Exhibitions

In 1894, the renowned actress Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923) tapped the Parisian studio Lemercier to create a last-minute poster for her production of Gismonda. The assignment fell to Czech artist Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939), and it not only jump-started his career and a six-year partnership between the two—it helped establish him as one of the leading lights of the Art Nouveau style movement, creating a signature style that continues to inspire artists, illustrators, and designers to the present day.
That lasting influence is the jumping off point for “Timeless Mucha: The Magic of Line,” which opened last month at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.
Organized by the Mucha Foundation, which is run by the artist’s descendants, the show features not only their extensive holdings of the artist’s posters, drawings, paintings, and other works, but also a wide selection of album covers, manga illustrations, comic book covers, and other 20th- and 21st-century artworks inspired by Mucha.
So a classic 1896 Mucha poster for Job cigarettes—one of his first and best-known advertisements—featuring a woman with long hair that curls into exaggeratedly stylized decorative swirls, is shown alongside a Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley poster for a 1966 concert featuring Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band and Big Brother and the Holding Company.
Alphonse Mucha, JOB (1896). Collection of the Mucha Trust, ©Mucha Trust 2025.
The duo repurposed Mucha’s female figure, but transformed her with electric green hair set against bold shades of red and magenta and their own curving lettering.
“They are really identifying with this work’s graphic potency,” Phillips associate curator Renée Maurer told me. “They are relocating it to another time period by using a psychedelic color palette to promote the event.”

Mucha was undeniably revered in his day, when his posters and advertisements were widely disseminated. His posters lined the streets, and his illustrations graced the covers of major magazines.
And to feed the public demand for his work, Mucha even produced smaller posters printed in publications, allowing people to bring his ornately detailed lithographs home without having to rely the luck of finding one in the wild.
Alphonse Mucha, Monaco Monte-Carlo (1897). Collection of the Mucha Trust, ©Mucha Trust 2025.
“This moment in history is really a wonderful time because there are less restrictions on printed materials, so more and more artists are creating posters and prints,” Maurer said. “Posters are everywhere, creating that open air exhibition space for everyone.”
“Everyone wanted to live with it,” Maurer added, citing the artist’s “sinuous line and curving form.”
Alphonse Mucha, Lily, “The Flowers” (1898). Dean Torrence (Kittyhawk Graphics), Diana Ross and the Supremes, Let the Sunshine In (1969). Collection of the Mucha Trust.
His flowing compositions with their intricate line work are a timeless celebration of female beauty, as evidenced by the comparison between Mucha’s Lily from his 1898 series “The Flowers,” and the cover for the 1969 Diana Ross and the Supremes album Let the Sunshine In designed by Dean Torrence (of the band Jan and Dean) for his company Kittyhawk Graphics. In both, the woman’s face is framed by a profusion of white flowers growing all around her.
In addition to some framed versions of mid-20th-century album art on display, the museum also has a retro-looking listening station featuring these records. Just put on the supplied headphones and place the album sleeve down next to the record player to listen to the music from Mucha-inspired artists including the Grateful Dead, Thin Lizzy, and King Crimson.
A visitor to “Timeless Mucha” listens to a record with cover art inspired by the Art Nouveau style of Alphonse Mucha. Photo by Sarah Cascone.
“Seeing these connections, having lived with or grown up with these posters, to see what inspired them is really fascinating,” Maurer said.
The Phillips is the first stop of the exhibition’s five-city North American tour, although the foundation has staged versions of the show in Japan and China. Mucha Foundation shows at U.S. museums are relatively rare; a 2021–23 show that only  traveled to the Speed Art Museum in Kentucky and the North Carolina Museum of Art, was the country’s first in 20 years. (In Prague, the foundation opened the first official Mucha Museum at the Savarin Palace just last week.)

The current retrospective, curated by Tomoko Sato, also includes some of Mucha’s childhood drawings, as well as items from his home and personal collection, such as Japanese prints that influenced his compositions.
It’s only fitting, therefore, that such cross-cultural exchange goes both ways—the show includes a number of contemporary manga illustrations from artists such as Hideko Mizuno, Ryoko Yamagishi, and Yoshitaka Amano that undeniably bear Mucha’s influence. That includes works mimicking Mucha’s signature “Q-formula,” in which a woman is seated within a circular halo shape, with drapery trailing off below her to form the tail of a capital “Q.”
Alphonse Mucha, The Arts Dance (1898). Collection of the Mucha Trust, ©Mucha Trust 2025.
Mucha’s style has become so famous and influential the world over that some of these artists weren’t even aware of who they had to thank for the elegant line, ornate framing devices, and gentle, organic beauty of the flowers and drapery that they were incorporating into their own work.
This embrace of the Mucha style—even unknowingly—speaks to an artistic connection across countries, from generation to generation, underscoring the lasting power of his art.
Yoshitako Amano, Final Fantasy XIV: Adventurer and God of Storms (2010). ©Yoshitako Amano, Final Fantasy XIV, SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.
“Timeless Mucha: The Magic of Line” is on view at the Phillips Collection, 1600 21st Street, NW, Washington, D.C., February 22–May 18, 2025. It will travel to the New Mexico Museum of Art, Plaza Building, 107 West Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 20–September 21, 2025; the Boca Raton Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, Florida, November 19, 2025–March 11, 2026; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak Street, Kansas City, Missouri, April 11–August 30, 2026; and the Museo Kaluz, Avenue Hidalgo 85, Historic Center, Mexico City, Mexico, October 8, 2026–February 8, 2027. More

