Art & Exhibitions

Touring his recently opened exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art, artist Hew Locke told some visitors that a song came to mind: “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” written for Nina Simone in 1964. Of course, his concern is not that of the misbehaving lover seeking forgiveness, as in the song, but rather that of an artist whose work is rich with symbolism and teeming with meaningful found objects, and who plumbs complicated histories of empire, identity, and migration—especially those that deal closely with the history of the British Empire, and are coming before American audiences.
The New Haven museum bills “Hew Locke: Passages” as the artist’s most comprehensive show to date, including 49 works spanning nearly three decades and including photography, sculpture, and drawing. On view through January, it is curated by the museum’s director, Martina Droth, who was promoted from chief curator last year. 
Hew Locke, Ambassador 4 (2022). Courtesy John Hammond.
The Guyanese British artist was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1959 and moved with his family as a child to Georgetown, the coastal capital of the small South American nation of Guyana, just as the former British colony was gaining its independence. Being there as the country created its own flag and other national iconography sensitized him to the power of symbols and how closely they are linked to identity. He lived there until moving in 1980 to Britain to attend Falmouth Art School; he then earned an MFA at the Royal College of Art in London, where he still resides. 
It’s suitable that an institution devoted to British art be his ambassador in the States for this extensive presentation. But Locke will be known to art lovers on these shores from a few projects that have brought his tart historical commentary—he often says that if he hadn’t become an artist, he could have been a historian—to U.S. museums. The first was For Those in Peril On the Sea (2011), a flotilla of about 70 model boats, which came to the Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2013, alluding to his own travels as well as to what the artist has called a “hybridization of culture.” 
Installation view of Trophy 3 for The Facade Commission: Hew Locke, Gilt (2022). Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art; by Anna-Marie Kellen.
New Yorkers, meanwhile, witnessed Gilt, the installation of his sculptures in the form of gilded trophies on the façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2022, its title punning on the “guilt” owing to the imperial acquisition of that institution’s globe-spanning holdings. And his sprawling installation The Procession (2022), commissioned by Tate Britain, was installed at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, in 2024. It features nearly 150 life-size figures, some on horseback, including drummers, soldiers and other characters, kitted out with masks and costumes, holding aloft banners and flags, ambiguously in celebration and/or protest.
How Is the Queen of England Like Bart Simpson?
One of the earliest works in the show greets visitors to the galleries: Veni, Vidi, Vici (The Queen’s Coat of Arms), from 2004, stands some seven feet high and riffs on the U.K.’s coat of arms, which appears on the British passport.
Hew Locke, Veni, Vidi, Vici (The Queen’s Coat of Arms) (2004). Courtesy of Hales, London and New York.
On that document, a crowned lion and a unicorn flank a shield; here, the shield has been replaced by a skeletal head wearing a crown. “People are literally dying to get this document,” Locke said during the tour. In the piece, textiles and found plastic objects, including the kinds of cheap materials schoolchildren use to make collages, are visibly stapled to a plywood backing; the Black artist self-consciously cast the symbol of Britain partly in the African colors of red, black, and green. “I use clichés deliberately,” he said.
Nearby hangs Koh-i-noor (2005), a nine-foot-high relief sculpture of the bust of Queen Elizabeth II, encrusted with hundreds of plastic objects found at markets and discount shops, including toy animals, flowers, and jewelry. Discussing British imagery such as this, not necessarily immediately recognizable to Americans, he alluded to Simpsons creator Matt Groening, who said that he drew Bart Simpson in such a way that he could be recognized by his silhouette alone.
Hew Locke, Koh-i-noor (2005). Courtesy Brooklyn Museum.
Koh-i-noor is titled for what was once the world’s largest diamond, at 105.6 carats. Originating in a mine in India and long owned by Indian and Persian heads of state, it was ceded to Queen Victoria when she was named Empress of India, and is set in her crown; India, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan have all demanded its return. The queen’s profile, Locke noted, still appeared on his school workbooks in Guyana even after it gained its freedom. In his sculpture, her profile bristles with sword blades, perhaps suggesting the violent colonial enterprise at whose head Elizabeth stood. 
But in an interview, Locke warned away from simplistic interpretations. “It is complicated,” he said. “It is ambivalent.” As an example, he offered King Charles: “He didn’t choose to be born to the Queen. I see decent people in difficult situations. I met the guy and I liked him.” Locke was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to art, in 2023.
Locke Was Early to Scrutinize Public Monuments
Locke’s fascination with symbols of power, and veneration of questionable figures, extended to public monuments before they came in for a reassessment in the 2010s. As early as 2005, he pitched London public arts organization Artangel on a “statue-dressing project” in which he would “dress/disguise/reveal well-known statues in central London in order to reveal/describe aspects of British culture/history/contemporary situation.” When the proposal was rejected, the artist’s mockups for the project themselves became the pieces. 
Hew Locke, Colston (2006). Courtesy Hew Locke.
Colston (2006) shows a statue devoted to 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston in the English city of Bristol that would be torn down in 2020 during Black Lives Matter protests. The photo of the merchant is decorated with medals, skeletons, shells, and symbolic talismans “intended to point to the specific crimes and misdeeds of the commemorated figure,” Drost wrote in the exhibition catalogue. “Black people had to celebrate this dodgy dude,” said the artist in the gallery. 
In our interview, Locke described Colston and the other icons he treats similarly as “weighed down by the burden of history. The people are loaded down until they can barely handle any more.” Here’s more and more gold and treasure, he said; I suggested that they might as well choke on it. “Literally,” Locke agreed. “Literally.”
Hew Locke, Saturn (2007). Courtesy Hew Locke.
In early days, Locke’s colorful works were seen as “exotic”; people would ask him if they were created for festivals, and, in his view, overly linked them to his Black identity. He went to the other extreme in the late 1990s, working only in black and white. But by the time he created Saturn (2007), he was insisting on his own presence in his work; these towering studio photographs show the artist, his eyes barely visible, encrusted with the same kind of finery that Colston and others choked on. In Saturn, he is encrusted with flowers and the heads of baby dolls, and holds a scepter. All around him appear the words honi soit qui mal y pense, the old-French motto of a British knightly order, usually translated as “shame on anyone who thinks evil of it”; that slogan, too, appears on the British coat of arms.
In that piece, Locke’s head is backed by the silhouette of the queen, recalling Groening’s Bart Simpson quip, but perhaps needing translation for U.S viewers. In our interview, Locke described a moment during a county fair that, for him, drove home the legibility of national symbols. A man representing a bird sanctuary had brought a specimen. “The feathers weren’t so good,” the artist noted before realizing it was a bald eagle. The moment the animal spread his wings, Locke said, its symbolism came crashing down on him: “It’s America!”
Sailing Into the Future
In other pieces, like the watercolor Guyana House Boat (2018), Locke looks to his other home country, to which he periodically returns, for inspiration.
Hew Locke, Guyana House Boat 4 (2018). Courtesy Hew Locke.
The country’s name, he pointed out in the gallery, comes from an indigenous language and means “land of many waters.” In an era of rampant sea level rise, that’s not always a blessing: its capital, Georgetown, where Locke lived, is about six feet below sea level, and the country suffers regular flooding, so the notion of putting a Guyanese home in a kind of ark resonates not only with travel, migration, and cultural hybridization, but also with dire environmental threats.
Sculptures by Hew Locke hang in the lobby of the Yale Center for British Art. Photo: Brian Boucher.
Entering and leaving the museum’s imposing building, designed by renowned architect Louis I. Kahn, the visitor encounters a small assembly of sculptures of boats, hanging from the ceiling of the atrium, a few feet above the floor. Desire (2018), The Survivor (2022), and The Relic (2022) bring the house boat drawing into three dimensions, and evoke his earlier, larger flotilla, For Those in Peril On the Sea (2011), even as it also evokes migration, sea level rise, Britain’s maritime history, and the Middle Passage. All sailing in the same direction, they also echo the ambiguous parade of Procession (2022); while the cause being celebrated and protested there is ambiguous, the artist once described the figures as all headed “into the future.”
The future may look no better than the complicated, violent past that Locke explores. But, like it or not, into the future we all sail together.
“Hew Locke: Passages” is on view at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut, through January 11, 2026. It will travel to the Wexner Center for the Arts, 1971 North High Street, Columbus, Ohio, where it will be on view February 13-May 24, 2026, and to the Museum of Fine Arts, 1001 Bissonnet St, Houston, Texas, where it will be on view June 21–September 13, 2026.  More

