Outside the New Museum's recently unveiled building, the flailing arms and large pink breasts of Sarah Lucas's new public sculpture, "VENUS VICTORIA" (2026), tower over the endless flow of traffic on Lower Manhattan's Bowery.“Mom, why are they all standing there?” a toddler asked a woman hurriedly pushing a stroller near the artwork on Friday, May 15. "They're looking at the sculpture," the woman replied, interrupted by another unsatisfied, tiny-voiced, “Why?”"Because they think her titties are interesting," she responded, laughing and whisking the child past the work.The subversive feminine figure, perched angularly atop a dusty washing machine in bright yellow high heels, will...

Nathaniel Mary Quinn still sounds a little stunned by the whole affair: Last fall, the painter was in the kitchen of his Brooklyn brownstone when he got on a three-way call with Mick Jagger and producer Andrew Watt. By the end of it, he had agreed to make the cover art for Foreign Tongues, the Rolling Stones’ new album, due out July 10.  “I’m standing in my kitchen talking to Mick Jagger,” Quinn told me last week over the phone, “It was surreal.” The resulting image, an unsettling but magnetic composite portrait that folds together the faces of Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood, now sits at the center of the Stones’ global rollout for the record. Quinn also redesigned the band’s famous...

Over 97,000 people have submitted complaints to the United Kingdom’s Independent Press Standards Organisation after right-wing news outlets published back-to-back articles characterizing British arts trustee Misan Harriman's recent social media posts as antisemitic. Alongside the complaints, Tracey Emin, Greta Thunberg, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Doig, and Aimee Lou Wood were among the 245 original signatories of an open letter in support of the photographer and human rights activist as articles amplified calls for his removal from the board of the Southbank Centre in London.Harriman has rejected the characterizations of his social media posts as antisemitic. “I’ve organized for Black Lives Matter,...

The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, has reinstated mention of Donald Trump’s two impeachments in a new wall text accompanying his portrait in the institution’s gallery of American presidents. The museum had earlier sparked an uproar by scrubbing all reference to the events as the Smithsonian, its parent institution, came under intense scrutiny from […]

Sotheby’s New York logged a big win last Thursday with the $85.8 million sale of Mark Rothko’s Brown and Blacks in Reds, 1957, a sterling example of the painter’s singular style. This is now the second-highest price the artist has ever fetched at auction. The top spot belongs to his 1961 painting Orange, Red, Yellow, […]

Beach reads are officially back, and it feels like nature is finally inviting us to bring our books outdoors again. In between your escapist fantasy novels and trendy memoirs (I too was roped into the inexplicable Strangers hype), dip into an essay collection by critic Megan O'Grady on art as a necessity as vital as the air we breathe, or a graphic novel that captures the magic only books can wield. Luminary artist Nan Goldin is reissuing a tender photo essay, while Jennifer Higgie brings us a novel of prose poetry that imagines the inner life of an infamous British artist. I'm also keeping an eye out for the late Greg Tate's groundbreaking essay collection Flyboy in the Buttermilk, which will...

In a distraction-free “dream lab,” Zendaya has carte blanche to create a new wardrobe in a short, stop-motion film written and directed by Spike Jonze. The advertisement, which announces a clothing line the actor co-created with apparel brand On, merges dance and playful optics as she maneuvers through some otherworldly trial and error. You might also enjoy Jonze’s mind-melting dance video for Apple featuring FKA twigs. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Zendaya Taps into the Creative Process in a Quirky Ad Directed by Spike Jonze appeared first on Colossal.

Two high-profile museums—Hong Kong’s M+, a contemporary art museum that opened in 2021 in a building designed by Herzog & de Meuron facing Victoria Harbor, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, which closed last year for a long-planned renovation of its Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers building—have announced a five-year partnership, beginning next year. The plan was announced at M+ on May 15 and reported by the South China Morning Post. Representatives from both institutions were on hand, including M+ director Suhanya Raffel, Pompidou president Laurent Le Bon, and French Consul General Christile Drulhe. The following day, Le Bon and Raffel participated in a...

Rene Matić was named the winner of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, one of the most prestigious honors in the field. They received the £30,000 ($40,250) prize for their exhibition “AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH,” which closed at CCA Berlin in February. Matić, who is based in London, works across photography, sculpture, sound, poetry, and film to examine social dynamics of race, gender, and intimacy through the lens of national symbols (flags are a recurring motif). Their practice includes an excavation of British subculture, including the “rude boy,” a fashion and ideological formation that emerged in the aftermath of postcolonial resistance movements. Part photography, part sculpture,...

