Shows & Exhibitions

South Korea’s burgeoning art scene is known for bravely embracing international art stars; as such, the Ohio-born, Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist Richard Kennedy, a rising dynamo in the art world, has found the right audience for their Asian institutional debut.
Known for their dance-inflected celebration and reflection of the queer Black experience, Kennedy has presented a new body of work that includes their signature, vibrantly-colored woven paintings and a new video installation at the Jeonnam Museum of Art. The two-year-old public museum is located in Gwangyang, a four-hour train journey away from the capital city Seoul.
In the show, called “Acey-Deucy,” the artist continues their exploration of relationships and sexuality at the intersection of class, race, and gender. The solo show, which is spread across three distinct rooms, breaks down boundaries between binaries such as black and white or male and female. While the exhibition’s narrative may be part of an ongoing discussion topic in the west, situating this in culturally conservative Korean society feels particularly urgent.
Installation view of Richard Kennedy’s solo exhibition ‘Acey-Deucey.’ Photo by Seungwook Yang. Image courtesy of Jeonnam Museum of Art, Korea and PeresProjects.
Kennedy’s new film, titled Miracle W.I.P., features performances by the artist and collaborators Kyle Kidd and Tahir Francis—the mystical, multi-screen video installation is arranged to form the letters “o” and “h,” referring to the artist’s home state Ohio; the biographical work is testament to their own self-searching journey.
Kennedy, who has had solo shows at MoMA and MoMA PS1, was included in the group show “Ubuntu, A Lucid Dream” at Palais de Tokyo in 2021, where they transformed the Paris museum into a dance floor for a participatory performance. Audiences in Korea were able to experience the artist’s live performance as well, a medium central to their practice, during the exhibition’s opening. Works created during the performance Milk & Cookies are on view in on gallery room, which was transformed into an imaginary classroom during the performance as Kennedy revisited the trauma of humiliation and power dynamics in a school setting.
Since its inauguration in March 2021, the Jeonnam Museum of Art has been showcasing Korean and international art, including a solo presentation of Russian art collective AES+F and a major retrospective of Georges Rouault in dialogue with Korean artists. Kennedy’s show is the museum’s third solo presentation of an international name since its inception. Given their gallery Peres Projects recently opened a second space in Seoul’s Songhyeon-dong area, adjacent to other major galleries and museums, it is likely that South Korean audiences will be seeing more of Kennedy’s electrifying work.
Richard Kennedy’s “Acey-Deucey” is on view until June 4. See highlights of the exhibition and opening performance below.
Richard Kennedy, milk & cookies, performance view on March 16, 2023, Jeonnam Museum of Art, Gwangyang, South Korea. Photo by Seungwook Yang. Courtesy of Jeonnam Museum of Art, Korea and Peres Projects.
Richard Kennedy, milk & cookies, performance view on March 16, 2023, Jeonnam Museum of Art, Gwangyang, South Korea. Photo by Seungwook Yang. Courtesy of Jeonnam Museum of Art, Korea and Peres Projects.
Richard Kennedy, milk & cookies, performance view on March 16, 2023, Jeonnam Museum of Art, Gwangyang, South Korea. Photo by Seungwook Yang. Courtesy of Jeonnam Museum of Art, Korea and Peres Projects.
Richard Kennedy, milk & cookies, performance view on March 16, 2023, Jeonnam Museum of Art, Gwangyang, South Korea. Photo by Seungwook Yang. Courtesy of Jeonnam Museum of Art, Korea and Peres Projects.
Installation view of Richard Kennedy’s solo exhibition ‘Acey-Deucey.’ Photo by Seungwook Yang. Image courtesy of Jeonnam Museum of Art, Korea and Peres Projects.
Installation view of Richard Kennedy’s solo exhibition ‘Acey-Deucey.’ Photo by Seungwook Yang. Image courtesy of Jeonnam Museum of Art, Korea and Peres Projects.
Installation view of Richard Kennedy’s solo exhibition ‘Acey-Deucey.’ Photo by Seungwook Yang. Image courtesy of Jeonnam Museum of Art, Korea and Peres Projects.
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The Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Riga, Latvia, is returning this summer for its third edition, RIBOCA3. The event, originally scheduled to take place last summer, was cancelled shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The initial program, “Exercises in Respect,” had been more or less prepared by German curator René Block, when war broke out on February 24. RIBOCA’s team swiftly redirected their organizational efforts towards the launch of Common Ground, a center for Ukrainian refugees to gather, socialize, and work. It offers a range of creative activities and children’s playrooms. Two months later, in April, they announced their decision to postpone that year’s event.
