Eliana Willis

“I’d describe her as a visionary,” said writer and curator Lina Ramadan, speaking of the late Qatari artist Wafa Al-Hamad. “She had a rare ability to sense how the rapidly changing world around her could open onto many possible futures. She approached Arab and Islamic art with openness, not to repeat what had been done, but to imagine what it could become.”
Ramadan recently curated “Wafa al-Hamad: Sites of Imagination” now on view at the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, the first solo museum exhibition dedicated to the late Qatari artist (on view through August 9). “This exhibition seeks to uncover the overlooked legacy of a pioneering Qatari woman artist, shining a light on a presence that has often been marginalized,” she explained.
“Wafa Al-Hamad: Sites of Imagination” 2025. Wadha Al Mesalam, courtesy of Qatar Museums ©2025.
A Reintroduction, Even For Those Who Knew Her Work
Al-Hamad, who was born in 1964 and passed away in 2012, was relatively well-known during her lifetime in the Gulf Region. She was one of the first female students to join the Qatari Free Atelier in 1981, where she took workshops and later contributed to art education. In those years, she actively exhibited across the Gulf with multiple exhibitions including “The Arab Youth Exhibition” in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (1983), the “6 Gulf Women Artists” exhibition in Sharjah (1994), and Sharjah Biennale 4 (1999). A passionate arts educator, she later became a professor at Qatar University.
Wafa al-Hamad, Khida’a Al Basar (Optical Illusion) (1985). Collection Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art.
Despite inclusion in those group shows, Al-Hamad herself never became a major name, however, and for many, even in the Gulf Region, the exhibition is an introduction to her work. It is one marked by exploration. Over the 40 years of her career, Al-Hamad experimented freely, working across mediums including ink, watercolor, pastel, collage, and even, in her later years, digital work. The exhibition delights in this diversity, showcasing figurative and landscape paintings, abstractions filled with luminous shapes, op-art-inspired moments, paper-cut works, and much more. Her works can look vastly different even within a single year. Take two works, both made in 1985, Atlal (The Tower of Barzan), a painterly landscape showing a castle set against a blue sky, and Khida’a Al Basar (Optical Illusion), a geometric work made of black lines (she was familiar with the work of Vasarely and her works certainly nod to his legacy at times). The exhibition suggests that these various modes of representation informed one another, creating parallels or “overlapping languages” that might draw out unexpected connections—and, looking closely, they do emerge.
Wafa al-Hamad, Atlal (The Tower of Barzan) (1985). Collection Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art.
“She often played with perspective and optical illusion, not to trick the eye, but to guide it toward something more intuitive or spiritual,” said Ramadan “Her abstraction is rooted in real places: traditional architecture in Qatar and the Gulf, the land around her, faces she knows. She didn’t make abstract work just for its own sake—it was a way to explore the many layers of reality across the canvas. To me, that’s poetry in visual form.”
A sensitivity to color unites her works across their many forms; bright yellows, blues, and pinks radiate throughout (the exhibition design emphasizes this with bold and bright wall colors). Her forms often draw back to her training in mafrooka, an Islamic decorative technique she learned at al-Marsam al-Hurr in Doha. At times, elements of Arabic calligraphy emerge, and she incorporates Qur’anic verses and Arabic proverbs.
“Even in her digital pieces, which we’re showing for the first time in this exhibition, these elements come together—the depth of space, layers of meaning, and careful attention to rhythm and light,” Ramadan added.
Wafa al-Hamad, Geometric Composition (1988–1998). Collection Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art.
Experimentation Driven by Imagination
Al-Hamad’s most luminous works are a series of biomorphic abstractions, where forms float in gauzy veils. A gem of the exhibition is Lailat Al Hena (Henna Night) (1992), where ovoid forms in acid pastel colors suggest women gathered around on cushioned seats (in the upper right, she includes a teapot). As in the dream world, the image vacillates, with no one logic dominating.
“Her work creates what I often think of as ‘sites of imagination’, spaces where familiar forms are transformed, layered, and opened up to the dreamlike, the abstract, and the unknown,” Ramadan said of this gauzy fluidity.
The exhibition also highlights the artist’s role as an educator. In 1998, Al-Hamad earned a PhD in Art Education from the University of Northern Texas and became one of the first women to teach art at Qatar University. Al-Hamad’s doctorate dissertation is included in the exhibition, “adding an essential layer to understanding her theoretical framework and artistic intent.”
“Wafa Al-Hamad: Sites of Imagination” 2025. Wadha Al Mesalam, courtesy of Qatar Museums ©2025.
“I had the privilege of engaging closely with her life and practice while writing her biography in discussion with her family. That process was pivotal. It opened up space to study her work not just through the lens of form or technique, but through the textures of her personal history, her conceptual language, and her dreamlike visual worlds,” she added.
A closing section of the exhibition positions Al-Hamad’s works among those of other pioneering Arab women artists, including Madiha Omar, Nadira Mahmoud, Balqees Fakhro, Samia Halaby, Naziha Salem, and Helen Khal. Ramadan believes drawing attention to overlooked women artists such as Al-Hamad is essential for a younger generation of women artists with ties to the region earning worldwide attention.
“Wafa Al-Hamad: Sites of Imagination” 2025. Wadha Al Mesalam, courtesy of Qatar Museums ©2025. 
“While contemporary Gulf artists such as Sophia al-Maria, Farah al-Qassimi, and Monira al-Qadiri receive deserved international recognition today, this show creates a vital link to those who paved the way, artists like Wafa al-Hamad, whose contributions have been historically underacknowledged,” Ramadan explained. She hopes the exhibition more firmly situates her legacy within the context of the artists who exhibited alongside her and helps catalyze an evolving narrative of Gulf modernism.
She also sees the exhibition as speaking to our times, when new ways of seeing feel essential. “In curating this project, I was particularly drawn to the ways her work invites new readings, how it gently unsettles fixed narratives and instead proposes open, imaginative encounters,” she said. “Wafa’s work is rooted in Qatar but always open to broader ideas. Through it, she offers us a different way of seeing, one that remains profoundly resonant today.” More

