Les Rendez-Vouz De Gary
Artforum revisits the 1983 interview “Getting Ready for the Golden Eighties” between writer Gary Indiana and filmmaker Chantal Akerman. Indiana describes Akerman’s cinema as inviting viewers to notice subtle disturbances within the frame rather than conventional plot points. Their dialogue touches on French versus Belgian cultural influences, literary inspirations, and the practical challenges of narrative filmmaking in an experimental context. The piece includes archival links that reconnect readers with the original conversation and related commentary.
Language as Demolition Tool: Selma Selman’s Letters to Omer
On April 15, Selma Selman performed *Letters to Omer* at Brooklyn’s Amant, using spoken‑word to turn language into a demolition tool. The piece featured over forty letters addressed to a silent, affluent figure named Omer, oscillating between intimate confession and...
Thiago De Paula Souza Appointed Curator of Eighth Athens Biennale
The Athens Biennale, founded in 2005, has appointed Brazilian‑born curator Thiago de Paula Souza to lead its eighth edition slated for next spring. Souza, known for exploring eroticism, gender nonconformity and intimacy, brings experience from co‑curating the 2025 São Paulo Bienal...
Closely Watched Curator Raphael Fonseca Joins Lisbon’s Culturgest
Raphael Fonseca, the Denver Art Museum’s first curator of Latin American modern and contemporary art, has been appointed visual arts programmer at Lisbon’s Culturgest, a private foundation backed by state‑owned Caixa Geral de Depósito. He will relocate in June 2026,...
Barbara Chase-Riboud Speaks Out on Declining US Pavilion Spot
American sculptor Barbara Chase‑Riboud announced she will not participate in the United States Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale, citing the current climate of global conflicts. She joins photographer William Eggleston, who also declined the invitation, leaving the pavilion to...
Can Festivals Save Time-Based Art? On Mexico City’s TONO
The TONO festival in Mexico City’s March edition highlighted a hybrid curatorial model that merges museum rigor with festival accessibility, presenting a dozen time‑based works ranging from Tino Sehgal’s Mexican premiere of *This Joy* to Rafael Lozano‑Hemmer’s interactive *Pulse Garden*. Led...
Lynda Roscoe Hartigan Named Director of Smithsonian American Art Museum
Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, former chief curator of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM), will assume the museum’s directorship on September 8, 2026. She returns from her role as executive director and CEO of the Peabody Essex Museum, where she became the...
Art Dubai to Present Significantly Smaller Event After Iran War Forces Postponement
Art Dubai cancelled its originally planned 20th‑anniversary fair after the US‑Israel attack on Iran and announced a scaled‑down "special edition" for May 14‑17. The new edition will feature just 50 exhibitors instead of the slated 120, still hosted at Madinat...
Mikala Tai Appointed Curator of 2027 TarraWarra Biennial
Sydney‑based curator Mikala Tai has been appointed to lead the tenth TarraWarra Biennial, scheduled for July 31 to November 4, 2027 at the TarraWarra Museum of Art in Healesville, Australia. Tai brings extensive experience in contemporary Australian and Asian art, having directed the...
Never Stop Stopping
Michael Krebber’s paintings are characterized by unfinished, sketch‑like surfaces that deliberately halt mid‑idea, prompting viewers to question artistic originality. A 2005 essay collection titled “Man Without Qualities,” authored by Daniel Birnbaum, John Kelsey, and Jessica Morgan, dissected his tactics of...
Toronto Biennial of Art Announces Artists and Theme for 2026 Edition
The Toronto Biennial of Art announced its fourth edition, titled “Things Fall Apart,” to run from September 26 to December 20, 2026. Curated by Allison Glenn, the show will explore water‑related rupture and syncopation, drawing on Chinua Achebe’s novel and cultural references. Seventeen newly...
Morad Montazami Named Artistic Director of 16th Dak’Art Biennial
Morad Montazami has been appointed artistic director of the 16th Dak’Art Biennial, scheduled for November 19–December 19, 2026. The edition, titled “(Anti)Fragility: Arts of Repair and Counter‑Shock Strategies,” will explore how fragility can be transformed into artistic strength through community co‑creation. Montazami, founder...
