Exhibitions

The Leroy Johnson exhibition at Margot Samel—the artist’s first solo in New York City—looks like a curious little neighborhood or city street. Little “houses” lined up, each wholly unique, with recognizable hallmarks that could be found in any number of communities: signs for restaurants, images of storefronts, stoops, people, and patchwork architecture.
Installation view of “Leroy Johnson” (2025). Photo: Matthew Sherman. Courtesy of Margot Samel, New York.
These modestly sized sculptures up close, however, don’t offer any viable, inhabitable space for the mind’s eye to occupy as a dollhouse or diorama might. Each work instead appears more as composites of artifacts: photos and clippings; scraps of wood, cardboard, and fabric; pieces of pottery; even gum wrappers. And, upon up-close inspection, the heart of Johnson’s practice can be found, revealed through symbolic and material clues that are both explicit and oblique.
Johnson was born in 1937 in the Eastwick neighborhood of Philadelphia, the city where he ultimately lived his entire life until his death in 2022. Eschewing art school and traditional arts training (beyond attending some classes at Fleisher Art Memorial), Johnson’s position as an outsider artist was a conscious decision. Fueled by what he saw as art world hegemony, he chose instead to forge his own path.
Leroy Johnson. Photo: Matthew Bender. Courtesy of the Estate of Leroy Johnson, Margot Samel, New York and The Center for Emerging Visual Artists.
Though Johnson first began making art while still in high school, over the course of his adult life he simultaneously held a wide range of jobs, including as a social worker, rehab counselor, and teacher to disabled youth, to name a few. He completed his M.A. in human services in 1988, and was deeply committed to the city and communities of Philadelphia—which can be traced throughout his artistic practice.
Johnson’s houses are largely comprised of found materials sourced from across Philadelphia, complemented by photos taken and printed by the artist as well as the addition of “graffiti” and painted surfaces. Some of these houses feature portions of fired ceramic, made from clay that the artist excavated from the ground in the city.
Leroy Johnson, Crosswalk (ca. 2000–2005). Courtesy of Margot Samel, New York.
Adding to the complexity of Johnson’s work are references to Black life and history, urban lived realities, art, and the effects of poverty, racism, and gentrification, with each work holding space for multiple truths and interpretations.
On Crosswalk (ca. 2000–2005), the white outline of a crown adorns the front side of a gable, alluding to the iconic signature of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Below, a series of shadowy silhouettes feature on the corner and within an inset porch; along the roof, a row of tiny, modeled pigeons quietly looks on. The details are simultaneously specific and common. Rather than lean into the exact representation of a singular building or site, it is a visceral portrait of a collection of places, pieced together through a psychological lens.
Leroy Johnson, recto: Who Is Eligible (ca. 2010–2015). Photo: Claire Iltis. Courtesy of Margot Samel, New York.
Elsewhere, images of corner stores, references to the civil rights movement—whether an image of Malcolm X or Cecil B. Moore’s name scribbled on a wall—and idiosyncratically reproduced figuration reflect the cultural and physical fabric of the city, acting as both a tender homage and unyielding record of the place Johnson lived for 85 years.
Notably, each of the houses is fully circumventable, with the details and compositions wrapping the entirety of the work, adding depth to this parallel world. In Who is Eligible (ca. 2010), the proverbial exterior resembles any number of row houses or apartments, but on the reverse side is a wide open blue sky above a collage of more building facades.
Leroy Johnson, Who Is Eligible (ca. 2010–2015. Photo: Claire Iltis. Courtesy of Margot Samel, New York.
Through his distinctive approach to construction and medium, Johnson situates himself as an architect of memory and archivist of materials; where the city of Philly ends and his work begins is undefinable, a testament to the artist’s commitment to depicting through poetic means the true scope of life in the City of Brotherly Love. More

“It all kind of started with this idea about edibles,” said Stacy Lynn Waddell via video call from her North Carolina base, describing her newest body of work set to go on view with Rebecca Camacho Presents at FOG Design+Art 2025. “The first time I went out West, I went to San Francisco and of course, when one goes out West and you go to San Francisco, you go to a weed shop or whatever they call them.”