At long last, Meow Wolf is bringing its otherworldly enchantment to New York City, with plans to open its seventh permanent exhibition at Pier 17 in South Street Seaport. The immersive experience company, which launched as an art collective in Santa Fe in 2008, announced the project at the SXSW festival in Austin today.
For years, Meow Wolf fans have been waiting for the company to come to the East Coast. The success of the original Santa Fe exhibition, which opened in 2016, inspired ambitious expansion plans announced in 2019 to open 15 locations in the next five years.
The pandemic slowed things down, and scuttled plans for an interactive hotel in Phoenix and exhibition in Washington, D.C. But Meow Wolf debuted permanent exhibitions in Las Vegas and Denver in 2021, Dallas Grapevine in 2023, and Houston in 2024, with Los Angeles on track to open in late 2026. Now, with New York officially in the works, the East Coast expansion is finally back on.
“It’s a dream come true for us,” Vince Kadlubek, Meow Wolf’s cofounder and chief vision officer, told me. “Some of the greatest art institutions on this planet are in New York, and amazing DIY performance spaces and live venues. There’s just so many reference points in New York that we’ve been inspired by our entire lives. We’ve always known that we wanted to do a project in New York, but we needed to grow and evolve as a creative company to reach the standards of a New York project.”
The castle on the ice planet Eemia at Meow Wolf Denver. Photo courtesy of Atlas Media.
If you’ve never been to a Meow Wolf, the exhibitions exist at the intersection of an art museum, an interactive theater production, and a theme park, with high-tech light, sound, and video melding with painting and sculpture for an immersive storytelling experience. And the company is hoping to take that to the next level in New York.
“This is a a new tier of exhibition. We’re gonna bring detailed physical environments and remarkable digital environments together in a mixed reality ecosystem,” Kadlubek said. “We are striving to create alternate worlds that are alive—an immersive, animated world that is responding to your actions.
It’s gonna be something that nobody in the world has seen before.”
Finding space in Manhattan big enough for one of Meow Wolf’s maximalist exhibitions was no easy task. At Pier 17, Meow Wolf is partnering with the Seaport Entertainment Group, which operates a series of Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurants at the site, as well as open-air concert venue called the Rooftop, under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge.
“The Seaport has close to 400 years of history. It used to be a Dutch fur trading port. Up until 20 years ago, it was a very famous fish market. Today it’s an amazing cultural center,” Meow Wolf CEO Jose Tolosa—a 10-year resident of the city—told me. “It has reinvented itself through the years, in the same way that the city reinvents itself consistently. It pays homage to to our immigrant past, present, and future in many ways.”
Meow Wolf Gas Station in the in Projected Desert in Meow Wolf Las Vegas. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.
Wherever it goes, Meow Wolf always looks to tap into the local community and its history, with installations designed by local artists complementing the work of the in-house team. New York, of course, will offer no shortage of talent to add to the mix.
“They will become part of our family, just like every group of local artists that work in in every single Meow Wolf exhibition,” Tolosa said. “Meow Wolf artists always impress me with their own unique way of looking at the world, and I can’t wait for the New York filter on that view.”
And for all that Meow Wolf explores portals to alternate dimensions, its storylines are also rooted a sense of place, inspired by history. For New York, Kadlubek expects to highlight the role the city played in American independence, and the meaning of freedom, as well as how it has become a melting pot for cultures from across the globe.
“As we get to know local artists and curators, I’m sure a lot of the story of New York will start to come through authentically,” he said.
The exhibition is still in the early concept stages, even after a year of talks with the Seaport to secure the location. Kadlubek estimated a late 2027 or early 2028 opening, adding that it was “probably safely say that this is going to be our most expensive project project yet.”
Neon Kingdom in Meow Wolf the Real Unreal in Grapevine, Texas. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.
Despite its impressive growth over the years, the company has hit speed bumps along the way, including three rounds of layoffs—one in 2020 and two last year. The first of those was primarily a reduction in staff at the exhibitions, and in-character actors were on hand to interact with visitors. The second, Tolosa told me, was a means of adjusting staffing needs from the lead up to opening two locations in back-to-back years, compared to the two-year gap before Los Angeles will debut.
The Meow Wolf Workers Collective has been outspoken in its criticism of the layoffs. Company employees first unionized in 2020 and have secured contracts in Santa Fe, Denver, and Las Vegas, with negotiations ongoing at Dallas. (There are currently 962 staff members.)
Meow Wolf has also faced criticism for setting up shop in Texas, given the state’s restrictive reproductive health care laws and outlawing of gender-affirming care for minors, among other anti-LGTBQ legislation. I asked Kadlubek if the company felt an added pressure to continue to tell diverse stories given the current political climate.
“We need courageous champions who are willing to stand up for human rights and what’s made this country great, and that includes the incredible weave of cultures that America has always welcomed,” he said. “And honestly, New York represents that more than any other city.” More