In 2022, the heirs of John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) made a major donation spread across seven museums in the U.S. and the U.K. These works were not by the famed Gilded Age society portraitist, but his younger sister Emily Sargent (1857–1936)—an accomplished artist in her own right, being recognized for the first time.
Now, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is hosting “Emily Sargent: Portrait of a Family,” its first show of the watercolor paintings it received in that gift. Emily’s works were actually lost for decades, until some of her relatives found a forgotten trunk in storage containing hundreds of her paintings.
“There’s a sense of discovery seeing them,” Stephanie L. Herdrich, the Met’s curator of American painting and drawing, told me. “We’re just starting to understand more about how she worked.”
The exhibition at the Met is one of the first opportunities for museumgoers to see these newly rediscovered works, which showcase Emily’s experiments with different painting techniques as she developed her own personal style.
Emily Sargent, Avila (ca. 1900–10). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, anonymous gift, at the request of members of the artist’s family, 2021.
There was a small Emily Sargent exhibition at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester in 2022, an expanded version of which appeared at the nearby Sargent House, the family’s ancestral home, the following year. And the Met included a couple of Emily’s works in last year’s “A Decade on Paper: Recent Acquisitions, 2014–2024.” But the new show shines a spotlight on her watercolors like never before.
“They’re in amazing condition. If they were ever shown, they were maybe hung in private homes, but to our knowledge they were never exhibited,” Herdrich said.
Emily Sargent, Alhambra (1903). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, anonymous gift, at the request of members of the artist’s family, 2021.
To preserve the delicate works, the museum will rotate in new pieces about halfway through the show’s run. Altogether, the exhibition will showcase about 20 of the 26 paintings by Emily in the donation.
The show complements the museum’s current blockbuster, “Sargent and Paris,” about John’s years making a name for himself as a young artist in the French capital, and the creation of his famed masterpiece Madame X.
Emily Sargent, Park Scene (1902). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, anonymous gift, at the request of members of the artist’s family, 2021.
The Met actually already had some watercolors in the collection that it now believes are by Emily’s hand. They were part of a large donation of works on paper in 1950 that also included a sketchbook by the siblings’ mother, Mary Newbold Sargent (née Singer), which is also on view in the new show.
Since the family’s gift, scholars have begun researching more about Emily, a previously overlooked figure in the annals of art history.
John Singer Sargent, Spanish Midday, Aranjuez (1903). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of Francis Ormond, 1950.
“I basically knew nothing about her,” Herdrich admitted. “There’s archival material and some letters from her at the collection of the MFA Boston, which are being catalogued and transcribed. But so much of what we know about her is still shaped by what we know about her brother. So I think letting her works be seen is a good start.”
In comparing the family trove of Emily’s works to its existing holdings of her brother’s work, the Met was excited to discover that the two had sometimes even painted the same scenes. As part of the Emily Sargent gift, the museum was able to select some pieces that matched examples of John’s work it already owned, as well as a watercolor that the two created together in northern Italy, titled The Brook, Purtud.
Emily Sargent and John Singer Sargent, The Brook, Purtud (1906–08). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, anonymous gift, at the request of members of the artist’s family, 2021.
Though the Sargent children were American, they were born in Europe, and were adults the first time they set foot in the U.S. Neither Emily nor John ever married, and the two traveled extensively, often together, documenting their travels in their art.
While Mary insisted on drawing lessons for all of her children, only John got a formal art education. Emily, who suffered her entire life from the effects of an childhood spinal injury, only began painting in earnest in her 30s.
Emily Sargent, Sea & Shore, Hammamet (1929). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, anonymous gift, at the request of members of the artist’s family, 2021.
The exhibition features her architectural studies and landscapes, some of which border on abstraction. Emily’s talents are obvious, which makes the contrast with her brother’s remarkable career, as the great portraitist of the age, all the more dramatic.
It’s bittersweet to imagine what Emily could have achieved, and the heights she could have reached, had she had the same opportunities afforded to John. But this show gives a glimpse into her talent, finally scratching the surface of the lesser-known Sargent.
Emily Sargent, Garden Scene with Building, Villa Varramista (1908). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, anonymous gift, at the request of members of the artist’s family, 2021.
“There’s still so much to learn about her,” Herdrich said. “We just wanted to get her works out there and bring her to the fore—let people get to know her.”
“Emily Sargent: Portrait of a Family” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, July 1, 2025–March 9, 2026. 
“Sargent and Paris” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, April 27 to August 3, 2025. It will travel to the Musée d’Orsay, Esplanade Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, 75007 Paris, France, as “Sargent: The Paris Years (1874–1884),” September 23, 2025–January 11, 2026. More

The countdown to the 250th anniversary of America’s independence has begun, and museums are already lining up celebrations to mark the milestone. Far from empty flag-waving exercises, these exhibitions richly explore the nation’s founding ideals and contested histories through the lenses of art and artifacts. What did independence mean then—and what does it mean now? Here are 10 shows that encourage reflection as much as a deep reckoning.

