Art & Exhibitions

In November last year, two print curators from the Rijksmuseum were perusing the showrooms of an auction house in Haarlem, northwest Netherlands, when something unexpected caught their eye: a 19th-century condom with an erotic print stretched across its parchment-colored surface.
Huigen Leeflang and Joyce Zelen had missed the listing in the catalogue and were intrigued, not only because it represented a gap in the Amsterdam museum’s collection, but also because Zelen’s doctoral work had focused on erotica. First though, they needed permission from the bosses in Amsterdam. They got it, acquiring the 1830s condom for €1,000 ($1,140), something of a steal, the curators believe. There were no other bidders.
The 200-year-old condom is now the centerpiece of “Safe Sex?” a small exhibition at the Rijksmuseum that explores 19th-century sex work and sexual health predominately through Dutch and French prints. In the interim between acquisition and display, the curators catalogued the condom (there was previously no “condom” classifier in the database) and examined it extensively under UV light (it has never been used). Their conclusion? The condom was a souvenir from an upmarket French brothel.
The condom is the centerpiece of a new exhibition “Safe Sex?” Photo: courtesy the Rijksmuseum.
The proof rests in the printed etching that presents a half-naked nun seated beside three variously endowed clergymen of differing denominations. The caption reads, “Voilà, mon choix” (“there, that’s my choice”). It’s something of a three-way joke: first on celibacy in the clergy, second on the various sects of the church, and third in referencing the judgement of Paris in which the Trojan prince was forced to decide who was most beautiful among the goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena. It’s these details that has led curators to believe the condom was designed with a wealthy and well-read audience in mind.
The use of protective sheaths can be traced as far back as the ancient Egyptians; from the late 15th century on, they were predominantly made from linen, leather, or animal bladders, materials that were neither particularly comfortable nor safe. The Rijksmuseum’s condom is likely made from sheep’s appendix (though further testing is needed), and is of a kind that was available under the counter at brothels or barber shops until the introduction of vulcanized rubber condoms following its invention in the late 1830s.
The 1830s condom with a print is one of only a handful of known examples. Photo: courtesy Rijksmuseum.
To create the image, the appendix would have been laid out flat and pressed into an inked copper plate etching.
Despite its potential benefits, the use of condoms was strongly disapproved of in society, particularly by the church. “Like today there were two sides to sexuality in the 19th century,” a spokesperson for the Rijksmuseum said over email. “The pleasure on one side and the risk of sexually transmitted diseases on the other side. So this object embodies both the lighter and darker sides of sexual health, in an era when the quest for sensual pleasure was fraught with fears of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, especially syphilis.”
The condom is one of only a handful of such objects from the 19th century. In 2011, a condom from the same era sold for €12,000 (about $13,650) at the French auction house Drouot and in 2019 a pig bladder condom from 1830 sold for €2,000 ($2,275).
“Safe Sex?” is on view at the Rijksmuseum, Museumstraat 1, 1071 XX Amsterdam, Netherlands, through the end of November. More

If Swiss-born textile artist Silvia Heyden had had her way, she would have been a violin maker. Born in Basel in 1927, she was an avid violinist even as a child. While still a girl, she decided she wanted to learn to make the object that brought such beauty into her life, but she was born too soon for that life course.
“Her dad took her around to a few violin makers. They said, ‘Oh, this is nothing for a girl or a woman. It’s too rough on your hands.’ She was disappointed, but she accepted it,” said her son, Daniel Heyden, during a recent conversation.
Instead, Heyden became a tapestry weaver, a path nearly as difficult, and which her teacher Elsi Giauque told her it would “take a lifetime” to learn. For over half a century, Heyden did just that, devoting herself to the loom and creating close to 800 innovative and rhythmic tapestries until soon before her death in 2015. From Switzerland to Durham, North Carolina, where she moved with her family in 1966 (her husband was hired as a professor at Duke), Heyden found the manipulating of tensile threads an experience akin to the manipulating of strings on a violin. She created unexpectedly modern tapestries inspired by the movements of the natural world and music—but which never received widespread acclaim in her lifetime.
Courtesy of the Heyden Estate and Charles Moffett Gallery.
Now, a new exhibition “Improvisational Nature: The Weavings and Drawings of Silvia Heyden” at Charles Moffett (through June 7) is shining a light on Heyden’s overlooked oeuvre, marking both the first New York solo exhibition for the late artist, and the first exhibition of the artist’s tapestries and drawings in the U.S. since 1972.
The exhibition, which was put together in close collaboration with the artist’s son and daughter, is a joyful introduction to a vibrant, hitherto unknown creative talent. Heyden, over her decades of experimenting, discovered a singular approach to weaving, working in a spirit of improvisation that embraced learning through sensation. In some ways, the works are reminiscent of jazz music.
“Silvia’s work possesses such a palpable energy. Her formidable skill and boldness at the loom—the bends, shifts, and folds in her lines, the vibrant and surprising relationships between her colors—enliven her tapestries with an innate movement, force, and dynamism,” said Charles Moffett, in an interview.