Just two weeks after picking up the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlinale, actor Tilda Swinton is already on to her next project. But this time, she is taking up the role as an exhibition curator.
The Oscar-winning actor is taking helm of “Supersonic Mediaeval,” an exhibition of British artist and designer Marianna Kennedy set to take place at Christie’s Paris from May 5 through 11. This retrospective delves into Kennedy’s practice and use of materials from resin and wood to bronze and Murano glass in her artisan oeuvre through the eyes of Swinton, who is a long-time admirer and collector of Kennedy’s work. This event is organized by PLVR Zurich.
Tilda Swinton, right, and Marianna Kennedy. Courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd.
“Marianna’s work has always sprung from and lived in, for me, a particularly sweet spot, one where the ancient and resonant meet the unknown and surprising,” noted Swinton in a statement. Earlier this month, she was presented the honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the Berlinale, during which she gave a headline-grabbing speech.
The exhibition’s title, which playfully juxtaposes two seemingly contradictory concepts, pays homage to the actor’s admiration of Kennedy’s practice of skillfully blending art and craftsmanship, modernity and tradition, through her creation of objects such as carved and gilded mirrors and lamps.
“This is the landscape of the ‘Supersonic Mediaeval,’ invested in exquisite craftsmanship and joyful color and merging the familiar and the fresh: its atmosphere brings with it a breath to the heart of condition, renewal, and of bright new horizons ahead,” Swinton added.
The Canadian-born Kennedy went to the National College of Art in Dublin and furthered her studies at the Slade School of Art in London. In 2006, she began making her now iconic gilded mirrors at her studio in Spitalfields, London, where she is still based today. Her elegant body of work, made with refined, contemporary techniques and precious materials, are in the many private collections.
Marianna Kennedy’s mirror and lamp. Courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd.
Swinton and Kennedy were introduced by a mutual friend, and they were connected by a shared passion for collaborating with artisans, which involves the contemporary reinterpretation of historical craft techniques. Drawing inspiration from the houses and neighborhood of Spitalfields, which has a history of silk-weaving brought by the French Huguenot Protestants and is a culturally diverse area, the show is expected to carry a cinematic vibe, inviting visitors to immerse themselves in an imagined theatrical set while experiencing Kennedy’s work.
“I have always been inspired by Tilda’s unique artistic vision combined with a playful sense of collaboration. We both share a respect for craftsmanship and a love of beauty, bridging the gap between the past and present but always looking forward. For us, the past is always new,” Kennedy noted in a statement.
Throughout Swinton’s film career, she maintained close ties with art and artists. She made her film debut in Caravaggio in 1986, directed by Derek Jarman, who was also an artist whose works have been exhibited at galleries in recent years.
In 2019, she organized her first art show, “Orlando,” at the Aperture Foundation in New York as a curator. Named after Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel of the same title, the exhibition featured more than 50 works by 11 artists, who explored the themes of identity and transformation in the book as well the 1992 film adaptation starring the Swinton. Last year, she played the role of a harried art-world outsider in the satire Problemista. More