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently home to a guerrilla art project featuring the work of 17 Native artists. The unsanctioned augmented reality exhibition, “Encoded,” was launched by nonprofit media and design lab Amplifier on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, taking over the institution’s American Wing.
Each of the artists has remade existing works from American art history in the Met collection, bringing the Native point of view into galleries long dominated by the perspective of European settlers and their descendants.
“Amplifier wanted to open up an opportunity for more dialogue and discussion about why for so long have Indigenous peoples have not been more integrated into these collections that are in these giant institutions,” exhibition curator Tracy Renée Rector told me.
You can see (and hear) the show’s 25 altered masterpieces on your iPad or smartphone when you are at the museum. Representatives from Amplifier are also on hand to distribute exhibition guides and even offer tours of the show, which runs through the end of the year.
Cannupa Hanska Luger, Midéegaadi: Fire (2021-ongoing), overlaid on Thomas Cole, View on the Catskills – Early Autumn (1836-37). Photo: courtesy of Amplifier.
A New Take on Well-Known Works
The first work in the show can actually be seen outside the museum, with a larger-than-life Indigenous dancer in colorful traditional garb, by Skawannati, looming over the Met façade. Inside, video work like Midéegaadi by Cannupa Hanska Luger, continues inside, dancing across paintings like Thomas Cole’s View on the Catskills – Early Autumn (1836–37).
“The works that I’m presenting are an intervention on a narrative that American art has maintained, which is that the landscape of North America was void of population,” Luger said in a video for Amplifier. “I wanted to present work that brought the living things that existed on the landscape before America was America.”

In the galleries, some of the Met’s most famous works are included in the show, such as The Gulf Stream by Winslow Homer. Open up the “Encoded” website, and the work’s imperiled Black sailor is joined by a black and white figure dancing to a Tlingit song from a 2006 Nicholas Galanin video, Tsu Héidei Shugaxtutaan I.
The artist also contributed an AR version of his work Never Forget, planting a sign reading “Indian Land” in white capital letters across the verdant landscape of Valley of Wyoming (1865) by Jasper Francis Cropsey. The work is inspired by the original Hollywood sign, which said “Hollywoodland.” Galanin first installed a physical version in California’s Coachella Valley for the 2021 edition of the Desert X public art biennial.

