The Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid has closed its garden for maintenance and temporarily closed its two satellite buildings, the Glass Palace and Velázquez Palace in El Retiro Park, for renovation. The main museum remains open, showcasing its renowned collection of modern and contemporary art, including Picasso's Guernica and works by Dalí, Miró, and Bourgeois.
A comprehensive list of gallery exhibitions opening and closing in New York City for the week of February 9-15, 2026, has been published. The schedule includes openings at major galleries like Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, and Matthew Marks, featuring artists such as Michael Heizer, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Anish Kapoor, alongside shows at smaller spaces. The list also notes the final weekend to see exhibitions at venues including Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and Alexander Gray Associates.
LACMA has announced that its David Geffen Galleries, the centerpiece of a two-decade campus transformation, will open to the public on April 19, 2025, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and priority member access, followed by general admission starting May 4. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, the $720-million Brutalist building spans Wilshire Boulevard and houses 110,000 square feet of exhibition space across 90 galleries, organized thematically rather than by medium or chronology. The inaugural installation will use global bodies of water as an organizing framework, featuring works such as Georges de La Tour's "The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame," Vincent van Gogh's "Tarascon Stagecoach," and Henri Matisse's "La Gerbe." The project was funded largely by private donors, including a record $150-million donation from David Geffen, with $125 million from L.A. County.
Mexico City's Museo Experimental El Eco is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its reopening with a special exhibition and a commissioned performance. The museum, a landmark of 1950s architecture designed by artist Mathias Goeritz, is also in the final stages of obtaining national heritage status, which would ensure its long-term preservation.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has announced the opening schedule for its long-awaited David Geffen Galleries, a new single-building replacement for its eastern campus. A ribbon-cutting ceremony on April 19, 2026, will kick off two weeks of previews for members and donors, with general public access beginning on May 4. The building, designed by architect Peter Zumthor, will feature a mix of returning collection highlights, recent acquisitions, and new commissions.
Zona Maco, Latin America's largest art and design fair, has launched its 22nd edition in Mexico City as the anchor of the city's 2026 Art Week. The fair features over 220 galleries from 26 countries, blending contemporary and modern art, design, and photography under the artistic direction of Direlia Lazo.
The Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers-New Brunswick presents *Andy Warhol: On Repeat*, an exhibition featuring nearly 70 black-and-white photographs and color Polaroids from its collection—some shown for the first time—alongside a suite of films on loan from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Organized by chief curator Jeremiah William McCarthy, the show runs from February 11 to July 31, 2026, in the Voorhees Gallery, and examines repetition and duration as central forces in Warhol’s art, with large-scale projections, vertical Polaroid towers, and bean bags encouraging visitors to linger.
Beirut-born artist and composer Tarek Atoui has been selected to create the next Hyundai Commission in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, running from 13 October 2026 to 11 April 2027. Known for his innovative musical performances with intricately engineered instruments, Atoui will transform the vast space into a multisensory environment exploring sound and vibration. His previous works include performances at Tate Modern's South Tank in 2016 and a presentation at the 2019 Venice Biennale. The announcement comes amid reports that Tate chair Roland Rudd floated offering naming rights to the Turbine Hall for £50m, though a Tate spokesperson called that hypothetical.
The Denver Art Museum (DAM) has announced its winter and spring 2025 programming, including exhibitions, events, and activities from February through April. Highlights include the closing exhibitions "Pissarro's Impressionism" (final day February 8) and "A Constant Sky" by Andrea Carlson (through February 16), the opening of photography show "What We’ve Been Up To: People" on February 8, fashion exhibition "Conversation Pieces: Stories from the Fashion Archives" on February 15, and "Space Is the Place: Art & Design in the Atomic Age" and "'Round the Clock: 24 Hours of Colorado in Prints" on March 1. Special events include Slam Nuba's 5th Annual Poetry Slam on February 21, lectures by Didier William and Zora J. Murff in March, and the major exhibition "The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art" opening April 19. The museum also offers free general admission for members and visitors 18 and under.
The Saint Louis Art Museum announced that a portion of the landmark exhibition "Anselm Kiefer: Becoming the Sea" will remain on display in its Sculpture Hall through Spring 2027. The installation features five monumental, three-story paintings—including "Missouri, Mississippi," "Lumpeguin, Cigwe, Animiki," and "Am Rhein"—that were among the most popular pieces of the exhibition, which drew around 150,000 visitors during its 14-week run. The extension was prompted by strong public turnout and the artist's personal connection to the space.
The 12th edition of Fog Design+Art in San Francisco opened with a record-breaking preview gala on January 21, drawing over 2,700 guests. The fair features 65 presentations from local and international dealers, with standout booths including Jessica Silverman's blue-hued works and Hauser & Wirth's $1m sale of Jack Whitten's 'Solar Space' (1971). Large-scale paintings dominate, alongside a notable abundance of botanical imagery, while geometric abstractions outnumber representational works. The fair's director, Sydney Blumenkranz, noted a particularly buoyant mood and strong attendance from tech industry leaders.