What does a retrospective accomplish? A major show on Gabriel Orozco in Mexico City offers a new idea.
From an academic standpoint, an institutional retrospective exhibition is seen as a crowning jewel of an artist’s career, the culmination of a lifetime’s worth of work and oeuvre that has had an outsized influence on the state of artmaking. Typically, retrospectives are staged roughly, if not precisely, chronologically, showing how the artist started in one place and—traced through subsequent periods and bodies of work—ended up in another. A nice tidy package.
Gabriel Orozco, Empty Shoe Box (Caja vacía de zapatos) (1993). Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris/Los Angeles.
But what if another, more valuable function could be found within the retrospective format? On view through August 3, 2025, Gabriel Orozco’s career-spanning exhibition at the Museo Jumex, “Politécnico Nacional,” all but abandons traditional considerations around what a retrospective can or should be. Instead, the retrospective is approached less as a case study of an artist and more as an open field of exploration, one where time, context, and medium are not presented hierarchically, but as entry points to the core tenants and recurring lines of inquiry of the artist’s practice.
The exhibition is curated by University College London Professor and Fellow of the British Academy Briony Fer, who has been a leading scholar on Orozco for more than two decades (she also curated a show of his work at White Cube Hong Kong in 2016). The artist and curator’s longstanding working relationship undoubtedly led to the ability for a more experimentally organized show. “This is an artist who is very open and has been very open to intellectual dialogue as well as to conversation and argument, that’s been very generative to me,” said Fer in an interview.
Installation view of the exhibition “Gabriel Orozco: Politécnico Nacional” (2025) Photo: Gerardo Landa & Eduardo López (GLR Estudio). Courtesy of Museo Jumex, Mexico City.
The show comprises 300 objects (more if you consider that some works include dozens of objects themselves) installed across four floors plus the public plaza and terraces. A proverbial homecoming for the artist, the exhibition marks Orozco’s first major museum show in Mexico since 2006 (in an opening talk, he was quick to point out that though he hasn’t had a project of this scale in Mexico for some time, he has always maintained a presence in the country, continually returning from his forays around the world).
Orozco’s role in facilitating Mexico’s recognition as an international powerhouse of contemporary art cannot be understated. In the early 1990s when Orozco was first rising to fame, Mexico was still best known for its advancements in Modernism, à la Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, or José Clemente Orozco (unrelated to Gabriel). Early works like La DS (1993), made from a Citroën DS car cut lengthwise and reassembled to be surreally slim, and Empty Shoe Box (1993), became exemplary of his practice, which centers on locating the fractures and intersections between art and everyday life.
Installation view of the exhibition “Gabriel Orozco: Politécnico Nacional” (2025) Photo: Gerardo Landa & Eduardo López (GLR Estudio). Courtesy of Museo Jumex, Mexico City.
It is this specific element of Orozco’s artistic focus that underpins the present exhibition at Museo Jumex, where works from across his career comingle and are instead loosely organized on an elemental basis, or as Orozco refers to them, “constellations.” The top floor of the show brings together atmospheric, airy works, including ceiling fans with streams of toilet paper hanging from their blades (emblematic of Orozco’s wry sense of humor), and the floor below presents bodies of work with a decidedly earthy, vegetal sensibility. In the first-floor gallery are aquatic works, including one of his iconic whale skeletons (another of which, Mobile Matrix [2006] hangs at the Biblioteca Vasconcelos across town). And the museum’s basement level is the “compost,” reflecting a buildup of ideas, voices, and overlapping media. The star of this lower level is a video work that mimics the format and style of viral videos on TikTok.
Installation view of the exhibition “Gabriel Orozco: Politécnico Nacional” (2025) Photo: Gerardo Landa & Eduardo López (GLR Estudio). Courtesy of Museo Jumex, Mexico City.
Despite the show’s massive size, parsing through decades of Orozco’s work was no small feat, involving going back into the artist’s archives and meticulously tracing the elemental aspects of various works from across decades.
“The only thing that I was not so sure about is that there were so many works, because you know I have worked a lot, and I have done a lot of different things,” Orozco said. “But [Fer] was just ‘yes, and this and then this and then this and that. And then we combine this with that.’ All the dynamics of co-relationships and putting so much research into finding pieces … The museum wanted to have a really ambitious show, and a very complete show. It was the one thing that I was a bit worried about. But she was so happy choosing works. I can see that she really likes my work. I think maybe she likes it even more than me,” he added wryly.
Gabriel Orozco, Empty Shoe Box (Caja vacía de zapatos) (1993). Photo: John Berens. La Colección Jumex, Mexico
Dotted throughout the show are some of Orozco’s most recognizable works, such as his “Samurai Tree Paintings” (2004), geometric abstractions with circular, diagrammatic designs that recall compositions he had toyed with years earlier on everything from graph paper to airplane tickets. These are juxtaposed with pieces such as Árbol nuevo (2006) illustrating how the inspiration behind the works lives on, ever-evolving, ever-adapting. Examples of his large-scale “Working Tables,” like Working Table, (Tokyo) (2015–2023) bring to life the intimate details of his process, displaying collections of various found and made objects, scraps of materials, partial works, and sketches, conceptually held together by the artist’s pursuit of finding the connections between things.
In the museum courtyard, Ping Pond Table (1998), a four-player construction of a ping pong table playable by visitors, has been reproduced with native water-based plats at its center, alluding to Orozco’s interest in games and penchant for the playful and humorous. Adapted from its original installation featuring lily pads, the work conveys a message that is perhaps even more potent today than at the time of its creation.
A new iteration of Gabriel Orozco’s Ping Pond Table (1998) is installed in the plaza of Museo Jumex, Mexico City. Photo: A. Olsen.
Art history, like much of the humanities, bears an impulse to categorize, codify, define, and place things (artworks, artists, periods of time, etc.) in little boxes. In “Politécnico Nacional,” Orozco and Fer resist such inclinations and instead consider the oeuvre holistically. In turn, the show can be understood more as a practice-based framework or roadmap from which visitors can freely explore the tactics and methodologies of the works—and how the implication of each has changed or stayed the same in the time since it was made.
“It changes the way I think about art history,” reflected Fer on the show. “For years I’ve been very dubious about the art historical construction that the meaning of the work is constructed when it’s produced…And everything about this work defies that. That sense of how meaning transforms, and I got very interested in temporality and time. I even in [the exhibition catalogue] called one of his techniques not a conventional technique, but time and temporalities … in the sense that everything is always in the process of changing through time.”
Installation view of the exhibition “Gabriel Orozco: Politécnico Nacional” (2025) Photo: Gerardo Landa & Eduardo López (GLR Estudio). Courtesy of Museo Jumex, Mexico City.
The exhibition’s installation underscores chronology’s backseat role. Across the floors, works from across the periods and places of Orozco’s career comingle, offering new insight into the heart of his practice.
At the extreme, on the top floor, a recent work, Ánima / Anima (2023) is hung on the wall beside the artist’s personal suitcase, replete with luggage tags and worn-off labels, which Orozco placed there on one of his last walkthroughs before opening. Brought on his most recent trip to Mexico City, and placed specifically next to this work (which references ancient Mexican imagery and symbolism), the addition reflects the continuing inspiration for new work inspired by way of revisiting another within the context of the exhibition.
“Both works are our cultural baggage because we do carry a lot of luggage and we need to know when to leave,” Orozco explained. Incongruities balanced by unseen connections in the world around us are a cornerstone of the artist’s work and the addition speaks to how this process of sousing out these intersections in his work—both old and new—is ongoing. No work is inherently fossilized within the time and place it was created.
Gabriel Orozco, Árbol nuevo (2006). Collection Isabel and Agustín Coppel.
The show’s title speaks to this egalitarian sensibility. Orozco took inspiration from the nearby Instituto Politécnico Nacional, and more broadly polytechnic education, which is geared toward applied sciences like engineering, but notably has no courses on art. For Orozco, this is a shortcoming, as shown in much of his work there are significant intersections between artmaking, engineering, music, computer technology, history, and so on.
In the context of the present exhibition, the retrospective format by way of Orozco’s practice itself is transformed into a type of school, one that forefronts accessibility, malleability, and a hope to inspire rather than indoctrinate in a particular pedagogy or canon. In the same way, an artist or art historian might have one takeaway from the exhibition, and an engineering student or architect might have another. Its aims are generative, rather than purely reflective.
Speaking on the show overall, Fer said, “It’s for a wide audience but never underestimate them. Never patronize them. And in a way, there are very specialist audiences and then there is this very wide public and some of that public is not knowledgeable about art, but if you make a good enough show, it will work for those different audiences.” More

