the nonhuman client was there before multispecies design
 
Long before architects began adding bird bricks, bee hotels and wildlife corridors to contemporary buildings, animals were already helping determine the shape of architecture. Across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, buildings were designed to accommodate pigeons, silkworms, horses, cattle and wild birds as part of systems that connected shelter, agriculture, religion, labor and power. The history of these structures suggests that the idea of multispecies architecture is a rediscovery of an older condition, as human buildings have always been influenced by nonhuman bodies.
 
A pigeon tower in Safavid Iran could turn the free movement of birds into...

Richard Dadd, "Bacchanalian Scene" (1862) (image public domain US CC0 via Wikimedia Commons)In English painter Richard Dadd’s “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke” (1855–64), the ghostly, gray faces of well-dressed Victorians nestle among human-size dandelions and shrubs, partially obscuring a shrouded figure raising an axe overhead. The eerie work was painted at Broadmoor Hospital, a high-security psychiatric institution where Dadd was confined after his tenure at the famed Bethlem Royal Hospital, also known as “Bedlam.” Writer and art critic Jennifer Higgie captures a similarly uncanny world in her novel of the same name. Originally published by Sternberg Press in 2006 and re-released by Verso in...

An Egyptian archaeological mission working at Saqqara has uncovered the tomb of Sekhentiu-Ptah, a high-ranking official of Egypt’s Old Kingdom (ca. 2700–ca. 2200 BCE). In a separate discovery, the archaeologists also found a network of burial shafts containing human remains and funerary objects from later periods. Heritage Daily reported the news following an announcement by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. The finds were made during the mission’s first excavation season in an area west of the Bubasteion necropolis in Saqqara. Taken together, they point to the ancient cemetery’s use over centuries. According to the mission, Sekhentiu-Ptah’s tomb contained the remains of a funerary...

The Vienna Actionism Museum (WAM) has been controversial since it opened in March 2024, which is perhaps not an entirely surprising outcome given the postwar movement’s penchant for violent, graphic performance art.   A new scandal is brewing as the museum prepares for its fall exhibition, dedicated to the work of Otto Muehl, one of the co-founders of Viennese Actionism. The show “Otto Muehl: Art on the Precipice” will feature 150 paintings, objects, film, and prints, some from the museum’s own extensive collection, others loaned by private collectors. It’s set to open on September 10 and will be on view through January 10, 2027. The controversy goes beyond the fact that many may find Muehl’s...

A Keith Haring drawing deemed authentic by a Superior Court judge but lacking sufficient provenance records to sell at Christie’s and Sotheby’s was the subject of a trial in Connecticut. The gallery that sold it ended up proving victorious. As reported by Greenwich Time, Nevada businessman Vernon Hartung bought the drawing of flying saucers from Martin Lawrence Galleries for $165,000 in 2018. But when he inquired about selling it at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the two auction houses said the artwork’s documented history “did not meet their requirements for selling a Haring drawing as an authentic work,” according to trial records. Martin Lawrence Galleries then attempted to sell the work for...

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — I first saw Catherine Murphy’s work at the now-defunct Xavier Fourcade gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 1980, and I have admired it ever since. Her career began when her paintings were included in the 1972 Annual Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art (a precursor to the Biennial). Since then, Murphy has characterized herself as an “observational painter” who bases her work on what she sees. Throughout her career, however, she would move from what she saw to setting up situations based on dreams and memory, broadening the definition of realism as well as breaking with the realist painting convention of working on a one-to-one scale. With these two innovations,...

The South Korean city of Gwangju has issued an apology for controversy that surrounded the Gwangju Biennale’s Taiwan Pavilion, whose name was initially altered in promotional materials for the show, only to be returned to its current name following an outcry from its participants. The Taiwan Pavilion, one of many national pavilions that appears alongside the biennial’s main exhibition, was at one point billed as the NTMoFA Pavilion, a reference to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, which organizes it. Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture alleged that the Gwangju Biennale had committed “political censorship” through the renaming. Having faced an open letter from artists showing in the pavilion, the...