VENICE — In the baroque interior of the Chiesa di Sant'Antonin in Venice, Gabrielle Goliath’s show, Elegy, is South Africa’s unofficial pavilion for the 61st Biennale Arte. Unofficial, of course, because in January, just months before the global art exhibition was set to open, South Africa’s Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie overrode the decision of the independent committee that had long determined which artist would represent the country. McKenzie, the leader of the pro-Israel, far-right party Patriot Alliance, claimed that “South Africa’s platform was being used as a proxy by a foreign power to endorse a geopolitical message about the actions of Israel in Gaza” — the result of...

Still in Sound explores how visitors may experience abstract visual language through sound in the Clyfford Still Museum’s largest galleries. Exhibition co-curators Bailey Placzek, the Museum’s curator of collections, and Ben Coleman, a British multidisciplinary artist, engaged contemporary artists who work with sound in their practice.After brief residencies, artists Maria Chávez, Maya Dunietz, Kalyn Heffernan, Matana Roberts, and Michael Schumacher each selected an abstract Still painting and composed an original, sonic interpretation in response. Their selections and resulting compositions set the tone for each gallery, then Placzek filled the rooms with other artworks that resonated with their...

Opened less than five years ago, M+, Hong Kong’s museum of modern and contemporary art, has just announced a multi-year partnership with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which houses the largest modern art museum in Europe. The Pompidou, which has been closed since last year to undergo renovations that will be completed around 2030, will […]

Hours before a $100 million sculpture by Constantin Brâncuși is to come to auction, Pace Gallery announced that it had taken global representation of the Romanian modernist’s estate. Pace, one of the biggest galleries in the world, added Brâncuși to its roster as a retrospective for the artist continues to travel the world. Organized by the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which debuted the exhibition in 2024, the retrospective is currently on view at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin and arrives later this year at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Brâncuși is among the most beloved European modernists. His work is prized for its simplicity: He crafted a bird from an arc of marble, a sleeping head in...

More than one hundred employees at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) on May 13 announced their intent to unionize in a letter delivered by organizers to museum director and CEO Scott Stulen, the Seattle Times reports. The staffers, who are spread across more than twenty front- and back-end departments, are organizing under the name Seattle […]

A giant mural by conservationist artist Robert Wyland has been painted over in Dallas to make way for a mural promoting FIFA, the international soccer federation.  The destroyed piece was one of 100 “whaling wall” murals that the artist has painted from Osaka to Detroit, and from Sydney to New York. Whaling Wall 1 appears alongside the Pacific Coast Highway and was dedicated in 1981; number 100 was painted outside Wyland’s own studio building in 1996. The Dallas mural, Ocean Life (1999), is number 82, and it covered two sides of the Texas Utilities Building. The larger portion, measuring 164 by 82 feet, depicted endangered whales and dolphins swimming in the ocean. Crews started painting over that...

Featuring a Barbara Hepworth sculpture, the display is framed as a "taster" of Tate Britain's public sculpture garden to open next year

Apelron Contemporary transforms a former railway warehouse
 
Located within the Qingshuihe Railway Relics area in Shenzhen, Apelron Contemporary by Aether Architects and Archigress transforms a former railway warehouse into a contemporary exhibition space defined by lightness, transparency, and layered spatial relationships. Positioned between an active railway line and an urban roadway, the project engages directly with the compressed conditions of the surrounding infrastructure, treating the site’s density and proximity as a defining spatial characteristic rather than a limitation.
 
The original warehouse structure was designed only to support its existing roof, preventing additional structural loads...

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On a day pretty much like any other, a girl named Prue is out in a park with her baby brother when the unthinkable happens: he’s swept off by crows and taken into a mysterious forest known as the Impassable Wilderness. Joined by her classmate Curtis, Prue ventures into the magical, sylvan realm where animals have developed a complex society of their own. The search for Prue’s missing sibling plots the course for an epic adventure that is the heart of the young adult novel Wildwood. Soon, the story lights up the big screen. The forthcoming feature-length film is based on an original story by Colin Meloy—the lead singer of The Decemberists, for the fans out there—and illustrated by Carson Ellis, who also...

the Louvre reveals the winners of its redesign competition
 
Nearly seven months after France’s Ministry of Culture revealed the five finalist teams competing to transform the Louvre Museum, the institution has officially selected its winning proposal. As part of the ambitious Louvre – Nouvelle Renaissance initiative (find designboom’s previous coverage here), STUDIOS Architecture and Selldorf Architects have been named laureates of the international Grande Colonnade competition, tasked with reimagining the museum’s eastern entrance and visitor experience nearly forty years after Ieoh Ming Pei’s iconic pyramid reshaped the Louvre.
 