Through the Artistic Imagination
“Democracy Matters” at The New York Historical, New YorkJune 19, 2026–January 10, 2027
Johannes Oertel, Tearing Down the Statue of King George III (1852-53). Courtesy of New York Historical.
Why does democracy matter? What does it look like in action? These are some of the questions posed by this show, which inaugurates the Tang Wing for American Democracy at a moment when this form of government is under profound threat all over the world. The show will get into issues like voting, freedom of speech and of worship, and land rights. Works by historical artists like Thomas Cole and contemporary artists like Mel Chin, Fritz Scholder, Nari Ward, and Lady Pink will appear alongside historic documents such as an early printing of the Declaration of Independence—and its counterpart, the loyalists’ Declaration of Dependence (actually a thing!). One piece that resonates strongly with recent U.S. history is Johannes Oertel’s painting Tearing Down the Statue of King George III (1852–53), showing that a moment of Black Lives Matter-inspired iconoclasm in the U.S. has historical precedents. —B.B.

“America at 250” at Museum of Fine Arts, BostonOpening June 19, 2026
Fritz Scholder (La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians and American), Bicentennial Indian (1976). Courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The MFA Boston is reshuffling its 18th-century galleries for the first time in 15 years for this show, which integrates fine and decorative; Native and non-native; North, South, and Central American; and Caribbean art to dig into how artists have contributed to or resisted concepts of nationhood and identity. Get ready for some bold juxtapositions, like Gilbert Stuart’s unfinished 1796 portrait of George Washington with a recently acquired work by Mohawk artist Alan Michelson, who offers a critique of the Father of America, known to the Mohawk Nation as “Town Destroyer.” Also included will be Paul Revere’s Sons of Liberty Bowl (1768), an early piece of American protest art that pays tribute to a group of rebels who paved the way for the Revolution, and a ceramic jar, inscribed with a written message, by the enslaved potter and poet David Drake that exemplifies literacy as an act of resistance. —B.B.

“Amy Sherald: American Sublime” at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.September 19, 2025–February 22, 2026
Amy Sherald, Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance) (2014). Courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art.
Sherald’s comprehensive retrospective—which originated at SFMOMA before traveling to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York earlier this year—touches down at the NPG in time for the institution to mark the nation’s semiquincentennial. The sweeping survey celebrates the painter’s evocative portraiture, which recenters the Black figure in the contemporary canon; her powerful images of Breonna Taylor and First Lady Michelle Obama are featured. The show is a homecoming of sorts for Sherald: the artist debuted her work at the museum in 2016, when her portrait Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance) took the top prize in its Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. With “American Sublime,” Sherald also becomes the first contemporary Black artist to open a solo show at the NPG. —M.C.

“A Nation of Artists” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PhiladelphiaApril 12, 2026–September 2027
Frederic Edwin Church, Pichincha (1867). Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Two venerable institutions, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, join forces on this show, which features pieces from the collection of Phillies owner John S. Middleton and his wife Leigh. Including over 1,000 works of fine and decorative arts, it will be the city’s most extensive show of American art ever. It will feature historic artists like Mary Cassatt, Frederic Edwin Church, and Horace Pippin as well as contemporary practitioners like Rina Banerjee, Mickalene Thomas, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith among other indigenous, immigrant, and under-represented creators. On public view for the first time will be more than 120 works from the Middletons’ collection, including examples by Childe Hassam, Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns, and John Singer Sargent. —B.B.

“State Fairs: Growing American Craft” at the Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.August 22, 2025–September 7, 2026  
Liz Schreiber, State Fairs: Growing American Craft (2024–2025). Courtesy of Liz Schreiber.
The Smithsonian Institution bills this show as the first ever to deal with artists’ contributions to the great American tradition of the state fair. Spanning more than 240 works from the mid-19th century to the present by artists and 4-H clubs from 43 states and tribal nations, the show takes in features like heritage villages, parades, dairy barns, and rodeos. There’s no shortage of novelties. Viewers will see the size-96 boots of Big Tex, from Texas’s state fair; a life-size cow made of butter by Iowa’s official butter sculptor, Sarah Pratt; and a pyramid of 700 glass jars holding preserved fruits and vegetables, by star canner Rod Zeitler, also from the Hawkeye State. What’s more, artist Justin Favela offers the site-specific installation Capilla de Maíz (Maize Chapel), exploring the significance of corn with shimmering gold-fringed walls that combine two Mexican art practices, cartonería and the lavish Churrigueresque ornamentation of 18th-century Mexican Catholic churches. —B.B.

“Fighting for Freedom: Black Craftspeople and the Pursuit of Independence” at DAR Museum, Washington, D.C.Through December 31, 2025
Unidentified photographer, Pennsylvania, Craftsperson with a Hammer (ca. 1863).
How can crafts give voice to a righteous cry for freedom? That’s the question posed by this show, co-curated by the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive and spanning more than 50 objects, including furniture, metals, ceramics, textiles, art, tools, and personal accessories. It features items created by free and enslaved craftspeople and artisans, men and women, some named, some not, from the 18th through the 21st centuries, starting in the Revolutionary War years, when Black people were already calling for liberation. Among them is a table made for Thomas Jefferson’s use by John Hemmings (half-brother to Sally) and a gorgeous silver coffeepot from Charleston, South Carolina, likely created by a Black silversmith named Abraham. Following its DAR outing, the show will travel to the Gibbes Museum of Art, Historic New Orleans Collection, the Tennessee State Museum, and the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley. —B.B.