“We felt like the [original] concept was not relevant for the world that had changed,” the biennial’s Russian-born founder Agniya Mirgorodskaya told Artnet News about Block’s decision to produce an entirely new program. “He was very strong in his decision that there was no way we could proceed with it.”
Agniya Mirgorodskaya, founder of the Riga Biennial Foundation and commissioner of RIBOCA. Photo courtesy Riga International Biennial of Contemporary.
The organizers may have also been concerned about the optics of the biennial’s financial backing coming from a Russian: Mirgorodskaya’s father, the fishing entrepreneur Gennady Mirgorodsky. Latvia shares a border with Russia and is also vulnerable to the whims of its aggressive foreign policy. Despite having a large Russian-speaking population, it has recently passed several new laws attempting to reduce its neighbor’s cultural influence.
“It was very clear from day one that we had to completely change our funding structure,” said Mirgorodskaya, adding that RIBOCA has not accepted any money from Russia since the war began. “Practically speaking, that is why we needed that extra year as well.” The founder turned to her husband, an American financier working in real estate, who agreed to donate a fixed percentage of his earnings towards a new endowment fund for the biennial. “It was his amazingly generous suggestion and a brilliant solution for us,” she said.
Block has devised a program in two parts. The first is in part an effort to exorcize last year’s discarded “Exercises in Respect” concept so that the biennial can begin with a clean slate. A magazine launched on May 11 will showcase all the artworks that had originally been prepared for RIBOCA3 in 2022.
This will be followed in June by the exhibition “Intermezzo” at the Kunsthal 44Møen in Denmark, where Block is a co-founder and artistic director. Of the 12 artists featured, a few had initially been slated to appear in last year’s event, including Riga native Evita Vasiljeva whose original installation of upside down concrete benches will reappear in a new site-specific form, which instead overturns pre-existing benches on the Danish island of Møn.
The second part, which shifts the focus back to Riga, comprises two concurrent exhibitions opening on August 10 with an undetermined end date. Block’s “Fragment” at the former Riga Technical University is dedicated to artists working with moving image and sound, including work by the seminal video artist Nam Jun Paik and French filmmaker Clement Cogitore.
Members of the Danish collective Superflex [left to right] Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjornstjerne Christiansen pose in One Two Three Swing!, their Turbine Hall Installation at the Tate Modern on October 2, 2017 in London, England. Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images.This year, Block will share his curatorial responsibilities with the socially minded collective SUPERFLEX, which was founded in 1993 and is known for large-scale participatory works. They have produced the biennial’s central ongoing project “There is an Elephant in the Room,” staged across multiple venues, which invites 25 women artists to address a topic that they believe to be urgent, taboo, or controversial such as the ongoing war on Ukraine.
Since it was founded in 2016, RIBOCA has become the premier showcase and destination for art from the Baltic region. It is broadening its ambition by inviting artists to remain in the city and collaborate for extended periods and by offering a rotating array of public works.
“This year, the biennial won’t just happen for a few months,” said executive director Inese Dabola, noting the city’s lack of a permanent contemporary art offering. “We are thinking about art as infrastructure, we want to be more rooted and contribute to the local arts scene as much as we can.”
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If you had dined at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago in 1880 for the Annual Game Dinner, you might have had a hard time choosing among the 50 species offered. If Ham of Black Bear didn’t tempt you, maybe Ragout of Squirrel à la Française was your jam. One would expect to be charmed by some anachronistic dishes (and rock bottom prices) at an exhibition of vintage menus. But there is much more than kitsch value to “A Century of Dining Out: The American Story in Menus, 1841–1941” and plenty of subtext between the appetizer and dessert sections.
The show, which opened in April at The Groiler Club in Manhattan and runs until July 29, lives up to its name. Free of charge and open to non-members, it idiosyncratically and chronologically tells the story of American gastronomy, and the country itself—in menus. These include menus from restaurants, banquets, soup kitchens, private yachts, and even houses of ill repute.
An installation view of “A Century of Dining Out: The American Story in Menus, 1841-1941” in the ground floor gallery. Courtesy of The Groiler Club.
“It’s like a 15-degree slice of history,” said collector Henry Voigt, who adroitly curated the show and wrote the accompanying catalogue. “You’re looking from a different perspective. It’s not just what people were eating, but what they were doing, with whom they were doing it, and what they valued. It’s a mirror of society. Yes, it runs along class lines, but it represents all classes in various ways. They’re minor historic documents that reflect everyday life.”