Other works recontextualized by “Encoded” include the monumental Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851) by Emanuel Leutze. Viewed through the lens of the exhibition, the Continental Army has become engulfed in vegetation, plants weighing down the boat as it traverses the river. The new piece, by the artist Flechas, is titled LANDBACK.
“The piece is talking about our connection to the natural world.
It is not separate but integrated,” Rector said. “We can’t not acknowledge the earth that holds these stories.”
Flechas, LANDBACK (2025), overlaid on Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851). Photo: courtesy of Amplifier.
A High-Tech Project in a Hurry
Though the show has been in the works for four years, Rector didn’t come on board until July, when an anonymous Indigenous donor provided the funds to finally bring Amplifier’s high-tech vision to life. She had roughly a month to put together the artist list, which she wanted to make sure represented the diversity of Native artists across North America, or Turtle Island, as it is called by some Indigenous people.
“The artists had to turn something around really fast. Some of the artists had pieces ready to go that were immersive for digital technology, and others we supported with technical assistance,” Rector said. “I wanted to be sure to express that Indigenous creatives are dynamic and also have been using technology since time immemorial, from pottery work, weaving, and embroidery
to digital technology. So the exhibition
highlights both traditional forms of art and technology and contemporary forms.”
She was also excited that the exhibition was unsanctioned: “What does it mean to take up space? What does it mean to show up authentically?
What does it mean to work outside of systems?”
Nicholas Galanin, NEVER FORGET Valley of Wyoming (2021) overlaid on Jasper Francis Cropsey, Valley of Wyoming (1865). Photo: courtesy of Amplifier.
The Met has been making a concerted effort to feature the work of Native artists in recent years. In 2018, the museum displayed Indigenous art in its American Wing for the first time, with “Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection.” It followed up by creating a new Indigenous art program and hired Patricia Marroquin Norby as its first curator of Native American art.
The museum even commissioned a pair of monumental history paintings by Cree artist Kent Monkman for its series of contemporary “activations,” one of which recast Washington Crossing the Delaware with his Two Spirit alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. (Rector originally wanted an animated version of Monkman’s work, which debuted in 2020, for “Encoded.”)
And just last month, Jeffrey Gibson became the first Indigenous artist to create sculptures for the niches of the museum’s Fifth Avenue façade, with the installation of the commission The Animal That Therefore I Am.
Mer Young, We’wah Lhamana (2025) overlaid on Childe Hassam, Avenue of the Allies, Great Britain (1918). Photo: courtesy of Amplifier.
But as “Encoded” illustrates, there is still plenty of room to add Indigenous voices to the museum’s displays. A 2019 project, for instance, called “Native Perspectives,” added labels written by Native artists and historians to 18th- and 19th-century paintings and sculptures depicting Indigenous subjects—but those texts are no longer on display in the Met galleries.
The museum did not respond to my request for comment about the unsanctioned exhibition or future plans for its Indigenous art program.
“The Met has not issued any formal response,” Amplifier executive director Cleo Barnett told me in an email. “A researcher from the American Wing approached us yesterday at the Met expressing genuine interest in the project, but we haven’t received any official communication from the institution itself.
Acosia Red Elk at “Encoded” with Josué Rivas, Standing Strong featuring Acosia Red Elk (2021)over Thomas Sully, Queen Victoria (1838). Photo: by Aaron Huey, courtesy of Amplifer.
A Meaningful Moment
Many of the loved ones of the “Encoded” artists—who include Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Jarrette Werk, Josué Rivas, Katsitsionni Fox, and Mer Young—were at the museum for the show’s opening day.
“Watching family members see their relatives depicted or witnessing their own faces light up when they see their own cultural symbols reflected back at them at the exhibition, brought so many tears of joy,” Rector said.
Cass Gardiner, Skoden Warriors (2025) atop Jerome B. Thompson, The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain (1858). Photo: courtesy of Amplified.
The exhibition was also inspiring reflection from museum goers encountering the AR artworks, such as Cass Gardiner’s Skoden Warriors (2025). It overlays 8-bit Native American figures that recall Oregon Trail video game characters atop Jerome B. Thompson’s The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain (1858), of a group of white people picnicking atop a mountain. “Look at these guys, acting like they discovered the place,” a speech bubble pops up.
“Many people recognized the educational game from school and were curious to understand more from Cass Gardiner’s perspective about what colonization means, and what the actual impact of westward expansion is from an Indigenous point of view,” Rector said.
Priscilla Dobler Dzul, Future Cosmologies: The Regeneration of Maya Mythologies (2023), overlaid on Thomas Crawford, Mexican Girl Dying (1846; carved 1848). Photo: courtesy of Amplifier.
An especially moving work is Priscilla Dobler Dzul’s response to Thomas Crawford’s marble sculpture Mexican Girl Dying (1848). The original work fits into the trope of the extinction of the Native American people, romanticizing the death of young woman, shown topless. Dzul’s piece Future Cosmologies: The Regeneration of Maya Mythologies (2023) tenderly covers the woman’s bare breasts with a blanket made from the skin of a wild mountain lion.
“Priscilla’s work honors the many Indigenous lives lost to colonization in Mexico, but also uplifts the cosmologies and vitality of the people, while honoring the ancestors as well,” Rector said.

The project is not just about mourning what has been lost in the centuries since colonization began. It is also a celebration of Indigenous life and culture, and their continued presence here not only in the Met, but across the continent.
“The exhibit is gorgeous and fun,” Rector added. “I think it’s a beautiful addition to the Met, if they are open to incorporating it into their conversations about the work there.”
“Encoded” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, October 13–December 31, 2025. More