Stacy Lynn Waddell. © Marco Giugliarelli for Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2022).
Cannabis-infused foods and candies have become an increasingly popular and widespread commodity, but, for Waddell, these products presented a potent starting point for a new line of artistic inquiry. “Edibles,” as the presentation within FOG Focus is aptly titled, features 10 works on paper, each featuring a plant specimen rendered in pastiglia, or paste work, and covered in 22-karat gold leaf, and marks Waddell’s first solo presentation with Camacho.
“I’ve been interested in Stacy’s unique and thoughtful practice for years, admiring her commitment to historical techniques and how her luminous, elegant surfaces belie her use of challenging, frequently unforgiving materials,” Camacho said. “After participating in a group exhibition at the gallery last summer, this solo FOG booth is a great opportunity to share Stacy’s work with a much larger audience within the Bay Area as well as national and international audiences. I am excited and proud to debut Stacy’s newest works at the fair.”
Installation view of “Stacy Lynn Waddell: Edibles” at FOG Design+Art 2025. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents.
Gilding with precious metals is an essential technique within Waddell’s practice, which was on full display in her last solo show, “light takes time to reach us,” at Candice Madey, New York, in 2023 (her third solo with Candice Madey is planned for this September). Here, works included compositions crafted with gold leaf but also variegated metal leaf, silver leaf, and Japanese-colored silver leaf.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Lemon Daylily) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
In “Edibles,” however, all 10 pieces are overlain exclusively with gold, making their low-relief images difficult to discern from a single vantage point, prompting the viewer to move around the piece to see all the different details depending on the light.
“My work tends to be a quieter read, I am asking you [the viewer] to look at something that is a monochrome, also a metallic monochrome, and engage with something that isn’t necessarily easy to engage with. The graphic capability of the work itself is a slow read, and it’s layered between other stuff. You’re negotiating light and shadow, depending on the space the work is shown in.”
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Wild Strawberry) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
Complementing this visual experience is the specificity of the work’s support, a “leathery” type of paper handmade in India with a distinctive, textural surface and irregular edges, which lends it a sense of objecthood in and of itself. Working in pastiglia, using paste or other mediums to build up the surface, certainly imbues Waddell’s work with a sculptural quality but simultaneously allows her to engage with a type of drawing.
“There’s something about being able to use words related to construction and building when thinking about drawing… it’s the way I think about making a drawing,” Waddell explained. “I couldn’t make paintings like wet media onto paper or canvas. It has to be mediated with drawing. Everything I do has to be a drawn painting, not a painted painting.”
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Blackberry) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
Across the series of golden pastiglia drawings, both everyday and rare plants make appearances, and their edibility ranges from delicious to medicinal to toxic, with the inspirations behind each varying broadly. “Some have very particular personal stories behind them, like the blackberry bush that I grew up with at my grandparent’s property that became this giant, almost mythological being in and of itself,” said Waddell. “It was huge and unruly, and every year I would wait for those first ripe berries.” Others capture the artist’s interest through their associated lore. Pokeweed, for instance, is incredibly toxic but has historically been used as a dye—one known, however, to fade quickly—and in traditional herbalism.
Other works feature wild strawberries, opium poppy, bunch flowered narcissus, lemon daylily, cherry tree, sweet violet, tulip, and orchid (these last two species appear together in one work, in a variation on the theme). The way they are arranged in their respective compositions echoes the tradition of botanical drawings, which Waddell cites as a reference point.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Pokeweed) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
The history of botanical drawings stretches back several thousand years, with the intrinsic purpose of documenting the details of various plants but also identifying their uses and classifying them as medicinal, edible, or poisonous. In more recent history, specifically in American history, it was a tool of exploration and colonization. Today, in light of climate change, environmental disasters, and habitat loss, the botanical drawing may very well be the only extant record of any number of plant species.