A Fresh Historical View
“The Declaration’s Journey“ at the American Revolution Museum, PhiladelphiaOctober 18, 2025–January 3, 2027
A Pennsylvania Evening Post printing of the Declaration of Independence on July 6, 1776 from the Museum’s collection, and a commemorative printing of the Indian declaration, on loan from the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Courtesy of Museum of the American Revolution.
In 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was ratified, Philadelphia printer John Dunlap set to work producing the first poster-sized editions of the proclamation to be dispatched to the states. Today, only 25 of Dunlap’s printings survive—one of which anchors the American Revolution Museum’s forthcoming show that traces the Declaration’s impact. At the exhibition, the Dunlap broadside joins other rare iterations of the historical text—a German-language copy, the first newspaper printing—as well as documents of the independence movements in some 100 other nations. Similar charters from India, Ireland, Haiti, and Mexico, among others, are going on view to explore how the principles—and contradictions—of the American Declaration of Independence resonated across the globe. —M.C.

“Transformed by Revolution” at Concord Museum, ConcordOctober 3, 2025–February 22, 2026
Joseph Siffred Duplessis, Benjamin Franklin (1778). Courtesy of Concord Museum.
What did the American Revolution mean for communities across a young nation? Concord Museum, in one of its three exhibitions commemorating America’s 250th year of independence, will unpack how the idea of belonging took shape around and after the 1775 war. Furniture and domestic objects will shed light on the efforts of postwar mutual aid organizations, while textiles capture intimate narratives of childhood and family. Harvard College’s temporary relocation to Concord in 1775 (its so-called year of exile) is also explored here through 18th-century scientific equipment loaned from Harvard University, as well as a rarely seen portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Siffred Duplessis. The spotlight, however, belongs to the show’s gathering of maps, land records, and other archival materials that chart the networks of care established by Black and indigenous groups in the face of postwar precarity. —M.C.

“Facing Freedom in America” at Chicago History Museum, ChicagoSpring 2026
A copy of the Declaration of Independence in the collection of the Chicago History Museum. Courtesy of Chicago History Museum.
Festivities at the Chicago History Museum kick off with a refresh of its long-running exhibition “Facing Freedom in America,” which explores the many ways Americans have sought to define freedom—whether through the struggle for citizenship or public protest. Throughout 2026, the institution will also unveil new works created by four artists in response to the nation’s founding documents. Local artist Vida Sačić has created a type-based piece that engages with the Declaration of Independence; Barrett Keithley, founder of arts organization Paint the City, will reflect on the U.S. Constitution; painter Dorian Sylvain will contemplate the Thirteenth Amendment; and multidisciplinary artist Carlos Flores’s portable monument will tackle the Northwest Ordinance. —M.C.

“In Pursuit of Life, Liberty & Happiness” at the National Museum of American History, Washington D.C.Spring 2026
Thomas Jefferson’s portable desk. Courtesy of Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
The Smithsonian institution is going all out for America’s 250th with a major show spanning its three floors, bringing together 250 objects that represent key chapters in the nation’s history. The star-spangled banner that U.S. soldiers raised at Fort Henry after a decisive victory over British forces in 1812? Check. The desk on which Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence? Check. And the U.S. Navy gunboat that was part of the fleet that held off British forces in 1776? It’ll be here, too, undergoing an ongoing, onsite conservation. Other rarely exhibited artifacts will be on view as well. —M.C. More

The first U.K. public institutional solo exhibition of Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara has become one of the major cultural attractions in London since its opening in June. To industry professionals such as art advisors and those in the trade, this retrospective at Hayward Gallery is a must-see, as Nara is one of the world’s top-selling living artists from Asia. Art world celebs such as fellow Japanese artist Takashi Murakami and collector RM of BTS were also spotted at the gallery.
But more importantly, Nara’s iconic wide-eyed, child-like characters with an attitude resonate with a much wider audience well beyond the usual art crowd. Over the years, the artist has amassed a huge following around the world who adore the aesthetics and appreciate the immediacy of the messages embedded in his work, whether they are inspired by his childhood memories or responses to natural disasters and political injustice. “I think a lot about the nature, people, and the world around us,” the artist told the media during the preview. And these topics are what many people care about.
The blockbuster show features more than 150 works, ranging from paintings and drawings to sculptures and installations spanning four decades of the artist’s oeuvre, an expansion of its previous iteration at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden.
Hayward Gallery declined to reveal information about the sales of tickets and merchandise. “We are pleased with the response to the exhibition and its popularity speaks to the universal appeal of Nara’s work. People connect with his works emotionally—whether they are Gen Zs that may have first encountered his work through social media, or older members of the public who may have watched his rise over the past four decades,” Yung Ma, Hayward Gallery’s senior curator, noted in an email.
Below are five key works to understanding this highly anticipated London exhibition, which runs through August 31.

I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (2017)
Yoshitomo Nara, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (2017). Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
Featured in the spacious gallery on the upper level, which Nara described as “the chapel,” a space that invites visitors to quietly contemplate the works before them, this large-scale painting is among a handful of works that cannot be photographed. On loan from a private collection, this painting graced the cover of the artist’s 2020 eponymous monograph and was exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Yuz Museum in Shanghai, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Last year, the work made its auction debut and became one of the top lots at a Sotheby’s Hong Kong sale after it sold for $12.3 million, including fees.
Art market headlines aside, this is truly a mesmerizing painting, and no photo can ever do it justice. Looking at it up close, I felt I could see an entire universe in this character’s starry eyes. Rather than seeing these paintings of his iconic characters as self-portraits, “I see them as self-reflections,” said the 65-year-old. “There are many reflections of my inner self. They can be good, they can be bad. I hope viewers can see themselves in these works too.”