Come fall, London’s art enthusiasts eagerly await the unveiling of Tate Modern’s annual Turbine Hall commission–a rare chance for a contemporary art star to work on a truly monumental scale, filling the museum’s cavernous central exhibition hall. In recent memory, Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui wowed audiences with the sheer scale of his cascading bottle caps. Last year, Mire Lee’s grotesque body-horror contraptions divided opinion. But the response to this year’s much subtler installation by Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara has been comparatively muted.
Decreed “tame” by the critics, Goavve-Geabbil does not stun or surprise like its predecessors. Instead, it asks of us a more intimate engagement. In return, Sara promises to open our eyes to a different way of life, one in which humans hold sacred their interdependent relationship with nature. These are the lessons of Sámi philosophy, developed over centuries by people Indigenous to the Sápmi region, which stretches across the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
“You are activating a whole philosophy, a different way of being,” said Sara during a press conference at Tate Modern on Monday morning. “You have to connect spiritually, to awaken a different knowledge apparatus that lives in your body, when you live with animals in this close co-existence.”
Installation view of “Hyundai Commission: Maret Anne Sara” in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, 2025. Photo: Larina Fernandez, © Tate.
Rendering Reverence
Goavve-Geabbil has two parts. The standout piece at the back, titled Geabbil, invites audiences to wander through a maze-like structure of simple wooden fences that, in four places, spiral inwards to reveal a circular nook of fur-lined seats dotted with headphones. Sara is descended from a Sámi reindeer herding family and the viewer can tune into her personal account of learning to care for and revere the animal. This pact between man and beast also involves the latter’s slaughter, a sacrifice honored by the careful use of its entire being, from bones to fur and meat. As such, skulls decorate Sara’s structure.
“The beauty is what you can make out of them, how you can give them a new life,” said Sara.
Seen from above, on the Turbine Hall’s bridge, Geabbil‘s swirling forms mimic those found inside a reindeer’s nose. This astonishing labyrinth is a feat of biological engineering with the ability to heat each new breath of air by 175°F, allowing reindeer to survive the extreme cold. By magnifying these forms until they dwarf us, Sara emphasizes our humble position within nature’s sprawling systems, whether we care to acknowledge it or not.
Portrait of Máret Ánne Sara at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, 2025. Photo: Sonal Bakrania. © Tate.
“Your experience is of bodily inferiority, entering this universe of natural intelligence embedded with Indigenous science,” explained Sara. “It’s so big you might lose your direction at certain points. A modern human with modern rationality believes they can rule over nature but from the Sámi perspective we are equal to everything.”
Other references to the herding tradition include “reindeer earmarks,” distinctive markings that are passed down generations, carved into the fence’s poles. Further immersing the attentive viewer is a layered scent and soundscape that includes recordings from the Sápmi landscape and examples of joik, a form of Sámi song that can serve as a channel for communion with the elements of our world.
Climate Focus
The work’s second part, Goavve, towers over the viewer, reaching up over 90 feet to the ceiling. Its column of reindeer hides tautly stretched by electrical power cables is a memorial to reindeer lives lost to climate change. Sudden temperature fluctuations are disorientating and can also prevent animals from accessing crucial food sources. The cables also refer to the ongoing exploitation of Sápmi lands through mining activities, which not only destroys habitats and displaces communities, but risks diminishing age-old ancestral practices.
“I work very consciously with materials in terms of the power they bear,” said Sara. “The hides carry a very strong life energy and spirit within them.” Tied up by cables for Goavve, they become “a symbol of life trapped within the mechanisms of capitalism and extractivism.”
Installation view of “Hyundai Commission: Maret Anne Sara” in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, 2025. Photo: Yili Liu, © Tate.
Sara has long sought to raise awareness of issues facing the Sámi people thorough her art. The most notable example is Pile O’Sápmi, which she made in response to Norway’s order that her brother cull part of his livestock. While he launched an unsuccessful legal challenge, she created vast sculptural works out of reindeer skulls. By referring to a famous historical photograph in which men stand on a mountainous pile of bison skulls, the works’ title forges a link between the Sámi plight and those of other Indigenous communities across the world. Bison were hunted to near extinction by European settlers as a means of depriving Native Americans of a vital life force.
At the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, Sara converted the Nordic Pavilion into the Sámi Pavilion, where she placed the corpse of a reindeer calf within a swirling cocoon of hanging birch branches to make a mobile. Other sculptural works were made of reindeer intestines, referring to the emotional “gut” knowledge that belongs to all living beings. It is this infusion of Sámi philosophy that prevents Sara’s work from ever feeling morbid. Rather, it is a unique, multi-sensory celebration of all life.
“Hyundai Commission: Máret Ánne Sara: Goavve-Geabbil” is on view at Tate Modern, London until April 6, 2026.  More

