Madama Butterfly at Opera Colorado plays it safe — and never fully takes flight.

Christopher Corwin and Andrew Lokay provide dual perspectives on the National Symphony Orchestra's performances of Puccini's triple-bill.

Club Marginal Architekten Restores 1891s House in Berlin
 
Located in the Berlin district of Friedrichshagen, Friedi & Hagen is the renovation of a semi-detached house originally constructed in 1891 within a protected urban conservation area. The project, designed by Club Marginal Architekten, focuses on restoring the building’s historical proportions while reorganizing the interior to accommodate contemporary family living.
 
The attic structure was completely reconstructed and expanded through the addition of dormers, increasing usable space within the upper level. On the exterior, the facade was restored with windows incorporating the original cross-bar configuration, while several architectural...

The Headlines IN THE DOGEHOUSE. A federal judge slammed the US DOGE Service, ruling on Thursday that the Elon Musk–led department made unconstitutional and discriminatory cuts to National Endowment for the Humanities grants worth over $100 million, according to the Washington Post. US District Judge Colleen McMahon said DOGE violated the First and Fifth Amendments when it used ChatGPT to determine which grants to cancel based on whether they mentioned diversity, equity, and inclusion in their programs. She called the DOGE’s actions “a textbook example of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination,” and stated that Congress gave no authority to cut the funding it had appropriated. Some canceled...

Known for his stunning photos of wildlife and landscapes, as well as co-founding SeaLegacy alongside fellow conservationist and photographer Cristina Mittermeier, Paul Nicklen has traveled the globe to not only highlight our planet’s phenomenal biodiversity but also to shed light on its increasing vulnerabilities due to the ongoing climate crisis. Nicklen’s most ambitious project yet gathers myriad images from a career exploring the corners of the earth for more than three decades. Forthcoming from Hemeria, Reverence marks the most comprehensive collection of his work to date. The book features 160 photographs, including some of Nicklen’s most enduring images alongside others previously unpublished. From...

“The Harvest in Provence”, once owned by a British collector, is estimated to sell for up to $35m

japan pavilion turns caregiving into collective play
 
At the Venice Art Biennale 2026, Ei Arakawa-Nash transforms the Japan Pavilion into an environment shaped through touch, movement, and shared responsibility. Titled Grass Babies, Moon Babies, the exhibition takes the form of a participatory installation in which visitors are invited to carry one of 208 baby dolls through the pilotis, garden, and interior spaces of the pavilion, temporarily assuming the role of caretaker.
 
The gesture is simple from the outset. Each visitor selects a doll and holds it close while moving through the pavilion. Yet the experience quickly accumulates emotional and symbolic weight. The babies are not presented as props or...

GROHE SPA BLENDS BIOPHILIC APPROACH WITH MODERN TECHNOLOGY
 
Showcased through a series of portfolio pieces and prototypes during Milan Design Week 2026, GROHE SPA offers a forward-looking perspective on the future of bathroom design. The brand shifts the perception of traditional bathrooms, using advanced production techniques and fluid organic forms to create an atmosphere that promotes self-care. Featuring a three-dimensional printing tree shower representing a living element, the ‘Aqua Sanctuary’ evokes a sense of growth instead of mere manufacturing. Within its subtle light stems, the GROHE SPA AquaTree provides a state of calm and relaxation, transmitting the brand’s concept ‘Wellbeing through...

Elisabeth Grümmer was, of course, very good at Wagnerian prayers, but she also shines in this Verdi prayer.

At the United States pavilion for the 2024 Venice Biennale, Jeffrey Gibson’s work was a joyful celebration of Indigenous life; in 2022, Simone Leigh’s was a hymn to Black sovereignty. How, then, did we get Alma Allen’s art from the “land of the bland” at this year’s edition? That’s precisely what Editor-in-Chief Hakim Bishara wanted to know. Read his full review for a snapshot of the sad state of affairs at this year’s US pavilion. Also in Venice, Editor-at-Large Hrag Vartanian offers a peek into In Minor Keys, the main exhibition of the Biennale, which he calls “an unexpected symphony.” And in the Giardini, Greta Rainbow reports from a poetry procession in honor of Koyo Kouoh, the artistic...

celebrating the visible traces of touch
 
Clay, straw, linen, wood, and recycled fibers appear throughout the work of Victoria Yakusha in thick textured surfaces that carry visible traces of touch and labor. Across her interiors and furniture collections, materials retain their grain, density, and irregularity to create spaces that feel closely tied to landscape and long-term inhabitation.
 
Based in Kyiv, Yakusha has developed a design language which aligns with principals of Radical Softness through tactility and preservation through making. Her practice moves between architecture, interiors, objects, and installation work, though the projects remain connected through a consistent material...