In June, the Los Angeles Conservancy placed the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed George D. Sturges House on its 2026 L.A. Watch List for endangered architectural works. The home, built using redwood, brick, and steel, is the only residence in Los Angeles that Wright built in the Usonian style he pioneered during the Great Depression.  The 1,200-square-foot home was […]

Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has become central to a local corruption scandal, due to the conduct of civil servants who allegedly accepted bribes to grant exorbitant construction contracts for public work. According to a 2023 report from the Dutch publication NRC, formal suspicions of corruption related to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s asbestos treatment […]

Shakira will be shaking up Egypt’s Pyramids of Giza with a concert on November 28, promoter Rabih Mokbel told the National. It is the only stop in the region during her ongoing world tour. The “Hips Don’t Lie” singer was previously slated to headline Abu Dhabi’s Offlimits Music Festival on November 21. Her November 18 concert at Doha’s Stadium 974 was also canceled. “The only worry we have is that, production-wise, flying 200 people in Shakira’s crew to the Middle East is humongously expensive,” Mokbel, founder and chief executive of Venture Lifestyle and the promoter of the Giza show, told the National. “So, the fewer countries she has around us, the less likely she would be to do Egypt,...

The British Museum hosted Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel for a VIP viewing of the Bayeux tapestry on August 18, drawing concerns among staff, per a report from the Guardian. The museum declined to comment on the matter in an email to Hyperallergic, and it remains unclear if Thiel was part of a larger group privileged with viewing the 11th-century tapestry before its coveted public exhibition starting September 10.Thiel's VIP visit puzzled some, as the billionaire has never donated to the British Museum individually or through any of his businesses. Certain staff were concerned that Thiel's private viewing potentially limited public access to the historic weaving, as the museum must limit both the...

Animated characters, patterned textiles, logos from iconic fashion labels, graffiti, and more coalesce in the vibrant portraits of Victor Quiñonez. Born in Mexico, raised in East Dallas, and now based in Brooklyn, the artist, who works as Marka27, is interested in the ways activism and pop culture converge, and he infuses the visual language of contemporary street art with Indigenous imagery and Mexican mural traditions. Whether working on large-scale walls or more intimate canvases, Quiñonez taps into his own experiences of living between cultures and the arbitrary nature of national borders. Portraits like “Luchando Por Mi Alma” superimpose the signature Louis Vuitton pattern, desert flora, a striped...

Tia-Thuy Nguyen translates cloud formations into installations
 
Vietnamese artist Tia-Thuy Nguyen presents Fields of Resonance at Almine Rech Shanghai, her first solo exhibition in China. On view from August 28th to October 31st, 2026, the exhibition brings together nearly twenty paintings, sculptures, and installations produced using oil paint, beads, sequins, thread, quartz, crystal, recycled glass, stone, and stainless steel. The exhibition continues Nguyen’s engagement with clouds, a recurring motif in her work since 2018. Initially associated with memories of her father, a pilot who served during the Vietnam War, clouds later became part of the artist’s visual diary as she traveled between Asia and...

In 2023, when he was mayor of greater Manchester, Burnham had expressed unequivocal support for returning the Parthenon Marbles with ‘no strings’ attached

The Continuum initiative provides rare access to a global audience and market

Blue chip auction house Phillips has seen the departure of half its executive team and several top-level employees since the close of its May sales, Artnews reports. Miety Heiden, chair of private sales, and Jonathan Crockett, chair for Asia, are set to exit in September, leaving Robert Manley, chair and worldwide head of modern and […]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has canceled a planned exhibition at its Costume Institute honoring fashion designer John Galliano. Both the museum and designer cited fallout caused by Galliano’s prior antisemitic and anti-Asian comments as the cause for the cancellation. The exhibition was scheduled to open next spring alongside the Met Gala, […]

two staircases turn the climb into the view
 
Xiang Architects has completed the Chenhu Migratory Bird Observation Tower on Xianglushan, a natural rise within Wuhan’s Chenhu Wetland. Rising 19.8 meters (65 feet), the structure twists upward in two interlocking staircases to give visitors separate routes for ascending and descending while opening changing views across rivers and surrounding marshlands extending around them. The site already sits around 22 meters above sea level, so the climb begins among the trees before gradually lifting above the canopy and out toward the wetland horizon.
 
The observation tower draws that transition across the full ascent. Twenty-four staggered platforms interrupt the...

The British fashion designer John Galliano has withdrawn his upcoming exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, set to run concurrently with the 2027 Met Gala, after intense criticism of his past racist behavior. A French court convicted Galliano of antisemitic and anti-Asian hate speech directed at a French couple in February 2011, and a barrage of antisemitic slurs against a woman in October of the same year. He was fined a total of €6,000 ($6,962). A video of Galliano declaring “I love Hitler” was also circulated by the British tabloid, The Sun, leading to Dior firing the designer from his post as creative director in March 2011. When The Met announced the Costume Institute...

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stone enclosure defines the cultural center in Vaison-la-Romaine
 
Set at the foot of Mont Ventoux in Vaison-la-Romaine, France, the cultural center by Tectoniques is organized within a square mineral enclosure constructed from locally sourced stone. Behind the perimeter, timber volumes, shaded galleries, and a Mediterranean courtyard accommodate a music and dance school, performance hall, and children’s activity center within a compact, climate-responsive composition.
 