The San Diego Museum of Art (SDMA) is celebrating its 100th anniversary with a series of special exhibitions and a public birthday party. The centennial exhibition "SDMA 100 Years" opens January 24, 2026, featuring photographs, memorabilia, and film footage of key moments in the museum's history. Other exhibitions include "Local Visions: Reimagining the Façade" (through July 26), "Cafes and Cabarets: The Spectacular Art of Toulouse-Lautrec" (April 4–September 20), and "Forging a Legacy: 15 Years of Landmark Acquisitions" (May 16–September 7). The museum will offer free admission and extended hours on February 28 for its birthday fest with live music, art-making, and cake tasting.
The Memphis Art Museum, designed by Herzog & de Meuron in collaboration with archimania and OLIN, is taking shape ahead of its December 2026 opening. The 11,475-square-meter building along the Mississippi River features a glass facade, a public plaza shared with the historic Cossitt Library, a shaded courtyard, flexible gallery spaces, and a rooftop sculpture garden. The museum is among the first major US museums to use laminated timber construction. Updated renderings and construction images by Houston Cofield have been released, along with details of a curatorial shift that will organize the collection into 18 exhibitions focused on lived experience rather than traditional art historical chronologies.
Amoako Boafo's third solo exhibition with Roberts Projects, titled 'I Bring Home with Me,' opens January 17 in Los Angeles. The show recreates the artist's Accra, Ghana studio within the gallery through an architectural collaboration with designer Glenn DeRoche, featuring vibrant wallpaper, grid windows, and light-filled passages. Boafo presents new portraits using his signature fingertip painting technique, integrated into the studio structure and a folding wooden sculpture inspired by the Adinkra symbol nkyinkyim.
The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICA SF) has abandoned plans for a permanent physical space, instead adopting a nomadic model focused on site-specific exhibitions. Its first project under this new approach launches during San Francisco Art Week at the Transamerica Pyramid Center, featuring installations by artists Lily Kwong and Tara Donovan. Kwong's EARTHSEED DOME is a 3D-printed soil structure embedded with native seeds that will bloom in the adjacent redwood grove, while Donovan's Stratagem series uses recycled CDs to create light-scattering columns inside the building's Annex Gallery.
The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum has announced that its newly renovated Flight and the Arts Center will open on July 1, 2026, with two inaugural exhibitions: “The Ascent of Rauschenberg: Reinventing the Art of Flight” and “The Art of Air and Space: Interpretations of Flight.” The Rauschenberg exhibition, timed to the artist’s centennial, will present 30 of his artworks related to flight, including the monumental lithograph “Sky Garden (Stoned Moon)” (1969), and will run for one year. The exhibition is curated by Carolyn Russo and features loans from the Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has announced plans to build a €60 million Modern sculpture garden, called the Don Quixote Pavilion and Garden, on a nearby triangular plot of land. The project is funded by an exceptional donation and long-term art loans from the Don Quixote Foundation, established by billionaire businessman Rolly van Rappard. The garden will feature three pavilions designed by Foster + Partners, with landscaping by Piet Blanckaert, and will display sculptures by Alberto Giacometti, Jean Arp, and Henry Moore. The museum aims to open the space free of charge this autumn, but planning permission has not yet been granted, and the project includes the restoration of three listed buildings.
The New Museum on Manhattan's Lower East Side will reopen to the public on March 21, 2025, after a two-year closure for an $82 million expansion designed by OMA's Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas with executive architect Cooper Robertson. The expansion adds 61,930 square feet—including 9,600 square feet of gallery space, education facilities, artists' studios, and event spaces—bringing the total footprint to 119,600 square feet. The new building will be named after the late philanthropist and curator Toby Devan Lewis. The reopening will feature site-specific commissions by Tschabalala Self, Sarah Lucas, and Klára Hosnedlová, and a building-wide thematic exhibition, 'New Humans: Memories of the Future,' with works by over 200 modern and contemporary artists.
Five major art openings are taking place in London this week, headlined by museum-scale gallery shows featuring Joseph Beuys, Nan Goldin, and Richard Avedon. Thaddaeus Ropac presents 'Bathtub for a Heroine,' the first UK exhibition focusing on Beuys' monumental sculpture, while Gagosian shows all 126 photographs from Goldin's 'The Ballad of Sexual Dependency' and Avedon's 'In the American West' series. The weekend culminates with Condo London, a city-wide collaborative exhibition linking 50 galleries across 23 spaces.
A roundup of major U.S. museum openings and expansions scheduled for 2026 highlights several high-profile projects across the country. These include the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, the Hip Hop Museum in New York City, and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. Additionally, the Edward W. Kane & Martha J. Wallace Center for Black History opens in Newport, Rhode Island, in June; the San Mateo County History Museum in Redwood City, California, completes a $23.5 million expansion in the fall; and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland finishes a $175 million expansion adding 50,000 square feet.
The Trump administration has given the Smithsonian Institution a deadline of January 13 to turn over materials related to a review of programming at eight of its museums, as outlined in a December 18 letter from White House officials Vince Haley and Russell Vought. The review stems from a March 2025 executive order titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," which accused the Smithsonian of promoting a "divisive, race-centered ideology." Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch noted that some requested materials are not readily available and will require significant effort to compile, while the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors have expressed confidence in the Smithsonian's commitment to professional standards.
