Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? The Eric Carle Museum staff have started unionizing. Workers announced the news on Instagram on August 3, amid staff allegations of understaffing, a lack of promotions, and poor workplace conditions at the Massachusetts museum established by the beloved children's book author and illustrator. According to their post, employees filed for a full-time and part-time staff election with the National Labor Relations Board. "We call upon Museum leadership not to interfere with or delay a union vote," the post reads. Under representation from the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2110, the group demanded that as many staff as possible be allowed to vote in the election,...

Pickleball aficionados in downtown Pittsburgh get to enjoy an art experience as they play thanks to artist Sharmistha Ray's vibrant floor murals.The artist's new "Geometry of Play" installation invites the public to step into — and onto — the vibrant surfaces, pickleball paddle in hand. Unveiled on July 16, the three courts are part of Arts Landing, a $31 million community gathering space that opened earlier this year. The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust commissioned Ray to design the courts, which will be surrounded by other public works from artists such as Thaddeus Mosley and John Peña. Sharmistha Ray's "Geometry of Play" invites the public to step into — and onto — the vibrant surfaces,...

Casa Arbo by Perkins&Will São Paulo reinterprets urban living
 
On a quiet, tree-lined street in a neighborhood that preserves a significant part of São Paulo’s residential tradition, Casa Arbo emerges from a simple idea: to create a building capable of offering the spatial quality, comfort, and connection to nature typically associated with a house, without sacrificing the qualities of urban living. Developed by Meta Incorporadora and designed by Perkins&Will São Paulo, the building embodies a contemporary vision of living, in which architecture, landscape, and the city function as inseparable parts of a single experience.
 
From the initial studies begun in 2019, the Perkins&Will team understood that...

Staff at Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG) in UK-based trade union Prospect have decided to strike on August 11 and 12, as per a recent statement. Over 90% of members voted on action, with nearly 77% of those favoring strike action. Operating out of Greenwich’s UNESCO World Heritage site, RMG represents four cultural institutions in London: […]

Editor’s Note: The following story contains mentions of sexual assault. To reach the National Sexual Assault Hotline, call 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org.Two alumni from the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan have come forward with previously unreported abuse allegations against Jeffrey Epstein while he was a benefactor of the school. The alumni's allegations against the financier, which include claims of sexual misconduct and assault, emerged during a two-year external investigation into a history of abuse at the arts boarding school and summer camp.In addition to the new accounts about Epstein, the investigation culminated in a 97-page report in which dozens of alumni made...

The Jeju Museum of Art has revealed the list of sixty-nine participating artists and collectives for the 2026 Jeju Biennale in a press release. The event, which is set to open on August 25, will run until November 15, and is titled “Iyahong: The Art of Metamorphosis.”  Now in its fifth edition, the Jeju Biennale will take place […]

Before announcing John Galliano as the subject of its starry Costume Institute exhibition opening next spring, the Metropolitan Museum of Art met with influential rabbis and Jewish leaders to discuss the selection of a figure “as famous for his antisemitic rant in 2011 as he is for his fashion,” according to the New York Times. As reported by the Times’s chief fashion critic Vanessa Friedman, the Met convened several meetings between Jewish leaders and Anna Wintour, Vogue’s global editorial director and a Met trustee; Andrew Bolton, curator in charge of the Met’s Costume Institute; and Galliano himself. Among the Jewish leaders were Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League,...

In 2021, British artist Sacha Jafri auctioned what was then the world’s largest canvas painting, The Journey of Humanity, for a total of £45 million ($62 million at the time) in support of children’s charities. The proceeds from the sale made in Dubai were supposed to be split between UNICEF, UNESCO, and the Global Gift Foundation. But the London Times reports that over five years later, the money has still yet to be disbursed to the selected charities. In 2022, the UAE-based organization, Dubai Cares, which was supposed to receive and distribute the funds to the different NGOs, filed an ongoing legal case against the winning buyer, French-Algerian crypto-businessman André Abdoune, for failing to deliver...

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.

