“The art world runs on informality,” artist Damien Davis writes, “until informality stops serving the institution.” In today’s must-read piece, Davis takes on the many ways so-called “standard” contracts actually undermine artists’ power. The cost of pushing back feels higher than the risk of signing, he writes, and sometimes, you can’t afford to walk away.Speaking of walking away: The latest twist in this year’s Venice Biennale, after the awards jury resigned last week, is that you are now its judge. There will be no Golden Lions, the event’s top prize; instead, ticket holders will vote on “Visitor Lions,” with awards announced when the show closes in November. Conveniently, Israel...

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

ELISAVA REWRITES THE CULTURAL CODE THROUGH INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS
 
Elisava’s Master in Applied AI for Arts and Design (MAIAD) is a program on technological intervention for thinkers, designers, and creators. Under the conviction that those who understand artificial intelligence are the ones who will shape the future of culture, the master – offered in Barcelona (in English) and Madrid (in Spanish) – frames the algorithm as a raw material for artistic innovation and critical reflection. It is a curriculum designed to train a new kind of creative – one who dissects, builds, and provokes with intelligent systems to rewrite how culture is produced, distributed, and believed. 
Zeynep Atik’s project...

brick and zinc redefine a 1970s house in seoul’s myeongnyun-dong
 
Located in Myeongnyun-dong, Jongno-gu, an area in Seoul characterized by dense clusters of red brick buildings, this structure was originally constructed in 1974. The renovation by sukchulmok and BRBB reworks the existing building into a hybrid space that accommodates both studio and residential functions, while maintaining continuity with its historical context.
 
The intervention retains much of the original exterior, introducing limited contemporary additions that allow the building’s existing form, material irregularities, and relationship to the surrounding fabric to remain legible. New materials, including clay bricks that reference...

lina lapelytė’s collective construction in hamburger bahnhof
 
At Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Lithuanian artist and composer Lina Lapelytė fills the museum’s vast Historic Hall with 400,000 wooden cubes for We Make Years Out of Hours, the second edition of the Chanel Commission. Opening during Gallery Weekend Berlin and on view until January 10th, 2027, the large-scale participatory installation turns the museum into a shifting terrain of collective building, singing, and coexistence.
 
Through choreography, sound, and audience participation, Lapelytė dissolves distinctions between sculpture and performance, monument and gathering, asking visitors to physically shape the...

designboom hosts studio drift co-founder in milan
 
As the co-founder of Studio DRIFT, Lonneke Gordijn has spent two decades at the vanguard of experiential design, choreographing the delicate intersection of nature, technology, and human perception. From kinetic installations that mimic the flight patterns of birds to sculptures that breathe, DRIFT’s work consistently explores the ‘life’ within inanimate objects. It is this profound focus on material agency and the hidden rhythms of our environment that makes her one of the definitive voices for a conversation on the post-human future of design.
 
At designboom’s ROOM FOR DREAMS during Milan Design Week 2026, Gordijn challenged the fundamental...

Last month, Faustin Linyekula stood at the edge of the lagoon beside the Arsenale, looking out over the water. He bent down and ran his hand along the moss that clings to the concrete docks, then began to sing. His voice carried across the basin, past the bell towers and into the empty military warehouses, the sound echoing through spaces that, in a matter of weeks, would be filled with art and people. For now, though, Venice was quiet. Three weeks before the Venice Biennale opens to press and invited guests on May 5, much of the city’s exhibition infrastructure remained off-limits or unfinished. The Giardini, the public gardens that houses many of the national pavilions, was closed. Access to parts of the...

The untimely passing of curator Koyo Kouoh, the artistic director of the 2026 Venice Biennale, has been deeply felt throughout the art world for the past year. Now, artist Derrick Adams will pay tribute to Kouoh via a monumental installation in Venice this week. A banner version of his collage Heavy is the head that wears the crown (2026) will be installed on the facade of the Palazzetto dello sport Giobatta Gianquinto, facing the Rio della Tana, near the Arsenale, one of the Biennale’s main venues. Done in his signature style, this newly realized work features a portrait of Kouoh, whose face and arms are rendered as different geometrical shapes; above her head is the word “JOY,” from which golden rays...

