America250 was established by congress and files regular reports while Freedom 250 is planning a mixed martial arts fight at the White House on Trump’s 80th birthday

The open, light-filled Dutch pavilion has been turned into a dark bunker-like space, where visitors will experience a raw vocal performance

VENICE ART BIENNALE RETURNS FOR ITS 61st EDITION
 
The Venice Art Biennale returns for its 61st edition from May 9th to November 22nd, 2026, and designboom is here to guide you through this year’s main exhibition, national participations, collateral events, and everything unfolding across the city during the six-month event. Titled In Minor Keys, the 2026 International Art Exhibition was conceived by curator Koyo Kouoh, who developed the project before her passing in May 2025. The exhibition will be realized by the curatorial team she assembled, carrying forward the framework, artists, and exhibition architecture she had already defined. Conceived as an invitation to tune into quieter frequencies of...

As the Venice Biennale opens for previews this week, cultural workers and organizers opposing Israel’s inclusion in the event are planning what they say is “the first ever organized strike to occur within the Biennale.” This Friday, May 8, labor unions, event participants, and other individuals plan to withhold their labor in an action organized by the Art Not Genocide Alliance and other groups. Look out for Hyperallergic’s coverage.Also today, our list of exhibitions to see around Los Angeles this month; a round-up of the best memes about the out-of-touch, Bezos-funded Met Gala; and a profile of nonagenarian artist and master printmaker Mohammad Omer Khalil, whose work is currently on view in...

When I was a fledgling opera enthusiast, professors at a small-town Wisconsin college routinely travelled to Chicago for Lyric Opera performances.

A rally is also planned to take place in the city on the same day, 8 May

working through softness at museo fortuny
 
At Museo Fortuny in Venice, Erwin Wurm’s Dreamers turns its attention to small gestures, bodily awareness, and the slow work of rethinking how forms hold meaning. The show aligns within the idea of Radical Softness, which turns attention toward intimacy, repair, and sustained acts of attention.
 
Installed within the layered interiors of the Venetian palazzo, the exhibition reads as a series of minor adjustments to perception, each one asking how sculpture might register presence through lightweight contact and imbalance.
 
The timing, alongside the wider atmosphere of the Venice Art Biennale, sharpens this reading. Wurm’s work has long engaged humor and...

The artist’s B-movie inspired project at Ateneo Veneto reimagines the story of Len Karamoy, an overlooked member of the resistance movement Permesta

A Clear Resin Phone Case Embeds a Vertical Terrarium
 
The Terrarium Phone Case, developed by Daniel Idle, integrates a planted environment into the structure of a smartphone accessory. Designed for the iPhone 16 Pro Max, the project incorporates soil, moss, and small-scale vegetation within a transparent enclosure, positioning the device as both a functional object and a contained ecological system.
 
The case is developed through 3D modeling and fabricated in clear resin, allowing visibility of the internal composition. A vertical terrarium is embedded within the structure, using a stabilised soil substrate that maintains the arrangement of materials during handling. This configuration enables the phone to...

Jafa and Richard Prince come together for the first time in an explosive new exhibition which shows their shared interest in appropriation and the real America

wdc campus’ ACADEMIC VISION AND SOCIAL PRACTICE
 
Through WDC Campus, World Design Capital Frankfurt RheinMain 2026 softens the edges of academic vision and social practice, reshaping the Frankfurt Museum of Applied Art as a real-world laboratory. From July 3 to August 9, 2026, the campus hosts a summer exhibition alongside a series of discursive workshops centered on design exploration and our future coexistence. The initiative places the next generation of designers at the forefront, synthesizing perspectives of over 20 national and international universities to drive a sustainable and democratic future. This interdisciplinary discourse connects students, start-ups, and research institutions to find...

Portrait(s), the annual photography festival in Vichy, returns as a curatorial proposition that treats portraiture less as a genre than as a system for understanding how images construct identity, power and attention. The programme brings together David LaChapelle, Paul Graham, Yohanne Lamoulère, Julia Gat and Patrick Tournebœuf, each working through different models of portraiture: staged spectacle, documentary observation, social space and architectural trace. It positions photography as a field where historical memory, institutional frameworks and contemporary image saturation intersect. At its centre, LaChapelle anchors a major solo exhibition that sits alongside documentary, archival and pedagogical...

custom portable retro lo-fi player with cassette tape
 
Iulius Curt creates a custom portable retro player with a cassette tape that records lo-fi songs from streaming apps and smartphones. In a nutshell, the user’s smartphone sends music wirelessly to the machine, which then records it onto a moving loop of tape, the same way a cassette worked in the 1980s. Then, a second read head picks the sound back up a moment later and plays it through a speaker. This machine starts its life as a Privileg TC 183, a mid-weight Japanese cassette deck. The designer kept the recording circuitry, from the bias oscillator and erase head to the tape equalisation, because redesigning those from scratch would have taken...

