A previously obscure double-sided drawing by Vincent van Gogh, created in the final weeks of his life, will be auctioned by Christie's in Paris. The sheet features a study of female pea pickers on one side and a landscape on the other, complete with color notations indicating Van Gogh's intention to develop them into paintings. The work has been authenticated by the Van Gogh Museum and carries an estimate of €100,000-€150,000.
A heated political dispute has emerged between the Spanish central government and the Basque regional government over a proposed loan of Pablo Picasso’s 'Guernica' to the Guggenheim Bilbao. The Basque government requested the masterpiece for a 2027 exhibition marking the 90th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica, but the Reina Sofia Museum and Spain’s Ministry of Culture have blocked the move. Officials cite a recent technical report warning that the painting’s massive scale and fragile condition make it too vulnerable to survive the vibrations of transport.
The third edition of Abidjan Art Week recently concluded in Côte d’Ivoire, featuring extended gallery hours, bus tours, and exhibitions across diverse neighborhoods from the administrative Plateau district to the working-class area of Abobo. The event saw a significant expansion this year, with the number of participating galleries more than doubling and featuring artists from across the continent, including Cameroon, Mali, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
A diplomatic dispute has emerged between Japan and New Zealand over a proposed bronze statue in Auckland commemorating 'comfort women' forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during WWII. Japan’s ambassador warned that the memorial, donated by the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance, could damage international relations, while the Japanese embassy labeled the project part of an 'anti-Japan' movement.
Galleries and museums in Gulf states like the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are reopening and projecting normalcy despite the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, which has entered its fourth week. Major events like Art Dubai have been postponed, and institutions like the Sharjah Art Foundation have delayed gatherings, but many cultural venues are operating with adjusted formats or by appointment.
Miart, Milan's international modern and contemporary art fair, is launching its 30th-anniversary edition in a new, larger venue, the Allianz MiCo South Wing. The 2026 edition, themed "New Directions: Miart, but different," will host 160 galleries from 24 countries across three levels, featuring sections like Emergent for new voices, Established for historical dialogue, and a special film project called Movements.
The Palm Springs Art Museum has unveiled "A Queer Arcana," an ambitious exhibition exploring the intersection of LGBTQ+ culture, occultism, and esoteric spirituality. Spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, the show features a diverse array of media—including a major four-banner commission by the collective Hilma’s Ghost—and is organized into thematic sections such as Tarot, Sex Magick, and healing. The project emerged from the museum’s Q+Art initiative, a unique program dedicated to queer art histories within a general art museum context.
A small marble fragment from the Parthenon has been recovered from the wreck of the Mentor, a ship owned by Lord Elgin that sank in 1802 while transporting sculptures from the Acropolis to Britain. The fragment, discovered off the Greek island of Kythira by the Greek Ministry of Culture's underwater antiquities unit, is a decorative gutta likely from the temple's entablature or roof edge.
A heated controversy has erupted in Mexico following the decision to move a massive trove of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera artworks to Spain for a long-term loan. Protesters and cultural advocates are challenging the relocation of the Dolores Olmedo Museum collection, which includes some of Kahlo’s most iconic paintings, to a new private museum in Madrid. In response to the backlash, Mexican officials have issued public assurances that the collection remains national heritage and is legally required to return to Mexico by 2028.
The feminist art collective Hilma’s Ghost, founded by artists Dannielle Tegeder and Sharmistha Ray, is reclaiming the role of alternative spiritualities and the occult within art history. Sparked by the 2018 Hilma af Klint retrospective at the Guggenheim, the collective emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic as a research-based project that bridges artmaking with esoteric practices like tarot, witchcraft, and neo-tantric cosmologies. Through workshops and collaborative paintings, the duo explores how women and queer artists have historically been erased from the canon due to their unconventional, mystical methods.
Miles Davis, born in 1926 in Illinois, rose from a middle-class background to become a transformative figure in jazz. He left formal studies at Juilliard to play with Charlie Parker, but soon forged his own iconic sound characterized by intimate tone and phrasing, most famously on the seminal *Birth of the Cool* sessions. His career was defined by constant reinvention, pioneering multiple major movements from cool jazz and modal recording to jazz fusion, earning him the nickname "the Picasso of Jazz" from Duke Ellington.
The Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster is presenting "Voices of Many Voices," a significant exhibition dedicated to the pioneering work of Julia Heyward. The show highlights Heyward’s multidisciplinary practice, which emerged from the 1970s New York performance scene, blending vocal experimentation, monologues, and complex multimedia orchestrations. By juxtaposing music, image, and language, the exhibition captures the artist's unique ability to navigate emotional extremes and the "simultaneity of opposites."
Historic Architecture Emerges from Stone in Matthew Simmonds Ethereal Sculptures
Sculptor Matthew Simmonds meticulously carves miniature, hyper-realistic architectural interiors—including gothic cathedral arches, vaulted ceilings, and stairwells—directly into hunks of Carrara marble and limestone. His recent works, often based on real sites like Bamberg Cathedral or Tuscan cities, reveal ornate, smooth interiors that contrast with the stone's raw exterior, and he is currently using a quieter period to experiment with how light and space within the sculptures can express a sacred quality.
The New Museum's latest exhibition explores the evolving definition of humanity through the lens of technological advancement and ancestral wisdom. The show juxtaposes the anxieties of modern machine labor—exemplified by Simon Denny’s Amazon worker cage—with Indigenous epistemologies and animist traditions that offer alternative ways of inhabiting the world. By featuring artists like Jaider Esbell and Santiago Yahuarcani, the exhibition highlights how hybridity and relationality can resist the rigid hierarchies of Western modernity.
Activists have launched a wheatpasting campaign across New York City calling for a boycott of the 2026 Met Gala. The protest targets the event's lead sponsors and honorary co-chairs, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, highlighting Amazon's alleged exploitation of warehouse labor and its technological support for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The posters, designed by the activist group Everyone Hates Elon, feature provocative imagery such as urine-filled water bottles and tear gas canisters to symbolize the human cost of Amazon's business practices.
Artist Joe Moss presents his installation 'Automated Fantasy Procedure' at Matt's Gallery in London. The work features a squadron of choreographed drones, two-channel videos with actors portraying figures like a Caspar David Friedrich-inspired wanderer, and a Roman-style mosaic, all experienced in scheduled ten-minute replays designed to mimic the overwhelming sensation of scrolling through a smartphone.
Clémentine Bruno’s artistic practice explores the tension between presence and absence, treating the canvas as a site of temporal layers rather than a flat surface for representation. Her work emphasizes the preparatory stages of painting—the laying of gesso and the construction of supports—allowing images to emerge reluctantly through processes of sanding, veiling, and partial erasure. Recent exhibitions, such as "Educational Complex" at Tonus and "Vision of Fading" at Mendes Wood DM, highlight her interest in how institutional structures and memory maps dictate what is retained and what is forgotten.
Anzia Yezierska, a Polish-Jewish immigrant who arrived in New York in 1890, defied traditional gender expectations to become a leading literary voice of the 1920s. Dubbed the 'Queen of the Ghetto,' she documented the raw struggles of immigrant women on the Lower East Side using a unique 'immigrant English' style that captured Yiddish idioms. After escaping a restrictive marriage and pursuing an education at Columbia University, she channeled her personal frustrations into stories of poverty, ambition, and the psychological toll of assimilation.
Italian Arte Povera pioneer Michelangelo Pistoletto has launched a global public art project titled "Three Mirrors," broadcasting digital works across major cities including London, Los Angeles, Seoul, and Milan. Organized by the digital art platform Circa, the series features three filmed performances of the artist drawing on mirrors, illustrating his "Third Paradise" philosophy. The works appear daily at 20:26 local time on prominent advertising screens, transforming commercial spaces into sites for artistic reflection.
A new memoir by Fred Brathwaite, known as Fab 5 Freddy, chronicles his life as a pivotal figure connecting the emerging hip-hop and graffiti scenes of 1970s and 80s Brooklyn with the downtown Manhattan art world. The book, "Everybody's Fly: A Life of Art, Music, and Changing the Culture," serves as an all-access pass to a transformative era, featuring encounters with icons like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and Debbie Harry.