Connecting back to Waddell’s initial inspiration of edibles in California, the works also tap into the history and heritage of agriculture in the state, and how the Central Valley operates as a source of sustenance due to its extremely long growing season.
The gold leaf placed over the top of these drawings adds yet another layer of complexity to these works, evoking icon painting, religious images that were popular in the 6th as well as 13th through 17th centuries, which frequently depict portraits of figures and scenes from holy texts against a ground of gold leaf. These paneled works operated as a focus point for parishioners, and, similarly, Waddell’s works invite focused attention from viewers—both in how the compositions are optically perceived as well as reflection on and contemplation of what they depict.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, Untitled (Blackberry) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
The intended viewing experience of Waddell’s work in many ways parallels her working practice, which, Waddell admits, is rather gradual and time-consuming. “I work really slowly, and I have things I want to really experiment and play with.” Part of this prolonged approach is in no small part due to an interest in things that have had some time to settle, and tracing reference points between things that might otherwise be incongruous.
Stacy Lynn Waddell, detail of Untitled (Blackberry) (2024). Photo: Kunning Huang. Courtesy of Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco.
“I need things that have a bit of a patina, to have a bit of age on it,” Waddell said. “It’s about connecting myself to history or rerouting what I want to make through the historical lens. It gives the work weight, but it also gives people a whole lot to bring with them too. You’re standing in 2025, looking at a work that was made at the end of 2024 with a process from the Renaissance, and then you’re bringing all of your experiences as a human being, your preferences art as a collector, your interests as a curator or gallerist. That’s super interesting to me.”
The angles, both physically and intellectually, at which Waddell’s new work can be approached are numerous yet subtle. Despite their glittering opulence, their presence is decidedly quiet, and contemplative. Against the backdrop of the fair’s (and life’s) clamor and commotion, they invite viewers to take pause, offering a moment of respite and reflection. More

A sprawling exhibition dedicated to one of the most legendary living artists, David Hockney, is set to open at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris this spring. With over 400 works dating from 1955 until the present day, among the highlights will be two new works inspired by the artists Edvard Munch and William Blake.
“This exhibition means an enormous amount because it is the largest exhibition I’ve ever had,” said Hockney in a press statement, noting that his works will fill 11 galleries at the foundation. “I think it’s going to be very good.”
The artist and his partner, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, have been personally involved in organizing “David Hockney 25,” which runs from April 9 through September 1, 2025. As we have come to expect of the British painter, whose exploratory approach to medium has readily evolved with the times, the show will include a wide variety of media from pencil and charcoal drawings to digital compositions worked on an iPad and even immersive installations.
David Hockney, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (1968). Photo: Fabrice Gibert, © David Hockney.
Hockney’s lengthy career has taken him from his native city of Bradford in Yorkshire to London, Paris, Los Angeles, and, more recently, a peaceful farmhouse in Normandy. The 87-year-old artist has now resettled in London and is showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, some of the works going into the show won’t even feature in the catalogue because they are still in the works.
With his trademark vibrant palette, imbuing his compositions with an eye-catching, hallucinatory quality, the artist has embarked on a new series of paintings that pay homage to some of the historical greats. On view will be After Munch: Less is Known than People Think (2023) and After Blake: Less is Known than People Think (2024), both works that take an impressively expansive view of our world today and realms that lie far beyond, invoking history, our future, and astronomy. In After Munch, the three graces hold up the world while an ancient philosopher meets our gaze.
David Hockney, After Blake: Less is Known that People Think (2024). Photo: Jonathan Wilkinson, © David Hockney.
Yet, these ambiguous pieces are, ultimately, humble observations about human naivety. Their titles were inspired by a headline Hockney saw in the New York Times around 2000 that read: “Less is known than people think.”