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At some point, I realized I didn’t want to choose between the past and the present. I was interested in allowing them to coexist,” says baroque-style painter Nieves González, who distorts trappings of traditional portraiture to exalt modern day women. Her recent portrait of British pop star Lily Allen, for example, places contemporary attitude—and fashion—within […]
The post Baroque-style Painter Nieves González distorts trappings of traditional portraiture to exalt modern-day women first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

As the 61st edition of the Venice Biennale opens for previews this week, cultural workers are planning a 24-hour strike this Friday, May 8, opposing Israel's inclusion in the event amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza.In a statement shared with Hyperallergic, the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA) described the action as “the first ever organized strike to occur within the Biennale.” Among the groups that will observe the strike are Biennaleocene, a coalition of local cultural workers formed in 2023 to mobilize against exploitation in Venice's arts sector; the independent art space Sale Docks; cultural heritage association Mi Riconosci; and the grassroots movement Vogliamo Tutt’altro. The Italian...

A spectacle of material waste, celebrity culture, and growing wealth inequality, the Met Gala is no stranger to protest and criticism. But this year's Jeff and Lauren Sánchez Bezos-sponsored soirée was a masterclass in ragebaiting the masses.The Met Gala's red carpet entrance is one of the most heavily scrutinized cultural moments online, and last night, the gloves were off when it came to evaluating the choptitude or servability of each look. It makes sense, doesn't it? If you're going to publicly align yourself with a billionaire-backed costume party because a luxury fashion house invited you to sit at the table they bought out, the least you can do is look good. And yet, so many...

This month, Los Angeles is brimming with overdue retrospectives of influential artists and illuminating showcases of previously unseen work. A Richard Mayhew survey at Karma highlights the subversive elements beneath the bucolic surfaces of his abstract landscapes. The Broad presents Yoko Ono’s first solo museum show in Southern California, and a two-venue presentation of Magdalena Suarez Frimkess’s ceramics and drawings proves that the 96-year-old artist is still very much at the height of her creative powers. Meanwhile, the California African American Museum explores the musical output of celebrated photographer, filmmaker, and writer Gordon Parks, and Chris Sharp unveils a recently rediscovered...

MINNEAPOLIS — On February 12, Trump-appointed “border czar” Tom Homan announced the “end” of Operation Metro Surge, during which more than 4,000 federal agents aggressively targeted immigrant communities in the Twin Cities, causing massive chaos throughout the area and killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti. It seemed meaningful that the same day as Homan’s announcement, Minnesota-based interdisciplinary artist Rosy Simas opened A:gajë:gwah dësa’nigöëwë:nye:' (i hope it will stir your mind) at the Walker Art Center. The contemplative installation slows the viewer down, inviting a soft sense of communion with objects such as salt bottles made from woven corn husks, each hung from a grid on...

When Amy Sherald hit the red carpet at the Costume Institute’s Met Gala on May 4, she appeared to have stepped directly out of her iconic 2013 painting Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance). Wearing a red hat and a black-and-white dress created by designer Thom Browne, Sherald channeled the work’s youthful subject, who stares coolly out […]

Anish Kapoor has decried US participation in the upcoming Sixty-First Venice Biennale, saying it should be excluded owing to its “abhorrent politics of hate and its incessant warmongering.” Speaking with The Guardian, Kapoor, who represented England in the 1990 Biennale, praised the five-person jury of this year’s iteration for resigning en masse after refusing to […]

The Dimitris Daskalopoulos-led Athens cultural institution NEON will be closing down after fourteen years, the organization said in a statement last week. Founded in 2012 by Daskalopoulos, a prominent art collector and the chairman of DAMMA Holdings SA, NEON was never confined to a single space, but rather acted upon, per their mission statement, “a multitude […]

THERE’S BEEN MUCH TALK about the fading importance of Berlin in the context of the European and global art markets. Some artist friends have attributed this shift, which is driving them to consider relocating, to the many egregious instances of government censorship that have afflicted the arts over the past few years, as well as […]

A new principal space for the Saudi Arabia Museum of Contemporary Art, or SAMoCA, will be constructed as part of the government-funded Diriyah Company’s wildly ambitious Saudi Vision 2030 plans, according to new reports.   The institution will be financed by a $490 million grant from the Diriyah Company, which itself is owned by the Public […]

Though the Met Gala is held each year by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the glitzy event is known less for its engagement with art and more for tapping the fashion industry. That changed this year, in large part because the Met Gala made a concerted effort to show off connections between fashion and art. Taking place in tandem with the Costume Institute’s newly unveiled Met exhibition “Costume Art,” last night’s Met Gala carried the theme “Fashion Is Art,” a decidedly broad topic that allowed attendees to go in a variety of different directions. Some went far back in time, looking to ancient Greek and Roman statues. Others reached for more recent influences. The painter Amy Sherald, for example,...

