Exhibitions

Across the U.S., artists and organizations have organized more than 600 pop-up events, performances, readings, and other forms of creative protest as part of Fall of Freedom, a new artist-led movement that aims to activate the country’s culture community against growing authoritarian threats.
The nationwide program, taking place November 21–22, serves as “a cultural roadblock,” said the artist, curator and writer Accra Shepp, one of the project’s initiators. “You won’t be able to scratch your nose or turn your head without bumping into a movie, or a video on your phone, or something you read. It will be everywhere. You will be reminded that the rule of law matters and that the arts—they not only celebrate freedom of expression, they are the reason for freedom of expression.”
The initiative officially launches at the performance space National Sawdust on Friday, with a night of music and dance, but events are scheduled throughout the day and into the weekend. In New York City alone, there are nearly 200 projects taking place, ranging from a participatory art action by the cooperative ABC No Rio held in Madison Square Park, to a video installation hosted by the media arts non-profit Los Herederos in the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Ave subway station. A group called the NYC Resistance Salon is displaying artwork and political cartoons critical of the Trump administration on a roving digital billboard, and the Banned Book Brigade plans to wear sandwich boards bearing the covers of their favorite censored publications on the steps of the New York Public Library. 
Some galleries and art spaces in New York are taking part or have submitted existing shows under the Fall of Freedom umbrella, including 601ArtSpace, Jack Shainman Gallery, Cristin Tierney Gallery, and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts. Among the museums participating are El Museo del Barrio, which is hosting a retrospective of the influential Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco, and the Bronx Museum, which is presenting a show dedicated to the sculptor Reverend Joyce McDonald, a member of the activist organization Visual AIDS. The Public Theater is hosting a free screening of Ask E. Jean, a documentary about the journalist and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued President Donald Trump for sexual assault. 
Coco Fusco, still from Your Eyes Will Be an Empty Word (2021). Courtesy of the artist and Alexander Gray Associates.
One of the most high-profile events is Creatives For Freedom, a benefit concert held on Saturday night at Pioneer Works, headlined by the singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow, with Mark Ronson, St. Vincent, Maggie Rogers, and other performers, which will raise funds for the ACLU’s efforts to protect civil rights. 
“We had hopes, but we had no way of knowing what was going to happen,” Shepp said of the number of events that have been organized for Fall of Freedom. 
The Puerto Rican artist Miguel Luciano, another initiator behind Fall of Freedom, said there was a lot of optimism early on, and that built as more and more participants joined a series of town hall meetings on Zoom. “We were hoping that people would respond to this idea of wanting to do something. We all are frustrated with what’s happening in the country, and frustrated that a lot of the institutions that we care about and often work with are cowering in silence, whether they’re universities or museums. People are afraid, and they’re self-censoring and silencing in different ways,” he said. And looking at the list of events, the dearth of major institutions participating in Fall of Freedom is notable. 
“Fall of Freedom is an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation,” the initiative states on its website.
Instead of waiting for institutions to step up, the artists decided to take matters into their own hands, and the result is a network of projects not just in liberal strongholds like New York and California, but in more conservative states, like Alabama and Texas.
A number of projects are planned in Washington, D.C., including a dance protest outside the Kennedy Center by recently terminated staff, and a guerrilla performance by the local collective ArtWatchV2.0, titled Gold is Gauche, which will involve a parade of artists dressed in opulent French courtly costumes passing out buttons bearing an image of Trump as Marie Antoinette. “We will proclaim to the people the satire of our gilded decline and, with camp precision, stage the queering of Trump’s ‘Big beautiful BALLS room,’ laying bare its cost—literal and psychic—to the American people,” the group said. 
In a post on X, California governor Gavin Newsome posted an AI-generated portrait of Trump dressed as Marie Antoniette, writing: “TRUMP ‘MARIE ANTOINETTE’ SAYS, ‘NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU PEASANTS, BUT A BALLROOM FOR THE QUEEN!’”
And in the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed, artists are taking part in a pop-up exhibition at Huddle art space called Philadelphia Artists Resist, while the artist cooperative Muse Gallery is showing a large-scale quilt and hand-embroidered batik portraits by the artist Carolyn Harper depicting incarcerated individuals. A map on the Fall of Freedom website lists all the participating projects, allowing anyone interested in showing their support to find an event near them. “We’re hoping that people would be able to do exactly that: plug into what’s nearby, where they can connect with other artists or other people that are standing in their own power right now and doing it proudly and without fear,” Luciano said. 