Announced by French Minister of Culture Catherine Pégard, the...

heatherwick studio shapes liquid-inspired eyewear for JINS
 
Heatherwick Studio steps into the world of eyewear for the first time through a collaboration with Japanese eyewear brand JINS. The collection translates the architectural language of the studio into a series of optical frames shaped by the movement, asymmetry, and fluidity of water. Known for large-scale projects such as Little Island and Azabudai Hills, the studio applies the same human-centered philosophy to an object worn directly on the body.
 
JINS × Heatherwick Studio is built around the concept of Liquid, moving away from the rigid geometries and industrial precision associated with eyewear. The frames appear softened and slightly...

Olly Geary
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From help with websites and video editing to free accommodation and haircuts, artists are trading their work on Instagram and TikTok to escape the traps of capitalism

Best known for daring audiences to face and feel the female body on her own terms, the performance artist died in Vienna on 14 May at 85 years old

Uluru stands at the heart of Australia’s “Red Centre.” The sandstone monolith, rising 348 metres above the desert, has stood for 550 million years. The natural wonder is a symbol of Aboriginal land rights and a source of spiritual connection with the continent. Artist Bruce Munro (b. 1959) visited the site in the 1980s. The trip, which began as part of a journey around Australia, marked a turning point in both his life and artist trajectory. The location inspired Field of Light, an installation of 50,000 solar powered stems, which illuminates an area the size of seven football fields. The piece, first opened in 2016, was intended to be a one-year exhibition, but has since received 750,000 visitors...

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After ditching investment management to make time for his true passion, the founder of the Mougins Museum of Classical Art in France has swapped Old Masters for Modern art

“Upright” is the artist's first exhibition in a UK institution since 2010

LR Vandy fills ysp with rope sculptures caught mid-motion
 
Thick ropes drift through the Weston Gallery at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, climbing walls, looping through pulleys, then collapsing back onto the floor in heavy coils. Some hang with the tension of something still being pulled upward, while others slacken and spread across the concrete like exhausted bodies at rest. In Rise, British artist LR Vandy fills the space with rope sculptures that never quite settle into stillness. Even standing motionless, they seem caught halfway through an action. At the center of the exhibition is A Call to Dance, a monumental maypole form whose braided strands descend from a dark metal ring and gather densely at the...

Studio Carraldo develops a low-tech interactive installation
 
Studio Carraldo presents DELULU, a walkable installation developed for Munich Creative Business Week (MCBW) 2026 that examines how spatial design can respond to contemporary conditions of uncertainty, instability, and digital overload. Drawing from the slang term ‘delulu,’ derived from ‘delusional,’ the project translates the idea of retreating into imagination into an interactive architectural environment organized through movement, disorientation, and participation.
 
The installation takes the form of a labyrinth composed of movable partitions that continuously alter spatial relationships and circulation paths. Rather than functioning...

I have very few opportunities to see real-life opera divas, but when Natalie Dessay chose to debut her first Traviata at Santa Fe, there was no way I was going to miss it.

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In an age defined by the incessant circulation of images, photography has become less a discrete medium than an ambient condition. Pictures arrive and depart with such velocity that looking is often reduced to a kind of reflex – a flicker of attention rather than sustained encounter. The photograph, once anchored in the idea of duration, now behaves like a surface of perpetual present tense, endlessly refreshed and endlessly displaced. However, within this saturation, photography festivals have become increasingly important as counter-temporal spaces – environments in which images are slowed, recontextualised and recharged through proximity, scale and sequence. They function as temporary architectures of...

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Si entra subito nel cuore del tema centrale osservando le immagini del fotografo colombiano Felipe Romero Beltrán: Bravo è il titolo del progetto che esplora il dramma dell’attraversamento del confine tra Messico e Stati Uniti, costituito dal fiume nel titolo, il Rio Bravo. Eppure, non vediamo figure umane nell’atto di passare il guado, ma soprattutto oggetti, sedie, materassi, pentolame, cortili senza persone, reliquie religiose, e luoghi che ci fanno capire che qualcuno da lì è passato. Come uno spettro. Fantasmi del quotidiano è il leitmotiv della XXI edizione del Festival della Fotografia Europea, realizzata con la curatela di Walter Guadagnini, Arianna Catania, Tim Clark e Luce Lebart.
Felipe...

By Tabea Martin ‘Me Myself’ brings together four artists — Anna‑Lena Ruff, Debora Schultheiss, Tabea Martin, and Eva Schick — whose works move across differing styles and energies yet find in this art space an unforced coherence. I sense a shared thread of observation and inner dialogue, and a contemplation of natural female presence. The exhibition is currently showing at the Anja Edith Brinckmann Galerie, Basel. From here, the individual narratives invite a closer reading. By Anna-Lena...