“I thought it was a gem, of course they don’t know much!” explained Hockney in the book Spring Cannot Be Cancelled by Martin Gayford. “Nobody knows anything.”
The acrylic painting After Blake was inspired by Dante and Virgil Approaching the Angel Who Guards the Entrance of Purgatory, one of the 18th century English poet and artist William Blake‘s interpretations of Dante’s Divine Comedy. The marvels of 14th and 15th century Florence have clearly captured Hockney’s imagination for many decades, since the show will include a little known work Renaissance Head from the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. It was painted in 1960s, just after Hockney graduated from the Royal College of Art.
David Hockney, 27th March 2020, No. 1 iPad painting printed on paper. Photo: © David Hockney.
Hockney has long introduced art historical references into his work, as will be obvious on the exhibition’s top floor. There will hang The Great Wall (2000), a collage of reproductions of some of the artist’s all-time favorite artworks from the early Renaissance onwards. Other nods to Hockney’s inspirations will come in the form of an installation that reimagines the artist’s studio as a dance hall, a reference to the regular musical performances he stages at his own home, and new reinterpretations of opera set designs originally made by Hockney in the 1970s.
Fans of Hockney’s quintessential subjects—swimming pools, interiors, characterful landscapes, and sensitive portraits of friends, family, or fellow artists—will find plenty of these classics on view. These include Portrait of My Father (1955), Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy (1968), Portrait of An Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972), and A Bigger Grand Canyon (1998). The more recent Normandy landscapes, many of which were completed during lockdown, will also fill two galleries on the foundation’s 1st floor. More

“Color is bullshit,” the legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson once told his younger colleague, William Eggleston. Less vulgar but equally dismissive, Ansel Adams once likened photographing in color (though he did plenty of it) to playing an out-of-tune piano, and claimed that he could get “a far greater sense of ‘color’ through a well-planned and executed black-and-white image than [he had] ever achieved with color photography.”
William Wegman, Ski Patrol (2017). Courtesy Galerie George-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois.
Indeed, color photography had a hard time of it after it was first developed in the mid-19th century, with critics and connoisseurs terming its seductive colors garish as opposed to the supposedly more dignified black and white. But that’s long since changed, and color photography is presently widely accepted, in fine art, fashion, journalism and other fields.
Walter Chandoha, New Jersey, 1962. ©️ Walter Chandoha Archive.
Now, multihyphenate artist Maurizio Cattelan has curated an exhibition on color photography along with Sam Stourdzé, director of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Médicis. It’s taking place at that Renaissance villa just moments away from the famed Spanish Steps in the heart of the Italian capital, which was once the residence of Cardinal Ferdinando I de’ Medici and home to the Academy since 1803.
The show presents the work of some 20 artists, broken up into what the curators call “chapters,” with titles like Early Birds, Raining Cats and Dogs, Femme Fatale, and Stranger Things. On the roster are Miles Aldridge, Erwin Blumenfeld, Guy Bourdin, Juno Calypso, Walter Chandoha, Harold Edgerton, Hassan Hajjaj, Hiro, Ouka Leele, Yevonde Middleton, Arnold Odermatt, Ruth Ossai, Martin Parr, Pierre et Gilles, Alex Prager, Adrienne Raquel, Sandy Skoglund, Toiletpaper (the magazine established by Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari), and William Wegman.
Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, Toiiletpaper. Courtesy Toiletpaper.
“What if color could save us?” said Stourdzé in an email. “In a world of grey where the clouds seem to be pilling up, this exhibition invites you to a chromotherapy session featuring lemon yellow, limitless blue, vibrant red, and sunshine orange.” 
Animals are frequent subjects. Wegman is perhaps best known for his photos of his Weimaraners in various poses, sometimes sporting human clothes. Chandoha, by contrast, is known as a cat photographer; of his archive of more than 225,000 photos, some 90,000 depict felines. “Cats are my favorite animal subject,” he said, “because of their unlimited range of attitude, posture, expression, and coloration.” A charming photo of his shows a furry specimen perched atop three stacked pillows; another shows a quartet in a loving embrace.