As for what comes next, both Shepp and Luciano hope the momentum of this weekend will continue to build, and more artists and organizations will join the initiative. All the work taking place over the next two days can serve as “a reminder that action is possible,” Shepp said, “that the courage to speak freely, to exercise one’s right as an artist, to be a participant, as a viewer in an artwork or action, this is what we’re celebrating, and that we shouldn’t be fearful.”
Luciano hopes that such an experience of collective solidarity “makes everybody stand taller” and that the institutions or groups that were tentative about joining this time gain the confidence to join in future events. “We all need to do something right now—the integrity of our institutions is on the line,” he emphasized.
Shepp added that this weekend could also serve as a wake-up call “for others who might see the political reality differently, those who feel comfortable with what’s been going on. They will not be able to ignore the fact that their goals and desires stand far outside of the Constitution,” he said. “The illegality that surrounds the present political moment, is just inescapable. People who seek to normalize it or trivialize it—it’s a weak attempt.” More

A taste of Paris has made its way to Texas. The Louvre’s second-hottest show of all time,“Louvre Couture,” just opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, fresh off the heels of its seven-month run in Paris earlier this year. The exhibition pairs apparel and accessories by top fashion houses from Yves Saint Laurent to Jacquemus with artworks and objects, illustrating how heavily designers draw from art history.
Yves Saint Laurent’s Robe Mondrian (1965)—the earliest design in “Louvre Couture” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston—alongside Piet Mondrian, Composition with Grid #1 (1908). Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
“Louvre Couture” marked the Parisian museum’s first fashion exhibition in its 231-year history. More than one million people attended—just 12,000 less than the count for their record-holding “Leonardo Da Vinci” exhibition in 2019. Olivier Gabet, the Louvre’s director of decorative arts, conceptualized “Louvre Couture” upon joining the museum in 2022—after nearly a decade at next door’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs, home to the French state’s fashion collection.
A new Yohji Yamamoto ready-to-wear dress between Louise Nevelson, Mirror Image I (1969) on the left and Lee Bontecou, Untitled (1962) on the right. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
“Louvre Couture” didn’t set out to boost visitorship. Instead, it aimed recast the museum as a fun, not stodgy site—reaching younger fans and inspiring repeat, local guests in the process. The MFAH’s director Gary Tinterow and curator Christine Gervais visited in March, and knew they had to host the show themselves.
Iris van Herpen, Syntopia dress (2018) © Iris van Herpen, Amsterdam. Courtesy Iris van Herpen. © Yannis Vlamos.
In Paris, “Louvre Couture” featured 100 ensembles and accessories by 45 fashion houses. The Houston edition hosts 36 objects from 23 designers—29 pieces of clothing, and six accessories. Most hail from contemporary times, with a few modern exceptions. 15 of the Houston show’s treasures appeared in Paris, including a wasp-like Jean Paul Gaultier gown from 2008 and Iris Van Herpen’s mesmerizing Syntopia minidress of 2018. Several were chosen specifically for Houston, like a glittery Schiaparelli dress with two Texas tie-ins: Houston-born superstar Beyonce wore it onstage, and its designer, Schiaparelli creative director Daniel Roseberry, was born in Plano.
Christian Louboutin platforms (1995) Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The original “Louvre Couture” played out across the Louvre’s 100,000 square-foot Decorative Objects department. The MFAH’s rendition features three “rare loans” from that department. A 13th century Eucharistic dove occupies the same gallery as a pair of nervewracking 12-inch platform slippers that Christian Louboutin produced in 1995. A 16th century breastplate sits by a scintillating silver dress by Alaïa, from 2017. And, a late-17th century Dutch tulipière is echoed by an elegant blue and white gown that John Galliano designed for Dior in 2009.
The Galliano gown and the tulipiere. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
“Louvre Couture” maintains its central thesis while adapting to the environment of the MFAH. There, the show spreads out across two buildings and over a dozen galleries that typically feature historic, modern, and contemporary art—lending an interesting, increased focus on painting, while still providing satisfying decorative art pairings.
Versace haute couture dress on the Autumn/Winter 1997-98 Runway. Photo courtesy ofVersace
Indeed, the MFAH might not look like the Louvre, but this show still brings the splendor. An ornate oak Longcase clock from 1685 is set alight by a Givenchy pantsuit from 1990 with its own brilliant brocade. A theatrical Dolce and Gabbana dress from 2013 foregrounds Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s mythological painting Juno and Luna (ca. 1735 – 1745). The sexiest Versace dress you’ve ever seen—made of metal and Swarovski crystals in 1997—scintillates near a case of Byzantine relics, with an ornate necklace from Chanel’s Métiers d’Art Paris-Byzance Collection (2010-11) sprinkled in for good measure. You will salivate.
The exhibition has no plans to travel America any further. Seize the spectacle while you can.