C’è qualcosa di controcorrente, nel senso migliore del termine, in una manifestazione che occupa un intero weekend per parlare di terracotta. Eppure, Buongiorno Ceramica!, giunta alla sua dodicesima edizione il 23 e 24 maggio 2026, è una delle poche occasioni in cui il termine “diffuso” – spesso abusato dal lessico delle arti contemporanee – riacquista una misura concreta e verificabile. Sessanta comuni italiani, più di cinquecento eventi, due giorni: la ceramica esce dalle vetrine, scavalca i recinti delle fiere specializzate e torna a occupare la strada, i cortili, le botteghe aperte come fossero stanze di una casa provvisoriamente condivisa.
Bottega ceramica a Montelupo Fiorentino (Toscana),...

The air held a real charge that night in SF's War Memorial Opera House.

The English soprano, famed for her interpretations of twentieth-century composers like Strauss, Britten, and Poulenc, as well as Mozart and operetta, died yesterday only a few days after announcing that she had a terminal cancer.

Erin Morley, Lawrence Brownlee, and Malcolm Martineau put on a jolly good show at the 92nd Street Y.

This is one of those rare performances that makes you believe that everything Verdi was greater Way Back When.

This season, photography exhibitions across Europe and the US are using image-making, installation and archival practice to confront some of the defining questions of our time: who controls representation, how technology reshapes tradition, and what it means to preserve identity under political and social pressure. From Amsterdam to Phoenix, artists are examining the tensions between truth and fiction, resistance and erasure. Presented at Huis Marseille, Fondazione Prada, Kunsthalle Bremen, Fotografiska Stockholm and Phoenix Art Museum, these exhibitions approach urgent contemporary issues with intimacy and ambition. Yumna Al-Arashi: Body as Resistance  Huis Marseille, Amsterdam | Until 21 June ...

All’interno del programma di 480 Site Specific, nello spazio di EDICOLA480 con la direzione artistica di Massimiliano Bastardo, il dipinto I secondi soldati di Gabriele La Torre – pittore palermitano, nato nel 2003 – si impone come un’immagine in apparenza semplice che, a uno sguardo più attento, rivela una costruzione percettiva instabile e stratificata. L’olio su tela lavora su un immaginario immediatamente riconoscibile, quello dei soldatini di plastica, ma ne sovverte la funzione narrativa, trasformandolo in un campo di tensione sospeso tra memoria, ripetizione e dislocazione.
Gabriele La Torre, “I secondi soldati”, olio su tela, 100×85 cm, 2026, ph: Danilo Donzelli Photography, courtesy...

Activist, educator and artist Mary Lovelace O’Neal, whose monumental, richly hued lampblack paintings expanded abstraction’s possibilities, died on May 10 in Mérida, Mexico. She was eighty-four. Despite a fruitful career spanning six decades, Lovelace O’Neal was known primarily as an “artist’s artist” until recent years, when she began to achieve international acclaim. Informed by flatness, […]

Fusing elements of Persian architecture with Christian altarpieces, Arghavan Khosravi grapples with the structures and ideological strictures that shape our lives. The Iranian artist has long reckoned with women’s fight for equality, particularly amid censorship and religious dogma in her native country. Through vibrant gradients that radiate across her sculptural paintings, Khosravi entices the viewer into urgent, ongoing conversations about resistance and control. Opening today at Uffner & Liu, What Remains presents a dynamic new body of work that captures moments of tension and strife. Figures, in Khosravi’s works, are often restricted and tethered to domestic objects and space, and critically,...

In Everything Now All At Once at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the title says it all. Dozens of works from the likes of Nick Cave, Ai Weiwei, Nina Chanel Abney, Wangechi Mutu, and many more represent a slice of the contemporary art world in which globalism and diversity are at the fore, and the lessons of the past inform how artists imagine the future. Interestingly, the pieces are also decidedly analog, especially noteworthy as these works—alongside a few other multimedia and photographic additions—have been made throughout the era of light-speed technological advances. Painting and sculpture, in particular, have long been treated as the nexus of “high art” in the Western canon. The...

Typically gravitating toward dreamy palettes of soft blues, grays, and oranges, Scottish artist Andrew McIntosh opts for a sanguine red in a new body of work. The crimson paintings continue McIntosh’s otherworldly landscapes that cast familiar forms like mountains and valleys in a strange, uncanny light. Glowing orbs float among the craggy terrain and veil the scenes in mystery. “These works sit somewhere between memory and invention—familiar landscapes interrupted by something I don’t fully understand,” the artist says. “Whitney” (2026), oil on linen, 170 x 130 centimeters On view at School Gallery, these bold pieces comprise the artist’s solo exhibition, I Hope This Transmission Finds You...