For Ireland’s pavilion, Isabel Nolan has created an imaginary world inspired by the Renaissance humanist Aldo Manuzio, whose ambition was to democratise reading

The Syrian pavilion brings back to life an ancient funerary tower, in tribute to the culture destroyed during the Syrian war

The work known as ‘Migrant Child’ was extensively conserved in a project funded by the banking group Banca Ifis

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Joy Like Time brings together Marina Abramović, Gillian Wearing and Kalliopi Lemos in a shared investigation into how meaning is shaped through duration, repetition and lived encounter. Set within the Sainsbury Centre’s season What is the Meaning of Life?, the exhibition resists any singular answer, instead proposing that significance is something continuously made rather than discovered once. Across performance, photography, and installation, time is treated not as backdrop but as material – something elastic, embodied and inseparable from attention itself. The works suggest that every moment contains the instant of making, the act of viewing, and the cultural residue that accumulates in between. What...

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Blue push pad allows furry pets to see it clearly
 
Meet the Dogosophy Button, a wireless button that allows dogs to control and turn on and off home appliances on their own. The idea was developed at The Open University’s Animal-Computer Interaction Laboratory, led by Professor Clara Mancini. The goal was not to teach dogs human habits, but to redesign technology so the device fits dogs’ bodies, senses, and ways of thinking. Its design starts with how dogs see and move. 
 
Dogs see colors differently from humans, and blue is one of the colors they can recognize most clearly. For this reason, the button has a blue push pad, but the rest of the casing is white, which helps the button stand out against...

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Indonesian-born artist Dian Suci has been awarded the 2025–27 Max Mara Art Prize for Women. Cecilia Alemani, curator of the prize and chair of the jury, along with representatives from the Museum MACAN, the Collezione Maramotti, and the family that founded the fashion brand Max Mara made the announcement today at the opening of the Venice Biennale. The award, established in 2005 to support mid-career women artists, gives Suci a six-month traveling residency in Italy customized to her winning project proposal. The residency will culminate with solo exhibitions at the Museum MACAN in Jakarta and at the Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, Italy, which will acquire the new works.   Suci’s work, which...

The 61st Venice Biennale may be marked by various protests as artists hum through the exhibitions, hundreds gather in front of the temporary Israeli pavilion in the Arsenale, and Pussy Riot makes their presence known in front of the Russian pavilion in the Giardini. More actions are planned for tomorrow, May 8, but the heart of the biennial art olympics — the international exhibition — beats on. Led by artistic director Koyo Kouoh, who died last May at age 57, and her handpicked team of collaborators, In Minor Keys opened for today’s preview with a somber curatorial press conference. Advisor Rasha Salti remarked that it was “not only an unusual biennale because the artistic director is not physically...

VENICE — Alma Allen’s United States pavilion at the Venice Biennale says nothing, does nothing, means nothing, and goes nowhere. Curated by Jeffrey Uslip, who resigned from a job in 2016 after accusations of “racial insensitivity,” the show is titled Call Me the Breeze. That's also the title of a 1974 Lynyrd Skynyrd song. A breeze is something refreshing, nourishing, mood-altering. However, I left Allen’s pavilion feeling the same as I did before. Nothing. The pavilion features a series of amorphous, nature-inspired sculptures — all untitled — made of bronze, wood, and stone. Installation view of Alma Allen, Call Me the BreezeIf there’s any essence to the show, it’s in the choice of...

VENICE — In the middle of the second day of the Venice Biennale’s opening preview, Cuban artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons took the first step of a poetry caravan across seven locations in the Giardini in honor of Koyo Kouoh, the late curator of this year’s main exhibition, In Minor Keys.“Today and forever, Koyo Kouoh, you are here with us… We are coming. Almost there, mother of the water. Almost there, mother of the ocean,” Campos-Pons announced to the growing crowd, some of whom were fellow artists that Kouoh selected for the Biennale. Many more were unsuspecting bystanders standing in line for free Illy-sponsored espresso, now forced to confront the conscience so often separated from commerce...

Forty years ago, New York was almost the opposite of what it is today. Though the city had mostly pulled back from the brink of breakdown brought on by White Flight, bankruptcy, etc., by the early 1980s, whole neighborhoods still seemed to have collapsed. Little did I know at the time that, as bad as it was, the city had become a kind of canvas. Graffiti — the art movement of the day — filled the empty spaces. Walls, subway cars, you name it: Everything was covered with magic marker and spray cans. Most of it was tags, cryptic nicknames, and street numbers done hastily with spray cans and magic marker.This was when Keith Haring’s work first appeared. And in this context, it seemed clever, upbeat, and...