“Louvre Couture” is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet St, Houston, TX, November 19–March 15, 2026.  More

In 1973, with the deep wisdom of his mid-20s, Ronnie Wood helped pen the lyrics: “I wish that I knew what I knew now, when I was younger.” They were for the song, “Ooh La La,” a classic for Wood’s then-band, The Faces. What could Wood possibly have known then? Two years later, he officially joined the Rolling Stones, and the rest is history. 
This year marks Wood’s 50th anniversary with the band, and he’s released new artworks to celebrate the occasion. His Paint It Black series, which feature himself and his bandmates, went on view earlier this week at Redhouse Gallery in Harrogate in the U.K., and signed, personalized prints of the paintings are available from the Redhouse Originals Gallery in limited editions of 100, priced at £1,250 ($1,630) each. 
Ronnie Wood, Out of Control (2025). Photo courtesy of Redhouse Gallery.
“I apply musical theory to my art. I build limited editions in much the same way as studio overdubs; the more defined ones are things that stand out in the mix,” Wood said in a statement.
Across these canvases, Wood employs a spare, brushy style against black backdrops to capture the Stones’ likenesses and onstage energy. Mick Jagger sings into microphone with his arms spread wide. Keith Richards balances on one leg as he holds a guitar with one hand. Wood leans out, perhaps towards an audience, as he plays his own guitar. The late Charlie Watts wields a drumstick above his set while another musician, off to the side, seems lost in the music.
Ronnie Wood, Tight Section (2025). Photo courtesy of Redhouse Gallery.
The print release coincides with a reissue of Black and Blue (1976), the first Stones album on which Wood played as an official band member. The band was auditioning guitarists after Mick Taylor quit in 1974, and Wood was up against serious competition. The chemistry between Keith Richards and Wood, who described their collaboration as “the ancient art of weaving,” helped seal the deal. Wood also chalked up his new job offer to “his musical versatility and bonhomie.”
Wood, in fact, has been painting for seven decades—longer, he said in a press statement, than he’s played music. He grew up in a creative West London household, where two older brothers were skilled musicians and graphic designers, and attended the Ealing Art College. His website features artwork that extends back to the 1970s. 
Ronnie Wood, Doctor (2025). Photo courtesy of Redhouse Gallery.
Wood has an omnivorous approach to subject matter, and his paintings alternately feature his bandmates, Robert Niro, horse racers, nude women, trees, houses, guitars, and flowers. He’s tried his hand at drawing and at sculpture: his site features bronze studies of a torso, a horse head, and a rhinoceros. 
In 2020, a large selection of the musician’s paintings, sculptures, and etchings went on view in Hertfordshire to benefit the National Health Service. Critics were scathing about Wood’s works, particularly his reimagining of Picasso’s Guernica with members of the Rolling Stones. “The Rolling Stones are the sexiest and most demonic rock band in history,” the Guardian‘s Jonathan Jones wrote, “and Ronnie Wood seems as entranced and appalled by their devilish antics as any bystander.” More

Grammy nominee and former Interlochen sculpture student Jewel is not one for standing still, in fact, she’s heading to Venice next year. The artist’s debut solo show, “Matriclysm: An Archeology of Connections Lost,” will open at Salone Verde on May 10 and run through November 22—aligning with the 62nd Venice Biennale. Crystal Bridges Museum of Art is presenting the show, which is organized by their curator-at-large Joe Thompson.
This won’t be Jewel’s first time working with Crystal Bridges. Last year, she debuted her revived art practice in “The Portal: An Art Experience by Jewel,” a group show at Crystal Bridges’ stunning Bentonville, Arkansas facilities that featured a portrait and a sculpture by Jewel alongside art by contemporary stars like Julie Mehretu and Fred Eversely.
Jewel behind the scenes with Heart of the Ocean (2024). Photo by Matthew Takes.
“Matriclysm,” however, will focus totally on Jewel. Per its title, the exhibition will explore feminine power, cataclysmic climate change, and the places where they overlap—with an emphasis on universality. “My hope is that the show reminds us what it feels like to be in closer harmony, inviting us to unearth ways to reconnect us to ourselves, each other, and the world around us,” Jewel remarks in press materials.
The exhibition will present new paintings, sculptures, tapestries, installations, and sound works. It all starts outside with First Mother, a massive plaster sculpture depicting a pregnant woman on her knees—an allegory for the Mitochondrial Eve, humanity’s common mother. Jewel collaborated with South African-based Congolese artist Patrick Bongoy to bring this goddess to life. Together, they wove her skin from hessian thread.