Silvia Heyden, Chaconne I (1992). Photo: Daniel Greer. Courtesy Charles Moffett.
And while Heyden spent her career working outside of the global art centers, she nevertheless found inspiration and creative dialogue within the work of fellow women textile artists, including Olga de Amaral (with whom she traded a work), Anni Albers, and Gunta Stölzl, whom she met in 1972.
Heyden’s journey as an artist began as a student at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich in the late 1940s and early 1950s. There she fell under the tutelage of Bauhaus master Johannes Itten and the pioneering textile artist Elsi Giauque, who had been a student of Sophie Tauber-Arp. Here, Heyden learned about color theory, experimental philosophy, materiality, and geometry—all of which would form her nascent approach to tapestry. The school, however, was not entirely encouraging, regarding tapestry as a decorative relic of centuries past/ while looms were present at the school, they were covered in cobwebs, according to Heyden’s accounts.
“Ironically, the founders of the Bauhaus (including Itten) had very little appreciation for tapestry weaving because they only thought of the representational tapestries depicting court scenes and battles. The weavers of those tapestries had to imitate paintings, thereby losing the woven quality…” wrote Heyden in a 2009 letter. “This misunderstanding about weaving since the Renaissance meant that the Bauhaus principles of integrating art and craft, of letting how things are made help determine how they appear, of experimenting and improvising, were never really fully applied to weaving.”
Installation view “Improvisational Nature: The Weavings and Drawings of Silvia Heyden,” 2025. Courtesy of Charles Moffett.
Heyden remained resolute as she graduated in 1952, having been moved by a visit to the medieval tapestries at the Museum of History in Basel.  She saw an expressive potential for tapestry that was yet untapped.  While artists in the Renaissance had made their tapestries working against cartoons, full-scale drawings that served as the blueprint that would determine their forms, previous generations and cultures embraced other strategies. In the Medieval era, the work was far more intuitive and less predetermined.
Heyden embraced this organic spontaneity. Heyden’s drawings, included in the exhibition, underscore her appreciation for the natural world, be it running water or the movement of trees in the breeze. In Durham, living near the Eno River, she often walked the wooded grounds, making sketches. While sometimes these drawings bear strong resemblances to her finished tapestries, other times they are quite different.
Silvia Heyden, Tulips (2011). Photo: Andy Romer. Courtesy Charles Moffett.
Creating a sense of movement in the often flattened medium of tapestry was one of Heyden’s central concerns. In the early 1990s, she had a critical breakthrough at the loom, coming by chance on what she would call feathered weaving, itself a variation on Native American wedge weaving. In a process that involves weaving weft threads diagonally across the warp threads, the tapestry gains a dimensionality and scalloped edges when removed from the loom.
“She wrote a lot about the movement and the rhythm,” her son recalled. “To make a composition dynamic and hold the viewer’s attention, movement could lead the viewer through the work.”  In the gallery, many of Heyden’s tapestries ripple, sculpturally, against the walls in crests. These tensions give the work a sense of momentum. In Breaking Wave (2002), the pull of the threads, like a riptide, moves from left to right, while in Tulips (2011), energy builds upward, echoing the growth of the flowers. “The feather weave is not something you can possibly preconceive, and that was what she was after,” Heyden added.
Silvia Heyden, tbt (c.a. 1999). Photo: Daniel Greer. Courtesy Charles Moffett.
She was not wholly unknown in her lifetime,  though she never had ambitions toward fame. In 1972, Heyden had her first major exhibition at the Duke University Museum of Art. She exhibited mostly in the U.S. and particularly in North Carolina, but her works were also shown in Switzerland and Germany. In 1994, the Textile Museum of St. Gallen, Switzerland, presented the most significant exhibition of her work to date. She was not one for self-promotion, however.
“The last thing she wanted to do was deal with money or marketing or publicity. It was not her thing,” said her son. “She wanted to be left in peace, which was ultimately why we lived in North Carolina, because she thought that it was a place where it would be nice and quiet. She said that North Carolina had been her cocoon.”
Silvia Heyden, Chaconne I (1992). Photo: Daniel Greer. Courtesy Charles Moffett.
In some ways, her underexposure may have liberated her creatively, however. “While in some ways, I think the fact that she spent most of her life working outside the prevailing European and American developments in modern tapestry that were shaping the field in the 20th century meant that her work was vastly under-appreciated during her lifetime, I also believe those conditions gave her the freedom, space, and time to hone her approach,” said Moffett.
Rightly, Moffett notes that her works feel startlingly contemporary, “We are already thinking about how we can present her work alongside that of artists of different generations,” he said. “Her work feels very of the moment. It feels like it could’ve newly left the studio when in fact we have work at the gallery that spans roughly forty years of her work at the loom.”
