, light, and sculpture to reimagine the story of Len Karamoy, a combatant in the CIA-supported Permesta movement that fought the Indonesian government from 1957 to 1961 in North Sulawesi. Tontey, a Minahasan Indigenous artist, uses LiDAR, quantum ghost imaging, and other technologies to explore Indigenous identity, ecology, and the blurring of history and myth.
The 82nd edition of the Whitney Biennial has opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer. Featuring 56 artists from diverse global backgrounds, the exhibition explores themes of American empire, human-nonhuman relationships, and the impact of infrastructure. Early critical reactions highlight a pervasive sense of "horror" and bodily disturbance, with works utilizing AI, sculpture, and painting to address grief, war, and societal transformation.
The 2026 Whitney Biennial features a wave of artists grappling with the unsettling intersection of human identity and advanced technology. Works by Cooper Jacoby and Isabelle Frances McGuire highlight a shift away from the sleek, optimistic 'Y2K' tech aesthetic toward a 'techno-horror' that explores data extraction and biometric surveillance. Jacoby’s 'Estate' series uses AI-generated scripts derived from the social media data of deceased individuals, while McGuire’s sculptures utilize 3D medical scans to create distorted, ghostly figures that blur the line between the organic and the digital.
A Swiss artificial intelligence firm, Art Recognition, has claimed with high certainty that two versions of the painting 'Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata' (ca. 1428-32), held by the Royal Museums of Turin and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, are not by the hand of Northern Renaissance master Jan van Eyck. The company's CEO, Carina Popovici, stated the A.I. model determined the works were not authentic with 91% and 86% certainty, respectively, though the museums involved have not officially commented.
NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery has launched its first Gulf Quinquennial, titled "Between the Tides," featuring around 30 artists from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. The exhibition presents a coherent selection of videos, installations, paintings, and traditional record-keeping practices, aiming to deepen and complicate the cultural narrative of the Arabian Peninsula by highlighting its diversity, linguistic interactions, and migrant labor.
W. David Marx joins Artnet News senior editor Kate Brown on the podcast 'The Art Angle' to discuss his new book, *Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century*. The book argues that creativity across art, media, and popular culture has stagnated over the past 25 years, driven by commercialization, rapid technology shifts, and a preference for profit-driven formulas over experimentation. Marx identifies a 'conspicuous blank space where art and creativity used to be' and proposes five strategies to revive cultural inventiveness.
Yasha Grobman, an architect and researcher, has been appointed director general of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, ending a prolonged leadership crisis. He succeeds Suzanne Landau, who stepped down after serving as interim director since September 2023. Grobman, a former dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, has been publicly critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and has spoken at protests in Haifa opposing the war in Gaza. His appointment follows a discreet search by a board-appointed committee and comes as the museum faces financial strain, reduced hours, and a decline in international activity.
A new study published in *Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts* by French researcher Temenuzhka Dimova uses eye-tracking technology to examine how pointing fingers in Old Master paintings affect viewer attention. Conducted through the University of Vienna’s Laboratory for Cognitive Research in Art History (CReA), the study compared participants' eye movements when viewing original paintings—such as Theodor Rombouts's *The Card Players*—and digitally altered versions where the pointing gestures were removed. Results showed that viewers focused more on the faces of pointing figures and the narrative context, not just the target of the gesture, and that removing the finger fundamentally changed how the story was perceived.
Hong Kong will send two artists, Angel Hui and Kingsley Ng, to represent the special administrative region at the 2026 Venice Biennale, marking the first time a duo has been selected. The Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA) and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) are collaborating for the first time on the presentation, which will take place at the Campo della Tana as a collateral event. Hui, a gongbi ink painter born in 1991, and Ng, a media artist and associate professor born in 1980, will explore "the poetic rhythms of daily life" in dialogue with the Biennale's main exhibition theme, "In Minor Keys." The selection follows HKADC's decision in April to oust M+ museum as the exhibition's organizer, a role it had held since 2013, without citing a reason.