“While ‘Matriclysm’ is inherently tied to the feminine divine, it is with men that life is created,” Jewel wrote over email regarding her decision to work with Bongoy on this sculpture, which visitors can touch. “The process felt like a mending and a healing of the feminine and masculine; it felt like cooperation, community, and equanimity. It also felt important to embody the First Mother in Africa, the cradle of our species and whom we can trace our matriarchal mitochondria to.”
Jewel creating Seven Sisters at the Toledo Museum of Art’s glass-blowing studio. Photo by Ben Morales.
Inside “Matriclysm,” guests will enter a dark space illuminated by Seven Sisters—seven glowing orbs evoking the titular Pleiades star cluster. Jewel produced this piece in the glass blowing studio of Ohio’s ambitious Toledo Art Museum. She’s also converted open-source light wavelength data that NASA and UC Berkeley have gathered on the Seven Sisters into a 12-minute soundscape of seven women singing. Their “neuro-ceutical” chorus aims to alter visitors’ brainwaves. To that end, Jewel recruited Susan Mangsamen—the mother of the rising field of neuroaesthetics—to pen the introductory essay for the exhibition’s catalog.
Numerous oil paintings will surround Seven Sisters. Some, like a portrait of Jewel and her son, will celebrate motherhood. Others will celebrate divine femininity more generally, through portraits of notable women like Henrietta Lack (whose cervical cancer cells led to the discovery of the first human cell line) and mathematician Mileva Maric (who married Albert Einstein). Four large paintings from Jewel’s surrealist “Ceremony” series of menopausal women will also appear here, facing off with digital works portraying the upsides and downsides of birth control.
Jewel, Nepo Baby (2025)—an artwork from the “Ceremony” series set to debut in “Matriclysm”. Courtesy of the artist
The second gallery in “Matriclysm” will center on Heart of the Ocean, an eight-foot tall resin and steel sculpture animated by 60,000 dancing LED lights. Jewel devised a soundtrack for this sculpture, too, working with NASA, NOAA, Stanford University, and UC Berkeley to gather data on oceanic health metrics like temperature variations, migratory animal patterns, wave activity, and salinity. Historic and realtime fluctuations in these traits will be fed into “music algorithms” that Jewel created, generating a unique 12-minute soundscape that will sing on behalf of Earth’s oceans. A tapestry depicting a larger-than-life, green-suited girlboss will hang nearby, reminding viewers that gender equity and the environment are intimately related. We record feminism, after all, in terms of waves. More

Despite its remote location, the small, high desert city of Marfa in far West Texas is a destination that the art world eagerly makes a pilgrimage to, with an internationally recognized scene that entices visitors all over the world. At Ballroom Marfa, one of the city’s cornerstone art institutions, however, the exhibition “Los Encuentros,” on view through March 29 of next year, doesn’t seek to cater to these types of in-the-know national and international audiences, but instead one much closer to home.
“I don’t really care that art world people, art world insiders love and embrace the show,” said exhibition curator Maggie Adler on a video call. Instead, she described the best compliment coming from a nearby gas station attendant who had watched the commission on the exterior façade as it was created day by day by artist Ozzie Juaras and was moved by it.
The work, Coatzomaki (2025), synthesizes street art from across Los Angeles with elements of Aztec culture to create a “Ballroom deity” that embodies the dichotomies between “earth and sky, instinct and creativity, gravity and joy.”
Ozzie Juarez, Eco Sin Voz (2025). Photo: Alex Marks. Courtesy of Ballroom Marfa.
“Even if she didn’t walk into the building, she had an experience with art that was for her,” said Adler.
The show brings together the work of five Latinx artists—Juarez, Justin Favela, Antonio Lechuga, Narsiso Martinez, and Yvette Mayorga—who each explore the intricacies and diversity of Latinx culture through very disparate practices.
While calls for more diverse institutional arts programming have intensified over the past five years, few institutions have managed to rise to the occasion fully. With this show, Adler, the artists, and the Ballroom team have homed in on the specificity of the locale and their audience: Marfa is located just an hour north of the Mexican border, and Texas’s population of Hispanic and Latinx hovers at around 40 percent. The result is a group show of uncommon clarity and vision.
Creative Synergy
“Los Encuentros” has been as much a passion project as an institutional program. Adler, who formerly spent more than a decade as a curator at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (the Carter) in Fort Worth, already had a working relationship with Favela. The Carter had previously commissioned the artist for the installation Puento Nuevo (2019), inspired by Alexander Calder, nachos, and piñatas. Since then, Adler had been hoping for an opportunity to collaborate again.
Shortly after departing the Carter, Adler’s friend and Ballroom Marfa Executive Director Holly Harrison invited her to visit Antonia Lechuga’s studio. Adler described the experience as a type of “exquisite torture,” as she connected with his work, but no longer had an institution behind her.  The path to supporting the artist’s work wasn’t so straightforward.