For her family, they hope the exhibition brings Heyden some of the very attention she eschewed in her lifetime. “She was left out to some extent—and happily from her perspective, but something has been missing,” said her son, “I’ve spent a lot of time with her work. There are a lot of artists out there, but I think her work is right up there with the rest of them. I just wonder, why haven’t people seen this work?” More

I was walking through an ancient wood when the symphony of birdsong around me was interrupted by a haunting, melodic voice singing an old English folk tune—seemingly coming from a tree. Another voice, several yards away, soon joined it, and yet another across the path shortly after that. One more completed the quartet, and the soft swaying of the towering conifer canopy above me provided light percussion as well as dance instruction.
Could this be some sort of spell? No, it was Scottish artist Susan Philipsz’s 2015 “sound sculpture,” As Many As Will, derived from a series of Elizabethan country dance songs. The work is installed on the grounds of the Goodwood Art Foundation, a sprawling new contemporary art destination in the Sussex countryside, opening to the public on May 31. While this art park may not be bewitched, I nevertheless found myself enchanted by it for its seamless blending of art and nature.
The inaugural season opens with a headlining presentation of works by acclaimed YBA sculptor Rachel Whiteread, including a monumental new staircase sculpture, Down and Up, set into an open field, its stairs connecting both earth and sky. New works by Veronica Ryan and Rose Wylie also dot the 70-acre landscape, as do works by Isamu Noguchi. Hélio Oiticica’s Magic Square #3 (1977–79) is currently under construction and will be unveiled later this summer; it will mark the first outdoor sculpture by the late Brazilian Neo-concrete artist in Europe.
Isamu Noguchi, Octetra (three-element-stack), 1968–2021, at Goodwood Art Foundation. Photo: Lucy Dawkins. Courtesy of Goodwood Art Foundation.
Goodwood is better known for its sporting events like the Festival of Speed, a motorsports fête held every July, and Glorious Goodwood, an annual multi-day horse-racing event that dates to 1802, now officially called the Qatar Goodwood Festival. The grounds belong to Charles Gordon-Lennox, the 11th Duke of Richmond, whose family has held the 11,000-acre estate in West Sussex since the 17th century. The first duke—son of King Charles II and his allegedly “favorite” mistress, Louise de Keroualle—purchased what was then a hunting lodge in order to partake in the Charlton Hunt, reportedly the oldest fox hunt in England. Subsequent dukes added palatial kennels and stables (as well as more wings to the house). Its cricket pitch is one of the oldest in England, with reports of the game being played there dating back to 1702.
“We’re very sporty,” Gordon-Lennox told me over an Earl Grey (his) and a flat white (mine) while we sat on the terrace of 24, the art foundation’s new onsite café designed by Studio Downie Architects. He added that he’s keen to balance that perception with the launch of the sculpture park.
Goodwood Estate.
As is the case with most dukes, Gordon-Lennox already has quite the historical art collection. Among the more than 300 works are a series of Canalettos that were commissioned by his ancestor, the second Duke of Richmond, in 1747. There is also a rich collection of sporting paintings by George Stubbs, many of which depict the estate—unsurprising given that his family was one of the artist’s biggest patrons. Stubbs even lived on the estate as an artist-in-residence between 1759–60. Portraits on view bear the signatures of major artists like Joshua Reynolds and Anthony van Dyck. Gordon-Lennox himself is a photographer and, within the last decade or so, a collector of Post-War and Abstract Expressionist photography, “especially camera-less photography,” he said.
Goodwood’s pivot to contemporary art could be positioned as a brand extension strategy, elevating Goodwood’s cultural capital in line with heritage luxury branding—think LVMH’s Fondation Louis Vuitton or Château La Coste. Indeed, his grace has grown Goodwood’s luxury portfolio substantially since taking on the estate’s management in 1994. He now boasts nearly 20 businesses on his property, including Rolls Royce, which established its headquarters there in 2003. Also among the Goodwood portfolio is a 91-room hotel, health club, two golf courses, organic farm, and the impeccably named Goodwoof dog show. The group employs over 550 people and attracts 800,000 visitors to the estate each year. In 2023, its turnover was £135.9 million (around $183 million), according to the Financial Times. 
The Duke of Richmond with artist Rachel Whiteread, in front of her new work Down and Up (2025). Photo: Dave Dodge/PA Media Assignments.
Gordon-Lennox sees the art foundation as more of a continuation of a mission than a business proposition. Previously, the site was leased to art collectors Wilfred and Jeannette Cass, who originally started a sculpture park there, which closed in 2020. “There’s been a bit of a gap,” his grace said, “but it was important to me that contemporary art remained a part of what’s here.” Two indoor gallery spaces, already in existence thanks to the Cass Sculpture Foundation, have been revamped by Studio Downie. The main gallery features sculptures and photographs by Whiteread. In the Pigott Gallery, set back into the woods, Amie Siegel’s film Bloodlines (2022) plays on loop; it follows the handling and movement of Stubbs paintings from different stately homes around the U.K., including Goodwood.