My Drawing Room 2008, Bedroom Included (2008)
Installation view of Yoshitomo Nara. Photo by Mark Blower. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
Upon entering the exhibition, one is immediately drawn to this cute little hut that looks as if it came straight out of an anime. This installation is a reimagined studio space of Nara. In this playhouse-like safe space, one can find his drawings, vintage toys, and other items collected by the artist, who enjoyed his freedom during his childhood despite being alone. Even though the artist is not there, the lights are still on and one can still hear the music being played. Visitors aren’t allowed to enter this little house, but they can catch a glimpse of Nara’s inner world through the windows. One should allow themselves enough time to take a good look at this meticulous creation, the first of more house installations to come.
“While [my life] may have objectively looked like loneliness, I was very happy with all of my surroundings—I will always really appreciate this environment because it’s original to me,” Nara said in an earlier interview with Artnet News.

Nara’s Record Sleeves
A staff member looks at a selection of record sleeves from Yoshitomo Nara’s personal collection that he finds particularly inspiring. Photo: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images.
When Nara was nine years old, he accidentally picked up the transmissions coming from the Far East Network of Armed Forces Radio from a U.S. Air Force base in Misawa in Japan’s Aomori prefecture, where Nara grew up. He initially did not understand the language spoken on these broadcasts, but it did not stop him from appreciating the music. Since then, music has played an irreplaceable role in Nara’s life and his artistic creations. He also served as a radio show host at Shibuya Radio in 2016 for three years. When Nara held his first international retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2021, he created a walled installation with the vinyl record sleeves from his personal collection. Luckily, Nara brings this installation to the London show, offering fans a glimpse of some of the deepest cultural influences on the artist.
Drawings
Yoshitomo Nara, Untitled (1997). Courtesy of the artist and Hayward Gallery.
The large-scale polished paintings are certainly the main attraction of the show, but it is Nara’s drawings that take the audience on a journey through his inner world, the evolution of his artistic practice, and his take on the world around him. The beauty of this exhibition is that it features a large number of Nara’s drawings executed over the past decades, some even dating back to the early 1990s. Some of his drawings on envelopes or found materials appear to be conceived in an ad hoc manner. Some, such as the one featured above, reflect a moment of angst that many of us have experienced growing up. These drawings are scattered across the exhibition, but do pay attention to a series of small, amusing drawings hung on the wall of the corridor of the upper gallery. You can certainly see yourself in one of them.

Miss Forest, A Pedestal (2023)
A staff member looks at Miss Forest, A Pedestal (2023) by Yoshitomo Nara. Photo: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images.
Sculptures play an increasingly important role in Nara’s oeuvre. Art historian Yeewan Koon, who curated the artist’s sculpture-themed exhibition “My Imperfect Self” that opened at Blum Los Angeles at the beginning of the year, noted that the artist took up sculpture in response to the trauma of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that hit his home turf on March 11, 2011—the worst earthquake recorded in Japan’s history. “What he really wanted to do was to leave his physical presence onto the clay itself, a way to make permanence feel more solid,” Koon said earlier, ahead of the opening of the exhibition. She also observed that Nara’s approach to sculpture has evolved over time, from “wrestling” with the clay to “nurturing” the earthy material from 2016 onwards.
Conceived in 2023, the large-scale Miss Forest, A Pedestal depicts a “forest child” with her eyes closed, looking calm and serene despite being surrounded by the crowd and chaos. A herd of small dogs congregates on the flat surface of Miss Forest’s head, forming a crown for this character that appears to be at one with nature. She might be alone, but she is definitely not lonely.
The exhibition of Yoshitomo Nara is on view until August 31, 2025 at Southbank Center. More

Some of the art world’s most renowned venues and events take place in what seemed unlikely contemporary art hubs at their inception. Just think of Dia Beacon, Prospect New Orleans, SITE Santa Fe, and Mass MOCA. 
Now, a contemporary art triennial aims to create that same magic in a tiny village in Western New York State, an hour’s drive from Rochester to the east and Buffalo to the west. Launching in 2026, the Medina Triennial will invite artists to create some 50 site-responsive works at a dozen or so indoor and outdoor locations in a village on the Erie Canal, a few miles south of Lake Ontario, that is home to about 6,000. The sites include former industrial buildings, public spaces, and significant spots along the canal, with the central site being a sandstone former hotel. 
You may never have heard of Medina, but those in the region have. It has had no fewer than five local landmarks designated on the National Register of Historic Places, including its downtown, and it was noted by the Buffalo News in 2020 for “a bubbling multifaceted culinary and cultural renaissance.”
Downtown Medina. Photo: Hakan Topal. Courtesy Medina Triennial.
Heading up the show are co-artistic directors Kari Conte and Karin Laansoo, with Buffalo-based Ekrem Serdar as associate curator. Conte, an independent curator and writer based in New York and Turkey, currently holds curatorial roles at New York’s City as Living Laboratory and Kai Art Center in Tallinn, Estonia. Laansoo lives in Rochester and Tallinn, and is founding director of the Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center and artistic director of Tallinn’s Kai Art Center. Serdar is curator at the Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center.
“The Medina Triennial will converge transformative artistic positions within a village marked by history and possibility,” said Conte in press materials. “It will offer an inclusive space where global perspectives and local sensibilities meet, with numerous works that are grounded in Medina with far-reaching perspectives.”
Added Laansoo: “Western New York is a location of personal significance to me, as it’s a place I’ve called my home for a number of years. Medina is a hidden gem in this region in many ways. A triennial of this scope has never been organized in the U.S. in a community of this size, making this an unprecedented opportunity.”
View of the Canal Port in Medina, New York. Photo: Hakan Topal. Courtesy Medina Triennial.
Invited artists will often work in collaboration with local residents, said the organizers, who aim to draw 50,000 visitors. 
The show was conceived by what might seem an unlikely duo of arts impresarios—the New York Power Authority, the nation’s largest state public power organization, and the New York State Canal Corporation, which operates some 524 miles of waterways—in hopes of revitalizing the canal and highlighting its significance. Those authorities recruited the leadership of three Buffalo institutions—the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Burchfield Penney Art Center, and the University at Buffalo—along with Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery and the Corning Museum of Glass, to serve on a steering committee.
The inaugural edition will run June 6–September 7, 2026. The artist roster is in formation; the organizers will start to name the participants in the fall. To gin up excitement in the meantime, the Medina Triennial Hub will open in September and will host public programs and events in partnership with Western New York arts venues. More