Though she is nearing 80 years old, legendary performance artist Marina Abramović has no plans to slow down. In fact, this month she is set to premiere what she believes is her “most ambitious” performance yet for Factory International in Manchester. Balkan Erotic Epic is a contemporary take on ancient traditions that explores the tension between spirituality and sexuality, one that features no less than 70 performers.
Though little has yet been revealed about the highly-anticipated show, Abramović has released behind-the-scenes images from rehearsals.
From Marina Abramović’s Balk Erotic Epic (2025) for Factory International in Manchester. Photo: © Marco Anelli.
Born in former Yugoslavia, now Serbia, in 1946, Abramović has drawn on her Balkan heritage to re-examine ancient folkloric rituals and beliefs in a mega four-hour, 13-part performance of dance and live music. But the epic doesn’t stop at elaborate costumes and complex choreographies; further pre-filmed scenes will be transmitted via surrounding screens. Throughout, we will come to understand the erotic not as something taboo but as an energizing life source.
Audiences are free to navigate the space as they wish, but are warned that performances may turn “intimate” or “feverish,” with graphic scenes, full nudity, and simulated acts. If this sounds potentially uncomfortable, that’s the point. Abramović is staying true to form in confronting viewers with the full scope and intensity of human experience. Over four hours, it may even feel like something of an assault on the senses.
Rehearsal of “Tito’s Funeral” from Marina Abramović’s Balk Erotic Epic (2025) for Factory International in Manchester. Photo: © Marco Anelli.
“Through this project, I would like to show poetry, desperation, pain, hope, suffering, and reflect our own mortality,” the artist said. She is certainly no stranger to grueling performances designed to push her to her limits. These include having a bow and arrow aimed at her heart, passing out as she lay at the center of a burning star-shaped wooden frame, and walking halfway along the Great Wall of China to meet, and break up, with her ex-partner Ulay.
“In our culture today, we label anything erotic as pornography,” she added. “This gives me a chance to go back to my Slavic roots and culture, look back to ancient rituals and deal with sexuality, in relationship to the universe and the unanswered questions of our existence.”
Rehearsal of “Orgy” from Marina Abramović’s Balk Erotic Epic (2025) for Factory International in Manchester. Photo: © Marco Anelli.
No mean feat! And one that will be achieved by all manner of acts, from a giant orgy to dancing skeletons and a “mushroom garden” populated by fake phalluses. The reasoning behind this flagrant lack of modesty is Abramović’s finding that, in Balkan culture, many rituals have centered around genitalia. It was a topic that first began to interest her during the making of her 2005 film Balkan Erotic, which similarly focuses on ceremonial acts performed in the nude.
Some of the traditional rites that are being revived include the dressing of a naked corpse, men penetrating the soil to improve its fertility, and a pregnant woman being soaked in milk. These scenes will, Abramović believes, connect us to the history of humanity, revealing to us the same hopes and anxieties that we feel today.
Research of “Tito’s Funeral” from Marina Abramović’s Balk Erotic Epic (2025) for Factory International in Manchester. Photo: © Marco Anelli.
Though she has long been one of the art world’s most talked about celebrities, Marina Abramović is having something of a moment this fall. Just last week, she threw a well-attended rave at Saatchi Yates in central London that had queues curling around the block. A sweeping retrospective has just opened at the Albertina in Vienna and a second was recently announced by the Galleria dell’Accademia in Venice, set to run during next year’s Biennale. Abramović is the first living woman artist to receive the honor.
“Balkan Erotic Epic” is on view at Aviva Studios, Aviva Studios, Water St, Manchester, through October 19, followed by an international tour.  More

“Magritte and Les Lalanne: In the Mind’s Garden,” which opened this week at Di Donna Galleries in New York’s Upper East Side, pairs the Belgian Surrealist with the husband-and-wife duo Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne. Both shared an affinity for reimagining nature as a poetic, dreamlike force. Rather than simply depicting the natural world, Magritte and the Lalannes revealed in it the mysterious and the uncanny—sometimes lighthearted, sometimes heady. They also reveled in breaking down its laws.
“There’s a strong interest in nature and also metamorphosis,” said Emmanuel Di Donna, motioning to an iconic Claude Lalanne Choupatte—“if you look at the cabbage with chicken feet. It’s morphing into a fantastical object.”
Installation view of Magritte and Les Lalanne: In the Mind’s Garden at Di Donna Galleries. Photographer: Pauline Shapiro. René Magritte: © 2025 C. Herscovici, Brussels / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Courtesy of Di Donna Galleries, New York.
“In the Mind’s Garden” unites Di Donna and Ben Brown, who first met when they both worked at Sotheby’s before setting up their own galleries. The London-based Ben Brown Fine Arts is closely associated with landmark Lalanne exhibitions, like the massive and spectacular “Planète Lalanne” in Venice. “I thought, what do I do next?” Brown said. “I thought I’d lie low for two years and then this came up. It was perfect because it’s much more intimate.”
Di Donna focused on Magritte and Brown on the Lalannes, then they’d meet in the middle. “It has come out as perfectly as we would have wanted,” Brown said. “The juxtaposition has been incredibly successful.”
Altogether, the show gathers more than 70 works, most drawn from private collections. Yes, some of the iconic Lalanne sheep flock appear, too. The show also revives the artists’ historical link to Alexander Iolas, the Greek-American dealer who represented both Magritte and the Lalannes. Sotheby’s later described Iolas as the man who “transformed René Magritte from a Belgian oddity to a worldwide celebrity.” Claude Lalanne put it more simply: “Our success was really entirely thanks to Iolas.”
The day before the opening, I toured the show with its curators. The exhibition sets two distinct visions of the surreal side by side—sometimes overlapping, sometimes diverging, always in dialogue. Here are some standout works, with commentary from the dealers.
Claude Lalanne, Portrait d’Alexandre Iolas (1974)
Claude Lalanne, Portrait d’Alexandre Iolas (1974). On loan. © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Pauline Shapiro Photography. Courtesy of Di Donna Galleries, New York.
The enigmatic dealer is depicted solemnly with his head framed by a jaw-like vise.
Di Donna: “He was the connective tissue” said Di Donna, “he represented all three: the Lalannes and Magritte. He was incredibly active, a Greek dealer who introduced Surrealism not just in America but also in Paris and London.”
Brown: “He died in the mid-’80s. He had galleries in Athens, Milan, Paris, New York. He worked with de Kooning, with Warhol—famously the ‘Last Supper.’ He also represented Ed Ruscha… Iolas was really the instigator of quite a lot of things in those days.”
“He put together a lot of great collections for people like the de Menils, the Agnellis, and the Rothschilds, which is why all of those collections have both Magritte and Lalanne in them, because these were stable artists. He was also a very difficult human being—complex, exuberant, intelligent, and very good at enticing wealthy collectors into his orbit.”
François-Xavier Lalanne, Hippopotame I, 1968/98
François-Xavier Lalanne, Hippopotame I (1968/98). © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Pauline Shapiro Photography. Courtesy of Di Donna Galleries, New York.
Combining beauty with functionality, Hippopotame I is a marvelous life-size representation of a hippopotamus that also functions as a bath, complete with a sink.
Installation view of Magritte and Les Lalanne: In the Mind’s Garden at Di Donna Galleries. Photographer: Pauline Shapiro. René Magritte: © 2025 C. Herscovici, Brussels / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Courtesy of Di Donna Galleries, New York.
Brown: “This is quite iconic. There are three of these, all different. One is in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. One was a commission from Marcel Duchamp’s wife ‘Teeny.’ This one I bought about seven years ago. It’s a fully functioning bath. The plumbing runs through the leg. You can hook it up, and it works.”
René Magritte, Le miroir universel (1938–39)
René Magritte, Le Miroir Universel (1938–39). On loan. © 2025 C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Pauline Shapiro Photography. Courtesy of Di Donna Galleries, New York.
Le miroir universel belongs to Magritte’s La magie noire series. It depicts a nude figure leaning against a rock as her body metamorphoses from flesh into the cerulean blue sky, a seamless fusion of the intimate and the infinite. At auction, it last appeared at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in October 2023, where it sold for HKD 77,575,000 ($ 9.9 million).
Di Donna: “The idea of this woman morphing into the landscape—it’s like inside and outside, which we’ve played with here in the theme of the exhibition. She’s becoming part of the landscape. It’s very poetic. She’s becoming very sculptural, with those eyes that have no pupils. She’s steady, ingrained in the landscape. The subject is his wife, Georgette. Here she’s both intimate and concealed, which speaks to themes of identity and concealment that run throughout his work.”
René Magritte, Moralité du Sommeil (ca. 1941)
René Magritte, Moralité du Sommeil (ca. 1941). © 2025 C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Pauline Shapiro Photography. Courtesy of Di Donna Galleries, New York.
The show also highlights Magritte’s paintings that extend the exhibition’s themes of interior and exterior, private and public, dream and waking life.
Di Donna: “Moralité du Sommeil embodies two of the major themes of the exhibition—the interplay between outdoors and indoors, and the desires of the unconscious mind. The anonymous central figure is imprisoned within the darkness of her own subconscious, while the brighter, less threatening ‘real’ world lies just beyond, suggested by gentle rolling hills. This is a striking example of Magritte’s manipulation of light and shadow, compelling the viewer’s gaze to bounce between interior and exterior realms, revealing the unconscious as an active, inescapable force shaping perception.”
Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, Pomme de Ben (2007)
Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, Pomme de Ben (2007). On loan. © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo: Pauline Shapiro Photography. Courtesy of Di Donna Galleries, New York.
Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne were intertwined and showed their work together, but they had two distinct practices and rarely combined their talents.
Di Donna: “The apple is a typical form of Claude and obviously, the monkey, is a François-Xavier animal, which he did many times. But they decided to put it together.”
Brown: “Originally, there was an invitation card to my first exhibition when they did a photo montage of two sculptures joined—the monkey on the stem of the apple. I had to explain to everybody that the they were separate sculptures. Four or five months later they said, ‘Come on, we’ve got a sculpture for you. It’s called Pomme de Ben.’” Voila.
René Magritte, Le chœur des sphinges (1964)
René Magritte, Le Chœur des Sphinges (1964). © 2025 C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Pauline Shapiro Photography. Courtesy of Di Donna Galleries, New York.
Di Donna: “Deceptively simple upon first glance, this painting quickly reveals a subtle strangeness that challenges perception. A vast green forest is topped by a clear blue sky, dotted with mysterious forms seemingly extracted from the canopy of leaves below. Among these suspended shapes is a suggested pipe—one of the most emblematic motifs of Magritte’s visual language.”

