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Cooper Hewitt’s tiny Staircase Masterpieces
 
In 2006, Cooper Hewitt put a collection of staircases on display that no one could climb. The exhibition was called Made to Scale: Staircase Masterpieces, The Eugene & Clare Thaw Gift, and it consisted of a collection of miniature model staircases, finely crafted from wood and metal, from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Looking at these tiny, swirling helixes and delicate balustrades, there’s a certain artisanship that makes them more than utilitarian tests of interior architecture.
spiral staircase model in English style, late 19th century | all images gift of Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw
 
 
The Eugene & Clare Thaw Gift to the institution
 
The...

A range of politicians and public figures have criticized the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for its forthcoming controversial John Galliano show, including dealer Arne Glimcher, the founder of Pace Gallery, one of the biggest such entreprises in the world. A New York Times report published on Friday revealed that the Met has privately faced criticism over the exhibition for Galliano, a fashion designer who was convicted of a hate crime in France in 2011 for antisemitic comments. He later apologized for these comments and went to rehab. He returned to the industry as creative director of Maison Margiela, a role he held from 2014 to 2024. The Galliano show is poised to be the Costume Institute’s big...

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Pure dementia. Magda Olivero in the finale to Fedora.

ICON tests the elasticity of home through large-scale 3D printing
 
Across central Texas, the same ridged concrete wall now belongs to houses with remarkably different ideas of who they are for. It curves through House Zero, an expansive Austin residence designed with Lake Flato around the proportions of a mid-century ranch house.
 
A few miles away, similar walls — 3D-printed by ICON — repeat across 100 suburban homes at Wolf Ranch. At Community First! Village, they enclose compact permanent homes for people who have experienced chronic homelessness. Further west in Marfa, the printing process is shaping domes and vaulted guest rooms for a new iteration of El Cosmico. Each carries the visible trace of...

color, geometry, and modularity form Charlie Firth’s table lamps
 
Based in South West Wales, product and furniture designer Charlie Firth develops an evolving design language through color, modularity, and digital fabrication. His ongoing series of 3D printed table lamps combines functional lighting with sculptural forms influenced by the Memphis movement, translating its geometric shapes, patterns, and saturated colors into objects for contemporary interiors.
 
Firth’s process begins with two-dimensional drawings in which shapes and patterns are layered and collaged. He collects block forms and graphic motifs from his surroundings in sketchbooks, gradually combining them into compositions. These...

The foundation established by Robert Indiana to preserve his legacy is selling the artist’s longtime home on the Maine island of Vinalhaven, despite instructions in his will that the property be transformed into an art space open to the public. The Star of Hope Foundation, as the foundation is called, listed this week Indiana’s former home, a rambling 19th-century Odd Fellows lodge known as the Star of Hope, for $1.4 million, according to the New York Times. A second building Indiana owned, a few doors away, is being offered for $210,000.  Indiana, best known for his “LOVE” series, with its iconic tilted O, moved to Vinalhaven in 1978 and spent the next 40 years living in the Star of Hope, a local...

The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation denied the use of a 1981 portrait by the artist of notorious New York lawyer Roy M. Cohn for the cover of a forthcoming biography, titled American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn’s Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump, because of its negative affiliation with the sitting US president, according to the New York Times. The portrait in question, simply titled Roy Cohn, captures the lawyer’s striking outward stare and scar-split nose head on, surrounded by a black backdrop, a signature of Mapplethorpe’s images during the final decade of his life. At the time it was made, Cohn was the subject of an interview for an issue of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. Writer and book...

THE SKY PROMISED NOTHING exhibition explores human hope
 
Based in Guadalajara, Mexico, artist Ricardo Luevanos presents The Sky Promised Nothing, his first solo exhibition in Asia, at Diesel Art Gallery in Tokyo from July 25th to September 23rd, 2026. Working across digital drawing, mixed media, painting, sculpture, and installation, Luevanos creates poetic visual narratives that explore longing, nostalgia, hope, and the enduring human desire to transcend perceived limitations. His work has been presented in solo museum exhibitions in Mexico and has expanded into the country’s broader cultural landscape through projects including official artwork for international film festivals.
all images courtesy of...