Jo van Gogh-Bonger (1862–1925), one of art history’s most quietly influential figures, will be the subject of an exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum, the institution named after her brother-in-law, the Dutch Post-Impressionist she helped make famous.
It is well known that Vincent van Gogh struggled to find an audience for his work during his lifetime, only achieving the renown he enjoys today posthumously. But it is Van Gogh-Bonger who deserves much of the credit for his blossoming into a beloved figure known the world over for his captivating paintings as well as his mental illness and premature death.
When Van Gogh-Bonger married Theo van Gogh (1857–1891), it was with the knowledge that the art dealer was supporting his artist brother, a preternatural talent who also suffered from fits of melancholy and had even cut off his own ear just after their engagement. When Van Gogh died in July 1890, the couple inherited his life’s work, a cache of 400 paintings and many more drawings.
Finding a home for this art, and fostering a love and appreciation for it, was always going to be a monumental task. But then, adding to the family’s tragedy, Theo died just 21 months after his wedding, leaving his young wife to care not only for their baby Vincent, but for the life’s work of his namesake uncle. (The brothers are buried side-by-side in the cemetery in Auvers-sur-Oise, the village north of Paris where Van Gogh died.)
Isaac Israëls, Woman Standing in Front of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1920). Collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
The exhibition, which marks the centenary of the death of Van Gogh-Bonger, will feature the work of Isaac Israëls (1865–1934). She at one point hoped to marry the Dutch painter after the death of her husband, but Israëls and Van Gogh-Bonger instead became close friends.
She even loaned him several works by her brother-in-law, which served as a major source of inspiration for Israëls. Incorporating copies of Van Gogh’s paintings into the background in at least 17 of his paintings between 1915 and 1920, Israëls even began using Vincent’s name as a verb.
Isaac Israëls, An elegant lady posing before the sunflowers of Vincent van Gogh (ca. 1916–20). Photo: courtesy of Christie’s Amsterdam.
“I’m still very busy Vincenting,” he wrote to Van Gogh-Bonger at one point. The museum’s collection includes over 100 letters from Israëls to Van Gogh-Bonger, which are being published in a digital edition on the occasion of the show.
“Israëls writes with great candor and verve about art, literature, music, love and friendship. He had a keen interest in Jo and her tribulations, and enjoyed their time together. But he was also fascinated by Vincent’s work, as he frequently expresses in his letters,” Hans Luijten, Van Gogh-Bonger’s biographer, who is publishing the letters, said in a statement.
Excerpts from Van Gogh-Bonger’s diary that provide insight into the relationship between the two will also be on view.
Isaac Israëls, Portrait of Jo van Gogh-Bonger (1895–97). Collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
The exhibition unites 10 of Israëls’s Van Gogh-inspired works, as well as his 1894 painting of the young Vincent Willem van Gogh, and Portrait of Jo van Gogh-Bonger (1895–97), which the museum had restored ahead of the show to remove layers of overpainting and thick yellow varnish.
After decades in the shadows, Luijten’s 2022 biography, Jo van Gogh-Bonger: The Woman who Made Vincent Famous, finally brought Van Gogh-Bonger’s important role in popularizing Van Gogh’s work to light—tirelessly wooing critics and arranging shows, even in the U.S. Hopefully, this exhibition will make her name known to even more of those who love and appreciate her famous brother-in-law.
“Captivated by Vincent. The Intimate Friendship of Jo van Gogh-Bonger and Isaac Israëls” will be on view at the Van Gogh Museum, Museumplein 6, 1071 DJ Amsterdam, Netherlands, September 12, 2025–January 25, 2026. More