A traveling exhibition featuring high-definition, full-scale replicas of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes is opening for an indefinite run at the Westfield Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, New Jersey. The show, "Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition," presents all 34 ceiling and altar masterpieces using advanced printing techniques, allowing visitors to view the works up close without the crowds and time constraints of the Vatican.
The Gallery at Hotel Willa and the Encore Gallery at the Taos Center for the Arts have emerged as vital "satellite" exhibition spaces in Taos, New Mexico. Managed by the nonprofit Paseo Project under Executive Director Matt Thomas, the Gallery at Hotel Willa has transformed 2,000 square feet of hospitality space into a hub for local talent, featuring high-profile fashion installations by Josh Tafoya and upcoming ecological exhibitions like "Disturbance." Meanwhile, the Encore Gallery leverages the high foot traffic of the Taos Center for the Arts to provide local artists with significant community exposure alongside film and theatrical programming.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has unveiled a monumental Tiffany Studios window, "Mountain Landscape (Root Memorial Window)," which was previously housed in a San Antonio church. The 1917 stained-glass masterpiece, designed by Agnes Northrup, had been roped off for a decade due to insurance liabilities before the church sought a public institution to ensure its preservation and display. Following a meticulous conservation process, the nine-foot-tall window is now a centerpiece of the museum’s Visions of America Galleries.
Aicon Art in New York has opened its first exhibition dedicated entirely to Indian miniature painting, titled "Courtly Visions: Indian Miniature Painting." The show features a breadth of works created between roughly 1630 and the early 19th century, showcasing the intricate detail and narrative scenes characteristic of the genre. It aims to highlight the diverse styles and themes that emerged from various royal courts across the Indian subcontinent.
Three previously unknown drawings by Joan Miró have been discovered among the possessions of his friend, the artist and designer Edmond Vernassa. The works include a 1972 promotional drawing for Mallorca and two large-scale designs for interior balcony railings, created for the influential art dealers Aimé and Marguerite Maeght. The drawings are now set for auction in Antibes with estimates reaching up to €400,000 each, following a public showcase during Paris Drawing Week.
The St. Louis-based triennial Counterpublic has unveiled its full artist list for the 2026 edition, titled 'Coyote Time.' Running from September 12 to December 12, the exhibition features 47 artists, duos, and collectives, including prominent names like Glenn Ligon, Nicholas Galanin, and Rirkrit Tirivanija. Curated by a diverse team including Stefanie Hessler and Wanda Nanibush, the triennial will utilize site-responsive practices and emergent technologies to explore themes of climate, immigration, and education.
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in SoHo has emerged as a vital hub for New York’s downtown performance scene through its intergenerational exhibition, "Sacred and Profane." Featuring a collaborative residency between poet Pamela Sneed and performance artist Carlos Martiel, the programming centers on themes of Black maternal grief, queer identity, and the exhumation of suppressed histories. Recent performances included Martiel’s "No Resurrection," a ritualistic piece involving his mother and a mound of earth, and Sneed’s readings that address the collective trauma and "urgent care" status of the LGBTQ+ community.
The Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum in Gqeberha is facing a catastrophic institutional collapse due to years of municipal neglect and a 64% staff vacancy rate. A recent report reveals that the museum’s priceless collection—which includes works by George Pemba, Gladys Mgudlandlu, and LS Lowry—is being threatened by leaking roofs, spreading mold, and failing fire and security systems. While the galleries have been closed to the public for over a year, the facility currently lacks a qualified conservator to address the mounting damage to its historical and contemporary holdings.
The Surrey Art Gallery is launching "In the Shadow of the Pavilions: Expo 86 and Contemporary Art," a multidisciplinary exhibition running from April 18 to June 7. Curated by Jordan Strom, the show features archival works and documentation from over 40 artists created between 1984 and 1988. It brings together official commissions from the world’s fair alongside unofficial, parallel art initiatives that emerged during Vancouver’s Centennial celebrations, covering media ranging from kinetic sculpture to performance art.
A View From the Easel
Artist Lusmerlin, who works between studios in Maryland and Philadelphia, describes a creative process that begins with physical and mental alignment through activities like stretching and singing before painting. Their flexible studio spaces, which open onto a garden, directly influence ambitious projects, including a 28-foot painting titled "The Big Rip" that investigates the theoretical collapse of the universe.