On the Great Western Railway (ca. 1881), left, the fixed price for breakfast was 75 cents. The beverage list offered over three dozen Champagnes, clarets, and ales. The gilt-edge menu at right came from a social event catered by Louis Sherry (1855–1926) in New York City in 1884, a few months after he opened his confectionery and catering business, serving New York society’s highest echelons. Courtesy of the Henry Voigt Collection of American Menus.
He continued, “I reflect on not only just the upper classes, but women’s history, African American history, and what’s dubbed economic precarity, meaning people who have been pushed from a livable life by war and financial crisis. These menus are very rare. Who saved a menu from a soup kitchen, saying, ‘I wanna remember this evening for the rest of my life?’”
Major swaths of the American story are touched upon. The show is divided into sections such as “The Great War and Onset of Prohibition,” “King Cotton and the Telegraph,” “Echoes of the Jazz Age,” and “The Great Depression and Recovery.”
Mark Twain’s 70th birthday party was national news. Delmonico’s (New York City, 1905) bill of fare is illustrated with comic sketches by cartoonist Leon Barritt (1852–1938) depicting the guest of honor in successive stages of his career. The dinner was hosted by George Harvey, the owner and editor of Harper’s Weekly, which published a special supplement with photographs of the 170 guests. Courtesy of the Henry Voigt Collection of American Menus.
Shortly after completing the show’s installation, Voigt—in a tie, blazer, and loafers—gave me a run-through of some of the 224 menus he’d selected for the exhibition. “Oh, this one makes me tear up,” he said. “A couple of them here make me lose it.” He pointed out an Emancipation Banquet menu from an African-American social club honoring Sojourner Truth. Nearby was the menu for Lincoln’s second inaugural ball; guests could munch on delicacies such as terrapin and tongue en gelée.
Voigt noted two other menus, saying, “These are the only two menus I know of from southern states under Confederate control, one from Lanier House in Macon, Georgia, in 1862 and the American Hotel in Richmond in 1864, which perished in a fire the following year during the fall of Richmond. There was a scarcity of food in the Confederacy.”
This menu is remarkably sparse. In the accompanying exhibition notes, Voigt wrote, “The lack of shipments from outside the region also caused the cuisine to be markedly local in character. The ham-and-greens dish was made with poke sallet weed, a poisonous wild plant popular in Appalachia and the South. The leaves must be boiled in water three times to make them safe to eat, even in the early spring when its toxins are at the lowest levels.”
The Palmer House (Chicago, 1886) opened on September 26, 1871, only 13 days before it burned to the ground in the Great Fire. The second Palmer House advertised itself as “thoroughly fire proof.” It hosted such famous guests as actress Sarah Bernhardt; writers Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde; and Presidents James Garfield, Ulysses S. Grant, and Grover Cleveland. Courtesy of the Henry Voigt Collection of American Menus.
An Ellis Island menu, typewritten on onion skin paper, is particularly moving. It offered boiled rice and milk, and bread and butter, to newly arrived children. “When poor immigrants arrived in the 19th century, they came in steerage and they were in a state of shock,” Voigt explained. “Read about the number of children that died on the island. So, the practice began to give them milk and bread.”
“Immigrants thought that America was welcoming them with food,” he added. “The food was paid for by the shipping lines, but they thought America was. And 50, 60, 70 years later, they had warm feelings. No, they’d never seen white bread before, but they knew they would be okay because food is symbolic. We welcomed them symbolically.”
The Gem (New Orleans, ca. 1913), left, operated in an old mansion on Royal Street from 1847 to 1919. The menu for Maxim’s (New York City, 1917), right, was designed in a modern Louis XIV style. Future silent-screen idol Rudolph Valentino began his career as a busboy at Murray’s and later landed at Maxim’s as a “taxi dancer,” a paid dance partner for lone women. Courtesy of the Henry Voigt Collection of American Menus.
The advent of modernism in the 1920s marked an invigorating aesthetic shift, but it would be short-lived given the simultaneous rise of Prohibition. “There was nothing cool about Prohibition,” Voigt said. “It was a disaster. People didn’t care about food anymore. The good restaurants were all closed. Speakeasies didn’t care about food. People no longer drank wine; they drank booze. Society collapsed and food did too, from an haute cuisine point of view.”
Voigt paused and continued thoughtfully, “Prohibition was repealed in December of 1933, but it took about 50 years to get over it. When do you think we got back on our feet gastronomically? The 1980s!”
The cuisine at finer American hotels, such as the Winthrop House (Boston, 1852), might be described as “Frenchified English cooking,” as one British visitor put it, with an emphasis on wild game. The focal point of dinner at its restaurant, Hasty Pudding Club, was provided by seven varieties of game birds. Courtesy of the Henry Voigt Collection of American Menus.