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The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, established in 1996, celebrates exhibitions and publications that have made “a significant contribution to photography in the past 12 months.” It’s a major moment in the cultural calendar, and, over the years, has spotlighted seminal names such as Arthur Jafa, Deana Lawson, Lorna Simpson, Richard Mosse and Susan Meiselas. This year’s winning artist is Rene Matić, for the exhibition AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH, at CCA Berlin, Germany, which ran from November 2024 to February 2025. The show, as Shoair Mavlian, Director of The Photographers’ Gallery and Chair of the Jury, describes, comprised “raw and honest photographs” that “bring a story of...

Presso Fondazione Sabe per l’arte a Ravenna, la mostra Molteplice senza disordine curata Enrico Camprini espone tre artisti di generazioni diverse che si confrontano e si pongono in relazione con lo spazio espositivo creando una sintesi che ragiona sul dialogo tra il luogo espositivo e l’atmosfera creata dalle opere.
AA.VV., “Molteplice senza disordine”, veduta della mostra, Fondazione Sabe, Ravenna, 2026. Foto di Daniele Casadio, courtesy Fondazione Sabe per l’arte
Le opere degli artisti coinvolti si confrontano in sguardi che si ibridano e si influenzano a vicenda. Alice Cattaneo invade lo spazio espositivo con l’opera site specific Se questo margine è di tempo, che si allarga sulla...

By Lacey Argus It's easy to miss the bite-sized rainbows orbiting around the travertine surfaces of The Getty Center's Main Entrance. Some people breeze by them, eager to visit the various galleries that lie just beyond them. Others dash through them as they rush into a crowded bathroom line. Some briefly glance upward at the towering glass light prisms suspended from the atrium enclosing the space. But not children. If you spend an afternoon amongst these rainbows, you're sure to notice...

La Hyde Gallery presenta Sensual Abstract, una mostra collettiva che esplora il linguaggio dell’astrazione attraverso la percezione, la materialità e l’esperienza interiore, a cura di Lyudmila Hyde. La mostra è stata inaugurata di recente e sarà visitabile fino al 26 maggio 2026. La mostra propone un nuovo modo di vedere il mondo in una città frenetica come Londra, un modo di osservare più attento, dove forma, texture e movimento si dispiegano attraverso le sensazioni. Infatti, la galleria supporta artisti che espandono i confini della percezione e si confrontano con la pittura come medium vivente ed evolutivo. Inoltre, Sensual Abstract continua questa visione con una riflessione sulla...

W hen we connect over Zoom, Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir, aka Shoplifter, is in Bentonville, Arkansas preparing to unveil Xanadu, a large-scale, outdoor installation at Format Festival. “It’s going to be like an alien forest that people at the festival roam around in and space out,” says Arnardóttir of the installation, consisting of ten poles ranging in […]
The post The Immersive Hairy Worlds of Shoplifter first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

What do you get when you combine an obsessive urge to create, sleep deprivation, climate change anxiety, and penchant for enchanted nature realms? Amy Casey shows us firsthand, through her infinitely detailed paintings of manmade structures, either clashing or peacefully coexisting with natural environments. In these pieces we might find repetitions of fungi, leaves, and […]
The post Amy Casey: All The World Is Green first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Aunia Kahn  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
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As we enter the summer months, there’s a universal desire to get outside. The trees are green, flowers are in full bloom and the sun is shining well into the evening. These five exhibitions are bringing contemporary art into nature, placing sculptures in dialogue with the environment. Each one offers visitors the opportunity to witness art outside of the confined of white walls and gallery spaces, getting up close to creativity on a monumental scale. Major names like Yayoi Kusama, Lynn Chadwick and Henry Moore take up new space, whilst Nic Nicosia and Nicola Turner transform familiar museums into new experiences. Lynn Chadwick Houghton Hall, Norfolk | Until 4 October Houghton Hall presents a new exhibition...

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By Melanie Chapman Let the Art (and the Artist) Speak for Itself Outside of the art world, painter Celeste Dupuy-Spencer may not yet be as familiar a name as Jean-Michel Basquiat or Vincent Van Gogh, but to those who followed her artistic growth over the past ten years, she was on her way. Perhaps therein lay the problem. For those who knew Celeste personally and/or had the opportunity to work with her professionally, there is still a profound sense of loss permeating most conversations...

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Derek Beck’s Website
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