FLORIM’S CHROMATIC JOURNEY THROUGH SENSORY GEOGRAPHIES 
 
Florim presents SensiColore, a ceramic collection that translates the essence and spirit of Italy into a contemporary architectural language. Designed by Matteo Thun and Benedetto Fasciana, the series finds its soul in Goethe’s diary ‘Italian Journey’, as a tactile ode to the country’s natural landscape. This latest introduction follows the sensory lineage of the brand’s previous collections Sensi and SensiTerre, exploring a sensory geography rooted in nature’s raw purity blended with artisanal work and technological alchemy.
Florim presents SensiColore | all images courtesy of Florim
 
 
SENSICOLORE’S PAINTERLY SENSITIVITY EVOKES...

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Michael Spyres talks to Kevin Ng about his winding path as a baritenor, which composer he wants to conquer next, and how he makes Wagner work in his voice — and in his native Ozarks.

I realize Igor Gorin did not sing much Verdi except for a few Papa Germonts, yet this performance of the famous baritone aria from Attila I claim is well-night perfect singing.

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...

This May, exhibitions on display around the world harness photography and installation to interrogate pressing themes, from the importance of proper representation to the future of our natural spaces. They ask questions like: what happens after sea levels rise? What does the world look like 50 years from now? How do we preserve our cultures, traditions and communities in the face of massive uncertainty? They’re some of the most important issues facing our current moment. Each exhibition, hosted at the National Portrait Gallery, VB Photographic Center, ARKEN, Biennale of Sydney and Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, explores them with depth and nuance. They do not provide easy solutions, but ask the audiences to hold...

Luminous Lucia Popp’s “Caro Nome” beams with Gilda’s youthful passion, displaying Popp’s signature bright, beautiful timbre and magnificent coloratura.

In 2019, Ralph Rugoff curated the 58th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale under the title May You Live in Interesting Times.Well, Ralph, you got what you wished for, and then some. Times are so "interesting" now that they've upended the next biennale before it’s even opened.The latest development is the collective resignation of the show's international jury. The jurors haven't given an explicit reason for their decision, but indicated it had something to do with their recent announcement that countries accused of committing crimes against humanity (namely, Israel and Russia) will not be considered for awards. I expect more drama during the press preview next week. Our team...

We live in a time of suppression — by governments, by corporations, by culture. What do we do against it? Let us show you. Below, we take you into a revolutionary photo studio in Mali that chronicled a nation's independence. A document of a city devastated by the AIDS crisis through portraits not just of people but of inanimate objects. A meditation on grief and death, and also a monument to the city's first Arabic-speaking enclave. These are artists who made or are making works from all kinds of places, from an attic during World War II, to the California state psychiatric system, to the very center of the art world. Here is art that is playful, cerebral, feral — art that offers a way...

Kim Dacres gravitates toward renewal and care, transforming worn rubber into expressive sculptural portraits. The New York-based artist twists and braids tired treads into sleek buns and rows typical of Black hairstyles, which she embellishes with gear-like crowns and jewelry made of metal bike chains. Spray painting the material to mask marks, Dacres utilizes what might otherwise be deemed worthless to create bold visages. A new body of work extends a series of celebratory busts the artist made to honor those who’ve inspired and influenced her. On view this month at Charles Moffett, Lost on a Two Way Street follows this trajectory, while adding flatter wall works evocative of Victorian-era cameos. “The...

With widespread boycott campaigns, a crowdfunded United States pavilion exhibition, and the jury's collective resignation before it even starts, the 61st Venice Biennale is moving more like a circus than the “Art Olympics.” In the latest twist, the Golden Lion awards have been shelved altogether this year, and it will now be up to the public to vote on the best national pavilion and best artist in the main exhibition.The Biennale Foundation announced the establishment of the “Visitor Lions” shortly after the Biennale's award jury issued its collective resignation yesterday, April 30. The jury's decision was an escalation of its previous statement of intent to omit “countries whose...