The city of Amsterdam is known not only for its great museums but also for its thriving erotic culture, with brothels and peep shows galore. But as a small protest last week demonstrated, there are still a few groups that will get their dander up when they feel their religion is being slighted, especially when it involves a sexual joke. The current dustup actually comes as a result of a collision of the worlds of culture and sex—namely, a prophylactic on view at the Rijksmuseum. 
A 19th-century condom, printed with a sexual scene involving a nun and three members of the clergy, is on display in the exhibition “Safe Sex?” at the national museum. In the bawdy scene, the nun has raised her skirt to reveal her crotch as three clergymen expose themselves to her, over the caption Voilà, mon choix (there, that’s my choice). The scene echoes, with genders reversed, the classical scene of the Judgment of Paris, in which  the Trojan prince is forced to decide who was most beautiful among the goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena. 
The Catholic foundation Civitas Christiana staged a protest outside the museum. Courtesy Civets Christiana.
The Catholic foundation Civitas Christiana staged a protest outside the museum for two days last week, and has posted a petition, which currently has over 1,000 signatures, calling for the condom to be removed, claiming it is “a grotesque insult to God, the Catholic Church and the entire Dutch nation.” For them, the condom is not a joke, it’s evidence of a moment of persecution of the Catholic Church after the French Revolution. 
Right-wing publications have thrown their support behind the protests, for example De Dagelijkse Standaard, which asks why it is “courageous” to mock Christianity, but “completely unthinkable” to display a rendition of Mohammed. “Because a cartoon of Mohammed—even from the 18th or 19th century—would be unthinkable in the Rijksmuseum. Not because they don’t exist. But because people are afraid. Afraid of riots. Afraid of fire. Afraid of protests that are not peaceful.”
The condom is the centerpiece of a new exhibition “Safe Sex?” Photo: courtesy the Rijksmuseum.
The curators think that the condom, likely made from a sheep’s appendix, was most probably a souvenir from an upmarket French brothel. It’s exceedingly rare; only two such objects are known to survive, said the museum, which noted that 19th-century sexuality and prostitution have been underrepresented in its collection.
A representative of the museum downplayed the situation, pointing out to the Art Newspaper that the protesters numbered only 11 people, and also indicated that Civitas Christiana was recently ordered in court to stop spreading misinformation against the Rutgers Centres of Excellence on Comprehensive Sexuality Education, linking the organization to child abuse.
“Mocking religion is as old as religion itself,” exhibition co-curator Joyce Zelen told the Art Newspaper. “I don’t think this is a response to the French Revolution and the Catholic church. It’s meant to be funny.” More