But it did catalyze a realization, Adler said, “I’m not doing these projects and working with these artists and being their interlocutor because I was at the Carter, I’m doing them because I’m me at the Carter.” And the seed of an idea was born. Though Adler’s story is not explicitly linked to “Los Encuentros,” it parallels the theme of looking beyond institutional walls and engaging with the art, artists, culture, and community outside them.
Detail of work by Yvette Mayorga in “Los Encuentros” (2025). Photo: Alex Marks. Courtesy of Ballroom Marfa.
Both Favela and Lechuga share a penchant for employing everyday materials and transforming them into works that deliver cogent visual experiences through means counter to expectations of “high” art.  On the recommendation of Ballroom Marfa’s curatorial assistant Felix Benton, Juarez soon entered the mix. Juarez is represented by Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles, which led Adler to Narsiso Martinez. Adler was already familiar with Martinez’s work, having made one of his first institutional acquisitions, Royal-ty (2021), a few years earlier.
With four artists who were men, Adler went in search of the “badest of badass women” to join the group. Enter Yvette Mayorga, an artist who coined the term “Latinxoco” in reference to her synthesis of Laninx culture and dramatic, visually delectable style.
“It was clear from that moment on that we had the right mix of artists and never looked back.”
Antonio Lechuga, My Flesh is Afraid, but I Am Not (2025). Photo: Alex Marks. Courtesy of Ballroom Marfa.
Medium Specificity
Arguably, the most compelling aspect of “Los Encuentros” is the material diversity. Despite drawing from parallel and even overlapping cultural and contextual references, there is little in the way of medium overlap—and each artist’s employment of medium speaks as strongly to their practices and overarching project as much as the purely visual elements. “That was really the raison d’être of selecting these artists,” said Adler, “that was the underpinning thread, the materials.”
Installation view of “Los Encuentros” (2025). Photo: Alex Marks. Courtesy of Ballroom Marfa.
Lechuga’s work falls somewhere between collage and tapestry. The Texas native uses various cobijas, fleece blankets with printed pictorial designs, which he cuts and reassembles to create new compositions that engage with themes of protection, comfort, and home. These types of fleece blankets are staples in many Latinx households; inexpensive yet warm and decorative, they are commonly found at everyday flea markets, shops, and marketplaces both in Mexico and across the American Southwest—which is where Lechuga sources them. The style and material were first popularized by the San Marcos brand, made in Mexico between 1976 and 2004, but imitations have proliferated, and they remain popular today.
Tapping religious, spiritual, and ancient cultural symbols, from a scene featuring St. Cristopher to fantastical portraits of animals like a panther, the visual tactility and, for many viewers, the visceral memory of the feel of the cobija are as much part of the weight of the work as the imagery itself.
Narsiso Martinez, La familia (2025). Photo: Alex Marks. Courtesy of Ballroom Marfa.
In Ballroom’s entry gallery space, a series of works by Martinez showcases a similar approach to material content. Using found commercial fruit, vegetable, and grocery store packaging—like cardboard produce boxes used to transport oranges, squash, or apples, plastic containers for lettuce or clementines, Whole Foods paper bags—as a support, he draws portraits and populated vignettes of the farmworkers who are primarily responsible for harvesting crops that feed millions of Americans.
Narsiso Martinez, Los Dos Amigos (2025). Photo: Alex Marks. Courtesy of Ballroom Marfa.
Placing renderings of these farmworkers on one of the basic materials of their work essentially collapses the distance between producer and consumer and highlights a populace that, despite how vital they are to society, is frequently exploited, marginalized, and, in the current political climate, persecuted.
The materials also give insight into the artist’s own history, as Martinez himself worked as a farmworker, which he illustrates in Los Dos Amigos (2025), which includes a self-portrait of the artist alongside one of his coworkers. It’s a poignant testament not only to oft-overlooked farmworker communities but the deeply human experience of community building and connection.
Yvette Mayorga, La princesa (Ride or Die) (2024). Photo: A. Olsen.
Cultural Context
There are two vehicles—albeit of sorts—in the exhibition, one by Favela and the other by Mayorga.
Mayorga’s La princesa (Ride or Die) (2024) is a feminine visual delight. A vintage station wagon has been painted bubblegum pink and carefully “frosted” like a celebratory cake. Within, pink shag covers nearly every surface, and the dash too has piped acrylic “frosting.” A variety of additional objects, like a pink Tamagotchi, pink rosaries, an iPhone in a pink case, Hello Kitty stuffies, and more, are placed throughout the interior.