The project occupies former vineyard land that has been converted into a housing estate. Its position within a fragmented peri-urban context, without a direct connection to the public realm, led Tectoniques to develop an inward-looking...

A criminal court in Hamburg has ordered the confiscation of €32m in sales proceeds from Serop Simonian’s children, who plan to appeal their conviction

The artist's knotted reflections on place and perception

With a teal roof and gabled windows, a colonial-style dollhouse is at the center of Isaiah Lee’s practice. In his current body of work, the Chicago artist renders childhood toys that transition from objects of play and nostalgia into uncanny, animate entities. Set in the scaled-down rooms and landscape around the miniature home, Lee’s scenes channel the wonder and theatrics of the adolescent imagination, while confronting the ways these early experiences permeate one’s life. Born into a fundamentalist Christian family in Missouri, the artist grapples with the contradictions within the teachings of his upbringing, alongside the lived reality of being a Black man in the U.S. In “Shepherd I,” a tiny...

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Museum leadership said the partnership would end on 31 August ‘at the end of its agreed term’, though reports suggest the agreement was due to continue until 2028

Raul Guillermo  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Raul Guillermo’s Website
Raul Guillermo on Instagram

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As an editor, occasionally a pitch lands in your inbox that makes your heart rate quicken. That’s what I felt when artist and writer Lia Strasser emailed me a few weeks ago, attaching a very personal and moving essay about her relationship to the story of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock. You may be familiar with the critique that Krasner’s oeuvre has been overshadowed by that of her husband — the alpha male, the household name, the frankly abusive spouse. When Strasser first saw a post announcing The Met’s upcoming exhibition dedicated to both artists, she winced. “Give her a solo show!” Then, Strasser retraced her steps — from the Abstract Expressionist couple’s home in East Hampton to the...

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PLAZA DE COLÓN GETS A PINK TAKEOVER
 
From September 24 to 27, ADN FÓRUM returns to Madrid for its fourth edition, transforming Plaza de Colón into an open-air landscape of art, design and temporary architecture. Positioned between the Salamanca district and the city’s Golden Mile, the free event takes over the square with a collection of signature shipping containers, installations and interventions developed by habitat and lifestyle brands together with artists, architects and designers. The organizers describe the temporary setting as a contemporary ‘dry port’ — though this one arrives coated, rather unapologetically, in pink.
 
Organized by Asociación ADN FÓRUM and presided over by Gabriel...

In a new book, Oscar Ho Hing-kay outlines the growing visibility of boundary-breaking local artists and their responses to the 1997 handover to China

By Julie Faith There is something strange about returning to a place you once knew well after being away for a long time. You recognize the architecture before you recognize what the years have done to you. As I passed through the gate at Corey Helford Gallery, crossed the lot, and headed up the stairs, I felt ridiculously, wonderfully giddy. Kid-in-a-candy-store giddy. I have been away from the gallery and much of the Los Angeles art world, but somewhere between the gate and the stairs, I...

The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall's Talk of the Town!

John Yohalem reviews pianist Steven Blier's warm, witty, and worldly autobiography, From Ear to Ear.

An amateurish production of Le siège de Corinthe, combined with heavy-handed conducting, at Pesaro weakens the defenses of one of Rossini's most topical operas.

Pure dementia. Magda Olivero in the finale to Fedora.

Nel 1979, quando il saggio “La Transavanguardia italiana” di Achille Bonito Oliva viene pubblicato su Flash Art, Jean-François Lyotard scrive “La condizione postmoderna”. Entrambi i testi muovono da una condizione di crisi, quella che interessa le metanarrazioni, vale a dire i sistemi narrativi volti a legittimare una visione del mondo lineare e progressiva. Per il francese l’obiettivo è la dialettica dello spirito, per l’italiano è il “darwinismo linguistico”[1] dell’avanguardia. Bonito Oliva contrappone all’istanza collettivistica e progettuale che aveva indirizzato le formazioni nate negli anni Sessanta “un ritorno dell’arte ai suoi motivi interni, alle ragioni costitutive del suo...

By Victoria Thomas Altadena-based artist James Griffith greets me at his studio, located in a refurbished 1920s firehouse diagonally across the street from the gleaming silver lagomorph of the restored Bunny Museum, by saying "Hi, I just started putting a galaxy in the armpit of a penguin." Great cities announce their identities through their monuments. New York City has the Statue of Liberty, St. Louis the Gateway Arch, Chicago the Cloud Gate, Philadelphia the original LOVE sculpture. And...