Can art effect change?
It’s a question frequently posed throughout the art world, and while fervent believers, cynical detractors, and nearly everyone in between have lobbied one position or another, a concrete answer has yet to be formed. For American artist Bobby Anspach, he had his doubts—but also faith.
Installation view of “Bobby Anspach: Everything is Change” (2025). Photo: Pernille Loof. Courtesy of the Newport Art Museum.
Anspach’s first institutional solo exhibition opened this month at Rhode Island’s Newport Art Museum, “Bobby Anspach: Everything is Change,” which traces his focused pursuit of a transformative art form, one that could inspire radical and world-spanning change.
The show is curated by Taylor Baldwin, a multidisciplinary artist who is also the Graduate Program Director of Sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Baldwin worked closely with Anspach at RISD while he was a student at the college. While enrolled at the school’s MFA program, Anspach produced the first iterations of his “Place for Continuous Eye Contact” sculpture series, examples of which are the crowning jewels of the exhibition in Newport. The works are physically and psychologically immersive, comprising, variously, pom-poms (tens of thousands of them), lights, tents of expensive fabric, chandelier-like domes, hospital beds, tapestries, sound, and a range of other found or repurposed materials.
Installation view of Spring Break Art Show with Bobby Anspach, “Place for Continuous Eye Contact” (2020). Photo: A. Olsen.
Anspach was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1987. He received his BA from Boston College in 2011, studied at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, and earned his MFA from RISD in 2017. Frequenters of New York’s Spring Break Art Show will likely remember his 2018 or 2020 “Place for Continuous Eye Contact” installations, which also made appearances at a pop-up space in Beacon, New York, in 2021, and a Walmart parking lot in Newburgh and on Fifth Avenue outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2022. While these happenings should have marked the beginning stages of a career just taking off, on July 5, 2022, Anspach died at the age of 34.
The artist’s untimely death adds a layer of poignancy to the exhibition. “At the center of the show is an artist who isn’t here,” Baldwin said during a preview walkthrough. Despite the artist’s existential absence, his vision and voice are very much present, which remain still as an open-ended invitation for change, one that operates on the individual scale but with a view toward the collective.
Installation view of “Bobby Anspach: Everything is Change” (2025). Photo: Pernille Loof. Courtesy of the Newport Art Museum.
The show’s opening gallery space offers context for his specific line of artistic inquiry, and the techniques and experiments he undertook to hone his approach to the more monumental places for eye contact sculptural pieces. Small-scale pom-pom sculptures that appear straight out of a Dr. Seuss book are juxtaposed with a range of paintings, including two large-scale canvases coated in a thick layer of metallic glitter save for the bottom right corners where the glitter has been seemingly wiped off to reveal “Bobby A.,” reflecting themes of discovery, self, and the subconscious.
Other paintings in the space highlight Anspach’s preoccupation with ideas of flatness, depth perception, and iconography. One canvas shows a technicolor, semi-abstract landscape, replete with a field of pom-poms, a blazing sun, various text, and the rendering of a pumpjack, the device used to extract crude oil from underground wells. While not visible from the front, along the right-hand edge of the canvas, it reads, “It’s going to get really bad, it’s okay, it’s okay.”
Concern about climate change and the devastation it has and will wreak was a core element of Anspach’s creative drive. “He was profoundly motivated by the sense that the world was off track about climate change, and the fear of the end of the world,” said Baldwin. “This painting is walking through a lot of that content, the fundamental motivation for the vast majority of his work was this urgency … feeling this sense of obligation towards saving the world.”
Installation view of “Bobby Anspach: Everything is Change” (2025). Photo: Pernille Loof. Courtesy of the Newport Art Museum.
As Anspach’s biography goes, he had his own transcendental experiences that catalyzed what could be described as this overarching, world-saving project. Long devoted to the practice of meditation, the artist had also experimented with psychedelics and undertaken several silent retreats. While he did not personally ascribe to the religion of Buddhism, from his MFA thesis, he describes it as an important framework, and alludes to the fact that the type of experiences and facets of consciousness he was tapping into were elements that predated him by thousands of years.
Baldwin noted, “He believed that he had experienced a truth through deep meditation and far-out thinking. He understood something fundamental about consciousness and the separation of self that would essentially convert anyone into that sense of obligation, and because he knew that truth, he wanted to make sure he could share it with as many people as possible.”
Detail view of “Bobby Anspach: Everything is Change” (2025). Photo: Pernille Loof. Courtesy of the Newport Art Museum.
Another central aspect of Anspach’s practice was his belief that art could change its viewer, bringing to the surface of consciousness a sense of empathy, understanding, and responsibility—to fellow humans and the world at large, universally threatened by issues like climate change, nuclear war, wealth inequality, and health crises. With such great conviction, however, comes some degree of uncertainty.
In Aspach’s thesis, he describes his concern over people’s willingness to open themselves up to his work and his personal ability to convey the message. “I am aware that there have been a lot of people who have come along claiming to know the truth. And that some of them have done a lot of harm to a lot of people. And I am aware that there is a tremendous degree of suspicion towards anyone who uses that word.”
Nevertheless, Aspach forged on, making numerous versions of his “Place for Continuous Eye Contact” works, two of which serve as the foundation for “Everything is Change,” accompanied by soundscapes produced by composer and Aspach collaborator Eluvium.
Set up in adjacent spaces, one is designed to hold an individual and the other two people.
Installation view of “Bobby Anspach: Everything is Change” (2025). Photo: Pernille Loof. Courtesy of the Newport Art Museum.
In the solo work, the viewer lies on a medical-style bed under a meticulously constructed amalgamation of decorative materials, lights, and a carefully placed mirror for the participant to gaze up into their own eyes, with the intention of inducing a state of deep introspection.
In the other, two viewers sit inside a tent lined with countless pom-poms and drenched in otherworldly lighting behind a contraption that blocks one eye of each participant, obliterating the ability to perceive depth. Staring into the eye of the person across with perception flattened and fully immersed in Aspanch’s high-craft creation, the sense of physical presence, space, time, and intimacy are extremely heightened.
Installation view of “Bobby Anspach: Everything is Change” (2025). Photo: Pernille Loof. Courtesy of the Newport Art Museum.
These are just two examples of a sculpture project that the artist had essentially dedicated his entire practice to. Through numerous iterations, he tinkered, refined, and experimented, all to find the perfect formula for communicating the truth he held so sacred in the most effective manner possible.
Of the series, Baldwin wrote in the show’s accompanying essay, “He once told me that if he finally made this one sculpture right, he wouldn’t ever need to make another one. He would be done. He told me that this sculpture, if he was ever finally able to fully make it right, would save the world.” Although Anspach’s pursuit of making one sculpture “right” was cut short, those that he left behind remain as fascinating entry points to the new world he envisioned.
Installation view of “Bobby Anspach: Everything is Change” (2025). Photo: Pernille Loof. Courtesy of the Newport Art Museum.
Like other pieces from this body of work, the eye contact works ask the viewer to suspend any preconceived notions of what is in favor of what could be, not only in a physical sense—though that plays a significant role—but a psychological one. Here, the viewer experience is as much, if not more, the work than the sculptural construction itself, at once a catalyst and index of change. A common denominator between both iterations is a degree of vulnerability and the stripping back of the ego.
Both during Anspach’s lifetime and posthumously, works from the “Place for Continuous Eye Contact” series have been installed in a range of venues, from a parking lot to an art fair. The Newport Art Museum is a first of its type for the series, set within the historic John N. A. Griswold House, built in the iconic American Stick style. Formerly a private residence, it has a decidedly different air than the typical museum white cube, bringing another dimension to the experience. Under an opulent painted sky full of stars and coffered ceilings, and upon intricate parquet floors, the installation speaks to the artist’s desire to meet people where they are, a desire that lives on.
Installation view of the restorative space designed by Lauren Rottet. Photo: Pernille Loof.
Historically, these participatory sculptures have elicited strong emotional reactions, necessitating time and space to collect oneself and reflect on the experience. Considering this, the museum commissioned Lauren Rottet to design what has been dubbed a restorative space, which functions as an extension of the exhibition itself. Using elements of architecture, interior design, and light, the gallery room invites visitors to rest.
Complementing the exhibition is the debut of a ten-minute documentary in an upstairs gallery space comprised of archival footage of the artist revealing portions of his life and studio practice, narrated with Anspach’s own voice. Also playing is a stop-motion animation he created while attending RISD, underscoring many of the themes that later came to define his practice on the whole.
Installation view of “Bobby Anspach: Everything is Change” (2025). Photo: Pernille Loof. Courtesy of the Newport Art Museum.
Part of what makes Aspach’s work so successful is its accessibility. Despite his lofty aspirations for change and the profound conceptual underpinnings of his work, he consistently places the viewer’s experience and understanding at the forefront. No inscrutable performances or nebulous references, the meaning of his work is clear: to unite humanity and save the world, one mind at a time.
Somewhat ironically, Aspach’s ability to achieve this accessibility could be attributed to his doubts about the overall endeavor, which Baldwin says was a recurring topic in their discussions at RISD; doubt in art’s ability to effect change, doubt of audiences’ willingness to open their minds to new ways of thinking, doubt around his own capacity to convey his truth. His faith, however, ultimately outweighed his doubts. “Through these moments of doubt, Bobby always seemed to choose to believe that (as cliché as it sounds and of which he was fully aware) art could change minds,” Baldwin wrote. “He chose to believe and to hope that the work he was making would impact people in meaningful ways. And that is what I would call artistic faith. In this sense, Bobby was one of the most faithful artists I know.”
“Bobby Anspach: Everything is Change” is on view at the Newport Art Museum, 76 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, June 21–September 28, 2025. More