‘The Founding Gifts’ exhibit celebrates art museum’s beginnings

The South Dakota Art Museum has opened 'The Founding Gifts,' a summerlong exhibition running from March 29 to September 21, celebrating the people and collections that established the museum. The exhibit highlights three key contributors: artist Harvey Dunn, whose 1950 donation of homesteading-era paintings formed the museum's foundational collection; the South Dakota General Federation of Women’s Clubs, which advocated for a permanent art museum and donated its art collection in 1970; and Congressman Benjamin Reifel, the first Lakota person elected to U.S. Congress, who loaned his Plains art collection in 1977, founding the museum's Native American collection. A free public reception is planned for August 8.

Emerging artist John Singletary featured in Oolong Gallery’s ‘Sun Goin’ Down’

Oolong Gallery in La Jolla, California, is presenting 'Sun Goin’ Down,' the first solo exhibition of painter John Singletary, a 2025 UC San Diego MFA graduate. The show features a series of haunting, symbolic paintings that explore memory, myth, and themes of death, love, and fear through techniques like sgraffito and sanding. It runs through June 25, with a special Juneteenth event planned for June 19.

One of New York City’s oldest houses to open as its neighbourhood’s first museum

The Hendrick I. Lott House, one of New York City’s oldest surviving structures, is set to become the first museum in Brooklyn’s Marine Park neighborhood. Built in 1720 as a Dutch Colonial farmhouse and expanded in 1800, the house remained in the Lott family until 1989. After the city purchased it in 2002 and completed exterior renovations in 2013, plans are now underway to open its interior to the public for the first time, preserving its unique wallpaper and agricultural history.

Fleurs De Villes blooms on Mag Mile

Fleurs De Villes, a floral art exhibition featuring mannequins made with real flowers, has returned to the Magnificent Mile in Chicago for a spring weekend. The event is held at 900 N. Michigan Shops and this year's theme is inspired by "Downton Abbey," ahead of the upcoming film based on the TV series. Local florists from the city and suburbs created handmade floral displays, with demonstrations scheduled throughout the weekend. The exhibition is free and open to the public through Sunday.

World-renowned artist brings outdoor art exhibition to Anne Springs Close Greenway

The Anne Springs Close Greenway in Fort Mill, South Carolina, will host "Forest Forms," a traveling outdoor art exhibition by world-renowned artist Huelani Mei, from September 13, 2025, through January 11, 2026. The exhibition features eighteen large-scale powder-coated steel sculptures, including a fox family, flower stacks, and a snake archway, placed along a half-mile trail from the Steele Creek swinging bridge to Lake Haigler. Presented by Visit York County and included in the Charlotte International Arts Festival schedule, the show is free with Greenway membership or daily admission.

A modern Tower of Babel? Pope Leo XIV warns against artificial intelligence

Pope Leo XIV has issued his first encyclical, titled *Magnifica Humanitas*, warning that artificial intelligence poses a major threat to humanity and could lead to a modern Tower of Babel. In the 43,000-word letter, he calls for disarming AI, establishing robust legal frameworks, and regulating tech giants like Meta. He also references Picasso's *Guernica* (1937) as a prophetic work denouncing dehumanization, alongside Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the novel *Schindler's List*. Separately, the Vatican is expanding its contemporary art program, with a new space called Conciliazone 5 currently showing works by British artist George Rouy, and future exhibitions planned for Yan Pei-Ming and Vivian Suter.

A pop-up hotel format is born that focuses on culture: starting in an architecture in Arles, France (with photos by Carla Sozzani)

Nasce un format di hotel pop up che punta sulla cultura: si inizia in un’architettura di Arles in Francia (con le foto di Carla Sozzani)

Luca Pronzato, founder of the pop-up restaurant platform We Are Ona, is launching a new itinerant hospitality concept called Casa Ideale. The first edition will take place from July 1–10, 2026, at Villa Bank, a 1970s villa near Arles, France, designed by Emile Sala and protected as a Remarkable Contemporary Architecture by the French Ministry of Culture. Guests will stay in the villa and dine at a restaurant run by chef Gil Nogueira, while the space also hosts a photography exhibition titled "Prologo" curated by Maddalena Scarzella for Fondazione Sozzani, featuring over 60 works from Carla Sozzani's archive by artists such as Urs Lüthi and Helmut Newton, alongside design pieces from the gallery Downtown+ by Luna Laffanour.