The curatorial program is run by Ann Gallagher, most recently the director of collections, British Art at Tate. She explained that the foundation will focus on one solo presentation per year, which will be centered in the main gallery and extend out into the landscape, “to allow artists to show works in different mediums and to encourage different experiences with their work.” She added that she hopes to get the program to a stage where it can commission new, permanent works and offer residencies. A later phase of the project will also include another gallery, a performance space, and an education center.
The Gallery at Goodwood Art Foundation 2025. Photo: Jonathan James Wilson. Courtesy of Goodwood Art Foundation.
For the launch of the art park, Goodwood has also commissioned a new performance by musician and broadcaster Nabihah Iqbal, curated by Helen Nisbet, who was just tapped as the new director of the Glasgow International. Both Iqbal and Nisbet will continue to work with the foundation to develop a performance and experience program.
Gordon-Lennox wants to ensure that as many people as possible are able to enjoy Goodwood. “Unlike other major outdoor art destinations in the U.K., like Jupiter Artland [in Scotland] and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, we’re accessible by train from London for day trips,” he explained.  Adult tickets are priced at £15 per person, but “green” discounts are available if you arrive by bike or foot. An ambitious learning program will partner with local schools to provide arts education, something sorely lacking from British state school curricula. Visit and transport costs will be covered by the foundation for schools that don’t have the resources to pay.
Bluebells at Goodwood Art Foundation. Photo: Lucy Dawkins. Courtesy of Goodwood Art Foundation.
Environmentalism and sustainability are central to Goodwood, Gordon-Lennox said. To that end, the art foundation has expanded the previously used outdoor sculpture area by nearly two thirds, funded by a major donation from Stephen Scharzman, the CEO of the U.S.-based investment firm Blackrock. The renowned horticulturist and landscape designer Dan Pearson has augmented the site with ever-changing naturalistic, mostly native plantings intended to highlight 24 seasonal moments—thus the numeric name of the café, which features on its menu produce either foraged from the landscape or produced on Goodwood’s farm. 
“When you finish planting something, that’s only the beginning,” Pearson said as we walked the grounds on a damp Thursday morning. The rain had been welcome, given the unusually dry spring England has experienced this year. Purple foxgloves, euphorbias, and geraniums dotted the sloping entryway—what was previously a parking lot. These join naturally growing English bluebells elsewhere in the wood, which had just finished blooming when I visited. 
Rose Wylie, Pineapple (2021) at Goodwood Art Foundation. Photo: Toby Adamson. Courtesy of Goodwood Art Foundation.
A second planned phase of additions will encompass more wildflower meadows, a lake just past where Philipsz’s sound work is installed, and possibly a biodiversity area going towards the sea—which is visible on clear days, along with the Isle of Wight. 
More than 1,000 trees have also been planted. Among these is a grove of cherry trees, also just freshly out of bloom and in bright green leaf. These lead to a small chalk quarry, on the opposite side, where Wylie’s new work, Pale-Pink Pineapple/Bomb presides, set back against the curve of the quarry’s side. A single cherry tree is adjacent to it.
“Nature, rather than sign posts, acts as a guide through the park,” Pearson explained, meaning the course of your visit could be shaped differently depending on what time of year you visit and what’s in bloom. 
And it’s true: you don’t necessarily go looking for the artworks at Goodwood, instead you discover them while looking at other things. Much like Philipsz’s voice in the trees, it’s like the sculptures and the soil are sharing a quiet conversation that you just happen to overhear—so you move closer to hear better. That small thrill—that’s where the magic is. More

Ever found yourself at Artechouse thinking, “This could use a killer soundtrack?” Good news for you: the immersive venue has teamed up with storied music publication Rolling Stone for an outing that brings the live experience to, well, life.
Titled “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience,” the showcase transforms the magazine’s photography archive into a 270-degree deep dive into rock history. There are more than 1,000 images, 200 videos, and 1,300 Rolling Stone covers. There’s a soundtrack of classics. You’ll encounter some 300 musicians—from Patti Smith and the Sex Pistols to Snoop Dogg and Radiohead. It’s like being in a mosh pit, we’re promised.
Installation view of “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience” at Artechouse. Photo: ATH Studio.
“This is just another way to reach out to fans—whoever they’re fans of, no matter how old they are—to bring them into the experience of music,” Joe Levy, music director of “Amplified” and former music editor of Rolling Stone, told me at the preview. “And I think that’s what the magazine did.”
The 50-minute journey is split into distinct chapters. “Backstage” and “The Band,” which open the experience, transport viewers into the concert venue for a glimpse into how the likes of David Bowie and Lizzo prepare to take the stage. “Fans” explores the adulation that greets artists (Beatlemania is aptly spotlit), while “Studio” and “The Message” unpack songwriting processes. There are also sections for “Cars,” an enduring motif in songs, and “Hair,” key to the appeal of such musicians as Elvis Presley and Frank Zappa.
Installation view of “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience” at Artechouse. Photo: ATH Studio.
Between needle drops—the Who’s “My Generation” and Blondie’s “One Way or Another” among them—is narration by Kevin Bacon, actor and member of the Bacon Brothers. “It’s a voice you know,” said Levy. “It’s a rasp that’s pure rock ‘n’ roll.”