Right now, at the Gibbes Museum of Art, an Alexander McQueen ombre creation is rubbing shoulders with a Hokusai print, and a Molly Goddard dress with a Joan Mitchell. Fashion legend Dapper Dan, meanwhile, is brushing up against painter Barkley Hendricks.
These artworks and fashion pieces are among the many that the Charleston institution has paired for “Statement Pieces,” an exhibition exploring the centuries-spanning dialogue between the two fields. Co-curated by Gibbes’s director of curatorial affairs Sara Arnold and the VP of Barrett Barrera Projects Kelly Peck, the show spotlights artworks from the museum’s permanent holdings and designs from the latter consultancy.
Installation view of “Statement Pieces” at the Gibbes Museum of Art. Photo: David Johnson, courtesy of Barrett Barrera Projects and the Gibbes Museum of Art.
The show, Arnold told me over email, “offered an opportunity to recontextualize our collection, and to bring world-class fashion design to our galleries.” It’s a sentiment echoed by the museum’s director Angela Mack, who told me: “Embracing other art forms as opportunities to interpret or enhance our understanding of the visual arts only broadens our understanding and increases our ability to reach new audiences.”
Childe Hassam, April (The Green Gown) (1920). Photo courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art.
The art-fashion couplings were devised with Arnold first selecting a group of artworks with stylistic throughlines, before Peck proposed some potential pairings. Peck also delved into the museum’s online database to identify artworks that might match objects she hoped to showcase.
“This was not simply a process of artwork dictating fashion or vice versa,” she told me. “Rather, it was a dynamic conversation between the collections.”
Left: Molly Goddard, Green Tulle Dress with Embroidered Flowers, Autumn/Winter 2017 Collection. Photo: Jonas Gustavsson / courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art. Right: Joan Mitchell, Series: July 25 I (1966). Photo courtesy of Gibbes Museum of Art.
The curators created the combinations, Peck added, based on visual similarities, whether in form, color, or texture, as well as research into the artist’s and designer’s bodies of work. “This ensured that the final pairings had both visual congruence and conceptual depth,” she said.
Indeed, most immediately, a visitor’s eye is drawn to the aesthetic connections between a garment and an artwork. The structured appendages on a red dress from Comme des Garçons’s Spring/Summer 2015 collection is echoed in the textured bulbs on a 2020 stoneware sculpture by Donté K. Hayes; the gold of a Gucci mini-dress is reflected in an 18th-century portrait by Benjamin West, in which landowner Thomas Middleton stands draped with a rich ocher fabric.
Donté K. Hayes, Sanctuary (2020) and Comme des Garçons Red Dress from Spring/Summer 2015 on view at “Statement Pieces” at the Gibbes Museum of Art. Photo: MCG Photography, courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art.
Sometimes, these graphic links surfaced shared approaches between designer and artist. For instance, Arnold highlighted how the partnering of Romare Bearden’s abstract canvas Untitled (Green) (ca. 1950s) and a severe Serena Gili ensemble turned up more than visual correlations. “A closer investigation of the artists’ practices reveals their shared intuitive approach,” she explained. “Each relies heavily on memory, family tradition, and an interest in experimentation and innovation.”
Serena Gili, Cashmere Beaded Top and Fiberglass Skirt (2012) and Romare Bearden, Untitled (Green) (c. 1950s) on view at “Statement Pieces” at the Gibbes Museum of Art. Photo: David Johnson, courtesy of Barrett Barrera Projects and the Gibbes Museum of Art.
A host of fashion designers featured in “Statement Pieces” have taken cues from art history—McQueen, Peck noted, was known for his “engagement with art”—but so too have artists relied on fashion to denote identity and authority.
Note, say, Thomas Sully’s portrait of Sarah Reeve Ladson, seen decked out in a fur-trimmed coat and colorful turban, nodding to her exotic sense of style and her association with the arts; or Barkley Hendricks’s Ms. Johnson (Estelle) (1972), in which the crisp lines of his sitter’s everyday wear convey “an attitude and ease of style,” in Peck’s words, and in turn a profound individuality.
Barkley Hendricks, Ms. Johnson (Estelle) (1972).Photo courtesy of Gibbes Museum of Art.
“In some sense, fashion is an artistic medium we all engage with on varying levels daily,” said Arnold. “Bringing these fashion objects into conversation with paintings and sculpture or other mediums traditionally considered fine art not only expands how we define art but awakens us to how we look at all art, and the significant role it plays in our everyday lives.”
“Statement Pieces: Contemporary Fashion Design and the Gibbes Collection” is on view at the Gibbes Museum of Art, 135 Meeting St, Charleston, South Carolina, through April 27. More