“Magritte and Les Lalanne: In the Mind’s Garden” is now on view at Di Donna Galleries, 744 Madison Avenue, New York, through December 13, 2025. More

For the first time possibly ever, there is not a single ad to be seen in Grand Central Terminal. “Humans of New York,” Brandon Stanton‘s popular social media art series of photographs of people he’s interviewed on the city’s streets, has taken over each and every one of the 150 video billboards in the grand concourse, as well as the subway ads below in Grand Central Station for “Dear New York.”
“This beautiful art installation transforms the terminal into a photographic display of New Yorkers telling their stories from all walks of life—serving as a powerful reminder of our shared humanity,” MTA director of commercial ventures Mary John said in a statement. “It is the first time an artist has unified digital displays in both the terminal and subway station below, and the MTA coordinated across many corners of our organization to make this happen.”
It’s New York’s largest public art installation in 20 years, since The Gates by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, a magical pathway of saffron-colored fabric in Central Park. And it’s all the more impressive in that Stanton paid for it all out of pocket, as a gift to the city.
“If it provides even the slightest amount of joy, solace, beauty, or connection to the 750,000 people who pass through Grand Central every day—we have achieved our goal,” he wrote on Facebook.
The “Humans of New York” art installation “Dear New York” in the main concourse at Grand Central Terminal. Photo: courtesy of Brandon Stanton.
The Project Was a Massive Undertaking
The original plan was to use the proceeds from his new book, Dear New York, but Stanton ended up having to dip into his life savings to cover the total cost, which included space rental and covering the station’s lost ad revenue. The artist and journalist, who wrote the best-selling book Humans of New York, declined to provide an exact figure, but told the New York Times that “I no longer have any stocks.”
Stanton has shot portraits of 10,000 people across the five boroughs and beyond since beginning “Humans of New York” in 2010, creating a kind of photographic census of the city. (He has since expanded the project’s scope internationally, to 40 countries and counting.)
The “Humans of New York” art installation “Dear New York” in the passageways of Grand Central Station. Photo: courtesy of Brandon Stanton.
“Dear New York” is projecting some of those images, enlarged to be 50 feet tall, onto the towering columns beneath the station’s famed starry ceiling. It’s all set to a soundtrack from the Juilliard School, which has provided more than 100 hours of music in various genres from live performances by students, alumni, and faculty.
Other photos have been printed on vinyl and affixed to the tile walls of the passageways down in the subway station. There’s also a photo display mounted inside the station’s Vanderbilt Hall, where Stanton has shared the stage with 10 local artists and 600 New York City public school kids.
The “Humans of New York” art installation “Dear New York” in Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Terminal. Photo: courtesy of Brandon Stanton.
To bring the project to life, Stanton tapped Broadway producer David Korins, who worked on Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, and Immersive Van Gogh, as the creative director for experience in the main concourse. Andrea Trabucco-Campos, a partner at the design firm Pentagram, was responsible for laying out the installations across the labyrinthine subway tunnels below.
Stanton, who has over 30 million followers across social media platforms, spent about six months organizing the exhibition.
The “Humans of New York” art installation “Dear New York” in the passageways of Grand Central Station. Photo: courtesy of Brandon Stanton.
The opening was timed to the release of the Dear New York. (Once he covers the exhibition’s installation costs, Stanton plans to donate the book’s profits to New York City charities; he has raised over $10 million to date through “Humans of New York.”)
“It is a love letter to the people of this city, and about the people of this city,” Stanton said of the exhibition in a statement. “Everyone who visits ‘Dear New York’ will not only see the art, they will become a part of it.”
The “Humans of New York” art installation “Dear New York” in the passageways of Grand Central Station. Photo: courtesy of Brandon Stanton.
“Dear New York” is on view at Grand Central Terminal and Grand Central Station, between East 42nd and 45th Streets and Lexington and Vanderbilt Avenues, New York, New York, October 6–19, 2025.  More