The back cover of Damiani’s catalogue for the exhibition “Chromotherapia: The Feel-Good Color Photography,” featuring a photo by Walter Chandoha.
Food also comes in for close study, for example in Martin Paar’s Common Sense [Donut, Ramsgate] (1999), a delightful shot of a child’s hands, poking out of brilliant red jacket cuffs, grasping a sugary treat, and Juno Calypso’s Chicken Dogs (2015), showing a model mysteriously lying face-down on a tile floor near a can of the titular food item, one dog tentatively poking out above the rim. 
Juno Calypso, Chicken Dogs, 2015.
Can’t make it to the show? Villa Medici will publish a 224-page book with Damiani, priced at €55, that will be available in U.K. bookstores in March for £50 ($61) and in the States in May at $60. 
“Chromotherapia: The Feel-Good Color Photography” will be on view at the French Academy in Rome – Villa Médicis, Viale della Trinità dei Monti, 1, February 28–June 9. More

In the 1980s, in lieu of a wedding ring, French sculptor Bernar Venet bent and looped a thin silver band around the ring finger of his soon-to-be-wife Diane. It was a playful, spontaneous act, but one that kindled in its recipient a fascination with artist-crafted jewelry. As she recalled, it drew her toward “the too-little-known world of these unique objets d’art, priceless for their rarity, and the symbolic meaning that is often the genesis of their creation.”
Over the next three decades, Diane Venet would build one of the most enviable collections of artist jewelry, numbering upwards of 220 pieces. Among them are creations by Dalí, Picasso, Braque, Lichtenstein, and Koons, as well as some others commissioned by Venet herself. So vast is the collector’s trove that it’s filled exhibitions, notably at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design in 2011 and Paris’s Les Arts Décoratifs in 2018, among other shows.
Salvador Dalí, Montre petite cuillère (1957). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Philippe Servent, Collection Diane Venet.
It’s now set for another outing, at the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, Florida, in April. The exhibition, titled “Artists’ Jewelry: From Cubism to Pop,” will see more than 150 objects from Venet’s collection displayed alongside companion works by the same artists, pulled from the museum’s holdings.
“Diane Venet’s collection is second to none,” said Ghislain d’Humières, the museum’s director and CEO, in a statement. “The necklaces, rings, brooches, earrings, headpieces, and more that she has collected feature incredible details rendered in interesting materials by some of the most famous artists of our time.”
Pablo Picasso, Le Grand Faune (1973). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Sherry Griffin, Collection Diane Venet
Gathered here is a veritable who’s who of modern and contemporary art. Jean Cocteau and Picasso offer parallel gold recreations of a human face on a brooch and pendant respectively; Niki de Saint Phalle’s signature Nana figure is reimagined in gold and multi-colored enamel; Dalí has similarly installed his trademark clock on the head of a hair brooch.
Niki de Saint Phalle, Nana Ange (1991). Courtesy of the artist. Collection Diane Venet.
Elsewhere are rings by Frank Stella, Lowell Nesbitt, and Rashid Johnson, as well as a bracelet by Lucio Fontana and a rare geometric necklace by Meret Oppenheim, one of only nine produced.
The line-up, noted the museum, boasts artists who were prolific jewelry makers like Calder as much as those who created one-of-a-kind works, including Stella. These pieces also bear out a diversity of craftsmanship—some are dotted with precious stones, some created out of hammered metals, while others were made from non-traditional materials (see John Chamberlain’s aluminum and paint design).
John Chamberlain, Untitled (1998). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Philippe Gontier, Collection Diane Venet.
“Since the beginning of humanity, individuals have adorned themselves with fine metals and precious stones—as modes of class distinction and personal expression,” said J. Rachel Gustafson, the museum’s chief curatorial operations and research officer. “This exhibition bridges the gap between craft and fine art, two creative forms that seldom intersect or are interpreted within one exhibition.”