The Museo de Arte Colonial in Antigua closed abruptly last December, and its collection of 287 works has been in limbo ever since

The Chinese ambassador to South Korea has ordered China’s artists to withdraw from the 16th Gwangju Biennale, which opens September 5, in protest of the Gwangju Biennial Foundation allowing Taiwanese exhibitors to participate under the name “Taiwan,” South Korean media reported today.  In a meeting with Gwangju Mayor Min Hyung-bae at Gwangju City Hall yesterday, Ambassador Dai Bing expressed his “regret and concern” over the decision to restore the name “Taiwan Pavilion” at the request of Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, the Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) reported.  Speaking on behalf of the Chinese Embassy, Dai then demanded Chinese curators and  installation staff to halt their...

Two municipal employees in the Dutch city of Rotterdam have been dismissed following an investigation into alleged corruption involving construction contracts. They include work connected to asbestos removal at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, one of the country’s most important museums. The employees were among three officials investigated after concerns emerged that municipal contracts had been approved at inflated prices. One of the three has since retired, while the other two were suspended and have now been fired. Rotterdam mayor Carola Schouten said an internal investigation found that the two employees had violated the city’s code of conduct by accepting gifts from companies doing business with the...

Discouraged from pursuing an artistic career as a young woman, Kusama went on to inspire millions with her performances, installations, paintings and more

According to archaeologists, the statue's abstract style and depiction of a human on an animal make this discovery significant

18 spruce trees become the structural frame
 
On a rocky headland in Randaberg, Norway, 18 whole spruce trees rise through Helen & Hard’s Cabin Sande, their root systems branching across the ceiling where columns meet beams. Studio founders Reinhard Kropf and Siv Helene Stangeland built the 112-square-meter retreat as their own cabin after twelve years of sketching and refinement. It replaces a 1970s cabin on the same site, where local planning restrictions required the replacement to stay within the earlier footprint and height. From outside, the low form sits close to the rock. Inside, the trees give the home its structure and much of its character.
 
Helen & Hard looked to Norwegian boatbuilding...

The city’s mayor said that two civil servants were found to have accepted “gifts from the municipality’s business contacts in exchange for possible preferential treatment”

Through his art, Mansour was a pioneering force of Palestinian cultural resistance

Christopher Corwin remembers the late soprano Ileana Cotrubas — and shares some archival recordings of her in Bellini, Tchaikovsky, Leoncavallo, and Gounod.

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Musubu Hagi’s Website
Musubu Hagi on Instagram

Every month, we share opportunities for artists and designers, including open calls, grants, fellowships, and residencies. Make sure you never miss out by joining our monthly Opportunities Newsletter. Hayama Artist ResidencyFeaturedLaunched in 2020, the Hayama Artist Residency offers visual artists from around the world a unique opportunity to spend four weeks in Japan for rest, reflection, and creative inspiration. Selected artists receive roundtrip airfare, a private bedroom, and an $800 stipend to cover meals and local transportation. We welcome applications from visual artists working in any medium and at any stage of their career. Applicants must be at least 21 years old. The residency runs June 1 to 30,...

In Ben Sledsens’ new body of work, An Apple for the Road, saturated fields of color meet methodical patterns constructed from grasses, leaves, brick, and more. The Antwerp-born artist conceives of vibrant, atmospheric paintings in which life pauses for a moment: there’s a swan hovering over its tinted reflection, a woman just stepping out her front door, and vivid still lifes in which clouds and soft breezes rustle through the windows. Often beginning with drawings on paper before translating the most salient details to the canvas, Sledsens is interested in repetition and the visual power of pattern, which he layers to form dense thickets of willow trees or the tiles lining a boating dock. These motifs set...

When I was about 10 years old, my parents organized a vacation to a tiny enclave called Orr Hot Springs just outside of Ukiah, California. Nestled in the mountains with a history dating to 1858 as a stagecoach stop with redwoods shading the trails, the property has a uniquely layered architectural history. We stayed in what my dad called “Art’s cabin,” which turned out to have really been built by a guy named Art in the mid-1970s. A giant tree intersected the middle of the structure. Art’s cabin is one of few remaining buildings from the property’s back-to-the-land era, before it became today’s modern yet earthy resort. In 1974, my dad and a group of friends from Berkeley teamed up to buy the hot...

Parterre Box invites you to cool off with a dip in the lake alongside Sonya Yoncheva and Pavel Černoch in Rusalka.

What is more demented than a thrilling performance of Strauss's Elektra?