Little is yet known about next year’s 61st Venice Biennale, which will run from April until November 2026, but that does nothing to dampen our excitement. Curator Koyo Kouoh, director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, has been named the first African woman to helm the biennial, and her chosen theme will likely only be announced this spring or summer. Will it be as divisive as Adriano Pedrosa’s “Foreigners Everywhere” was in 2024?
While we wait to find out, we have a drip feed of building anticipation thanks to the regular announcements rolling in about which artists will be representing their country at the art world Olympics. Denmark is the latest country to name its artist for the event: Maja Malou Lyse, whose practice uses popular contemporary formats like television and social media as well as IRL performances to explore the power dynamics that pervade daily life.
As always a new edition of the Biennale brings exciting changes as well as new controversies. So far, ahead of 2026, Qatar announced that it has secured a spot in the Giardini to build the first new pavilion there since South Korea’s in 1995. Australia, meanwhile, named artist Khaled Sabsabi as its Venice representative before dropping the artist just a week later, after his selection had became a political hot potato.
Here’s our regularly updated, up-to-the-minute list of all the national pavilions that have been announced so far.
Last updated on March 11
Denmark
Maja Malou Lyse, Antibodies (still). Image courtesy of the artist.
Artist: Maja Malou Lyse
Curator: To be announced
Venue: Giardini
What to know: Born in 1993, Maja Malou Lyse merges modern mediums like video, text, and performance with popular contemporary formats like television, billboards, and social media to explore the dynamics of desire and power that pervade our daily life. Though her practice deals predominantly with the digital realm, she has done in-person performances at the National Gallery of Denmark, Tate Modern in London, and Moderna Museet in Stockholm.
Austria
Florentina Holzinger. Photo: Elsa Okazaki, @elsaokazaki.
Artist: Florentina Holzinger
Curator: Nora-Swantje Almes
Venue: Giardini
What to know: Born in Vienna in 1986, Florentina Holzinger is known for performances that test the limits of what her audience can handle, in a practice that blends feminist body art with the tradition of Viennese Actionism. Last fall, it was reported that 18 audience members required medical treatment for nausea and shock after seeing her production Sancta, a remake of the blasphemous 1921 opera Sancta Susanna, at the Stuttgart Opera in Germany. The performance featured explicit and violent sex scenes, real injuries and blood, nail-biting stunts, and abundant nudity. Eek!
Canada
Abbas Akhavan. Photo: Alex de Brabant.
Artist: Abbas Akhavan
Curator: To be announced
Venue: Giardini
What to know: Born in Tehran in 1977, Abbas Akhavan emigrated to Canada with his family during conflict in the 1980s and now lives and works between Montreal and Berlin. Akhavan is interested in interrogating the history of place, and as such is known for site-specific installations that incorporate a wide variety of media like video, sculpture, drawing, and performance. No specific theme has yet been announced, but Akhavan is expected to respond directly to the Canada pavilion in Venice’s Giardini.

Estonia

Artist: Merike Estna
Curator: To be announced
Venue: To be announced
What to know: Born in 1980 and now based between Tallinn and Mexico City, Merike Estna’s practice expands traditional notions of painting by introducing once-marginalized craft elements. Not only is this a formal inquiry, but Estna impressed the selection jury for how her work, despite its vividly fantastical, mostly abstract appearance, invokes political and socially urgent themes. With an inherent theatricality that is never limited by the canvas, her works have also been used as stage sets for performance art pieces, featuring everyday items like food and drink with a surprising, arty twist.
Finland
Jenna Sutela and Stefanie Hessler. Photo: Matteo de Mayda.
Artist: Jenna Sutela
Curator: Stefanie Hessler
Venue: Giardini
What to know: Born in Turku in 1983 but now based in Berlin, Jenna Sutela’s varied practice incorporates scientific disciplines of all kinds, from biology to computation and astronomy to create unique sculptural installations. One of her best known works, Pond Brain (2023), is on display at Castello de Rivoli in Italy. At first glance the bronze bowl appears to be a fountain but visitors are invited to touch the work, turning into an instrument that harmonizes the deep reverberations of the water with an A.I. trained on polyphonic sounds from nature. The work debuted at the Helsinki Biennial in 2023.

France
Artist Yto Barrada in her installation, “Yto Barrada: Agadir” at The Curve Barbican Centre. Photo: by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images.
Artist: Yto Barrada
Curator: To be announced
Venue: Giardini
What to know: French-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada was born in Paris in 1971 but mostly grew up in Tangier, Morocco, a locale that has been the subject of her major photography series like “A Life Full of Holes” (1998), which studied the transitory existence of migrants attempting to flee to Europe, and Iris Tingitana Project (2007). She has worked in many mediums, but is best known for her abstract textiles and for her photography and film works, all of which become a means to address wider geopolitical issues like the climate crisis, immigration, and post-colonialism.
Great Britain
Lubaina Himid will represent Great Britain at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026. Photo: Adama Jalloh, courtesy of the British Council.
Artist: Lubaina Himid
Curator: To be announced
Venue: Giardini
What to know: Born in Zanzibar in 1954, Preston-based Himid moved to Britain with her mother as a baby and became a founding member of the Black British Art Movement in the 1980s. She is also a curator, best known for boosting the visibility of Black women artists with landmark shows like “Five Black Women” at the Africa Center in London in 1983 and “The Thin Black Line” at the ICA in London in 1985. Despite this pioneering work, high profile recognition of Himid has been belated, as was the case for many members of the Black British Art Movement. In 2017, she won the Turner Prize, becoming the oldest artist to do so at the age of 63, and, in 2018, she was honored with a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for her contributions to the arts. International institutional acclaim has followed.
Hungary
Endre Koronczi. Photo courtesy of Luca Cserhalmi.
Artist: Endre Koronczi
Curator: Luca Cserhalmi
Venue: Giardini
What to know: Born in Budapest in 1968, concept artist Endre Kornoczi has worked predominantly with the natural medium of wind for the past decade and, while not much is yet revealed about his exhibition “Pneuma Cosmic” for Venice, it will continue with this theme. Among his previous installations, video works, and open air projects is Extreme Sleep (2006-2020), for which the artist blended the banal and absurd by attempting to sleep by sheer force of will in various spots of open wilderness, such as slumped against a bumpy rock in the sun.
Iceland
Munnhola, obol ombla obla by Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir. Performance film 29 min.Premiered at Sequences Festival, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Iceland Pavilion
Artist: Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir
Curator: To be announced
Venue: Arsenale
What to know: Reykjavík-based Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir was born in 1987 and is recognized for her multidisciplinary practice that fuses visual art mediums ranging from drawings to sculptures with sound, text, and moving image, to pull us out of our present moment and welcome us into a beguiling spiritual dimension. She is also an award-winning poet who has published five books and does regular live performances of her work, blurring distinctions between literature, theatre, and visual art.
Ireland

Artist Isabel Nolan, curator Georgina Jackson, and producer Cian O’Brien at The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, Dublin. Photo: Ste Murray.