When the show first opened, the car hadn’t been installed yet; customs had stopped it at the Mexican border (ultimately, its engine had to be removed to pass through). But the unplanned journey and delay of the work ended up contributing another contextual layer to the exhibition.
Installation view of “Los Encuentros” (2025). Photo: Alex Marks. Courtesy of Ballroom Marfa.
Adler noted, “So many people make that daily commute as labor for Texas, and the difficulties of crossing the border as a human, it wasn’t easy, but the fact that the car made it through is a type of statement in and of itself of the permeability of the border for objects versus humans, it’s really a whole other layer of complexity and nuance for the show that I think is important to point out, and exactly why I wanted to do the show near the border opening July 4th. That was very purposeful.”
Surrounded by several more equally elaborate works by Mayorga, including a life-size figurative sculpture of a man and woman wearing a combination of historical European and contemporary Mexican styles, including Mexican pointy boots on the man and extravagantly detailed nail set on the woman, the gallery space is transformed into a vibrant almost surreal other world, one where women’s labor, feminine aesthetics, and histories of colonization and oppression have been fully reclaimed.
Favela’s car, Gypsy Rose Piñata (II) (2022), is at the scale of an actual car, but hangs from the ceiling in Ballroom’s North gallery and is made in the manner of a piñata, covered in tissue paper frills and swaying with the ambient movements of the air in the gallery space.
Installation view of “Los Encuentros” (2025). Photo: Alex Marks. Courtesy of Ballroom Marfa.
While the connection to Latinx culture can be traced through the materials and form, Gypsy Rose Piñata (II) also conceptually connects to Marfa’s history, and the work of John Chamberlain, an American mid-century artist best known for his sculptures made of crushed car parts. Chamberlain’s works are permanently on view at the nearby Chinati Foundation.
Other works by Favela continue the links to the artistic juggernauts who historically left their mark on Marfa. Untitled (Maiz) (2025), made from fluorescent tube lights in the shape of an ear of corn, pays homage to Dan Flavin; 1,095 Tamales (2010) evoke the metal cubes made by Donald Judd; Untitled (In Memorium Mr. Spanish) (2025) a larger-than-life cigar box, recalls the oversized sculptures of everyday objects by Claes Oldenberg.
The walls of the gallery space, too, have been meticulously covered in piñata-style fringed tissue paper, with the color paralleling that of a workroom at the Judd Foundation.
“I use the medium of piñata to express myself in a different way,” said the artist, “The installations are about these spaces where people expect me to be representative of my culture. Not only is [my work] about identity and nostalgia, it’s also about my navigating the art world, showcasing my identity, and the complexities of that.”
Justin Favela, Untitled (Maiz) (2025). Photo: A. Olsen.
Encounters
“Los Encuentros” doesn’t shy away from the complexities of Latinx culture, sociopolitical issues, or history. Instead, each artist, in their own way, digs deeper, using recognizable, everyday objects and materials to challenge commonly held assumptions about not only what art is or can be, but also who it is for.
In a walkthrough of the exhibition, Harrison remarked that the opening was one of the highest attended in Ballroom’s history, and for many, it was their first time at the venue, perhaps because it was the first time they felt a show was specifically for them. While each artist’s work independently delves into the intricacies of their personal experiences and perspectives, when considered holistically, the show presents a poignant tribute to identity and community—and what can be achieved when thinking beyond museum walls. More

This morning, fashion leaders including Anna Wintour, Thom Browne, Vera Wang, and Michael Kors gathered for the announcement of the Spring 2026 Costume Institute exhibition. “Costume Art” will debut on May 10, 2026, and inaugurate the Met’s new 12,000-square-foot space dedicated to the fashion department.
Designed by the Brooklyn-based husband-and-wife team Peterson Rich Office (PRO), the new Condé M. Nast gallery, named for the late founder of the media company, will be on the ground floor off of the Great Hall.
“It’s so momentous for our department,” the Costume Institute’s Curator in Charge Andrew Bolton told me after the press conference. “It’s a recognition of the work we’ve all done over the years. Fashion is so central to the museum. It’s the only art form that connects every single department and gallery in the museum. There’s not one gallery in which dressing the body isn’t represented. So, it makes sense that this art form that’s common to everybody in the street has this central place in the museum. It’s a recognition both of fashion—the role of fashion within the Met, but also the role of fashion within culture and art.”
Curator Andrew Bolton delivering remarks at The Met’s Costume Art press conference Image: Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, BFA.com/Matteo Prandoni.
As for the exhibition, “Costume Art” will feature artworks from across the Met’s collections in dialogue with garments from The Costume Institute. The exhibition’s main sponsors are Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos, with additional support by Saint Laurent and Condé Nast. The press materials state that the show will focus “primarily on Western art from prehistory to the present” and that it will be organized into a “series of thematic body types that reflect their ubiquity and endurance through time and space.”