Paris’s Palais de Tokyo will close for repairs in July 2027, necessitating a temporary move to a location that turns out to be hotly contested, French daily Libération reports. The noncollecting institution, which since its 2002 founding has been housed in a concrete structure built for the 1937 World’s Fair, recently revitalized its building and […]

Known for their monumental murals, which span entire public squares, rooftops, playing fields, and more, Ella & Pitr bring eccentric joy to urban spaces. The artists often represent people from historically marginalized groups, including refugees and the elderly. Sometimes laughing, other times sleeping or passing the time in quietude, these giant figures curl around fountains and wedge into parking areas in an expression of joy, resilience, and individuality. The duo are slated for an exhibition at Galerie Jonathan Roze in Rennes, France, titled Points de Suspension. Explore more on Instagram. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts...

Drops of water trickle down a plain white wall under a heavenly light in Ellen Pau’s 1988 video installation “She Moves 她去.” Flanked by soft white veils and a nostalgic, wooden armchair, the work introduces water as a central motif in Pau’s long-standing interest in Hong Kong as a city in constant transition, moving through cycles of lost and found.Ellen Pau: She Moves at SculptureCenter, curated by Freya Chou and designed by technical director Rain Chan, is the first United States survey exhibition of the woman widely regarded as Hong Kong’s video art pioneer. Across 15 videos and installations spanning the late 1980s to the present, water reappears in various forms: a crying wall, swimmers...

After Spanish physician and theologian Michael Servetus was burnt at the stake in 1553 for religious heresy, only three surviving copies of his The Restoration of Christianity would be spared from the bonfire. One particular copy, now held by the University of Edinburgh library, is ironically believed to have been personally saved by the Protestant leader John Calvin, who was responsible for Servetus’s execution in Geneva. Anyone familiar with Calvin, who bragged in a letter that he had “purged the Church of so pernicious a monster,” knows that the book wasn’t preserved due to affection for Servetus, but rather a bibliophile’s sentiment — even a doctrinaire, zealous, tyrannical bibliophile. And...

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.

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The curatorial team for the 2027 Bogotá Biennial (BOG27) has just been announced. Following the first edition in 2025, the upcoming edition of the biennal will be led by Juan Ricardo Rincón Gaviria as director, supported by chief curators Magalí Arriola and José Esparza Chong Cuy. The additional supporting curators will be María Paula Bastidas, […]

Gagosian will close its lone Basel gallery and has already exited its location in London’s historic Burlington Arcade, the Art Newspaper reports. According to a spokesperson, the megagallery will look for another space in Basel; the closure of the London branch is permanent. Gagosian has already erased mention of the outposts from its website. Both […]

After spending many years painting, Agata Iwaszkiewicz picked up a ball of clay for the first time at 41 and felt a change. “I knew I’d found what I had been looking for,” she tells Colossal. “Working with clay felt completely natural. Ideas came effortlessly, and I immediately had a clear vision for what I wanted to build with my new business.” Ceramika Matylda was born. The Gdańsk, Poland-based artist is particularly drawn to animals, especially dogs. Their playful, quirky, cartoonish faces and spaghetti-like limbs are both relatable and slightly unfamiliar, tapping into a sense of sentimentality and curiosity. “My newest collection of poodles was inspired by my own dog, Rudolf, who passed away...

augment 360 begins with the space after the ride
 
The Augment 360 begins with the moment after the ride, when a compact electric moped still needs a secure place to stay. Developed by Finnish micromobility company Augment with Munich designer Christian Zanzotti, it folds into a 350-millimeter-wide upright package that rolls on its own wheels. The shift turns a seated, road-capable vehicle into something that can enter an elevator and stand against a wall indoors. Its proportions feel shaped by apartment living as much as street travel.
 
Across the frame, the folding logic stays visible, with little bodywork hiding its movement. A low aluminum step-through tube curves into the steering column, while the...

Experts fear the explosions’ proximity to the site has caused damage, but cannot assess this while the area remains under Israeli occupation

Taryn Simon’s upcoming solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York will mark a number of firsts for the institution. Opening September 18, the show will mark “the first time the Guggenheim has dedicated the entire rotunda to a new body of work and to a single artist working in photography and video,” according to a release. The exhibition, which will be accompanied by an artist book published by the Guggenheim and Hatje Cantz, has been in the works for nearly a decade and was initiated by Nancy Spector, the Guggenheim’s former artistic director and chief curator. At the Guggenheim, Simon will debut Father Country I Do Love You (2026), a new body of work that lends the exhibition its title and...