Artist: Isabel Nolan
Curator: Georgina Jackson
Venue: Arsenale
What to know: Born in Dublin in 1974, Isabel Nolan has turned to the expanse of human history and the universe at large for inspiration in her art practice, counting among her references antiquities, literary figures, religious relics, and cosmological phenomena. She is no more limited by scale or medium either, with her output ranging from intimate, handmade objects or drawings to vast monumental structures. It is a busy time for the artist, who will also participate in the 13th Liverpool Biennial this summer.
Lithuania
Eglė Budvytytė, De sang chaud et de terre (Warm Blooded and Earthbound) (2024) © Eglė Budvytytė.
Artist: Eglé Budvytyté
Curator: Louise O’Kelly
Venue: To be announced
What to know: Born in Kaunas in 1982 and based between Vilnius and Amsterdam, Eglé Budvytyté uses various audio-visual media like video or radio to explore the blurry boundary between fiction and reality, creating scenarios that are partially staged and partially improvised. Much of her work is collaborative, and one recent film Warm Blooded and Earthbound, spotlights the sprawling landscapes of her native Lithuania.
Luxembourg

Artist: Aline Bouvy
Curator: Stilbé Schroeder
Venue: Arsenale
What to know: Born in Brussels in 1974, Aline Bouvy works between Luxembourg and Belgium and is known for her work in a mix of media. One particular focus of her practice is the embrace of the body as a medium through which we have sensory experiences, whether pleasurable or otherwise. What is the political status of the body in 2025? Are we more or less restricted than in the past? Bouvy’s presentation is likely to provoke these questions.
New Zealand
Fiona Pardington stands between two portraits from a series of life casts at the Royal Academy, London. Photo by Jonathan Brady/PA Images via Getty Images.
Artist: Fiona Pardington
Curator: To be announced
Venue: Arsenale
What to know: The New Zealand pavilion is back in 2026 after taking a hiatus in 2024, citing “inadequate” resources. Its comeback will be fronted by the artist Fiona Pardington, of Kāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Ngāti Kahungunu, and Clan Cameron of Erracht, who was born in Devonport, Auckland in 1961. She works predominantly in photography, particularly still-life compositions, and has gained recent recognition for her sensitive studies of objects in museum collections.

Switzerland
Artists: Gianmaria Andreetta, Luca Beeler, Nina Wakeford, Miriam Laura Leonardi, Lithic Alliance and Yul Tomatala
Curator: N/A
Venue: Giardini
What to know: A group of six creative practitioners have teamed up to represent Switzerland at Venice in 2026, beating out 140 rivals in the country’s first open competition for the privilege. Fittingly for such a large group, their project The Unfinished Business of Living Together will explore the state of coexistence, and our human capacities and limitations when it comes to social cohesion and tolerance. The diverse group represent different generations and different language speaking regions of Switzerland.
Taiwan
Li Yi-fan. Photo courtesy the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
Artist: Li Yi-fan
Curator: To be announced
Venue: Palazzo delle Prigioni
What to know: The Taiwan 2025 exhibition has been an official collateral event of the Venice Biennale since 2003 after it lost its national pavilion status following protests from China. Born in 1989, Taipei-based Li Yan-fan works with digital media, often creating surreal and humorous narratives with the use of game engines that he develops. In 2023, he debuted the video What Is Your Favorite Primitive at the Taipei Biennial, a parody of a Big Tech keynote speech that skewered the ethical ambiguities of the industry.

This is a developing story and will be updated. More

A massive bronze sculpture by Thomas J Price will soon stand tall in New York’s Times Square, accompanied at night by his stop-motion animations on the plaza’s famed billboards, in conjunction with his first major solo show at Hauser and Wirth in New York.
The sculptural work, Grounded in the Stars (2023), depicts a Black woman wearing everyday clothing and standing 12 feet above the ground, in a slightly contrapposto pose with both hands on her hips. The work emerges from Price’s ongoing deconstruction of preconceived notions about identity, demonstrating how Black individuals can claim space on their own terms.
Thomas J Price’s Grounded in the Stars (2023) is seen with a person for scale. Photo courtesy of Kunstgiesserei St.Gallen
The sculpture, Price told me over email, was designed to integrate into such a setting as Times Square, which brings together various histories and cultures. It aims to represent the diversity of visitors at the Crossroads of the World and address the traditional representation of marginalized communities in public spaces.
“I hope Grounded in the Stars will instigate meaningful connections and bind intimate emotional states that allow for deeper reflection around the human condition and greater cultural diversity,” he said.
The figure in the sculpture isn’t based on a real person—rather it is a composite of images and observations referred to by the artist in sculpting the work. Price said its identity is intentionally open-ended so people can see it without assumptions or stereotypes.
Thomas J Price. Grounded in the Stars. (2023). Photo courtesy of Kunstgiesserei St.Gallen
“The work is a composite fictional character, unfixed and boundless, allowing us to imagine what it would be like to inhabit space neutrally without preconceived ideas and misrepresentation,” he said.
And in a world full of shallow communication, soundbites, and mixed messages, this sculpture is meant to bring back a sense of human connection, he said. It explores the gap between what people see in the world around them and what they feel inside.
As for the animations, they will run on more than 90 billboards throughout the famed area from 11:57 p.m. to midnight nightly. They come from his ongoing “Man Series” of “plasticine heads” presented against stark black backgrounds. The heads come to life with subtle facial movements.
Portrait of Thomas J Price. Photo by Ollie Adegboye
“I was drawn to Thomas J Price’s work for Times Square because of the novel ways in which he imparts a sense of reverence for people’s everyday humanity,” Jean Cooney, the director of Times Square Arts, said in an email, adding that the works “summon power.”
At Hauser and Wirth, Price’s show, “Resilience of Scale,” will present five such towering figures with a large-scale photographic work comprising 18 separate framed images. As in Times Square, the exhibition invites viewers to navigate the space and make circuits around the works—”positioning themselves within the artist’s narrative,” reads the press announcement, “rather than merely observing from a distance.”
Thomas J Price’s Grounded in the Stars will be on view in Times Square at Broadway and 46th Street, April 29–June 17. The animated works will be shown nightly May 1–31.
“Thomas J Price: Resilience of Scale” will be on view at Hauser and Wirth, 134 Wooster Street, New York, April 24–June 14. More