Humor and happenstance take the front seat in Polish photographer Janusz Jurek’s wry images. Working as a graphic designer and commercial photographer by day, he finds the greatest creative freedom in the candid and incidental—the things he notices as he moves about town, travels, and attends festivals and other events. These are the places where he observes some of the most unique individuals and the quirkiest coincidences. “The less commercial and more bizarre, the better—people are more authentic then, less in control of what they’re doing,” he tells Colossal. Jurek is drawn to situations that happen outside of the mainstream, often turning his back on whatever the present attraction is in order...

CADIZ, SPAIN—El País reports that the so-called Delta II shipwreck uncovered during harbor infrastructure work in the Bay of Cadiz has now been identified as a vessel that sank during a famous 1587 raid by explorer and privateer Sir Francis Drake. The sixteenth-century wreck was recently determined to be the Genovese merchant ship San Giorgio e Sant’Elmo Buonaventura. It dates to a time when tensions between England and Spain were rapidly increasing, culminating in the defeat of the Spanish Armada off the English coast in 1588. A year prior to that, as the Spaniards were preparing their invasion, Drake caught the Spanish by surprise in Cadiz, sinking 30 to 35 ships belonging to them and their allies. The...

Cereal stems recovered from Roque Bentayga BENTAYGA, CANARY ISLANDS—Archaeologists uncovered the earliest known evidence of cereal harvesting in the Canary Islands, according to a report in La Brújula Verde. The discovery was made at the C008 cave complex at the Roque Bentayga rock formation on Gran Canaria. The site was likely used as a granary, for plant processing, and, later, as a burial ground by the ancient Canarians, a people of Amazigh, or Berber, origin, between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries. Excavations within the caves yielded over 200 lithic artifacts. Microscopic analyses of wear patterns on some of the objects, particularly a small basalt knife, determined that they were consistent...

YORK, ENGLAND—According to a statement released by the University of York, researchers have identified rare traces of dyed purple textiles in two Roman infant burials. Known as Tyrian purple, the extremely costly colorant was manufactured by crushing thousands of murex marine sea snails and was typically reserved for use by emperors, royalty, and members of the aristocracy. However, experts were able to detect its presence on garments wrapped around two small children who died and were buried around 1,700 years ago. Their remains are held in the collections of the York Museums Trust. The dye was identifiable through chemical analysis because liquid gypsum had been poured over the shrouded young bodies in...

Hundreds of bottles of “what appeared to be urine” were found in the Met last night, according to the New York Post—which noted that the museum’s starry Met Gala was “soaked in controversy.” “The shocking stunt—tied to allegations that Amazon warehouse workers feel forced to pee in bottles, rather than take bathroom breaks—comes as backlash over the billionaire’s involvement in the glitzy fundraiser has reached a fever pitch across New York City,” the Post reported. Credit for the protest was claimed by Everybody Hates Elon, an anti-billionaire group that set its sights on an event that did not lack for billionaires. In a statement on Instagram, the UK-based group said it had left the...

When Adrienna Matzeg embarked on a trip to Kyoto, Tokyo, and Seoul in July 2025, she encountered intense midsummer heat and humidity, which led her to exploring some of the cities’ nooks and crannies in the dark, when it was cooler. Illuminated storefronts and signage characterize the artist’s late-night runs to convenience stores, markets, and other features of these hubs’ sprawling urban fabric. “In her textile embroidery work, however, the energy of the city falls away,” says a statement from Abbozzo Gallery, which presents her forthcoming solo exhibition, After Hours. “What remains are quiet scenes that left an imprint, tactile snapshots as a record of those summer nights.” “Late Night...

By Lorraine Heitzman Erik Otsea's show, Clever Animals & Static at Alto Beta is a menagerie of a different sort. His tabletop ceramic sculptures are quirky but solemn hand-built industrial shapes that suggest machine parts found in abandoned factories or as models for obscure patent applications. They conjure Soviet-style brutalist architecture and futuristic inventions, all simple geometric forms that hint at a bygone time when we believed that life could be improved through industry. So...