The Trump administration has proposed the Smithsonian Institution’s leanest budget in nearly a decade, along with staff reductions, as its campaign against the museum over its ideological direction takes an expected turn.  For fiscal year 2027, the White House has proposed giving the Smithsonian $961.3 million in federal funding, roughly an 11 precent cut from the $1.08 billion Congress provided to it fiscal year 2026 and the institution’s lowest proposed funding level since at least 2020. The reductions would fall most heavily on facilities spending, which would drop by about 21 percent from $152 million in fiscal 2026 to $120 million under the new proposal, reducing it from roughly one-seventh to about...

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Artist Michelle Grabner will donate more than 2,000 artworks to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, making the institution the most comprehensive repository of her work. Comprising 700 paintings, 200 sculptures, and 1,200 prints, Grabner’s gift spans the arc of her career, so far, with pieces made in the early 1990s to ones made in the past few years. Her gift also includes 300 works from her personal art collection, amassed via a combination of trades, gifts, and purchases, as well as her teaching materials and syllabi from her three-decade tenure at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Grabner was born in Wisconsin in 1962, and she said growing up she was aware of...

Roc H Biel imagines homeware of Mars to critique the space race
 
Roc H Biel presents Martian Relics, a collection of five domestic objects that examines how everyday life might evolve if humans settled on Mars. Comprising a plate, mirror, window, flower pot, and water filter, the project uses speculative design to explore how environmental conditions influence culture, memory, resource use, and human behavior. Constructed from rammed earth and recycled stainless steel, the objects were photographed in the volcanic landscape of Lanzarote, whose terrain closely resembles the Martian surface.
 
Rather than presenting a vision of future living on Mars, the collection reflects on contemporary attitudes toward...

Greenland, the world’s largest island, is also covered in one of the earth’s two ice sheets. The other cloaks Antarctica. Greenland’s encompasses around 80 percent of the nation’s land mass, spanning more than 650,000 square miles. But it’s also melting at an accelerating rate due to climate change, losing an annual average of 261 gigatonnes—one gigatonne is equivalent to 2.2 trillion pounds—contributing to rising sea levels that impact the rest of the world. And Greenland’s massive icebergs are a reminder of this exceptional scale. On July 25, a mammoth iceberg literally made waves as it flipped over off the coast of Ilulissat, Greenland. A video taken from town went viral online, and AfarTV,...

Just in time for this month's theme of filth or dementia, a review of Terrence McNally's Master Class from Central City Opera.

There have been protests and a petition since the archive of Glasgow's Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) was listed among the assets of the insolvent organisation

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bringing noguchi’s unrealized playgrounds into motion
 
For decades, Isamu Noguchi’s unrealized sculptural playgrounds are preserved as plaster models, drawings, and blueprints, admired for their abstract beauty, remaining strangely detached from the purpose for which they were conceived: children at play. For the Noguchi’s New York exhibition at The Noguchi Museum, marking the institution’s 40th anniversary, five of those unbuilt proposals step beyond the archive through a series of hand-painted animated films by Montreal-based studio Eastend Western, inviting viewers to imagine what it might actually have felt like to move through them.
 
The five short animations reinterpret Play Mountain (1933),...

The strike across the east London museums will occur on 11 and 12 August as Prospect union pledges to step up industrial action across the heritage sector this summer

Ma che brutta figura per la lirica!

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Franck Bohbot captures Vienna State Opera in silence
 
Before audiences fill the auditorium and musicians take their places in the orchestra pit, Franck Bohbot documents the Vienna State Opera in his latest photographic reportage. The photographer captures the landmark without performers or spectators, shifting attention from opera as spectacle to the architecture that has framed generations of performances. His images reveal a building whose grandeur lies in the orchestrated sequence of spaces, from entrance hall to stage.
 
Completed in 1869 on Vienna’s Ringstrasse, the Vienna State Opera was designed by architects August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll as one of the boulevard’s first...