Man Ray, Optic Topic (1974). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Alain Leprince, Collection Diane Venet.
Woven through these objects, too, are personal narratives, particularly Venet’s. Man Ray’s sculptural mask, Optic Topic (1974), one of the show’s centerpieces, was snapped up by Venet for her husband. Originally conceived as a pair of gold sunglasses, the Dada pioneer’s final design instead obscures its wearer’s vision, giving new meaning to the word “mask.” Throughout the show are also gems that emerge from Venet’s friendship with artists including Stella and Rauschenberg, from whom she received an avant-garde brooch. The coiled wedding ring she received from Bernar is included here, too.
These displays will be accompanied by paintings, sculptures, and photographs to further contextualize the objects, and a sound-based work by Sheila Concari, which features audio snippets of Venet’s reflections on her remarkable collection.
Bernar Venet, Indeterminate Line (1985). Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Damian Noszkowicz, Collection Diane Venet.
“The story of this collection is largely that of my friendships in the art world over the past 40 years,” said Venet in a statement. “In my rather itinerant life, this collection of jewelry is thus an intimate museum that I can take everywhere with me and the treasure trove which I can find on my return home.”
“Artists’ Jewelry: From Cubism to Pop, the Diane Venet Collection” is on view at the Norton Museum of Art, 1450 S Dixie Hwy, West Palm Beach, Florida, April 12–October 5. More

The Venus de Milo, a celebrated ancient statue found on the Greek island of Milos and displayed at the Louvre since 1821, is one of the most famous artworks in the world. Yet relatively little is known about the many centuries of artistic output on Milos and its surrounding islands, known as the Cyclades. In bringing to light this veritable treasure trove of antiquities and artifacts, the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens is also spearheading new research into the rich historical insights these objects have to offer.
Installation view statues of Delos-born goddess Artemis in “Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades” at the Museum of Cycladic Art until May 4. Photo: Paris Tavitian, © Museum of Cycladic Art.
This is certainly the case of a new exhibition “Kyladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades,” currently on view until May 4, which uses art as a lens through which to learn more about the lives of the women who, over many generations, inhabited the sunny Cyclades, an archipelago of hundreds of islands including Mykonos, Thera (Santorini), and Ios. Some 180 statues and figurines dating from prehistory to the middle ages represent women in many guises, from goddesses, religious icons, mothers, entrepreneurs, and sex workers, all bonded by their resilience within a deeply patriarchal society.
“We were disappointed,” one of the show’s curators Panagiotis Iossif said of researching for the exhibition. “Women’s positions never improved dramatically, they were never unmarginalized. Ideas like feminism and equality are very modern.” However, despite laws and social norms that severely limited women’s autonomy, “Kyladitisses” shows that they still found ways to be influential in ancient Greek society.
Installation view statues of Delos-born goddess Artemis in “Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades” at the Museum of Cycladic Art until May 4. Photo: Paris Tavitian, © Museum of Cycladic Art.
The idea that women were inferior to men was a widely held belief in ancient Greek society, and one that would go on to influence Western culture for many centuries thanks in large part to the musings of Aristotle, who wrote in Politics, “the male is by nature superior and the female inferior, the male ruler and the female subject.” Women were excluded from public life in ancient Greece, including all formal political positions. However, there is evidence that through their close familial ties to men in power, elite women were able to exert some influence behind the scenes.
Despite these restrictions, women were permitted to participate in religious ceremonies and festivals. This was particularly true for those designated as priestesses within cults of female deities, like Athena, Demeter, or Artemis. These women organized and oversaw important public events, a huge civic responsibility.
Installation view terracotta ‘korai’ statues from Kea in “Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades” at the Museum of Cycladic Art until May 4. Photo: Paris Tavitian, © Museum of Cycladic Art.