The industrial halls of Berghain will soon be the site of Pierre Huyghe’s first artistic foray into quantum physics, with a new commission from the LAS Art Foundation’s Sensing Quantum program. The large-scale project, launched in partnership with Hartwig Art Foundation, opens January 23, 2026, and runs until March 8, marking Huyghe’s first solo institutional presentation in the German capital.
Though many details remain under wraps, Huyghe’s upcoming installation is said to revolve around uncertainty as both subject and method, drawing on quantum experiments and incorporating film, sound, dust, vibrations, and light. Concepts that have long fascinated Huyghe—indeterminacy, autonomy, and systems thinking, as well as the more-than-human—resonate naturally with aspects of quantum logic.
Halle am Berghain. Photo: Stefanie Loos AFP via Getty Images.
The monumental two-story halls of Halle am Berghain, a former thermal power station from the 1950s, provide a fitting backdrop. Huyghe is known for creating immersive environments that pulse with unpredictability, which are often referred to as “ecosystems.”
“Pierre is one of the leading artists of our generation,” said Bettina Kames, the director of LAS, in a video call. “He is wholly devoted to his projects—perfection, detail, and conceptual rigor guide everything he does.”
Few who saw it will forget his outdoor installation at Documenta 13, Untilled (2011–12), where he transformed a forgotten industrial site into a microcosm of autonomous life: a bee colony thrived on a statue, while a white greyhound with a pink leg wandered through the landscape. At the Pinault Collection’s Punta della Dogana in Venice last year, for his major work Liminal, visitors navigated a dark, cavernous installation of A.I.-inflected films, performances, and living marine life—an exploration of the boundary between human and nonhuman. The move toward quantum systems, with their inherent uncertainty and instability, is a logical continuation of this trajectory.
Pierre Huyghe Liminal (temporary title) (2024–ongoing). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Marian Goodman Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Esther Schipper, and TARO NASU. © Pierre Huyghe, by SIAE 2023.
“At a moment when quantum and A.I. technologies are beginning to converge, this project not only stages their philosophical and perceptual implications, but also asks what worlds might be conceived of—impossible, unstable, or yet to come,” the institution said via email.
In a statement, Huyghe described the new work as “a hybrid creature, an infinite membrane carved by void… an observer witnessing the ambiguous nature of the entity, its monstrosity.” The accompanying film, he wrote, “portrays an inexistent being, a soulscape, a radical outside,” aiming to turn states of uncertainty into a cosmos.
Notably, the project stems from a collaboration with quantum physicist Tommaso Calarco, co-author of the Quantum Manifesto, which sets Europe’s agenda for quantum research. “Luckily, Calarco is an art lover,” Kames noted. Calarco’s discussions with the artist have informed Huyghe’s experiments with quantum systems “as raw material,” transforming quantum properties into perceptible experiences. “The project with Huyghe is at such a high level,” added Kames. “It is one of the most important projects we have ever done at LAS.”
Pierre Huyghe, 2025, video still. Commissioned by LAS Art Foundation and Hartwig Art Foundation. Courtesy the artist. © Pierre Huyghe, 2025.
LAS Art Foundation, a nomadic institution bridging art, science, and technology, launched the Sensing Quantum program to explore the implications of quantum computing and theory. Laure Prouvost’s inaugural project earlier this year, which examined audio and visual manifestations quantum noise, in an artistic collaboration with Google Quantum A.I. won the S+T+ARTS award from the E.U. Commission.
In addition to ambitious visual art projects, Sensing Quantum includes endeavors with composers, a learning program, and a symposium coming up this month, all of which aims to illuminate some of the most elusive principles and hard-to-grasp elements of quantum mechanics through direct experience. Huyghe’s project will certainly mark an apex of it.
After its launch in Berlin, the presentation will travel to Amsterdam in 2026, presented by the Hartwig Art Foundation, which is currently creating a brick-and-mortar museum. Beatrix Ruf, the director of the Hartwig Art Foundation, said she is “thrilled and grateful” to be involved in this new chapter in Huyghe’s work with the LAS Art Foundation, and that the “inspiring collaboration is now opening up exciting avenues into the forward-looking world of quantum.”
Pierre Huyghe’s Sensing Quantum will be on view from January 23 through March 8, 2026, at LAS Art Foundation, hosting at Halle am Berghain, Berlin. More