Organized by Capture the Atlas, the 2026 Milky Way Photographer of the Year saw a record number of submissions, with more than 6,500 entries representing a wide range of landscapes and perspectives around the world. Just 25 were selected as the top images, representing 12 different regions from the Canary Islands to New Zealand to Argentina. “Every year, this collection reminds us that photographing the Milky Way is not only about technique or planning. It is about curiosity, patience, and the desire to experience the night sky in places where it still feels wild,” says Dan Zafra, editor of Capture the Atlas and curator of the annual contest. “Many of these skies are becoming increasingly rare, and we...

Vaillancourt Fountain, a Brutalist, pre-cast concrete fountain that’s been the central feature of San Francisco’s Embarcadero Plaza since 1971, caught fire on Wednesday morning as it was being disassembled, according to reports. The local landmark is being removed in order to make way for a $32.5 million transformation of Embarcadero Plaza and the nearby playground […]

Giorno Poetry Systems (GPS), the New York–based nonprofit founded in 1965 by pathbreaking artist John Giorno, known for his Dial-a-Poems, has announced twelve recipients of its new need-based grant. The so-called Treat a Stranger grants themselves are a relaunch of GPS’s AIDS Treatment Project grants, which it issued between 1984 and 1994, and are named […]

The gift, from the foundation of Jennifer Rubio and Stewart Butterfield, is the latest example of donors offering targeted support that goes beyond funding institutional acquisitions

The Tokyo-based architecture firm Kengo Kuma & Associates has been chosen to design a new, approximately $100 million project for the Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art in rural Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, per a statement. The museum—which showcases the work of many artists, including American Realist painter Andrew Wyeth as well as work made by […]

EARLY IN The Devil Wears Prada 2, after Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) returns to the offices of media conglomerate Elias-Clarke to become the new features editor of Runway, she receives an invitation to a garden party at the Hamptons estate of her boss, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). Horrified that she has nothing to wear for the occasion, […]

The tenth edition of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women comes at a time when there is growing focus on how artists translate lived experience into broader social and political frameworks. The 2026 winner is Yogyakarta-based artist Dian Suci (b. 1985), whose work was selected from a shortlist of five finalists that also included Betty Adii, Dzikra Afifah, Ipeh Nur and Mira Rizki. The announcement reflects an ongoing commitment by the prize to foreground practices that move between material investigation and conceptual depth. The decision was made by a jury chaired by Cecilia Alemani, and including Venus Lau, Amanda Ariawan, Megan Arlin, Evelyn Halim and artist Melati Suryodarmo. Within this framework, the prize...

Even after the recent addition of a Wegmans and Wells Fargo gave the entrance the sanitized shine of a suburban shopping center, it would be hard to overstate the strangeness and surreality of the inner parts of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The post-industrial buildings at eye-popping scale hiss and wheeze, and everything in the expansive grounds covered with toppled cobblestones and disused train tracks has the air of a haunted sanctum. (Think of “The Zone” in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker.) All of that makes it perfect for Radiohead, which is presenting a multimedia installation, exhibition, and screening experience called Motion Picture House KID A MNESIA at the Navy Yard through June 28. It’s a...

Three Baltic pavilions at the 2026 Venice Biennale—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—organized a walk in solidarity with Ukraine on May 6, one of the exhibition’s preview days. A statement from the Lithuanian Pavilion explains that the procession was dedicated to cultural workers from Ukraine “who continue to create and represent their country in conditions of war, as well as to those who have lost their lives because of ongoing violence.” Ukraine has its own pavilion at the Biennale, and this year’s show, “Security Guarantees,” features work by Zhanna Kadyrova. The walk began at the Lithuanian Pavilion in the Fucina del Futuro, progressed to the Latvian Pavilion in the Arsenale, and ended at the...

Belu-Simion Fainaru, the artist representing Israel at this year’s Venice Biennale, is said to have pressured Biennale officials ahead of the mass resignation of the event’s prize jury. According to reports first published last week by Italian news agency Adkronos, Fainaru accused the Biennale of “racial discrimination” and “antisemitism” and threatened to file suit in […]

The Aspen Art Fair will return to the Hotel Jerome from July 29 through August 1 with more than 35 exhibitors for its third edition, as the boutique fair continues to carve out a distinct presence during Aspen Art Week.  The 2026 edition will be the first under director Kelly Cornell, who joined earlier this year while continuing to lead the Dallas Art Fair. Her appointment signaled a broader effort to connect collector communities across the two fairs while maintaining Aspen’s smaller scale and more intimate format.  That scale, according to cofounder Bob Chase, remains central to the fair’s identity. Spread throughout the Jerome’s guest rooms and public spaces, the fair favors close viewing and...