The Venice Biennale opened for its professional pre-opening on Tuesday, and artists participating in the exhibition wasted no time making their voices heard. At noon, around 60 artists and a few dozen other participants gathered for an action protesting Israel’s participation in the event and protested in support of Palestine. For the action, titled “Solidarity Drone Chorus,” the artists gathered at the entrance to the Giardini and hummed “Drone Song,” a viral song composed by Gazan composer and music teacher Ahmed “Muin” Abu Amsha, in order to “sonically occupy space,” according to press materials. They then moved in a procession to the Central Pavilion. “The sound of drones is so heavy...

fierce pussy, a collective of lesbian artists, said that its Venice Biennale contribution was censored by the Italian city ahead of the opening of the exhibition today. The collective designed posters for the Biennale that address queer people and trans people. The phrase “Welcome queers and trans people” appears in both English and Italian on one poster that features the beloved Lion of Venice sculpture, which the group rendered as a cat. Another poster features the words “we are queers and trans people” alongside a list of occupations, from “your mortician” to “your favorite newscaster.” The list culminates in the words “we are everyone.” Composed of the artists Nancy Brooks Brody, Joy...

The shapes of Maxwell Mustardo’s ceramic works evoke ancient amphorae, kraters, and, most recently, kylix—a wide Greek cup with handles—although their surfaces feel distinctly organic. Textured growths cloak the vessels with fungal or lichen-esque forms, albeit in color palettes that are bold and otherworldly. Fluorescent oranges, pinks, and greens appear to glow in even the most mundane settings, firmly planting the pieces at the intersection of historic craft, nature, and the uncanny. “I am always tweaking chemistry and application methods to push certain surface effects that I like, that feel organic and grown,” Mustardo tells Colossal. “More recent series of work have tried to blur the...

Curtis Opera and a charming cast of young singers cast a spell with their beguiling production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. 

Artist Anish Kapoor called for the United States to be banned from the 2026 edition of the Venice Biennale while also applauding the jury’s recent decision to resign en masse. In an interview with the Guardian, Kapoor called the jury’s decision “courageous” and further criticized the US. “I would hope that [the jury] might have also excluded the United States for its abhorrent politics of hate and its incessant warmongering,” he said. While the jury did not explicitly say it had done so due to the inclusion of Israel and Russia in the exhibition, it had previously released a statement saying it would not consider for awards any national pavilions by countries who currently charged with crimes...

“Young people aren’t interesting these days.” It was this sentiment, heard over again from older groups, that artist Pieter Henket cites as the inspiration for his latest project. Birds of Mexico City is a collection of portraits focusing on young Mexicans who are redefining contemporary expressions of gender, identity, tradition and spirituality. The book is a love letter to the next generation – their fearlessness, self-expression and refusal to compromise. As Henket writes in the introduction: “I thought: how incredible that these kids love and respect themselves enough to step into the world exactly as they are, without worrying what anyone might say. It brought me back to my own youth. I was a...

Anna Tomowa-Sintow, "Ernani Involami," from the MET Centenial Gala, 1983.

A restaurant meal on a road trip. A billboard off a highway. A dusty side street in a Texas town. Stephen Shore (b. 1947) captures the seemingly banal moments of life. His photographs of small-town North America captured a society in transition. The mid-20th century works are emblematic of the rapid transformation of the era, both for culture and politics, and photography as an artform. His shots, according to 303 Gallery, “became a bible for young photographers seeking to work in colour, because, along with that of William Eggleston, his work exemplified that the medium could be considered art.” Most celebrated is Uncommon Places (1973 – 1981) series, which were taken over the course of a decade and...

There are few figures in the canon of 20th century image-making who require less introduction than Cecil Beaton. A polymath of rare fluency, Beaton moved effortlessly between photography, costume design and stagecraft, shaping the visual language of modern celebrity with a precision that still reverberates today. His lens did not simply capture – it constructed, elevating its subjects into carefully composed myths of glamour and identity. His work defined an era in which appearance became inseparable from performance, and portraiture from spectacle. To encounter Beaton is to encounter the architecture of fame itself. Beaton’s accolades are well rehearsed, yet no less striking for their familiarity. A...

A muscular Englishman in a khaki kilt and black beret hops atop the edge of an old well clad in traditional Spanish tile, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows in what can only be called an act of bravery.  High winds and rain pelt a group of visitors from all directions, and yet, this charismatic performer stands tall above the cobblestone to announce that he’s been living on this vacant island for nearly two centuries. He’s here to give us a tour. “This has been my home for 174 years,” the man says, introducing himself as Captain Horatio Hollingwood. “I arrived in command of a well-known British merchant ship, responsible for transporting goods of every sort. But alongside grain, wool, and oil,...