“’Costume Art’ will present a dynamic and scholarly conversation between garments from The Costume Institute and an array of artworks from across The Met’s vast collection,” said the museum’s director Max Hollein, “elevating universal and timeless themes while bringing forward new ideas and ways of seeing.”
The event took place in the Met’s Patio from the Castle of Vélez Blanco, a soaring 16th-century Spanish Renaissance courtyard carved from luminous Macael marble. Once the heart of an Andalusian fortress, later reinstalled in a financier’s mansion, and eventually gifted to the museum, the space still radiates transported grandeur—arcades, mythic carvings, and a cloistered stillness that make it one of the Met’s most dramatic interiors.
(L) Hans Bellmer, La Poupée (ca. 1936). © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (R) Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons, Ensemble, fall/winter 2017–18. Photo © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A sampling of what was in store was on display, including Rei Kawakubo’s autumn/winter 2017–18 Comme des Garçons ensemble, which would bulbously distort the wearer, positioned next to Hans Bellmer’s La Poupée (ca. 1936). Part of his broader Poupée series, Bellmer not only sculpted the uncanny figure but also staged and photographed it, using documentation as an extension of the sculpture itself. With its rounded, swelling forms, the piece even evokes the prehistoric Venus-type fertility totems. Elsewhere, Walter Van Beirendonck’s 2009 spandex bodysuit, which would make anyone look jacked and statuesque, stood guard over a 1503 Albrecht Dürer engraving of Adam and Eve. This just hints at what the show will encompass, and this is a lot to chew on, incorporating the broad history of fashion and art.
Objects from The Naked Body (left) and The Classical Body (right) on display at The Met’s Costume Art press conference. Image: Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, BFA.com/Matteo Prandoni
“It was exhausting,” Bolton admitted of putting “Costume Art” together. “Like literally sleepless nights. Sometimes I started from the fashion and sometimes I started from the artwork. What helped was when I began to think about the exhibitions as types of bodies and focusing on particular bodies that we come across in the museum. Some are pervasive, like the ‘Classical Body.’ Some are less pervasive, like the ‘Pregnant Body.’ There could be a hundred more different bodies that somebody else would do and could do.” Other sections are “Naked Body,” “Anatomical Body,” and “Mortal Body.”
But fashion, by its nature, requires a focus on the present. “I wanted it to reflect the diversity that’s happening in fashion,” Bolton explained, “but also the commonality of our lived experience. Half of the show will be focusing on the diversity of bodies. And the other one will be focusing more on the commonality of bodies, what we all share. So skin, aging, dying. I wanted to show the full spectrum of our sort of lived experiences.”
Objects from The Abstract Body on display at The Met’s Costume Art press conference. Photo: Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, BFA.com/Matteo Prandoni.
One might assume with the brand-new space that Bolton will pull out all the stops for scenography (PRO will also helm that design). “It’s funny because when I look back at something like the Alexander McQueen show [“Savage Beauty”], which I was really proud of, there’s something that seems a little old fashioned about it,” Bolton said. “I’ve always loved doing shows where the scenography carries a narrative of the exhibition. And this particular one, I wanted the opposite. I actually wanted the art to shine and the connections to be sort of what visitors engage with. So in a way, there’s an absence of space. I’ve actually used very traditional sort of exhibition furniture, like pedestals and platforms, but I’ve slightly played with the rhetorical sort of aesthetics behind that. Normally when you go through the museum, pedestals are used to show hierarchy and status and significant value. I’m sort of playing around with what those have meant traditionally within our museums.” It turns out the museum’s vast collections have always had a shared language—the body. Now, they get to show it off.

“Costume Art” will be on view from May 10, 2026, to January 10, 2027. More

In 1582, the first Japanese diplomatic mission bound for Europe set off from Nagasaki. Conceived of by Jesuit missionaries, the Tenshō embassy was composed of four young Japanese noblemen who over the course of the decade would meet various kings of Europe and a newly coronated Pope Sixtus V. In 1585, it arrived in Venice to great fanfare and its leader, Mancio Itō, was dressed up in crimson velvet and painted by Domenico Tintoretto.
Striking, playful, and somewhat artificial, it captures a pivotal moment of two world’s encountering one another for a first time. This painting will feature in an exhibition at the British Museum next year that promises to tell the 1,000-year saga of the samurai and explore how their image and myth was created.