After the ruling, President Donald Trump imposed new rate of up to 15%, although this is also being challenged and is likely to be temporary

Construction crews building President Trump’s hostile border wall razed a portion of a Native American archeological site in Arizona estimated to be at least 1,000 years old.Approximately 60 to 70 feet of the 272-foot-long Las Playas Intaglio, a design etched into the ground in Southwest Arizona’s Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, suffered damage from heavy construction machinery, as first reported by the Washington Post. The intaglio, a type of geometric or figurative drawing etched into arid desert pavements, resembles a fish and likely served as a sacred site for ancestors of the Tohono O’odham Nation, which lies east of the refuge. In a statement to Hyperallergic, a spokesperson for the...

Curator and writer Essence Harden has been appointed senior curator at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco. They will take up their new role on May 18. Harden, who is known for their deep interest in cutting-edge art and for bringing artists into the curatorial process, recently curated the 2026 […]

Martha Ortiz, the director of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO), has left her role amid allegations that she harassed museum employees and created a toxic environment at the institution. The museum in a statement said that Ortiz was retiring and that it would begin a search for a successor. Until one is […]

On Wednesday, at a ceremony held at La Marmora barracks in Rome, the United States officially returned 337 looted antiquities to Italy in a repatriation ceremony, the New York Times reports.  221 objects were repatriated via collaboration with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, while the remaining 116 were recovered on April 10, 2026 as the […]

New Jersey’s Montclair Art Museum has hired Kate Kraczon as chief curator to replace former appointee Gail Stavitsky, Artnews reports. Kraczon was most recently director of exhibitions and chief curator at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, but she was terminated last December as, amidst austerity measures, the university underwent a rash of […]

New York–based artist Guadalupe Maravilla had traveled to Venice last weekend to finalize the installation of his work at the 2026 Venice Biennale, a crowning achievement for any artist. But that situation, which he first posted about on Instagram, soured Thursday evening after he had left the Arsenale, one of the Biennale’s main venues, when two police officers approached him. “After completing the installation of my work at the Venice Biennale, I was racially profiled by police in the streets of Venice, who attempted to take me in for questioning,” Maravilla told ARTnews in a written statement. “Two officers initially stopped me and demanded my documents, then called in additional backup and...

Wheat impression on Neolithic mudbrick, Georgia TBILISI, GEORGIA—Phys.org reports that wheat for baking bread (Triticum aestivum) may have first been grown some 8,000 years ago in Georgia. Genetic studies of modern wheat plants and wild grasses indicate that domesticated wheat and wild goat grass were mixed in the South Caucasus and the Caspian Sea region. This hybrid plant eventually became bread wheat, explained Nana Rusishvili of the Georgia National Museum and her colleagues. They examined charred grains recovered from Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, two Neolithic village sites in Georgia. Because charred grains of bread wheat look similar to durum wheat and other wheat seeds, the team members...

A Botticelli painting placed under an export ban in an effort to keep it in the UK was acquired by the Klesch Collection and will stay in England by way of a three-year loan to the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford. As reported by The Art Newspaper, the work—titled The Virgin and Child Enthroned and dated to the 1470s—had been valued last May at £10.2 million (around $13.9 million). Previously it had sold at Sotheby’s in London for £9.7 million ($13.2 million). In a statement, the director of the Ashmolean Museum, Xa Sturgis, said the institution “warmly welcomes this acquisition of a painting by one of the most important artists in the Western tradition, and we’re so pleased that it...

Pieces of the Berlanga Cup BERLANGA DE DUERO, SPAIN—According to a Live Science report, a new study of the Berlanga Cup, a 1,900-year-old bronze vessel discovered in Spain, suggests that its decorations depict Hadrian’s Wall, which is located some 1,200 miles away from where the cup was discovered. “The cup is a small representation of a functional vessel called a Roman trulla—a bronze or clay cup with a handle used to drink water,” said Jesús García Sánchez of the Archaeological Institute of Mérida. “It is not only crafted with metals, but also expensive enamels, and later on customized. It is definitely not an industrial product,” García Sánchez added. The inscription on the cup lists...