Before embarking on menus, Voigt and his wife collected 17th- and 18th-century Dutch art. “It was a reflection of everyday life,” he said. “I’ve always been interested in everyday life. We were also interested in food and wine. Also interested in how food affects culture and societal patterns.” He sold off the paintings, keeping only prints and drawings. Menus became a focus when he retired at 60 as a senior executive at Dupont in the mid-1990s.
“It’s not just the art element,” Voigt said of his attraction to the milieu and explained what he looks for. “What’s the language of the menu? Who’s the intended audience? Is there evidence of race, gender, or class? All menus are seen through the prism of class. What about the typography? What about the graphic design? Who owned this menu? Why did they save it? Who was the printer? Who was the lithographer? Visual appeal is wonderful, but there’s a series of questions around a menu’s significance.”
The Cathay Tea Garden (Philadelphia, 1926), left, had a large dance floor and hosted a regular radio program. Four pages describe “American” and “Chinese” dishes. After more than 50 years, the Cathay Tea Garden closed in 1973. The Fountain Room at the Hotel Pennsylvania (New York City, 1924), right, was the largest hotel in the world when it opened on January 25, 1919, a few days before the 18th Amendment was ratified. After Prohibition, many hotel bars were turned into soda fountains. Courtesy of the Henry Voigt Collection of American Menus.
Voigt has now amassed about 12,000 menus and stores them in his home in Delaware. His wife doesn’t partake in his collecting. “I’m very interested in history, food, and wine,” he said. “And everyday life. It wasn’t an expensive hobby like owning a sailboat. It was an ignored field. It wasn’t like collecting art, where you needed to be a multi-billionaire to go to an auction and buy one thing. This was something that I could do.”
It’s not surprising that Voigt isn’t thrilled with today’s QR code dining culture, but he’s not trapped in the past. “I don’t pine for the old days when I look at the menus,” he said. “The old days are not as great as we think they were. Life is better now than it was then. Certainly for more people.”

Voigt will conduct an in-person tour of the exhibition on May 18 at 1 p.m. The Groiler Club is located at 47 East 60th Street, New York, NY 10022, (212) 838-6690.

Steinberg’s Dairy Restaurant (New York City, 1938) opened in 1931, one of several dairy restaurants on the Upper West Side. Its streamlined Art Déco interior was reproduced on the cover of this menu that offered Eastern European Kosher foods including salmon, borscht, vegetarian (mock) chopped liver, chopped herring, cabbage soup, and potato latkes. Courtesy of the Henry Voigt Collection of American Menus.

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Mike Nelson, who has exhibited in many top museums and biennials around the world for decades, is known for eye-opening presentations that immerse audiences into his strange visual universe. For “Extinction Beckons” at Hayward Gallery, on view until May 7, the British artist has brought his epically-scaled installations to London, in what has been billed as the artist’s first major survey exhibition.
The landmark show does not disappoint; from a gigantic maze of nearly two dozen interconnected rooms and corridors to a monumental installation made with 40 tonnes of sand, the show’s curatorial team and installation crew have completely reconfigured and transformed the gallery’s exhibition spaces in order to bring the artist’s unique vision to life. It took more than 30 builders and technicians over a month to install the show, which has been described by the museum as one of the most technically demanding exhibitions it has ever staged.
Alongside new commissions are many key works, some on view for the first time since they were originally exhibited. The Deliverance and The Patience (2001), a mesmerizing maze that was originally commissioned for a Venice Biennale 2001 collateral event staged at a former brewery building on Giudecca is on view, as is the enormous installation Triple Bluff Canyon (the woodshed) (2004), which is recreated with sand sourced from a river in Bedfordshire. Next to this surreal sand dune is a secret passage into I, Imposter (the darkroom), a meticulous recreation of the 2011 Venice Biennale installation that was drawn from his earlier installation in Istanbul Biennial 2003; also on view from the 2011 British pavilion is the dark red room of I, Imposter (2011).
There are many cultural and political references to be unpacked at “Extinction Beckons,” which is like a conceptual, time-traveling puzzle. While it may not be the most comforting exhibition on view, it is definitely a highlight in London so far this year.
See exhibition views of “Extinction Beckons” at Hayward Gallery below.