Domenico Tintoretto, Ito Mancio (1585). Photo: courtesy Foundation Trivulzio
So much of the samurai story, including the word itself, was reworked long after their power had waned—a myth enriched and confused further by its modern presence in film, manga, and video games. “The samurai dominated Japan’s history for centuries, but the reality of their lives was often quite different from popular understanding,” Rosina Buckland, curator of Japanese collections at the British Museum, said in a statement. “This is the first exhibition to interrogate the myth, right through to the present day.”
A set of samurai armour recently purchased by the British Museum. Photo courtesy British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Spanning armor, woodblock prints, paintings, clothing, ceramics, and contemporary media, “Samurai” will bring together 280 objects, drawing from the both the British Museum’s own venerable collection and a host of U.K. and international lenders. Due to the light-sensitivity of works, many are being shown in the U.K. for the first time. One highlight is a 17th-century suit of armor, which was recently acquired by the British Museum. It’s fitted with an earlier helmet and golden standard of iris-shaped leaves that were designed to make the samurai “identifiable and fearsome.”
Katsushika Hokusai,Minamoto no Tametomo on the Isle of Demons (1811). Photo courtesy of the British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
This suit, in some ways, matches the standard image of the samurai, a warrior class known in Japan as musha or bushi, that gained political dominance in the 1100s from their involvement in protracted conflicts between feudal lords, called daimyo. In the long era of peace that arrived with the Edo period (1603–1868), they served as government workers, scholars, and patrons of the arts. Women formed half of their number, receiving education and holding positions of power. A vivid illustration is a bright red woman’s firefighting jacket and hood which was worn by women who served Edo Castle. It’s woven with anchors and waves, watery motifs that seek protection from fire that was commonplace in the wooden city of Edo, modern-day Tokyo.
By the end of the 19th century, the hereditary status of samurai had been eliminated, in its place the myth of bushidō, a code of honor promoting patriotism and self-sacrifice, emerged. This formed the basis for the archetype so often depicted in modern media, from the films of Akira Kurosawa to video games such as Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, which are showcased in the exhibition.
The show, Buckland added, “will introduce visitors to Japan’s rich cultural history by exploring the samurai’s multiple roles, the ways they represented themselves and have been shown by others.”
“Samurai” is on view at the British Museum, Great Russell St, London, February 3–May 4, 2026. More

A choreographed fleet of more than 600 drones brought some of David Hockney’s best-known paintings to life in the night sky over the city of Bradford, northern England, on November 13.
Thousands gathered in Bradford’s Roberts Park to watch as works such as A Bigger Splash (1967), Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (1970–71), and A Year in Normandie (2021) were created by synchronized LED drones. The spectacle took place as part of celebrations surrounding Bradford’s status as the U.K. city of culture for 2025 and was a grand gesture in honor of the region’s most famous living artist.
The event was orchestrated by Skymagic, a drone light show company based in the nearby city of Leeds, that previously circled choreographed drones above the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022, the King’s Coronation Concert in 2023, and Coachella in the same year. The Bradford show marked the first time that drone swarm technology has been used to create a light painting in the U.K. It was also the first time Hockney’s work has been created by drones and also included The Old Guitarist from The Blue Guitar (1976-77), Tennis (1989), and Dog Days.
David Hockney’s Garrowby Hill (1998) created by drones. Photo: courtesy Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
David Hockney, Garrowby Hill (1998). Photo: courtesy Prudence Cuming Associates Museum of Fine Arts.
You sense Hockey, who was born in the city in 1937 and attended Bradford School of Art, would have appreciated seeing his swimming pools, self-portraits, and beloved dachshunds materialize in the Yorkshire sky. The 88-year-old artist has long championed the use of new technologies beginning with the Polaroid camera and Xerox fax machine in the 1960s, before his experiments with the Quantel Paintbox, an early computer graphics software, in the 1980s.
Recent decades have seen Hockney make work using a host of Apple products, most famously the iPad, with his paintings created on the tablet selling for millions. In 2023, his “Bigger & Closer” opened London’s new immersive venue Lightroom.
“Having embraced the latest digital technology in his work for many years,” Bradford 2025 U.K. City of Culture said in a statement. “This is a homage to Hockney’s lifelong exploration of new mediums, now reimagined in light by Skymagic.”
David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972) created by drones. Photo: courtesy Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.
The drone light show appeared above the village of Saltaire, a Victorian model village comprised of textile mills, public buildings, and workers’ housing from the second half of the 19th century that is a UNESCO World Heritage site. One of these mills, Salts Mill, now houses one of the largest permanent collections of works by Hockney. The building has also appeared in some of the artist’s paintings, including Salts Mill, Saltaire, Yorkshire (1997).
A second night of the drone display, planned for November 14, was cancelled due to bad weather.
David Hockney’s Diner Dog (1994) created by drones. Photo: courtesy Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture. More