For Xanthe Burdett, the boundary between humans and nature is thin, malleable, and always in flux. The Devon-born, London-based artist works largely in a palette of greens, layering leaves and vines atop faint figurative silhouettes. Invoking mythology and ancient cosmologies, her paintings suggest that people and plants are not only interconnected but also intrinsically one. Beginning with a sketch, Burdett employs the Renaissance-era cartoon method of transferring her drawings to canvas, which involves layering a substance like charcoal between the preparatory composition and the substrate and tracing the initial linework. After, the artist adds various greenery until she’s reached a lush density. “They...

Myriad myths and symbols are wrapped up in our captivation with cats. In ancient Egypt, the animals were revered as divine protectors, personified by the deity Bastet. In Japan, it’s hard to walk by shops without seeing a maneki-neko waving from the window. And superstition says that if a black cat crosses your path, it may be bad luck. Although depending who you ask, it could mean good luck… did you happen to notice which direction it was walking? For artist Minyoung Kim, who centers black felines in her eccentric compositions, the fascination comes down to “the contrast between how ordinary and how weird they are,” she tells Colossal. Kim taps into the paradoxes, such as how the animals can be...

Tommy Keith  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Tommy Keith’s Website
Tommy Keith on Instagram

This Strauss is demented in the best way possible.

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Ibrahim Rayintakath’s Website
Ibrahim Rayintakath on Instagram

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Lou Benesch  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Lou Benesch’s Website
Lou Benesch on Instagram

Skeletons, tombstones, and serpents. These are just a few of the iconic images pre-v ailing throughout the works of Morgan Sorensen—all relating to the themes of struggle, sadness, pain, and death. While anyone might agree that these graphic designs would all make for killer band T’s, there’s quite a bit of depth surrounding the artist’s […]
The post Future Relics: The Art of Morgan Sorensen first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

The body is an obsession for Monica Piloni. Whether it’s a hollowed face in the Samieses series or the eerie dolls depicted in “Ilegais”, a majority of Monica Piloni’s sculptures confront the human form. And while consistently returning to the body may seem confining to some, it’s a pursuit marked by liberation for the Brazilian […]
The post The Disconcertingly Honest Self-Portrait Sculptures of Monica Piloni first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose issue 42, which is sold out. See Matthew Grabelsky’s new solo show at Thinkspace gallery here.  Matthew Grabelsky had studied tradition in Florence, lived in the cultural nuclei of Europe, but hadn’t yet found the idea that would set him apart as an artist living in the twenty-first century. […]
The post Human/Nature: Animals Go Underground In the Paintings of Matthew Grabelsky first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

“Danger” is a word often associated with the candy-colored work of Los Angeles artist Kristen Liu-Wong. Her feminine tableaus, often rendered in a bright blend of acrylics, paint pen, and marker, have particularly veered into more menacing territory in recent years. “The world is a dangerous place,” Liu-Wong says, in a June interview. “I don’t […]
The post Dont Tempt Me: the Art of Kristen Liu-Wong first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

On paper, Nathan Reidt’s creatures sometimes reveal themselves through a fog of graphite. He may begin with a “vague, circle-y shape” and shade areas. “Then I just stare at it for a long time and wait for something to pop out and refine that a little and stare at it.” The Philadelphia-based artist explains by […]
The post Personal Growth: the Art of Nathan Reidt first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

The week of Art Basel is for me the most compelling moment in the city, and this year it reaffirmed its position as the most closely watched annual event in the international art calendar.

For an artist to return to painting after life‑altering injury is to witness the human spirit at its most unguarded. In such a moment, understanding the forces that carry you back to the page becomes all‑important, and in Joel Bradish Nichols’ case, the answers lie in the people and pursuits he had cherished. In a coma for months after a near‑fatal accident, his re‑emergence into artistic practice becomes inseparable from a narrative of devotion and determination — a surrounding spiritedness...

By Tabea Martin ‘Me Myself’ brings together four artists — Anna‑Lena Ruff, Debora Schultheiss, Tabea Martin, and Eva Schick — whose works move across differing styles and energies yet find in this art space an unforced coherence. I sense a shared thread of observation and inner dialogue, and a contemplation of natural female presence. The exhibition is currently showing at the Anja Edith Brinckmann Galerie, Basel. From here, the individual narratives invite a closer reading. By Anna-Lena...

Limited Edition print by Gerhard Wichler It’s been a distinctly textured start to the year at THE GAZE, where invigorating artistic narratives emerge across forms and disciplines, threading their way through an unsettled climate. I’m delighted to share the completion and publication of a candid, close‑range interview with abstract artist Gerhard Wichler—an exchange that brought a refreshing clarity amid the mayhem of today’s world. You can read our fascinating interview here. We also mark an...