When it came to crafting “Amplified,” the creative team had more than enough to work with. Rolling Stone magazine, in publication for nearly six decades, has been present for some of popular culture’s most significant moments  (at times writing itself into rock history). Along the way, it has amassed a substantive trove of archival photographs—numbering upwards of 60,000 images—created by names including Lynn Goldsmith, Bob Gruen, Janette Beckman, Mark Seliger, Danny Clinch, Anton Corbijn, and Neil Preston.
IDLES in concert, from “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience” at Artechouse. Photo: Sacha Lecca.
Led by Jodi Peckman, the experience’s executive producer and former creative director of Rolling Stone, the photo research and editing process took about two years, according to Levy. Whittling down the number of images was a months-long endeavor, he explained, as was “putting them on a screen and seeing how they play in the room.” In this, rock photography proved itself a versatile format.
“Music imagery is about experiences,” said Peckman in a statement. “It’s about the unbridled joy of concerts and our connection to our favorite artists.”
Installation view of “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience” at Artechouse. Photo: ATH Studio.
“To be able to deliver these photos 40 feet high, bigger than the actual event, is to really communicate the power of the photograph and put you in that moment,” Levy said. “If you have them in a magazine, if you have them on your computer, they’re powerful. But the difference between having them on your phone in the palm of your hand and having it surround you is indescribable.”
Such an immersive showcase, too, is not that alien to the rock ‘n’ roll experience. Levy pointed out the psychedelic light shows of the 1960s—lava-lamp art that accompanied the concerts of West Coast bands such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Starship. Just as transportive were Andy Warhol’s traveling multimedia extravaganzas, known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which combined film, performance art, and the sounds of the Velvet Underground. “Popular music,” Levy noted, “has grown hand in hand with technology.”
Installation view of “Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience” at Artechouse. Photo: ATH Studio.
And as with those other developments in popular music, Rolling Stone is not sitting this one out.
“The magazine, in its genius, recognized that rock ‘n’ roll was more than just music—it was also culture, politics, style, all of these things,” he said. “I like to think that the show delivers all of that. Everything that the magazine stands for and wants to communicate about music, you can find here in the show and the story that we’re telling.”
“Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, The Immersive Rock Experience” is on view at Artechouse, 439 W 15th St, New York, and 600 W. 6th Street, Houston, Texas. More

The traveling circus is, to writer and curator Laura Raicovich’s mind, a great metaphor for exactly the kind of culture we need right now. She and a number of colleagues are organizing a weekend-long festival, the “Circus of Life,” that will bring together artists, writers, theater groups, curators, performers, poets, activists, and others in St. Louis, Missouri this fall. The backdrop is Counterpublic, a triennial “civic exhibition” that was launched in 2019 by founding director James McAnally.
It all goes down October 24–26 at the Big Top circus grounds in the city’s Grand Center Arts District. Free and open to all, the event is organized by Raicovich and a team of four “ringleaders”—Kenneth Bailey of the Design Studio for Social Intervention; historian Galen Gritts; artist Jeanne van Heeswijk; and graphic designer and artist Nontsikelelo Mutiti. Among the other artists in the lineup are Chloë Bass, Hilma’s Ghost (Sharmistha Ray and Dannielle Tegeder), and Kameelah Janan Rasheed.
“Having worked in many more traditional cultural spaces,” said Raicovich in a phone interview, “I recognize their limits in welcoming people who might not otherwise attend, and I think right now, especially under the current political and social circumstances we find ourselves in globally, we really need to spend more time in person sharing a cultural moment or experience so we can see what we hold in common. The isolation of the pandemic and the screen-centered lives we live have alienated us to even a greater degree than we might otherwise be in terms of having common experiences.”
Raicovich brings a multiplicity of experiences to her new role as circus barker. She had worked at the Guggenheim Museum, the Dia Art Foundation, and public art nonprofit Creative Time before serving for three years director of New York’s Queens Museum; she resigned in 2018 following conflict with the board over her advocacy for progressive causes.
The Big Top. Courtesy Kranzberg Arts Foundation.
She then got straight to work on the book Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest, published in 2021 and blurbed as “urgent” by critic Travis Diehl. It was a busy year: she also teamed up with friends to open the Francis Kite Club, a bar and cultural events venue on New York’s Lower East Side. She’s been involved with City University of New York anthropologist David Harvey’s Urban Front as well. 
What’s on the agenda at Counterpublic? A lot! Everything starts on Friday night with performances by the Bread and Puppet Theater troupe spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph. Saturday will bring events like a conversation between Chloë Bass and author Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist) and a talk by Democracy Now! co-host Nermeen Shaikh. On Sunday, participants will join a parade to the Counterpublic House for a collective meal organized by Van Heeswijk and a number of local collaborators.