The pop culture feast that is New York Comic Con returns to the Javits Center from October 9 through October 12, bringing with it all manner of merchandise, collectibles, fan art, and vintage comic books. The event may have comics in the name, but it’s grown over the years to celebrate a wide range of books, toys, video games, television series, movies, and cosplay.
It’s a great place to meet original comic book artists and graphic novel authors, especially in the dedicated Artist Alley section downstairs. Most of these artists are completely independent, some traveling from across the country for the chance to sell their art and share their passion for all things superheroes, anime, science fiction, and fantasy.
This year’s edition of the con is of special interest to the art world at large, as Los Angeles’s eagerly awaited Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is hosting a special panel previewing the institution, slated to finally open next year. On Sunday, October 9, Hollywood legend Martin Scorsese will moderate a discussion between JR, the French artist famed for his photography and street art installations; Boris Vallejo, the noted science fiction and fantasy artist; and Julie Bell, illustrator and fantasy and wildlife artist.
And it’s an interesting time for the comic art world as well—even as the fine art market falters, the late fantasy artist Frank Frazetta just set a new record for the most expensive work of comic book or fantasy art with a $13.5 million sale at Heritage Auctions in Dallas.
But even if you didn’t snag tickets to the main event, there are exhibitions across the city celebrating the art of the comic book. Here’s our list of what to see during New York Comic Con.

“¡Wepa! Puerto Ricans in the World of Comics” at the New York Public LibraryOctober 4, 2025–March 8, 2026
Installation view of “¡Wepa! Puerto Ricans in the World of Comics” at the New York Public Library. Photo: courtesy of the New York Public Library.
In 2022, Manuel Martínez Nazario, a retired librarian in San Juan, Puerto Rico, made a major gift to the New York Public Library, donating the collection of some 1,600 comic books, political cartoons, and original art by or about Puerto Ricans that he had been amassing since the 1990s. The works on view in this bilingual show include comics set in Puerto Rico, as well as stories that focus on Puerto Ricans here in New York. There’s even Marvel’s first Puerto Rican superhero, White Tiger, who made his debut in 1975. Nazario and Rosa Colón Guerra, cofounder of Soda Pop Comics, whose 2014 anthology of female comic artists is featured in the exhibition, will speak in a Comic Con panel with curators Paloma Celis Carbajal and Charles Cuykendall Carter on October 9 at 3:30 p.m.
The New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Wachenheim Gallery, is located at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, New York. 

“Super Duper” at the Metropolitan Opera HouseSeptember 21, 2025–2026
Art Spiegelman, Superman in the Blottosphere (2023). ©Art Spiegelman.
This fall, the Met is hosting the premiere of the new opera The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, based on Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name about a pair of Jewish cousins who create a superhero comic during World War II (through October 11). This accompanying exhibition is inspired by the American origins of the superhero, featuring new works by contemporary artists such as George Condo, Dana Schutz, Rachel Feinstein, Roz Chast, and Rashid Johnson exploring what the superhero would look like in 2025. Only one work in the exhibition, by Art Spiegelman, author and illustrator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, was not commissioned for the occasion.
The Metropolitan Opera is located at 30 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, New York.

“Nightmares in Blood” at Below GrandOctober 4–November 8, 2025
James O’Barr, The Crow (2018). Courtesy of Below Grand.
Artist Arthur Peña has curated this group show featuring important horror illustrators ranging in age from 36 to 76, celebrating artists who have pushed censorship to the limits with their gory imagery. There are well-known fixtures of the genre such as Clive Barker, who has turned his tales of horror into films like Hellraiser, which he directed, and Candyman, which he executive produced. But the show also includes underground cult figures like “The Gurch,” a mysterious British artist making his U.S. debut here. Expect plenty of blood, guts, and monsters—perfect not just for Comic Con, but for Halloween.
Below Grand is located at 53 Orchard Street, New York, New York. 

“Frank Cho” at Philippe Labaune GallerySeptember 18–October 25, 2025
Frank Cho, Broken Angel (2025). Courtesy of Philippe Labaune Gallery, New York.
Comic artist Frank Cho prides himself on melding art and storytelling, letting his expert draftsmanship help guide the narrative in his illustrations for leading Marvel and DC titles such as Wonder Woman and Savage Wolverine. He is particularly known for his work in ballpoint pen and his fine crosshatching technique, which he uses to create impossibly detailed drawings that appear to leap off the page.
Philippe Labaune Gallery is located at 534 West 24 Street, New York, New York.

“Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey, Edel Rodriguez” at the Society of IllustratorsJuly 19–October 11, 2025
Edel Rodriguez, Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey. Photo: courtesy of Metropolitan Books.
Illustrator Edel Rodriguez, who has done covers for publications such as Time and Der Spiegel—you may remember his powerful image of President Donald Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty—presents the original art from his graphic memoir Worm. It tells the story of his flight from Cuba aboard a tiny shrimping boat in 1980, one of the “worms,” as Fidel Castro derisively referred to those leaving the island nation in the boatlift. The show also includes Rodriguez’s political art, silkscreened posters, and paintings.
Society of Illustrators is located at 128 East 63rd Street, New York, New York.

“Comics in the City: Sequential Art Is” at Flushing Town HallSeptember 25–October 20, 2025
A comic by Chris Gomez. Courtesy of Flushing Town Hall.
Comics writer Regine L. Sawyer, the founder of Women in Comics NYC Collective International, has curated this showcase of New York City comic book artists such as Will Heydecker, Bryan Angrand, and MARICAMA. It focuses on the narrative power of sequential art and how comics use panels to to tell a story image by image.
Flushing Town Hall is located at 137-35 Northern Blvd, Flushing, New York. More