LACMA Sets May 4 Opening Date for $724 Million “Curvaceous Concrete Sandwich” As Reviews Pour In
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art will open its new David Geffen Galleries on May 4, 2026, after a twelve‑year, $724 million construction project led by Peter Zumthor. The serpentine, single‑story structure sits 30 feet above Wilshire Avenue and will debut an...
Rirkrit Tiravanija to Assemble “A Gathering of Remarkable People” For Qatar Pavilion at Venice Biennale
The National Pavilion of Qatar will present “Untitled (a gathering of remarkable people)” at the 61st Venice Biennale, opening May 9, 2026. Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija curates the show, assembling musicians, poets, chefs and visual artists from across the Arab world. Co‑curated...
Duchamp’s Common Sense
The Museum of Modern Art opened a sweeping Marcel Duchamp retrospective that traces the artist’s evolution from early post‑Impressionist canvases to his later readymade‑centric works. The show is anchored by Molly Nesbit’s 1994 Artforum essay, which mines Duchamp’s letters to illustrate his...
The Met Hires Star Photography Curator for the Museum’s New Wing
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has hired Oluremi C. Onabanjo, previously MoMA’s Peter Schub Curator, as the new curator of its Department of Photographs. Her primary task is to manage the 6,500‑photograph Walther Collection gift received in 2025 and to...
K-POP, FUNGI, AND TERRACE RAVES: Art Basel Hong Kong 2026
Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 unfolded amid geopolitical tension and market uncertainty, yet the week featured a surge of new venues and alternative fairs. New spaces like GOLD and Antenna Space HK opened, while three debut fairs—Art House Tai Hang, Checkin...
Knight Foundation Names 2026 Recipients of Its $50,000 Art + Tech Fellowships
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced the five 2026 Art + Tech Fellowship recipients, each receiving an unrestricted $50,000 award and financial‑planning support. Administered by United States Artists, the program backs artists who blend emerging technologies with...
Saint Louis’s Counterpublic Triennial Reveals Artist List for Third Edition
The Counterpublic Triennial’s third edition, titled “Coyote Time,” will run September 12 – December 12 in St. Louis. Curated by Jordan Carter, Raphael Fonseca, Stefanie Hessler, Nora N. Khan and Wanda Nanibush, the show features 47 artists and collectives from the Global South and local neighborhoods. The...
Ben Lerner’s Transcription and the Literary Readymade
Ben Lerner’s fourth novel, Transcription, arrives as a slim, tripartite work that interrogates the boundaries between autofiction, artifice, and the digital age. Structured around interviews with an elderly poet‑translator and his son, the narrative weaves failed iPhone recordings, deepfake transcripts,...
Schlock Jock: Joshua Citarella at the Whitney Biennial
Joshua Citarella’s podcast *Doomscroll* was presented as a live artwork at the 2026 Whitney Biennial, sparking debate over whether a market‑oriented video interview series belongs in a museum. Originally a net‑art project exploring fringe online politics, Citarella rebranded the show...
The Brooklyn Museum Is Building a New Home for Its African Art Collection
The Brooklyn Museum is constructing a new Arts of Africa wing, a $13 million, 6,400‑square‑foot exhibition space slated to open in fall 2027. The project repurposes underused third‑floor storage and will sit beside the Beaux‑Arts Court, linking to the Egyptian galleries....
Melvin Edwards, Sculptor of Searing “Lynch Fragments,” Dies at 88
Melvin Edwards, the Baltimore‑based sculptor famed for his “Lynch Fragments,” died at 88. He began welding small, table‑sized metal assemblages in 1963 that confront America’s history of racial violence, later expanding to monumental stainless‑steel works. In 1970 he became the...
Aloha as Method: Curating the Hawai‘i Triennial
Wassan Al‑Khudhairi, a partner at C/O: Curatorial Office, is co‑curating the Hawai‘i Triennial 2025, grounding the project in the concept of “ALOHA NŌ.” The theme reframes aloha from a greeting to a practice of deep care, resistance to extraction, and relational...
Can the Biennial Serve a City, or Just “Big Art”?