“Singular meanings are not always the best,” Helmut Lang told me. It’s a statement befitting a sculptor whose works defy simple explanation.
A group of Lang’s oblique sculptures has just landed at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House in Los Angeles for the exhibition “What remains behind.” They appear as alien forms in the concrete-lined minimalist space. A low figure appears crouched and contorted with creases and folds; another, a monolithic slab, stands in a corner, its face alive with mysterious indentations. More significant than what they represent, though, is what they hold.
“The object and its integrity,” Lang said, “are the most important.”
Helmut Lang, fist I and fist IV (2015–17). Courtesy of the artist.
Lang’s works have been constructed out of such materials as foam and latex, steel and resin—what he called “not the usual suspects” when it comes to sculpture. Their former uses and purposes, he said, are given new heft by the artist’s hand.
“I just simply find it more inspiring as it is also more challenging,” he added of his choice of materials. “The emotional weight comes in by what I do with them, and I prefer the outcome not to have predetermined meaning. Materials are just materials despite their past.”
Helmut Lang, consenting position (2015–17). Courtesy of the artist and MAK Center for Art and Architecture.
The Austrian artist, of course, has had a long history with unconventional materials. His eponymous fashion label, founded in 1986, was characterized by minimalist tailoring and severe silhouettes, as much as its use of fabrics from rubber and metallics to thermochromic textiles. Lang’s deconstructive approach to design—combining dinner jackets with tracksuits, juxtaposing horsehair against silk—also helped dismantle the boundary that long separated luxury and street fashion.
Since retiring from the fashion industry in 2005, Lang’s art practice has blossomed. Not long after, he began showing his Delphic sculptures—towering columns created out of fabric scraps, stacked objects built out of rubber tires, reliefs made with memory foam—all bearing out his experimental approach.
“What happens during the work process, intellectually and form-wise, is that I approach a piece with an imaginary idea which I have not experienced and therefore remains innocent, waiting to be explored,” he explained. “This emotion results in a flow of works or procedures that can be interrupted at any point. These are condensed, layered, broken up, and again collected and suddenly taken over by another.”
Installation view of “Helmut Lang: What remains behind” at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Schindler House, Los Angeles, 2025. Photo courtesy of MAK Center.
The material responds too: “At any given moment, loss of control takes effect. If the sculpture is strong enough to fight back, that is often a good moment to stop.”
The form of sculpture has captured him, Lang said, because it afforded “the most possibilities of expression.” For years, too, he maintained a fond friendship with sculptor Louis Bourgeois—she appeared on his label’s 1997 campaign and he included a choker she designed in 1948 in his 2003 runway show. Elsewhere, he has reflected on how she affirmed his approach to material. Memory, Bourgeois once said, is a “form of architecture.” Lang’s works compact impressions past, present, and those yet to come.
Helmut Lang, fist II (detail) (2015–17). Courtesy of the artist and MAK Center for Art and Architecture.
At the Schindler House, the exhibition is towered over by a pair of fist-like sculptures, their bodies sharply folded, bound, and gnarled. Even as they challenge singular meaning, they invite exploration. A viewer is enticed to move around the works, to inspect their every cut and dent. The point, said Lang, is to trigger “more questions, not answers.”
“Once the work is handed over to the public, it becomes many lives,” he added. “Everyone is experiencing what one sees depending on their current potential and that is where the personal dialogue comes in. It is beneficial to leave the safety of former experiences behind, which leads to endless layers of opportunities.”
Helmut Lang, kleine Portrait Arbeit I (2015–17). Courtesy of the artist and MAK Center for Art and Architecture.
The meaning of his sculptures could also very well change with the environment they’re displayed in, he said—but in ways that remain, as always, open.
“I am willing to let a space violate the sculptures and avoid the trap of beautifying the object. I want to think that a sculpture will eventually be placed in different contexts and will respond for better or worse each time,” he said.
“Also, one cannot always choose where it will end up and I don’t want to be consumed by that fact. There is something interesting about not always being in control beyond the creation of the object.”
“Helmut Lang: What remains behind” is on view at Schindler House, 835 N. Kings Road, West Hollywood, California, through May 4. More