Musubu Hagi  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Musubu Hagi’s Website
Musubu Hagi on Instagram

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

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,...

Le lancette dell’orologio non smettono mai di rincorrere il tempo. Con il loro fare silenzioso, avanzano a poco a poco, rendendo attimi, minuti, ore e giorni, entità che in pochi istanti perdono di valore. Potremmo parlare di circolarità o di eterno ritorno se pensassimo a quel lampo di genio che, dopo generazioni e generazioni, continua ad abitare nella famiglia Buendia, nella lontana e recondita Macondo. Sì, perché alla fin fine, ogni attimo è destinato a ritornare.
Giovanni Anselmo, “Entrare nell’opera”, 1971, stampa fotografica su tela (copia espositiva), Archivio Giovanni Anselmo ETS, Foto © l’Artista, courtesy Archivio Giovanni Anselmo ETS
“Ripensando il Romanticismo nell’arte...

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...

Tommy Keith  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Tommy Keith’s Website
Tommy Keith on Instagram

Lasciata alle spalle una torre medievale dell’XI secolo e qualche palazzo cinquecentesco della Serenissima, sperso tra la speculazione edilizia degli anni Sessanta, a pochi passi dalla ottocentesca piazza Erminio Ferretto (intitolata a un partigiano morto nella guerra di liberazione dal nazifascismo) nel centro storico di Mestre, oltrepassato il duomo di S. Lorenzo, attraversato un restaurato cortile con porticato settecentesco, per studiato contrasto sorge il Museo del Novecento M9 (progettato dallo studio di architettura tedesco Sauerbruch Hutton, studio che aveva vinto il concorso internazionale indetto dalla Fondazione di Venezia per la riqualificazione di quell’area urbana), museo  ideato e proposto...

Ibrahim Rayintakath  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Ibrahim Rayintakath’s Website
Ibrahim Rayintakath on Instagram

Tra tutte le edizioni di Documenta, quella che si tenne nel 1972, dal titolo Interrogare la realtà – Mondi dell’immagine oggi, apriva una significativa riflessione sui linguaggi dell’arte contemporanea, il mondo reale e le sue rappresentazioni. Il titolo che il curatore Harald Szeemann scelse per la manifestazione risulta quanto mai contemporaneo, permettendo di consideralo come una valida prospettiva per scoprire lo studio dell’artista Luca Valerio (Fondi, Latina, 1966). È evidente come Interrogare la realtà – Mondi dell’immagine oggi presupponga una ricerca artistica che presenta elementi riconducibili all’arte concettuale, quindi caratterizzata da un rigoroso controllo formale e...

Hyper Reality è il titolo-tema dell’undicesima edizione del Festival curato a Forlì da Vertov Project. Prologo alla Fondazione Dino Zoli con la mostra collettiva Interference, che riunisce dodici artiste internazionali nel segno dell’interferenza come forza generativa. Forlì torna a essere una Babele di stimoli e visioni, grazie a Ibrida Festival Internazionale delle Arti Intermediali: l’undicesima edizione, dal titolo-tema Hyper Reality, è in programma dal 17 al 20 settembre. Prologo essenziale e complementare sarà la mostra collettiva intermediale Interference, che dall’1 settembre all’11 ottobre metterà in dialogo le ricerche radicali di dodici artiste internazionali.
Elena Bellantoni,...

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Exploring the people, places, and cultures that shape cities around the world, The City Series showcases images that respond to place not as a fixed subject, but as an idea shaped by experience, observation, and interpretation.
100 images of the city. Welcome to Cambridge.
Published by Shutter Hub Editions, and with a foreword by Alice Ryan, this beautiful collection of 100 images of Cambridge is a portrait of the city through the eyes of international photographers.
Order THE CITY SERIES: CAMBRIDGE here.
   
The photographers featured in THE CITY SERIES: CAMBRIDGE are: Zaklina Anderson, Robert Barcia, Viktor Barkhatov, Catherine Breslin, Tara Bucklow, Tiina Burton, Alison Carter, steven chandler, Alice...

By Betty Ann Brown "The idea becomes a machine that makes the art."—Sol LeWitt Dean De Cocker creates richly conceived, exquisitely crafted, and visually delightful artworks that shuttle between abstraction and conceptual representation. He has long been drawn to machines, from bicycles to motorcycles, cars to airplanes, and formal echoes of these devices appear in his current body of work, exhibited at the Visual Arts Center in the small Central California town of Visalia. Welcome to the...

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.

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...

“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.