Particularly popular in the Cyclades was the Thesmorphoria, a three-day festival celebrated by the cult of Demeter and her daughter Persephone. It was an opportunity to leave the domestic sphere, with women coming together to fill communal spaces in this celebration of fertility and renewal. At festivals dedicated to Artemis, young girls underwent rituals intended to commemorate their transition to womanhood. For example, those participating in the arkteia rite would dance around the altar and sometimes imitate bears to appease Artemis, who was thought to oversee a young woman’s journey through puberty to first childbirth.
Outside of these ceremonies, women were principally charged with managing the home, which might include supervising household slaves and budgeting to ensure the house is well stocked. In ancient Greek, women were severely restricted from participating in the economy by law, but there is some evidence of exceptions when it comes to working-class women. While textile production was a common pastime for all women, as evidenced by depictions on vases and spindle-whorls and loom weights unearthed by archaeologists, working-class women would sometimes support their families by selling their wares. There are surviving accounts from the Cyclades that record women selling perfumes and textiles, most often in the late Hellenistic and Roman period.
Fresco of the Women in the adyton (“Adorants”) from Xeste 3, Akrotiri of Thera, ca 1600 BCE. Photo: Paris Tavitian, © Museum of Cycladic Art.
So how did life change for women living in the Cyclades over the centuries? The exhibition contains Neolithic Cycladic figurines, of which the vast majority depict the female rather than male body, often in an abstracted or stylized manner. They are generally understood as reinforcing the association between women and fertility, survival, and the cyclic nature of life. It is not known whether they are by men or women, but either or both may be possible since society at this time was less organized and stratified.
By the Bronze Age, Cycladic marble figurines were often found buried in tombs, perhaps intended to provide protection in the afterlife. A rare glimpse into the role of women during this time is provided by the frescoes of Akrotiri, which were preserved under volcanic ash. We can make out several female figures apparently participating in a rite-of-passage ceremony in a particularly notable fresco know as “Adorants,” which is included in the show. This reflects the important role that women would continue to play in ancient Greek religious festivals.
Installation view religious icons featuring the Virgin Mary in “Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades” at the Museum of Cycladic Art until May 4. Photo: Paris Tavitian, © Museum of Cycladic Art.
“To the degree that our sources allow us to catch glimpses of the life of women in the Cyclades, we observe a progressive visibility of women from the Hellenistic period onwards,” said Greek and Roman antiquities expert Sophia Zoumbaki in an essay for the exhibition’s catalogue. “Gender barriers were present throughout antiquity, but the women took advantage of every opportunity they were given in order to participate in the events of the community—mainly in the religious sphere–but also to make ends meet in financial affairs, to manage property, to cope with the unstinting daily work at home, and on the estates.”
At the exhibition’s opening last month, Greece’s culture minister Lina Mendoni praised how it “brings together two very timely issues – one is women’s position internationally and through time and civilizations, the second is an island identity. Island identity is the one that defines – and defined from prehistoric times to our time – the progress and historical development of these specific islands.”
Installation view of religious icons featuring the Virgin Mary and a marble votive relief of Isis Pelagia, lady of the seas, in “Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades” at the Museum of Cycladic Art until May 4. Photo: Paris Tavitian, © Museum of Cycladic Art.
The exhibition is the first initiative to emerge from a landmark deal signed last year by the Museum of Cycladic Art and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades, a regional office of the Greek ministry of culture, with the aim of promoting Cycladic art at home and internationally.
Sandra Mariopoulou, museum’s president and CEO, noted to local press that it is “the first pan-Cycladic show that has ever been set up: a historic exhibition, as it is the first time it collects so many outstanding works of the Cycladic Islands in one place.”