The essay examines the rise of regional triennials such as FRONT International, highlighting how they emerged to replace historic juried shows and to capitalize on the "creative class" narrative. While these large‑scale exhibitions attract institutional funding by promising economic impact,...
Whither Biennials? On the Crisis of Global Art
Artforum’s 2003 roundtable on large‑scale exhibitions resurfaced this spring as the Whitney Biennial, Carnegie International and Venice Biennale opened, highlighting a two‑decade evolution of the biennial model. The format has multiplied worldwide, prompting talk of "biennial fatigue" and new critiques...
Biennials and the Environmental Cost of Global Art
The article examines how biennials, as itinerant art events, rely on carbon‑intensive shipping and travel, exposing a paradox between their climate‑focused themes and the environmental cost of their circulation. It argues that criticism of biennial mobility often overlooks similar ecological...
Agosto Machado, Whose Shrines Immortalized a Lost NYC Underground, Is Dead
Performance artist and LGBTQ activist Agosto Machado died on March 21 after a brief illness. Known for assembling shrine‑like assemblages from objects belonging to friends lost to the AIDS crisis, Machado’s work finally entered major institutions late in life. His career...
Kate McNamara Named Director of Harvard’s Carpenter Center for Visual Arts
Kate McNamara has been appointed the permanent John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director of Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, after serving as interim director since last year. McNamara, founder of the experimental Rhode Island space ODD‑KIN and...
Psychoanalysis as Chamber Drama: A Night at Artists Space
Artists Space hosted "Monologue Dialogue," featuring two work‑in‑progress pieces that used the monologue form to probe fractured consciousness and memory. "Diagnosis" presented a split‑personality dialogue that mimicked psychoanalytic interrogation, while Erika Landström’s "HOTEL ECHO LIMA PAPA" employed a solo performance that...
Wagner Foundation Names Winners of $75,000 2026 Arts Fellowships
The Wagner Foundation announced Tomashi Jackson, Lucy Kim, and Yu‑Wen Wu as recipients of its 2026 Wagner Arts Fellowships, each receiving a $75,000 unrestricted grant. Launched in 2023, the fellowship supports mid‑career or established Boston‑area artists whose work engages social...
Paris Internationale Milano Names Participating Galleries for Inaugural Edition
Paris Internationale, the nonprofit gallery‑led art fair founded in 2015, announced its inaugural Milan edition featuring thirty‑four galleries and nonprofits. The fair will run April 18‑21, with a VIP preview on April 17, at the historic Palazzo Galbani, and limits...
Double Dealing
White Columns, New York’s longest‑standing nonprofit gallery, staged “Art (by) Dealers,” an exhibition featuring over ninety works created by gallerists themselves. The show is explicitly for sale, with each piece labeled by anonymous numbers and a checkout system designed to...
A New New Museum
The New Museum reopened after a two‑year expansion, unveiling the sprawling survey exhibition “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” which showcases roughly eight hundred works ranging from Surrealist drawings to Carlo Rambaldi’s original animatronic E.T. model. The reopening also prompted Artforum...
Direct to Market: New York’s March Shows, On and Offline
Maxwell Graham’s dual exhibition spotlights Louise Lawler’s arrow installation and Hans Haacke’s 2005 “Untitled #1,” both interrogating political rhetoric and institutional memory. Across town, Isa Genzken’s “Disco Soon (Ground Zero)” reimagines the 9/11 site as a flamboyant gay bar, contrasting Haacke’s somber critique. Meanwhile,...
DOGE Canceled Museum Grant for HVAC Systems After ChatGPT Flagged It As DEI
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) canceled a $349,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant intended for HVAC replacement at North Carolina's High Point Museum after feeding the proposal into ChatGPT, which flagged the project as DEI‑related. Plaintiffs allege that...
Popcorn Pop
Artforum revisits J. Hoberman’s 2011 essay that framed mid‑century Hollywood directors as early Pop artists. Hoberman argued that Orson Welles, Douglas Sirk, and Alfred Hitchcock embedded avant‑garde experiments within mass‑market films, making cinema a proto‑Pop medium. The piece highlights how...
