Calling all photographers! Our fifth annual Booooooom Photo Awards are officially open for submissions. This year’s categories are Portrait, Nature, Street, Colour, and for the first time-ever, a special Student category. Our friends at Format are once again partnering with us to make it all happen. We’re thrilled to have an elite panel of judges joining us this year to help highlight the most outstanding work. Each category winner will receive a $1,000 USD cash prize, editorial and social coverage, a feature in our printed publication, and some goodies from some of our friends. Plus, we’re giving away three lifetime Format website subscriptions.
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STUDIO IN THE WOODS MARKS 20 YEARS OF HANDS-ON TIMBER LIVE-BUILDS
 
Marking the 20th anniversary of the architectural live-build summer school Studio in the Woods (SiTW), a new documentary short titled Crossing, Lookout, Horizon records the initiative’s 2026 session hosted at the Architectural Association’s (AA) Hooke Park campus in Dorset, UK. Founded two decades ago by Piers Taylor of Invisible Studio alongside architects Meredith Bowles, Kate Darby, Gianni Botsford, and Peter Clegg, with early mentorship from Ted Cullinan, the program functions as a hands-on pedagogical alternative to traditional studio-based design education. viewing completed projects in the forest
 
 
THREE STRUCTURES EXAMINE...

Across ancient Mesopotamia, lamassu figures assumed the form of a winged goddess. In the ancient Assyrian Empire, giant bulls or lions with human heads and wings represented the deities, which artisans often carved at a monumental scale to protect cities and palaces. For Albuquerque-based Esther Elia, who is of Assyrian and Irish descent, lamassu are anything but a relic of the distant past. Through sculpture, paintings, and textiles, the artist explores contemporary Assyrian experience through pattern, fashion, and autobiography. Her solo exhibition, Bazaar Ashuraya at Hecho a Mano, centers around a new collection of acrylic paintings, plus tile mosaics and functional objects. Elia delves into the theme of...

Fernando Calvillo was a leader and community representative in Oklahoma's art community (all images courtesy OVAC, unless otherwise noted)Fernando Calvillo, an esteemed artist and leader in Oklahoma City's arts community, died in a high-speed collision between two trains in the province of Toledo, Spain, on Wednesday, October 28. He was aboard with his husband, Lawrence Naff, who is expected to recover from serious injuries at a local hospital. The crash, which Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente attributed to computational failure and human oversight, claimed the lives of at least 68 other people and comes just nine months after another crash in southern Andalusia in Spain, which claimed the...

For its latest “Power” issue, New York Magazine commissioned Berlin-based artist Simon Denny to illustrate the article “So Few People, So Much Influence,” about 26 AI engineers, founders, and thinkers whose “influence on the AI landscape far outstrips their fame.” These include people like Logan Graham of Anthropic, whose job is to try and push AI models to do terrifying things like build a bioweapon or enact a cyberattack; Beth Barnes, the founder of METR, a nonprofit that tests AI models before they are released; and Brandan Foddy of Mercor, which trains AI models to take over more jobs and industries. The article, a collaboration with Transformer, a Substack newsletter about the power and...

The Baghdad Modern Art Group was established in 1951 by two of Iraq’s most influential artists, Jewad Selim (1919–1961) and Shakir Hassan Al Said (1925–2004), and grew to engage many of Iraq’s leading artists, architects, poets, and more. Together, they sought to develop a new art form, one that negotiated a time of globally inflected modernism from Baghdad, an Abbasid city (est. 762 CE) that traces its lineage to the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia. In All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group at NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, Dr. Nada Shabout brings together the artists from this circle, as well as those whom its work influenced, both at the time and in the following...

If someone had described Los Angeles youth culture in the late 1990s, they might have invoked towheaded surfers, Sunset Strip hair bands, Beverly Hills teens, and the graffiti-soaked clubs that harbored New Wave and punk. Thanks to Guadalupe Rosales, our view of that time is now much more expansive. Since 2015, the Los Angeles artist has collected the stories of the city’s Chicanx and Latinx youth — in particular, women and girls — via a pair of wildly popular Instagram pages, @veteranas_and_rucas and @map_pointz, which have become a collective archive of pre-internet adolescent life in the ’80s and ’90s. Big hair. Lined lips. Body-hugging tanks and baggy jeans. Not to mention the party flyers...

mari nagem questions humanity’s visions of the future
 
At New York’s CUE Art, Brazilian artist Mari Nagem draws a connection between humanity’s dreams of colonizing Mars and the ecosystems we are struggling to sustain on Earth. Her work explores a curious contradiction in our relationship with technology: we are developing increasingly sophisticated ways to survive on distant planets while overlooking the extraordinary systems of life that already exist around us.
 