Beatriz Morales (Città del Messico, 1981) vive e lavora tra Hidalgo e Berlino. La sua pratica si origina nella pittura, ma ne sottopone progressivamente a verifica i confini, estendendo il gesto cromatico alla fibra, alla scultura e all’installazione. Il passaggio dalla superficie allo spazio non coincide tuttavia con un abbandono del linguaggio pittorico. Il colore continua ad agire come principio strutturante, assumendo consistenza materiale, profondità simbolica e valore culturale. Tecniche tessili, fibre vegetali e pigmenti non sono trattati come semplici risorse formali, ma come depositi di conoscenza. La materia trattiene temporalità, gesti, economie, storie di estrazione e pratiche di trasmissione....

By Victoria Thomas Photographer and ceramic artist Catherine (Cathy) Opie first shocked and rocked the fine art world with her self-portraits during the late 1990s. Today, her decades of work — often termed confessional — now serve as context for the far more enigmatic Holding Blue installation, on view at Regen Projects through July 3. The Los Angeles-based artist identifies as a leather dyke, lesbian cowboy, an elder, and as "Mama Cathy," with a mustachioed male alter-ego named Bo. Opie is...

The Bayerische Staatsoper’s summer festival wound down with Lotte de Beer’s darkly effective production of Gounod ’sFaust.

I sort of have a love/hate fascination with countertenors/male falsettists.

Karina Gauvin slays for the slayed. Werk Bitch.

Prima istituzione d’arte contemporanea fondata oltre la vecchia Cortina di Ferro, il Ludwig Múzeum di Budapest si conferma un osservatorio geopolitico e culturale imprescindibile per decifrare le traiettorie dell’Est Europa. Nato nel 1989 dalla lungimirante donazione dei collezionisti tedeschi Peter e Irene Ludwig, il museo ha esordito nel 1991 tra le mura storiche del Palazzo Reale di Buda, per poi trovare la sua collocazione definitiva, nel 2005, negli spazi monumentali e avveniristici del Müpa, l’avamposto architettonico del Palazzo delle Arti affacciato sul Danubio.
István Csákány (Sepsiszentgyörgy, 1978), “The Sewing Room / Ghost Keeping”, 2012 (dettaglio dall’installazione). Veduta...

After visiting the New York Art Book Fair in 2011, Adelene Koh was smitten with the world of bookbinding. Her professional training commenced in Japan, then led her to London, and she’s now based in Taiwan, where she runs a studio called dddots. This year, Koh was one of 30 finalists for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, which celebrates innovation across a wide range of artisanship. As a bookmaker and conservator, Koh draws upon the technical precision and heritage of bookmaking to create unique sculptures using paper and thread. Her work “Endless” was included in the prize’s exhibition of shortlisted artists, consisting of a kind of ouroboros-like cylinder of meticulously folded paper and edges...

The closures are the latest mega-gallery real estate downsizes this summer

The boutique fair is attracting increasingly ambitious exhibitors while leaning into the mountain town's distinctive character

Every year, the Central West Astronomical Society (CWAS) of New South Wales celebrates AstroFest, a festival of astronomy during which amateur photographers and scientists from around the globe are invited to submit their best views of the night sky and beyond. This year, the overall prize was awarded to Stefan Buda for his tonal moonscape titled “The Lunar Apennines,” which captures a detailed view of Montes Apenninus. Categories include Deep Sky, Solar System, Wide-Field, Nightscapes, and more, allowing photographers to contribute images of phenomena ranging from distant nebulae and spiral galaxies to the Milky Way and aurora australis, or the southern lights, shining above impressive terrestrial...

Entrando negli spazi privati di fondaco in Largo Forcella 8 ad Atri, adibiti a luogo espositivo in occasione della collettiva “Adagio” dei cinque pittori Benyamin Zolfaghari, Enrico Pierotti, Andrea Lucchesi, Lorenzo Di Lucido, Andrea Astolfi, respiro un’aria serena: ad accogliermi c’è uno spazio rimasto fermo nel tempo, intriso di ricordi familiari, una sorta di grotta in mattoni e pietra datata tra Settecento e Ottocento, fatta di cunicoli e scale senza uscita, ampie arcate e nicchie immerse tra luci e ombre, come stanze della memoria o del pensiero umano.
AA.VV., “Adagio”, installation view at fondaco, Atri, 2026, courtesy of the artists
L’artista atriano Andrea Astolfi fa gli onori di casa...