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Statue of Ganesha looted from a temple in Madhya Pradesh, India NEW YORK, NEW YORK—According to a report in The Telegraph, the United States repatriated 657 artifacts to India in a ceremony held at the Consulate General of India in New York. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said that the objects were recovered in multiple investigations of antiquities trafficking. “The scale of the trafficking networks that targeted cultural heritage in India is massive, as demonstrated by the return of more than 600 pieces today,” Bragg explained. “There is unfortunately more work to be done to return stolen artifacts back to India,” he added. The objects returned in the ceremony include a bronze figure of...

Archival aerial photograph of Las Playas Intaglio, Arizona AJO, ARIZONA—According to a Washington Post report, an intaglio that looks like a fish has been damaged in southwestern Arizona by construction crews building a second wall on the border with Mexico parallel to the first. Waivers issued by the Department of Homeland Security exempted border wall construction crews from laws requiring the protection of Indigenous archaeological sites and the environment. Located inside Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, the Las Playas intaglio, which is estimated to be more than 1,000 years old and measured about 200 feet long when intact, was recorded by archaeologists Richard Martynec and Sandra Martynec in...

In the late 12th century, a nobleman named Count Gerard van Loon commissioned an abbey to serve as his final resting place. Over the next few decades, amid plenty of political tumult, Herkenrode Abbey in Hasselt, Belgium, was converted to the first Cistercian convent for women. It was a site of pilgrimage from the 13th to the 15th centuries, and despite regional wars and economic uncertainty, it stayed the course. During the 16th century, it experienced its heyday thanks to the patronage of a figure named Prince Bishop Evrard van der Marck, seeing the addition of a Gothic church that brimmed with beautiful stained glass windows, textiles, paintings, and more. The Eighty Years’ War paused Herkenrode’s...

The countertenors conquer the day in Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Like probably all of us, there are so many different things I could have submitted for a favorite Verdi performance.

Renature, presented at Bildhalle Zürich, explores the shifting relationship between nature, perception and materiality in contemporary lens-based art. Bringing together the work of Adam Jeppesen, Douglas Mandry, Inka & Niclas and Joost Vandebrug, the exhibition questions how the organic world is framed through technology and visual culture, whilst foregrounding the physical materials that shape photography. Together, these artists open a dialogue around nature as something seen, shaped and felt. They are not merely documented, but transformed. Their works reject permanence and perfection, instead embracing fragility, artifice and transformation as essential elements of a contemporary visual language. ...

By William Moreno The painter constructs, the photographer discloses. Susan Sontag, “On Photography” William Camargo’s current exhibit of twenty-four plus works, dated 2019 through 2025, reads as a mini survey, with photographic images and installations thematically placed throughout the modest gallery. It’s his largest showing of works to date. Early in his career, the Anaheim native considered fashion and product photography, photojournalism and conflict reportage, finding the latter...

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Join us on Sunday 07 June from 1.30pm to celebrate the launch of INTO THE TREES by photographer Jo Stapleton, curated by Karen Harvey and published by Shutter Hub Editions.
INTO THE TREES is an expressionist photographic account of Jo’s interactions with trees and woodland, later remembered and reimagined in the darkroom using a range of alternative processes and techniques.
Drinks and canapés will be served from 1.30pm before the formal launch event at 2pm, including a book signing and interview discussion between Karen and Jo about the making of the book and the role photography has to play in helping to protect our wildlife and green spaces.
To celebrate the launch of the book, Jo has produced a...

Sylvia Trotter Ewens  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
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By Nancy Spiller Alec Egan's painting "Dawn House," in his show "Groundskeeper" at Vielmetter Los Angeles, is tender, serene, and calm — a lavender and peach sky sheltering the triangular top of a house flanked by two palm trees and the tip of a cypress. In its companion painting, "Night House," the sky takes a sinister turn with layers of dark blue, sunset orange, and a roiling strip indicative of flames mixed with what might be smoke. It hints at something of what Egan, his wife, and two...

Matthew Walton is an emerging artist based in Toronto. He holds a B.A.A. (Hons.) in Animation from Sheridan College. His mixed-media practice combines drawing and painting, often merging the human form with a distinct graphic sensibility. The result is figurative compositions that strike a distinct textural contrast between softness and hardness. Embracing gestures and mannerisms once repressed, his work is also a celebration of authentic self-expression.
Froot Loops features Matthew’s mixed-media-work-on-paper series highlighting the quiet charm of everyday queerness. Each piece reimagines a separate mundane moment, transformed by Matthew’s bold, graphic approach to figuration and his vibrant technicolor...

Kelsey Shwetz  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
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