In her show, The Tropics, The Moon, and Mars, Nagem imagines what such a future might look like. Saturated red light fills the gallery, illuminating sculptural motorized branches and small ceramic formations. The installation recalls an...

One of Yoshitomo Nara’s largest paintings is also one of his most subtle. Instead of glaring defiantly at the viewer, the child at the center of In the Milky Lake / Thinking One (2011) has her eyes closed and a somewhat serene expression on her face. Her body is half-submerged in a pale pool of water. On November 19, the monumental painting will be offered by Loïc Gouzer’s Fair Warning app with an estimate of $10 million to $15 million. Measuring 8.5 feet by 6 feet, it’s the largest Nara painting ever to appear at auction. The work has been in private hands for 14 years and will be exhibited in Chelsea at 534 West 22nd Street, which has been designed to resemble a Japanese temple, from November 6–19....

VENICE — The Indian Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale is to visual art what minor tones are to music: striking notes that invite contemplation and convey depth. Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home interprets the Biennale’s theme, “In Minor Keys,” through the rich diversity encompassed by India's name. The exhibition offers a polysemous reading of home in a country where time and space are measured on a vast scale, bringing together disparate experiences of place, memory, distance, and belonging.The exhibition represents all of India: from the sun-baked earth of the southern state of Tamil Nadu to the stepped architecture of Ladakh in the north, to houses at the foot of the Himalayas, and...

Thanks to an inventive “Wanted” campaign by the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans in France, aimed at tracking down hundreds of WWII-era looted artworks, one painting has just been found, the museum’s director told ARTnews. A 17th-century painting by Dutch artist Willem Cornelisz Duyster, titled Un Buveur (The Drinker) and stolen in 1940 from the Orléans museum, was located last month at an auction house in Switzerland and is on its way back home to the French museum, Le Journal de l’Art reported earlier. After being presented with the evidence of the theft, “the possessor of the work immediately agreed to restitute it at no cost,” said Olivia Voisin, the museum’s director. The painting is...

A federal judge sentenced the former chief operating officer of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta to one year in prison and one year of supervised release for stealing more than $600,000 from the museum. Brady Lum, 60, served as the High Museum’s COO from January 2019 until December 2025, when he resigned. He began siphoning money from the museum in September 2019, around nine months into the job, until November 2025, when it was discovered. Lum’s theft involved the purchase of “non-business items and services for himself, including expensive guitars and other music equipment, personal music lessons, and woodworking equipment, through direct supplier invoicing and the High Museum’s corporate credit...

The Art Newspaper reports that the Italian parliament is weighing a new law that would create a formal process for returning art and cultural artifacts that were stolen by Nazis and Italian authorities under Benito Mussolini during World War II. The proposal was introduced by a member of Brothers of Italy, the party headed by […]

Last month, Paul Ramírez Jonas invited the people of Toronto to sit down with a stranger in a public space, make a promise, swear on it, see it spelled out on a large-scale marquee, and then memorialize it in a one-of-a-kind contract they kept. One of hundreds of such vows was: “I promise to disagree better.” Ramírez Jonas’s participatory public artwork “Public Trust,” presented by The Bentway (where Anna Gallagher-Ross directs programming), was commissioned and first showcased by Now + There (founded by Kate Gilbert and later renamed the Boston Public Art Triennial) in 2016, months before Donald Trump was elected as president.“Public Trust” was the Now + There’s first project, a labor of...