The Georgia Museum of Art has opened a new exhibition titled "We, Too, Are Made of Wonders," on view from January 24 to June 28, 2026. Inspired by Ada Limón's poem "In Praise of Mystery," the show brings together poetry, astronomy, science, and visual art to explore humanity's fascination with the cosmos. It features historic, modern, and contemporary works from the museum's permanent collection, including pieces by Dorothy Hood, Mildred Thompson, Lamar Dodd, Robert McCall, and others. Poems guide visitors through themes of wonder, science, mythology, and space exploration, with several works on view for the first time.
The article previews eight major art-venue openings expected in 2026, including the long-awaited Guggenheim Abu Dhabi on Saadiyat Island, Cardiff's first contemporary art museum (AMOCA), the V&A East Museum in London, the revived Palais de Danse studio of Barbara Hepworth in St Ives, and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. It also notes the uncertain status of the Museum of West African Art in Benin City amid political disputes. These projects range from vast new museums and subterranean expansions to restored artist studios, many delayed by funding, planning, or construction challenges.
Erik Bulatov, the Soviet-born artist known for overlaying Communist Party slogans onto luminous landscapes, died in Paris on 9 November. A key figure in the underground art movement of the 1970s and 80s, he was part of the Sretensky Group alongside Ilya Kabakov and others, navigating state censorship by illustrating children's books. His most famous work, *Glory to the CPSU* (1975), sold for $2.1m in 2008, and in 2025 he was ranked the most expensive living Russian artist by The Art Newspaper Russia.
A trio of major museum openings is expected in Los Angeles in 2026: the expansion of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) with its new David Geffen Galleries designed by Peter Zumthor opening in April; the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, founded by filmmaker George Lucas and designed by Ma Yansong, opening on 22 September; and the digital artist Refik Anadol's Dataland, the first museum devoted to AI-generated art, opening in spring. Additionally, the Victoria and Albert Museum opens V&A East in London on 18 April, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, opens an expansion on 6 June.
The Smithsonian Institution has announced 19 new exhibitions opening across its museums in 2026, including shows at the African American History and Culture Museum, African Art Museum, Air and Space Museum, American Art Museum, American History Museum, and Asian Art Museum. Highlights include Nick Cave's immersive installation "Mammoth" at the American Art Museum, a photography survey of the U.S. Bicentennial, and a major reopening of the Air and Space Museum's final seven galleries after eight years of renovations. Several exhibitions tie into the nation's 250th anniversary, while others explore LGBTQ+ African art, HBCU collections, salsa music history, and contemporary water-themed paintings by Hiroshi Senju and Bingyi.
Late December offers a rare slowdown in New York's commercial art world, with most galleries closing around December 20, but museums remaining open. This creates an opportunity for visitors to spend quality time with exhibitions that often get lost in the city's relentless cultural calendar. The article highlights ten must-see museum shows in New York City, including "Wifredo Lam: When I Don't Sleep, I Dream" at MoMA—the first major U.S. survey of the Cuban artist's surreal, decolonial paintings—and "Anish Kapoor: Early Works" at the Jewish Museum, showcasing his pigment sculptures and Vantablack works.
The global art market continued to contract in 2025, with prominent galleries such as Blum, Clearing, Sperone Westwater, Tilton, Kasmin, TJ Boulting, Project Native Informant, Nir Altman, and Altman Siegel closing due to challenging macroeconomic conditions. However, a rebound emerged at the top end by autumn, driven by Sotheby's white-glove sale of the Pauline Karpidas collection, strong VVIP sales at Art Basel Paris, and New York's November auctions, where Klimt's *Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer* (1914-16) sold for $236.3 million and Frida Kahlo's *El Sueño (la cama)* (1940) for $54.7 million. Christie's and Sotheby's reported increased sales from 2024, with second-half auctions up 26% year-on-year, though recovery remains uneven and concentrated in classic secondary-market tastes.
Dib Bangkok, a long-anticipated contemporary art museum, opens this weekend in a former steel warehouse near Bangkok's port area. Founded from the vision of the late collector Petch Osathanugrah and realized by his son Purat 'Chang' Osathanugrah, the museum houses over 1,000 works amassed over 40 years, including pieces by James Turrell, Alicja Kwade, Pinaree Sanpitak, and Subodh Gupta. Its opening exhibition, (In)visible Presence, features 81 works by 40 international and Thai artists, positioning the museum as a major new cultural institution in Asia.
The Argentine real-estate developer and collector Eduardo F. Costantini has acquired the entire Daros Latinamerica Collection, adding 1,233 works by 117 artists to his Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (Malba). Previously housed in Zurich, the collection includes key pieces by artists such as Ana Mendieta, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, and Cildo Meireles. The acquisition brings 75 new artists to Malba's holdings, including Doris Salcedo and Jesús Rafael Soto, and strengthens existing ones like Guillermo Kuitca and León Ferrari. Plans for a museum expansion to accommodate the works are already underway.