Just two months after becoming a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jennifer Rubio, along with her husband, Stewart Butterfield, have pledged $23 million to the New York museum. Rubio is an entrepreneur who founded the ubiquitous travel brand Away, and Butterfield, who is on the boards of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Dia Art Foundation, is a software executive who co-founded Flickr and Slack. The gift is earmarked for the Met’s internship program and will be used to ensure that all undergraduate and graduate internships are fully paid positions. The pledge, said Met director Max Hollein in a statement, will support “a continuous pipeline for new voices and innovative ideas to...

The veteran provocateur talks about his return to the enduring motif of Santa Claus, and his ongoing collaboration with the German actress Lilith Stangenberg, as an exhibition of his taboo-busting work opens in Paris

Meta Media Group has launched The Art Journal, a new independent digital-first publication dedicated to making the art market more... Read More

"I had seen enough of so-called order. I was forced to question everything."

Blake Masi  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Blake Masi’s Website
Blake Masi on Instagram

Exhibitions worth travelling for this summer, featuring Jesse Darling, The Antwerp Six, Martin Creed, Tracey Emin, Hayden Dunham and Harmony Korine.

Nearly 200 objects will be on view at San Francisco's Legion of Honor in a show exploring the influential civilisation

The Goodwood Art Foundation hosts Britain's first major exhibition by the US artist

The head of the Venice-based publisher and exhibition organising company shares his suggestions for places to eat, shop and explore

The winners of the Fourth Plinth Schools Awards 2026 were announced today

Contxt Venice launches as a new way to navigate the 2026 Venice Biennale, helping visitors discover artists, exhibitions and ideas across the city.

While studying Un ballo in maschera for my Vienna role debut next January, I came across this beautiful ‘Ecco l’orrido campo’ amazingly performed by Montserrat Caballé.

FAD News: Powerhouse Parramatta set to open in late 2026, bringing a new museum model to Western Sydney with major exhibitions, STEM learning spaces

Systems of power, cultural identity and “the fragile boundaries between perception and reality” are the ideas that drive Lucia Shuyu Li, a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans installation, performance, painting and sound. They’re also some of the most relevant themes of our times, emerging from a contemporary era defined by misinformation, political polarisation and an endless news cycle. Li draws on her Chinese heritage and time spent in the US to create her works, which express her “experiences as an individual navigating the complexities of contemporary society.” The trio of paintings Judge Me, I Am Dead Therefore I Was Alive and Who Cried Walking Home are perhaps her most personal, and...

In recent years, Julianknxx has developed a practice that sits at a compelling intersection of film, poetry and performance – one that resists easy classification while remaining grounded in lived experience. Born in Sierra Leone and now based in London, his work reflects an engagement with questions of identity, displacement and cultural memory. Rather than treating these themes as fixed subjects, he approaches them as evolving conditions, shaped by movement, language and time; unfolding through a logic of association rather than linear narrative, rhythm, voice and atmosphere. This creates a viewing experience that is as much about listening and sensing as it is about interpretation. In this way, Julianknxx...

Home might be a mutable concept, but some objects retain the aura of belonging and comfort even outside the walls we reside in. For Monica Rohan, those items are patterned fabrics and bentwood dining chairs, which venture outdoors in her vibrant oil paintings. The Brisbane-based artist has long depicted the supple folds and bright motifs of textiles, which tended to swaddle her characters or hide their faces among natural landscapes. Upholstered loungers and carved wood seats have similarly appeared in unusual spots, precariously holding a figure while nested in a slim hedge or slumping down a small hill. “Draped Clover” (2026), oil on board, 70 x 100 centimeters In recent years, though, Rohan’s...