Just one week after the Pace Gallery reported 35.5% losses, CEO Marc Glimcher has announced that the gallery is looking for new London outpost, as it put its Hanover Square location on the market in June. Pace published its 2024 accounts with Companies House, the British government’s business register, last week. The filing was ten […]

WARSAW, POLAND—Phys.org reports that fragments of a Celtic bronze helmet have been uncovered at Łysa Góra, a fortified settlement dated to the Early Iron Age in northeastern Poland. The site is strategically situated on the Orzyc River and close to an amber-rich region, which placed it in position to control the flow of amber and other goods to central Europe. The crushed helmet had been thrown into a pit with iron adzes and a scythe. Similar helmets have been recovered from graves belonging to the Celtic warrior elite in France and Austria. “The helmet is a symbol of power and direct evidence of long-distance contacts,” said Bartłomiej Kaczyńsky of the State Archaeological Museum in Warsaw. The...

A renovation project at the historic building—the original home of the Whitney Museum of American Art—has uncovered works by Robert E. Locher and Cecily Brown

New York’s Dia Art Foundation will co-present a two-part exhibition of work by the Indigenous Australian artist d harding to be split between Dia Chelsea and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney. The New York component will open in February, with the other part slated for March; both will run into August of next year. “A through line in harding’s practice is the concept of transfer—a consideration of how histories are carried through materials, techniques, and places, transporting ancestral knowledge into dialogue with the spaces in which their work is encountered,” Dia curator Jordan Carter said in a statement. “Presented in parallel at two institutions, bridging Australia and the...

With photos provided by Stephen ESPO and Matthew Kuborn, courtesy of ESPO Stephen Powers is a New York-based artist with a bold, straightforward style that combines minimalism, a carnival sideshow joie de vivre, and pristine design. Nothing about his career makes sense. He spurns the dealership model and operates an atelier-style shop in New York […]
The post The Handwritten World of Stephen ESPO Powers first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

SARAH NAGHAWI DEBUTS HYDROMECHANICALLY FORMED STEEL OBJECTS
 
Presented at Amman Design Week 2026, JAWF is an experimental design collection by Jordanian designer Sarah Naghawi that investigates the plastic deformation of stainless steel through hydromechanical forming. Marking the initial application of this industrial fabrication technique within Jordan’s design sector, the project manipulates sheet metal through the mechanics of positive and negative hydraulic pressure, testing the material limits of steel beyond conventional stamping or cold-rolling methods.
all images ©ASPIRE Ali Saadi Photography
 
 
HYDRAULIC PRESSURE REDISTRIBUTES STAINLESS-STEEL MEMBRANES
 
Derived from the Arabic word for an...

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ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO—Science reports that more than 200 teeth have been recovered from a Maya woman’s burial in southern Belize’s Bats’ub Cave by a team of researchers led by Keith Prufer of the University of New Mexico. When the woman was buried, her head had been removed and replaced with a ceramic bowl containing a jade bead. A similar scene was depicted on a bowl left in the grave. The burial took place between about A.D. 250 and 400, but radiocarbon dating shows that the first human tooth was left more than 100 years later. People continued to leave teeth in the cave for more than two hundred years. Genetic analysis of the teeth conducted by David Reich and Esther Brielle of Harvard University...

The Kennedy Center Honors, the marquee event of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, will celebrate a host of performers on December 7, even while the institution is at the center of legal and political fights. This year’s honorees are country star Barbara Mandrell, singer and onetime teen idol Paul Anka, actor […]

The organizers of the India Art Fair have named more than 120 participants in its eighteenth iteration, set to run February 4–7, 2027, at the NSIC Exhibition Grounds in New Delhi. Among the returning international galleries are Galleria Continua, neugerreimschneider, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Whitestone Gallery, and David Zwirner. India’s Nature Morte, whose founder, Peter Nagy, […]

GUNMA PREFECTURE, JAPAN—According to a Live Science report, the head and torso of a clay figurine thought to represent a female shaman, or miko, has been discovered in the moat at a fifth-century burial mound at the Nishikaminomiya archaeological site on the Japanese island of Honshu. The surviving pieces of this figurine measure about 16 inches long. Styled with a prominent nose and carefully molded fingers, the figurine was identified by its traditional Japanese topknot hairstyle, bracelets made of clay and red pigment, a red sash painted on the torso, and a rod-shaped implement in one hand. Similar figurines, called haniwa, have been found in other burial mounds, or kofun, which lend their name to the...