Along the way, there will be aerialists, and a local circus school will teach juggling. Creatives will have booths surrounding the big top: Janan Rasheed will play games with visitors and artist Finnegan Shannon will explore disability accommodation. Workshops will be on offer by Hilma’s Ghost and by Prem Krishnamurthy and Sam Rauch of the Department of Transformation. 
Raicovich is aware of the problematic aspects of circuses, like the treatment of animals and classification of some people as freaks, but even so, she is excited for a place for community and exchange by people who may not be initiated into what she calls the “byzantine rites” of arts and cultural spaces. 
“The circus has always been a place where people who are not accepted in mainstream society have gone for refuge, community, and fellowship, and to, frankly, have a life,” she said. “This is another reason we’re doing a circus—it’s a forum that has been accepting of people who are different. That’s an important thing.”
Admission is free and open to all, but spots should be reserved at Counterpublic’s website. More

The Smart Museum at the University of Chicago has just unveiled plans for a major mid-career survey of the work of one of the city’s most famous artists, Theaster Gates. Under the working title “Unto Thee,” the show will open this fall (September 23) and run through February of next year.
For an artist who is almost synonymous with his native city, it’s surprising that this exhibition marks Gates’s first solo museum show in Chicago, despite having had a string of high-profile institutional shows in other cities around the world.
“I think this is the first full exhibition of a full idea in Chicago,” Gates told me in a phone interview. “It’s really nice to come home, because in a way, my career started out in the world. I wasn’t really homegrown even though I was already doing more of the social side of my practice at home for years.”
According to the museum website, the show is “rooted in several core collections of objects,” that have been part of the artist’s practice and which he acquired through the university, where he has been a professor of visual arts for nearly two decades.
Smart Museum director Vanja Malloy told me the artist’s lack of a major institutional solo show in the Windy City came up during one of their casual conversations. She got to know Gates better when he chaired the search committee for the director job she eventually landed.
“Theaster Gates: Assembly Hall,” September 5, 2019 through January 12, 2020,Target Gallery. Photo by Bobby Rogers for Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
“The opportunities of doing a show at the Smart Museum are really exciting,” said Malloy. “One, this is not a new institution for him, he’s been really engaged with and committed, for a very long time. Also, it’s the South Side, where he has been working, and has matured and developed as an artist. His practice is in the city.”
The university materials that Gates has mined and consistently used in his practice range from the school’s department of art history, including glass lantern slides and vitrines from the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, to paint-stained concrete from the floors of Midway studios, and wooden pews that were made for the campus’ Bond Chapel. All of the objects were at some point “discarded and identified as no longer needed,” by the school. So Gates took stewardship of them.
“It’s not a retrospective of my practice, but a retrospective of the materials that I’ve gleaned and the way that I had used them over the last 15 years,” Gates told me. Of the title, “Unto Thee,” he said “it’s kind of like returning these materials back to their source.”
Malloy delved into how Gates approaches the materials, transforming not just their use but their meaning. With the glass slides for instance, the art history department was shedding them as part of a modernization effort. “They were super heavy and they didn’t know what to do with them. Theaster used them in his own practice, and he’s also thinking about the way that we have narrated art history over time. There’s a lot of layers and meaning that he mines from these objects, in the way that he positions them and uses them,” she noted.
“Theaster Gates: Assembly Hall,” September 5, 2019 through January 12, 2020,Target Gallery. Photo by Bobby Rogers for Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
Gates will also be filling the museum lobby, which hosts rotating displays, with a special large-scale installation that will be up for the rest of the year. He acquired a collection of roughly 350 African masks over time, and will display them with a dramatic installation across the walls, accompanied by music from the collection of famous late DJ Frankie Knuckles whose archive Gates acquired.
The display of the masks ties in to the museum’s larger initiative of provenance and collections research, said Malloy. “Some of the masks are really valuable and have cultural and religious significance, while others are replicas meant for the mass market,” yet they’re all mixed together and given equal space.
As Gates explained to me of the artworks and objects in the show, “they’re not in the same psychological condition that they were given or the same core materials. They’re returning with some ‘stank’ on them. And that ‘stank’ has to do with the fact that they’ve been gussied up. They’ve had a parade around the world and they’re coming home.” More

The late curator Koyo Kouoh’s vision for the 2026 Venice Biennale will go forward as planned, organizers announced Tuesday, just weeks after her unexpected death. Titled “In Minor Keys,” the 61st International Art Exhibition will be realized by the curatorial team Kouoh had assembled, who pledged to carry out the show as she conceived it—down to the artists, theoretical framework, and catalogue she had begun shaping last year.
Held in the Sala delle Colonne at Ca’ Giustinian, the headquarters of La Biennale in San Marco, Venice, the press event opened with a short video of the late Kouoh stating, “I am the artistic director of the Biennale Arte, and I look forward to seeing you in Venice in May 2026,” followed by a round of applause from the crowd.
Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, president of La Biennale di Venezia, noted that the organizers decided to persevere with Kouoh’s vision with support from her family and curatorial team.
“We are realizing today her exhibition as she designed it, as she imagined it, and as she gave it to me personally,” he said.