Siamo a Villa Marigola, a Lerici, all’interno del Lerici Music Festival, “Musica, Immagini e Parole dall’Acqua” con la mostra I miei orizzonti e tu di Giovanni Ozzola, a cura di Carlo Orsini e in collaborazione con Galleria Continua.
Giovanni Ozzola, vista parziale della mostra “I miei orizzonti e tu”, alla Fondazione Lerici. In primo piano a parete: “Untitled – a fine primavera”, 2026 e “Untitled – with a view”, 2026; sullo sfondo: “Venezia – faro di notte”, 2026. Foto di Fabio Gianardi, courtesy Lerici Music Festival 2026
Nella mostra sono presenti fotografia, scultura, installazione e video concepiti per il contesto del Golfo dei Poeti e con il mare che diviene metafora...

La fotografa Glorija Lizde, che vive e lavora a Spalato, utilizza la sua macchina fotografica per costruire quasi-documentari mirati attraverso le immagini, spesso indagando i membri della propria famiglia attraverso conversazioni difficili e in situazioni di precarietà. Non sorprende quindi che Glorija trovi punti di contatto nell’opera del medico Jean-Martin Charcot, le cui immagini di fine Ottocento, che ritraggono donne alle prese con la malattia mentale, possiedono un intenso peso psicologico e sollevano interrogativi culturali su autorialità, soggettività e ruoli di genere.
Glorija Lizde, “Ritratto di famiglia. Che aspetto aveva il mio viso prima della nascita dei miei genitori”, 2022, foto di...

“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.

João Daniel Pereira  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
João Daniel Pereira’s Website
João Daniel Pereira on Instagram

Julian Adon Alexander  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Julian Adon Alexander’s Website
Julian Adon Alexander on Instagram

By Betty Ann Brown "Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation — I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances."—Henri Matisse Jill sykes by Eric Minh Swenson Jill Sykes creates beautiful paintings of botanical phenomena. Like Matisse, she translates three-dimensional objects into two-dimensional images, occupying the territory between abstraction and representation to achieve balance and equilibrium. From a very early age,...

Aaron Agosto  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Aaron Agosto’s Website
Aaron Agosto on Instagram

By Victoria Thomas There's something about a hanging. Whether legal or not, the visual experience seems mythic, supernatural, theatrical, and ritualistic, versus the efficiency of a swift kill. If local authorities greenlight the killing, it's called a hanging. If they don't, the hanging is extrajudicial, and it's called a lynching. Anyone with even the scantiest grasp of American history will know that our country has a sordid romance with lynching — a romance which persists. And unless...

Common Objects brings together the work of 97 photographers from across the globe to explore the role of the image and its ability to shape perception. Organized not by theme or geography but by visual association, the book draws on the logic of the reference catalog—a structure built for sustained, democratic looking. Within it, photographs from vastly different cultures and contexts find themselves in unexpected proximity, generating connections and contrasts that no single image could produce alone. In this format, the photographs enter into a subtle dialogue with one another, revealing how context, sequence, and framing shape interpretation and inform visual experience.  
   
   
   
   
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Claudia Koh  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Claudia Koh on Instagram

By Betty Ann Brown Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, February 22–June 28, 2026 Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.—Dolores Huerta The Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF, originally the Rebel Chicano Art Front) was an art collective founded in Sacramento in the early 1970s. The visual art members, who focused on printmaking and murals, collaborated with writers, musicians, performers, and teachers. Together, they...

It is credited with ‘democratising photography’ on a global level – and now Shutter Hub is making its most democratic move yet. As of this month, the organisation will pass into the control of the community it was built for, in what founder Karen Harvey MBE describes as ‘a logical next step: to make things more equitable we need multiple perspectives.’ The announcement follows Karen’s decision to remove paid memberships last year, making Shutter Hub ‘fully open-access and available at no cost to all’. It’s a typically altruistic move from the social entrepreneur: also the founder of Toiletries Amnesty, the award-winning NGO. She was made an MBE in 2024 for services to people living in hygiene...