COUNTY WICKLOW, IRELAND—An excavation conducted ahead of construction on Threecastles Solar Farm in eastern Ireland uncovered a 9,000-year-old site and flint tools for cutting, sharpening, and scraping, RTÉ reports. “It’s a rare glimpse into the ritual and daily life of a small, nomadic community of people that had travelled up the rivers and the valleys and accessed the rich abundance of resources, including fish and hunting game,” said archaeologist Laurence Dunne. The tools were placed in a pit, he added. People returned to the site some 4,000 years later, around the time farming began in Ireland. In a nearby field, Dunne and his team also found remnants of an enclosure that may have been a...

From California to Oklahoma to Illinois, Black communities are saddling up and grasping the reins of a horse or ornery bull. A thriving culture that’s gained attention in recent years, these competitors form bonds in and out of the rodeo arena, where their animals kick up dust and barrel across the ring. Since 2015, photographer Ivan McClellan has been embedded within these communities across the U.S. His new book, Eight Seconds: Legacy in Motion, is an addendum to his earlier body of work with 91 new images that spotlight the people and places integral to Black rodeo culture. Dantey Eldridge, Oregon, 2025 Published by Damiani, the updated edition features Texan teenager Kortnee Solomon, who’s captivated...

Hedwig Fijen steps down from Manifesta after 33 years.

an unruly collection arrives in new york
 
Misha Kahn‘s latest exhibition, All Intensive Purposes, brings a radical collection of furniture and sculpture to Friedman Benda, marking ten years of collaboration with the gallery. A sofa resembles a pile of painted shapes, and a marble console seems to sag beneath the drapes of its own fabric-like surface.
 
The works reveal Kahn’s fascination with material experimentation and the unpredictable ways an idea can develop through the process of making. At the show’s opening, designboom spoke with the artist and designer about the thinking behind these unusual objects and his return to more tactile methods of working.
 
Throughout the New York gallery,...

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A custom sport coat is one of the most personal things a man can wear. It carries your proportions, your... Read More

Brady Lum, the chief operating officer for almost seven years, stole more than $600,000 from the Atlanta institution

Brady Lum, the former chief operating officer of Atlanta‘s High Museum of Art, has been sentenced to one year in federal prison for stealing more than $600,000 from the institution. He previously pleaded guilty to the charges in July. Before his sentencing, Lum paid full restitution to the museum and reimbursed $500,000 of its legal […]

The mummified remains of the priest Nekht were recently removed from public view at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

The curator Mary G. Morton tells us about her new publication that paints the Impressionist artist in a new light

For most of the world, Panama means a canal, a financial centre and a hub for flights and freight. Its... Read More

LABLANCA CONVERTS HILLSIDE GARAGE INTO APARTMENT IN TORRE BARÓ
 
Designed by architecture studio lablanca, Llerona is the adaptive reuse of a former garage into an annex guest apartment in the Torre Baró neighborhood of Barcelona. Situated on the slopes of the Collserola mountain range, an area defined by self-built domestic architecture and steep topography, the project adapts an irregular envelope comprising a main trapezoidal volume and an adjoining, elongated double-height volume.
all images ©Simone Marcolin
 
 
CONCRETE BLOCK PARTITIONS ORGANIZE SPLIT-VOLUME FLOOR PLAN
 
The interior distribution by lablanca architectural studio directly responds to two structural conditions embedded in the...

Through eloquent linear details and brushy, color-blocked backgrounds, Collins Obijiaku renders tender portraits in oil. Often directly meeting the viewer’s gaze, the striking figures inspired by individuals within the artist’s community command our attention. The artist harnesses a sense of timelessness, with a palette that swings from earthy to jewel-toned and subtle hints of architecture, nature, and art historical iconography that transcend specific eras. Raised in Nigeria’s Kaduna region, Obijiaku recently moved to Chicago, where he has grappled with the emotional resonance of distance and getting used to an entirely new place. “Seen through a sentimental lens, these settings lend the paintings an...

The author of a new book on the famous painting tells us why even she was mistaken about who it portrayed

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In Juneau, the world premiere of the Tlingit-language opera Ḵutulagaaw: The Tlingit-Russian Battles raises new questions about cultural ownership while singing a song all its own.

Artsy names 10 emerging artists to watch in 2027.