“In Minor Keys” will be the title and theme of the 61st International Art Exhibition, which will run from May 9 to November 22, 2026. Kouoh worked intensively to develop the project’s theoretical framework and design before her untimely death earlier this month. Between her appointment as the edition’s curator in late 2024 and May 2025, she had selected many of the artists and artworks, as well as authors for the catalogue, organizers noted.
The major concepts of next year’s edition were outlined by peers and collaborators that Kouoh had handpicked during the course of the development of the exhibition. They include advisors Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, a London-based art historian and curator; Marie Helene Pereira, a Berlin-based curator with ties to both Dakar, Senegal, and Beirut; Berlin-based writer and curator Rasha Salti; and New York-based journalist Siddhartha Mitter, the editor-in-chief of the exhibition catalogue.
Koyo Kouoh. Photo: ©Mirjam Kluka.
Pereira noted that in music, the minor keys are often associated with strangeness, melancholy, and sorrow. “They hold the cadencies melodies and silences of resonant walls that gather and create together a polyphonous assembly of art, convening and communing in convivial collectivity, beaming across the void of alienation and the crackle of conflict,” she explained of the exhibition’s title.
The 61st edition of La Biennale is “grounded in a deep belief in artists as the vital interpreters of the social and psychic condition and catalyst of new relations and possibilities,” Pereira added, underscoring that the exhibition will feature the artists who were chosen by Kouoh. These are artists whose practices push the boundaries of form and “seamlessly blend into society.”
Kouoh’s assistant Rory Tsapayi recited the verses composed by the late artistic director in 2022: “We need to be with love again. We need to dance. We need to make and give food. We need to rest and restore. We need to breathe. We need the radicality of joy. The time has come.”
Kouoh was the first African woman tapped to helm the illustrious biannual art extravaganza. The art world was shocked by her sudden death when the news was confirmed on May 10 by the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), her home institution in Cape Town, South Africa, where she served as executive director and chief curator.
Born in 1967 in Cameroon, Kouoh grew up in Zurich, Switzerland. She became the co-founding artistic director of Raw Material Company art center in Dakar in 2009. She was a member of the curatorial teams for documenta 12 and 13 in 2007 and 2012, respectively. Kouoh also served as curator of the artistic program of 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair from 2013 to 2017. Her appointment to curate the 2026 edition of the Venice Biennale was announced in December.
Additional details about the project—including the list of participating artists and the exhibition design—will be announced on February 25, 2026.
Featuring a central curated exhibition, national pavilions, and independent shows across La Serenissima, the Venice Biennale is one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious cultural festivals. Often dubbed the “Olympics of the art world,” nearly 700,000 people—or about 3,321 visitors daily—attended the 60th International Art Exhibition entitled “Foreigners Everywhere,” which was curated by Adriano Pedrosa. More

“What is the perfect home to you? Can such a thing exist?” artist Do Ho Suh asks Sarah Fine, a philosophy professor at the University of Cambridge who is also a collaborator with Suh on his ongoing Bridge Project, which interrogates the idea of “perfect home.” He continues, “Do we need borders? Can we actually dissolve them?”
Standing before Suh’s beautiful, delicate monumental installations—currently on view at “The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House,” the artist’s first solo show at London’s Tate Modern in two decades—these loaded questions like much more than personal reflections or academic thought experiments.
Do Ho Suh, Nest/s (2024) (detail). Courtesy the artist, Lehmann Maupin New York, Seoul and London and Victoria Miro. Photography by Jeon Taeg Su. © Do Ho Suh.
The exhibition opens at a time when immigration has been dominating the U.K. news headlines. The Labour government has proposed a major policy overhaul to control borders and reduce the number of migrants in the country, sparking controversy and claims that it amounts to anti-immigration. In London where the exhibition is staged, about 41 percent of its population was born abroad, including the Korean conceptualist who has called the city home since 2016. Given the current context, is it possible to mute the noises of current affairs while appreciating Suh’s art for its own sake?
Probably not. Suh’s decades-long exploration of the concept of home, memories, and cyclicality of time draws from his experiences of moving across the world—from Seoul to New York and later London. He admits that he did not think much about home until he left his native Seoul in 1991. His colorful, scintillating fabric architectural sculptures have captivated audiences not only for their aesthetic beauty. The works are deeply personal, and yet universally relatable.
Do Ho Suh, Nest/s (2024). Installation view, “The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House.” Courtesy the Artist, Lehmann Maupin New York, Seoul and London and Victoria Miro. Creation supported by Genesis. © Do Ho Suh. Photo © Tate (Sonal Bakrania)
The exhibition’s title, “Walk the House,” comes from a Korean phrase the 62-year-old heard when he was young. It describes the process of transporting hanok, or a traditional Korean house, from one place to another by taking it down and reassembling it. While most of us do not carry a physical home when we relocate, the idea of a transportable home speaks to more than architecture—it refers to “an intangible, metaphorical, and psychological one,” Suh noted in a statement. His oeuvre physically manifests the impalpable emotional baggage we carry, but can find difficult to articulate. He is asking the important questions held by many, on our behalf.