Remains of a Neanderthal infant discovered in Amud Cave, Israel TEL AVIV, ISRAEL—IFL Science reports that an international team of researchers including Ella Been of Tel Aviv University and Erella Hovers of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has analyzed the skeletal remains of Amud 7, a Neanderthal infant unearthed near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel in the 1990s. The bones have been dated to between 51,000 and 56,000 years ago. Previous research has found that Neanderthal fetal development was similar to that of modern humans. The size of the Amud 7 bones and skull, when compared to a modern human infant, would suggest that the Neanderthal child had been about one year old at the time of death. Yet,...

Early medieval grave, Ergoldsbach, Germany MAINZ, GERMANY—Live Science reports that Joachim Burger of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and his colleagues examined more than 250 sets of human remains of people who lived in what is now southern Germany, on what was the frontier of the Roman Empire, between A.D. 400 and 700. The researchers analyzed DNA samples from the bones, performed strontium isotope analysis to look for chemical signatures in the bones, and compared the results of the tests with 2,500 ancient and 379 modern genomes. The study suggests that many people engaged in monogamy, and nearly one-quarter of the children lost at least one parent by the age of ten. Yet, most children had at least...

Earlier this month, dozens of metallic discs suspended from the ceiling of a large industrial space invited viewers to immerse themselves in what SpY describes as “a continuous choreography of movement and reflection.” The artist is known for his large-scale installations, often repurposing objects like traffic cones and metallic rescue blankets to create striking urban interventions. SpY’s most recent room-scale work, titled “Halos,” reimagined the industrial interior of a former railway-related factory in Florence—a place we typically associate with Renaissance elegance as opposed to brutalist design—as part of the city’s Bright Festival. Three stories high, “Halos” interacts with the...

Neolithic-era pit filled with beaver bones, Alsleben, Germany ALSLEBEN, GERMANY—A pit containing the 7,000-year-old remains of at least 12 beavers was discovered in central Germany during an investigation conducted ahead of the construction of an underground power line, according to the Science Information Service (IDW). Researchers from the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt found the pit near a Neolithic settlement site of the Stroke-Ornamented Ware Culture on the Saale River. Study of the well-preserved beaver bones shows that the animals ranged in age from one year old to more than eight years old at the time of death. They are thought to have been hunted, skinned for...

From recognizable scenes around her home in Scotland to delicately rendered snapshots of places she visits, Laura K. Sayers’ meticulously crafted postage stamps nod to connections from afar. The artist, who also illustrates children’s books and is commissioned for special projects like greeting cards, incorporates itty-bitty cuts of colorful paper into tiny tableaux that can fit in the palm of a hand. Much of the work seen here is currently on view solo in Sayers’ solo exhibition of miniatures titled The Wee Small Hours at N. atelier. An array of everyday scenes is chronicled in a format we typically associate with significant events and remembrance, documenting fleeting moments like little treasures....

 
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...

In Deborah Turbeville – Photocollage and Ikram Abdulkadir – Soft Focus, presented side by side at Moderna Museet Malmö, the image is not fixed but constantly in negotiation with time, material and gaze. Fashion and portrait photography provide the point of departure, yet both practices quickly exceed their commercial origins. Instead, they unfold into meditations on presence – how a body occupies space, and how that space might be withheld, transformed or dissolved over time. Across both exhibitions, softness becomes a structural principle rather than a purely aesthetic choice. Turbeville’s work establishes a language of atmospheric resistance, where the photograph resists clarity in favour of...

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. Scenerium 2026 Art Award: Exhibition, Publication, Sales, and Global PromotionFeaturedWhere will your art take us? From landscapes and seascapes to cityscapes and imagined worlds, Scenerium 2026 invites artists worldwide to capture the essence of place and turn it into a visual journey. Through natural scenes, urban energy, and visionary environments, this juried opportunity celebrates art that draws viewers in and places them inside the world you create. Selected artists receive a smart online exhibition, Artsy...

Sylvia Trotter Ewens  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Sylvia Trotter Ewens’s Website
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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...