“Kykladitisses: Untold Stories of Women in the Cyclades” is on view at the Museum of Cycladic Art until May 4, after which it will travel to the newly renovated Archaeological Museum of Thera on Santorini for its reopening this summer. It will be followed at the Museum of Cycladic Art by “Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues” from June 5 until November 3, 2025.  More

Marcel Proust’s masterwork In Search of Lost Time, published in seven volumes from 1913 through 1927, is as much a rumination on the slip and slide of time as it is a time capsule. In it is bottled high society in early 20th-century France—its salons, seaside getaways, tea cakes, and of course, visual art. Proust, in fact, name-dropped some 100 artists throughout his famed tome, from Botticelli and Leonardo to Whistler and Vermeer, giving color to characters’ lives both inner and outer.
“It is only through art,” he wrote in the book’s sixth volume, The Fugitive, “that we can escape from ourselves and know how another person sees a universe which is not the same as our own and whose landscapes would otherwise have remained as unknown as any there may be on the moon.”
Paul César Helleu, Interior View of Reims Cathedral (c. 1892). Photo courtesy Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
And what might the French author’s own landscapes look like? A forthcoming show at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain, is giving Proust the Proust treatment by using art to bring his aesthetic ideas and thematic obsessions to life.
Proust’s Paris was undergoing a tremendous transformation at the turn of the century, one that reshaped its industry and urban infrastructure and gave a boost to its art and culture scenes. That ambient modernity was reflected in the author’s prose, but so was Impressionism, which guided how Proust described his scenes and sensations. He ranked Monet and Vermeer among his favorite painters, while socializing with the artists of the day, including Picasso and Jean Cocteau.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Brown and Silver: Old Battersea Bridge (1859–63). Photo courtesy Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
“Proust and the Arts” vivifies this milieu with artworks that capture Proust’s aesthetic meanderings across Europe. There’s Whistler’s rendering of London’s Battersea Bridge and Paul César Helleu’s color-spotted oil of the interior of the Reims Cathedral in Paris. Proust’s fascination with Venice, sparked by his first reading of John Ruskin around 1899, is also given play here, particularly his love for Italian gothic architecture.
Claude Monet, Water Lilies (1916–19). Photo courtesy Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
A number of artists who Proust referenced in his oeuvre feature as well. They include Rembrandt, Pissarro, Renoir, Fantin-Latour, and Manet; an iteration of water lilies by Monet, of course, will turn up. Vermeer, another Proust fave, will be represented by his 1653–54 work Diana and her Nymphs (alas, no View of Delft, in front of which the author staged a dramatic death scene in The Captive).
The show also draws out Proust’s connections with the theater and fashion worlds. A Georges Clarin painting of Sarah Bernhardt will be featured, highlighting how the author based Lost Time‘s Berma on the famed actor; as will costumes created by Spanish artist Mariano Fortuny, whose designs inspired the fashions of Proust’s Duchesse de Guermantes, evoking “that Venice loaded with the gorgeous East.”
JMW Turner, Venice: The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore (1834). Photo courtesy Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
These artifacts will be accompanied by a selection of the author’s books, some on loan from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Among them is Pleasures and Days (1896), his first published volume, its short stories reflecting his tastes in art and his regular visits to the Louvre.
Not least, Proust stans will rightly rejoice at the inclusion of James Tissot’s The Circle of the Rue Royale (1866). The painting is one of the many Proust brings up in his celebrated tome—with a twist. With it, he reveals that his protagonist Charles Swann was based on the very real figure of Charles Haas, a man about town.
James Tissot, The Circle of the Rue Royale (1866). Photo courtesy Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
“If, in Tissot’s picture representing the balcony of the Rue Royale club, when you figure with Galliffet, Edmond de Polignac, and Saint-Maurice, people are always drawing attention to you, it is because they see that there are some traces of you in the character of Swann,” Proust wrote in the book’s fifth volume, The Prisoner. In Tissot’s work, you’ll find Haas on the right, looking suitably self-assured.
“Proust and the Arts” is on view at Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, P.º del Prado, 8, Centro, Madrid, Spain, March 4–June 8. More