An example is Nest/s (2024), an enthralling installation newly created for this landmark show. Resonating with his signature fabric mesh architectural sculptures, this colossal piece is a collection of 1:1 scale replicas of the spaces where Suh had lived and worked— from bathrooms to kitchen and corridors—across Seoul and New York, to London and Berlin. Stitched together into one interconnected passage, Nest/s invites viewers to walk through.
Though walking through the translucent Nest/s guarantees striking photo ops for social media junkies, ultimately it is a poignant journey through Suh’s memory that inspires viewers to reflect on their own personal trajectories.
Do Ho Suh, Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul (2024). Installation view, “The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House.” Courtesy the Artist, Lehmann Maupin New York, Seoul and London and Victoria Miro. Creation supported by Genesis. © Do Ho Suh. Photo © Tate (Sonal Bakrania)
Another new work, Perfect Home: London, Horsham, New York, Berlin, Providence, Seoul (2024), offers a similar experience. In this semi-transparent room that draws from the artist’s current home, replicas of mundane objects like doorknobs, telephones and light switches—made from the same materials in a variety of colors with assistance from traditional seamstresses—are affixed all over the interiors.
Suh employs the technique of rubbing—placing paper on surfaces and transferring their textures with graphite—in his Rubbing/Loving series (the writing of “rubbing” and “loving” in Korean is the same, according to the artist). Standing next to Nest/s is Rubbing/Loving: Seoul Home 2013-22, shown for the second time since it was debuted at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Australia in 2022. Suh began working on this project in 2013, covering the exterior of the hanok—his childhood home that his family built in the 1970s—with hundreds of pieces of Mulberry paper, and then painstakingly rubbing every single inch of the surface of the house with graphite pencil, as documented in an accompanying video.
Do Ho Suh, Rubbing/Loving Project: Seoul Home, (2013-2022), installation view, “The GenesisExhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House.” Courtesy the Artist, Lehmann Maupin New York, Seoul and London and Victoria Miro. Repurposing supported by Genesis. © Do Ho Suh. Photo © Tate (Jai Monaghan)
Another work, Rubbing/Loving: Company Housing of Gwangju Theater 2012, reflecting on the aftermath of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, which marks its 45th anniversary this year. The emotionally charged creations born out of such laborious process are fragile, and yet their ghostly presence lingers like memory itself.
While these eye-catching installations take center stage, the exhibition also features a number of smaller walled works, including many fascinating works on paper that Suh created between 1999 and 2025. Among the highlights are the curious threads drawings and the stunning Staircase 2016, which magically transforms a red staircase model from three-dimensional, to a two-dimensional existence on a flat surface.
Two of Suh’s mesmerizing video works, Robin Hood Gardens (2018) and Dong In Apartments (2022), are also on display, projected on a towering screen at one end of the gallery. These visually compelling titles exploring the insulated worlds of these soon-to-be demolished housing blocks in London and Daegu. They were also featured at the artist’s solo exhibition at Art Sonje Center in Seoul last year.
Do Ho Suh, Bridge Project (1999-ongoing), installation view, “The Genesis Exhibition: Do HoSuh: Walk the House.” Courtesy the Artist, Lehmann Maupin New York, Seoul and London and Victoria Miro. Creation supported by Genesis. © Do Ho Suh. Photo © Tate (Jai Monaghan)
While some critics have complained about the presentation’s lack of balance, as these quieter works are easily overshadowed by the larger-than-life installations in a single open gallery, their inclusion surmises the breadth of Suh’s practice.
The exhibition concludes with a darkened space dedicated to the Bridge Project, an interdisciplinary research experiment that Suh has been working on since 1999. Comprised of videos, drawings, and installations, it is born from the artist’s search for the perfect home. In his imagination, that home sits in the Arctic Ocean, an equidistant point between Seoul, New York, and London—the three cities he has called home. He has thought of various scenarios and circumstances that would allow him to reach that “perfect home” and survive the challenging living conditions: building an impossible bridge, creating an inflatable structure containing necessities for survival including dumplings, and donning an inflatable suit known as Perfect Home S.O.S. (Smallest Occupiable Shelter) (2024).
Do Ho Suh, Staircase 2016, installation view, “TheGenesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House.” Courtesy the Artist, Lehmann Maupin New York, Seoul and London, Victoria Miro, and STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore. © Do Ho Suh. Photo © Tate (Jai Monaghan)
Suh’s imagination may be wild, but he is loyal and truthful to his premise, as seen in his conversation with philosophy professor Fine, documented in the project’s newspaper available at the exhibition. In response to Suh’s questions, Fine maintains that no one should be denied access to home, and “[m]ovement shouldn’t be seen as abnormal. It is what we do. We need to find ways to exist and coexist, and accommodate the realities of mobility.”
“The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House” is on view at Tate Modern in London until October 19, 2025. More