“The world hums with beauty and danger, harmony and discord,” says Jake Messing. “We walk through these shifting currents every day. For as long as I can remember, I have turned toward the natural world—studying its patterns, its relationships, its quiet lessons.” In highly detailed, hyperrealistic paintings, the Northern California-based artist explores nature as a reflection of our inner lives. Abundance and beauty are sometimes confronted with tension and discomfort, and through nature, “I question the fears and unspoken rules that shape us,” Messing says. “Coccinellidaes Hideaway 2” Working in acrylic on canvas, the artist composes otherworldly vignettes of flora and fauna, often uniting...

By Coral Pereda Serras Among established and other art spaces in Melrose Hill, sits 1028 N. Western Ave., home to Western Avenue Collective artists studios. This 1922 building hosts 22 artist spaces among which is El Nido, an artist-run curatorial and research space by VC Projects. El Nido, borrowing from its Spanish name, is nested in this distinctly LA courtyard and through "Photography Into Sculpture: An Homage and An Update," emerges as a portal into the imagined memories of a Victorian...

For the better part of two decades, Irina Werning has traveled throughout Latin America searching for a specific trait: incredibly long hair. In her photography series Las Pelilargas—meaning “the long-haired ones” in Spanish—she chronicles a time-honored Indigenous tradition through a visual celebration of patience, joy, and cultural pride. In a statement, Werning shares that when she asks young women in the many small towns she’s visited why they have long hair, they respond with simple reasons akin to, “Because I like it.” But, Werning adds, “The true reason is invisible and passes from generation to generation. It’s the culture of Latin America, where our ancestors believed that cutting...

Boston Lyric Opera’s Revolutionary War-set Daughter of the Regiment prioritizes accessibility without losing its charm.

The dictionary definition of Kuntenserven.

ABOVE: Installation view, Jeffrey Gibson, boshullichi / inlvchi – we will continue to change, Kunsthaus Zürich, 2025, photo by Franca Candrian, Kunsthaus Zürich Jeffrey Gibson was far more open about the act of dreaming and the beliefs that make-up spirituality than I expected. I started our conversation saying that I like to keep things loose, […]
The post Jeffrey Gibson: More Colors than The Eye Can See first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

A visit to Lincoln Park or the Garfield Park Conservatory is one of the outings Chicagoans rarely pass up, particularly when we need some reprieve from all the concrete and steel. Two beloved green spaces in the city, these spots boast oases blanketed in verdant foliage even in the depths of winter and house an array of specimens not native to the Midwest. For artists Merryn Omotayo Alaka and Sam Frésquez, the immersive nature of a conservancy, with plants above and below and all around, became a central point for a collaborative project. Your Birth is My Birth presents the duo’s synthetic hair sculptures, which suspend from the ceiling of Jane Lombard Gallery and splay across the wooden floor like organic...

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Orpheus Acosta’s Website
Orpheus Acosta on Instagram

In 1945, WWII was in its waning months. Allied forces entered Nazi occupied territories, liberating concentration camps and revealing the true extent of the horrors of the war for the first time. Adolf Hitler committed suicide on 30 April, and Victory in Europe Day was officially celebrated on 8 May. At the same time, John Baer was serving with the 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion, a unit of the US military. Here, he got a Leica camera from a captured German soldier. His earliest photographs were taken of his fellow soldiers in France and Germany, weary from war. Baer’s collection is a moving portrait of Europe and New York City in the decade after WWII. Now, almost a century on, a debut book demonstrates his...

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...

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.

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...

“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...

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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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Blake Masi’s Website
Blake Masi on Instagram

 
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...

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Sylvia Trotter Ewens’s Website
Sylvia Trotter Ewens on Instagram

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...

“What I am advocating for is a type of grace,” says Matthew Hansel. “Both in the way we see ourselves and in the way we see others. I am celebrating the impossible mix of contradictory things that make us human, including the parts of ourselves we hide from the world.” Hansel’s tour of our hidden […]
The post Matthew Hansel’s Hidden Demons first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

By Jorge Rodriguez-Jimenez Gustavo Rimada is showing his third solo show and largest to date at Thinkspace Projects. The show, titled “Rhythmic Sequence,” brings together his masterfully vivid acrylic paintings and his newly found love for ceramics. Offering mugs with faces that both haunt and delight, Rimada, who was born in Mexico and raised in California, is blending his Mexican heritage and his California lifestyle to create bold and culturally stunning works of art. Rimada’s ceramic work...

To celebrate the cult movie director’s 80th birthday, we bring you our interview with John Waters from Hi-Fructose Isssue 69. You can still get a copy in print of this issue here. Happy Birthday to The King of Puke! ABOVE: Portrait of John Waters, photo by Greg Gorman, © Academy Museum Foundation Early on in the […]
The post Happy 80th Birthday to The Pope of Trash: An Interview With John Waters first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.