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Star Khani transforms Brighton’s architecture into an emotional map of migration, memory and belonging

Yes, you miss the champagne sparkle and lilt of the best French versions but look at what you gain by hearing these grizzly tales in ETA Hoffmann's own language.

Through abstract, prismatic acrylic paintings to garment-like sculptures and textile collages, Jeffrey Gibson explores questions of identity, lineage, and cultural translation. Working across media, the artist intricately beads monumental works and incorporates a wide range of fabrics and materials. Jeffrey Gibson: A Real Love Thing at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center delves into the cross-disciplinary breadth of the artist’s practice throughout the past decade. Fifteen works amplify his interest in pattern, queer iconography, and his Indigenous Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee heritage. Drawing on the early and continuing influence of music, the artist often integrates song lyrics into...

Adobe brick with dog paw print KÜTAHYA PROVINCE, TURKEY—La Brújula Verde reports that 4,000-year-old paw prints have been found in adobe brick at Tavşanlı Höyük, a settlement mound in western Anatolia that dates back some 8,000 years. The sun-baked bricks were part of a wall that collapsed during a fire in the Bronze Age. Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Turkey’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, said that the prints had been made by a dog. Erkan Fidan of Bilecik Şeyh Edebali University and his excavation team have also uncovered ceramics, adobe, bone, burnt wood, and flint at the site. To read about other ancient canine prints preserved in brick, go to “They’re Just Like Us.”
The post Paw Prints Found in...

An eye peers from a goblet. A disembodied finger creeps from beneath a curtain. A supine figure, lost in a dream, envisions an uncanny array of game and fruit. For GaHee Park, landscapes, figures, and still lifes merge into seamless, surreal tableaux. Her signature glassy-eyed female characters move through spaces where the boundary between reality and fantasy blurs. Park’s new solo exhibition, Soft Shell at Jessica Silverman, delves into a realm where protection and a sense of security are nebulous. Although she nods to domestic spaces and symbols of comfort and sustenance, such as bowls laden with fruit, there is always something… else. “Woman and Moth in Eclipse” (2026), oil on linen, 35 x 40 x 1...

Richard Lynn provides a comprehensive introduction to the surprisingly wide and unsurprisingly wild world of opera podcasts.

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Evan M. Cohen’s Website
Evan M. Cohen on Instagram

San Diego Opera's Rigoletto, starring a persuasive Michael Chioldi, veers traditional—without the mothballs in tow.

There are Bohèmes and Bohèmes, and it is almost a joke word these days, but the French show us how it is properly done.

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Ominous backrooms? Echoey abandoned spaces? nope. These are the carefully explored and brilliantly captured photographs of instruments by Charles Brooks. Symphonic music can be epic. Grandiose in scale. It sweeps and pans through an architecturally tuned performance space, connecting our brains with the shared resonance of sound. And simultaneously, it can be intimate, reverberating through […]
The post Charles Brooks’ Eerie Photographs of Musical Instruments first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

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Credit: Márcia Falcão I was invited to attend two of the opening days of Frieze London and, arriving in my home city, I was immediately reminded of its extraordinary energy, gathering pace around the nucleus of the Regent's Park venue. The art on display was more than equal to the occasion. A-listers and icons from across the wider cultural landscape, including film, music and fashion, mingled with professionals and enthusiasts from London’s eclectic art scene, all seemingly loving, living...

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By Lorraine Heitzman There is a meticulous elegance to everything Phyllis Green makes, a quality that is immediately apparent in her brilliant fifteen-year survey show at the Laband Art Gallery. Phyllis Green: Of My Own Making is a diverse yet cohesive exhibit, both imaginative and grounded in the textures of commonplace materials such as wood, clay, cloth, and metal. She masterfully applies her vision across multiple disciplines making sculptures that appear simple despite her extraordinary...

By Victoria Thomas Classical music is rarely the currency of activism. We generally turn to less patrician, more hard-edged forms to voice protest and dissent against fascism, tyranny, racial violence, and other sociopolitical ills. But SYZYGY, a new three-movement concerto composed by Courtney Bryan celebrating three visual artists — all women, all women of color — defies this expectation. Bryan's 18-minute composition makes its world premiere on The American Concerto, Volume One, performed...