Recipients of $100,000 Rauschenberg Centennial Award Named
The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation announced the winners of its one‑time Centennial Award, a $100,000 unrestricted prize celebrating the artist’s hundredth birthday. The awardees—Senga Nengudi (art), David Thomson (performance), Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun (photography), and Patricia Spears Jones (writing)—represent a cross‑disciplinary cohort focused on Black experience...
Title, Theme Announced for 2026 Gwangju Biennale
The 16th Gwangju Biennale, running September 5‑November 15, 2026, is titled “You Must Change Your Life,” echoing the final line of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” Artistic director Ho Tzu Nyen frames the theme around “change” and “practice,” exploring...
Toleen Touq Will Curate the Twentieth Edition of MOMENTA Biennale
Curator and educator Toleen Touq has been appointed to lead the twentieth edition of Montreal’s MOMENTA Biennale, scheduled for 2027. The biennale, titled “The Long Now,” will explore the fractured logics of time by interrogating the concept of the present....
Keisha Scarville Awarded Brooklyn Museum’s $25,000 UOVO Prize
The Brooklyn Museum announced photographer and collage artist Keisha Scarville as the winner of its sixth UOVO Prize, awarding her a $25,000 unrestricted cash grant. Scarville will mount a solo show titled “Where Salt Meets Black Water” at the museum’s...
CARNAL KNOWLEDGE
Angelo Madsen’s 2025 documentary *A Body to Live In* chronicles the life of Roland Loomis, better known as Fakir Musafar, the self‑styled “Modern Primitive” who pioneered contemporary body‑modification and ritualized pain. The film weaves archival footage, Musafar’s own photography, and interviews...
Curators Announced for 16th Baltic Triennial
Vilnius’s Contemporary Art Center has named artist Nikita Kadan and curator Natalia Sielewicz to lead the 16th Baltic Triennial, slated for 2027. The duo proposes a theme of grief and resurrection, reflecting the ongoing Russian‑Ukrainian conflict’s impact on the Baltic...
Emerson Bowyer Appointed Chief Curator of Kimbell Art Museum
Emerson Bowyer has been appointed chief curator of the Kimbell Art Museum, officially starting on March 5. The Sydney‑born scholar arrives from the Art Institute of Chicago, where he oversaw major acquisitions such as William Holman Hunt’s *The Shadow of Death*...
Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk on Image-Making in Wartime
Ukrainian artists Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk debut the "Pedagogies of War" exhibition in Madrid, running March 3‑June 21, 2026. The show features four multi‑channel video installations created since Russia’s 2022 invasion, each probing how conflict is visualized in a hyper‑mediated world. Works...
Architectures of Air
Artforum has released a new portfolio spotlighting architect Claude Parent’s avant‑garde ideas, revisiting his 1960s collaboration with Yves Klein on “architectures of air.” The concept proposes an immaterial architecture that manipulates climate rather than erecting static structures, challenging modernist consumerism. The...
Opening Day: Theo Belci’s Best and Worst of the Whitney Biennial
Theo Belci’s opening‑day review of the 2026 Whitney Biennial spotlights two divergent approaches. Young Joon Kwak’s glitter‑laden chandelier is framed as Instagram‑ready spectacle, while Agosto Machado’s shrine‑like installations honor queer countercultural figures with tactile relics. Cooper Jacoby’s AI‑driven work resurrects dead social‑media personas, creating...
Russia Returns to Venice Biennale for First Time Since Invading Ukraine
Russia will have a presence at the 61st Venice Biennale, its first since canceling the pavilion in 2022 after the Ukraine invasion. The exhibition, titled “The Tree Is Rooted in the Sky,” features over fifty musicians, poets and philosophers from...
Watermill Center Appoints Charles Chemin Artistic Director
The Watermill Center announced Charles Chemin as its new artistic director, succeeding founder Robert Wilson after Wilson’s death last August. Chemin, a Paris‑born protégé of Wilson, has directed the Center’s International Summer Program since 2020 and collaborated on more than twenty...
Nicholas R. Bell to Lead Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum
The Royal Ontario Museum has appointed Nicholas R. Bell as its new director and CEO, effective July 6. Bell comes from a successful tenure at Calgary’s Glenbow Museum, where he launched a $250 million renovation campaign and created an endowment for free...