Installation view of Mike Nelson, I, IMPOSTOR, 2011. Various materials. Photo: Matt Greenwood. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
Installation view of Mike Nelson, The Deliverance and The Patience, interior, 2001. Various materials. Various materials. Photo: Liam Harrison. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
Installation view of Mike Nelson, The Deliverance and The Patience, interior, 2001. Various materials. Various materials. Photo: Liam Harrison. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
Installation view of Mike Nelson, The Deliverance and The Patience, interior, 2001. Various materials. Various materials. Photo: Liam Harrison. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
Installation view of Mike Nelson, Triple Bluff Canyon (the woodshed), 2004. Various materials. M25, 2023. Found tyres. Photo: Matt Greenwood. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
Installation view of Mike Nelson, I, IMPOSTOR (the darkroom), 2011. Various materials. Photo: Matt Greenwood. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
Installation view of Mike Nelson, The Asset Strippers (solstice), 2019. Hay rake, steel trestles, steel girders, sheet of steel, cast concrete slabs. Photo: Matt Greenwood. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
Installation view of Mike Nelson, Studio Apparatus for Kunsthalle Münster – A Thematic Instalment Observing the Calendrical Celebration of its Inception: Introduction; towards a linear understanding of notoriety, power, and their interconnectedness; futurobjecs (misspelt); mysterious island* *see introduction or Barothic shift, 2014. Various materials. Triple Bluff Canyon (the projection room), 2004. Various materials.Photo: Matt Greenwood. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
Installation view of Mike Nelson, Studio Apparatus for Kunsthalle Münster – A Thematic Instalment Observing the Calendrical Celebration of its Inception: Introduction; towards a linear understanding of notoriety, power, and their interconnectedness; futurobjecs (misspelt); mysterious island* *see introduction or Barothic shift, 2014. Various materials. Photo: Matt Greenwood. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
Installation view of Mike Nelson, Studio Apparatus for Kunsthalle Münster – A Thematic Instalment Observing the Calendrical Celebration of its Inception: Introduction; towards a linear understanding of notoriety, power, and their interconnectedness; futurobjecs (misspelt); mysterious island* *see introduction or Barothic shift, 2014. Various materials. Photo: Matt Greenwood. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
Installation view of Mike Nelson, Studio Apparatus for Kunsthalle Münster – A Thematic Instalment Observing the Calendrical Celebration of its Inception: Introduction; towards a linear understanding of notoriety, power, and their interconnectedness; futurobjecs (misspelt); mysterious island* *see introduction or Barothic shift, 2014. Various materials. Photo: Matt Greenwood. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
Installation view of Mike Nelson, Triple Bluff Canyon (the projection room), 2004. Various materials. Photo: Matt Greenwood. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.
Installation view of Mike Nelson, The Amnesiacs, 1996-ongoing. Various materials. Photo: Matt Greenwood. Courtesy the artist and the Hayward Gallery.

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By 1986, Keith Haring was at the peak of his powers. But when tasked with creating an exhibition for Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, Haring refused to remount old works, or even to lean on the celebrated visual motifs—the barking dogs, the glowing babies—with which his name had become synonymous. The New York artist wanted to create something completely new.
One of the results was Amsterdam Notes, a 125-foot black ink drawing that stands as one of the largest pieces Haring made for a museum. Nearly three decades on, Stedelijk is restaging the giant paperwork in its IMC Gallery, its so-called hall of honor, alongside two other works from the museum’s collection from May 26.
Keith Haring, Amsterdam Notes (1986). Photo: Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Keith Haring, Amsterdam Notes (1986). Photo: Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Keith Haring, Amsterdam Notes (1986). Photo: Collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
“For art lovers, Amsterdam Notes is a contemporary Bayeux tapestry, and a holy grail for Haring fans. Since works on paper are fragile, they cannot be exhibited for long,” the museum’s director Rein Wolfs said. “Moments such as this are unique, and happen rarely. But, this summer, the door to the Stedelijk’s treasury is ajar.”
Amsterdam Notes captures many of the socio-political themes around which Haring’s art so-often centered. There’s the oppressive power of religion in crucifixes set alight, and sexual liberation in gleefully exposed vulva and a pair of men clutching each other’s phalluses.
But unlike many of Haring’s smaller works, Amsterdam Notes is not easily reduced to simple messages or stories and seems concerned with the act of looking itself, as offered in many-eyed heads, an imploding television, and a ghoulish mirror reflection. It’s a spatial composition, one that is also charmingly bizarre, filled with monsters, walking brains, errant limbs, and a fish, which Stedelijk speculates is a playful nod to Haring’s name, which means herring in Dutch.
Mural (1986) by Keith Haring on the Food Center Amsterdam. Photo: Hanna Hachula, © Keith Haring Foundation.
As part of the 1986 Amsterdam exhibition, Haring also spray painted a 40-by-66-foot velum for the show’s floor as well as a giant sea monster on the museum’s former art storage depot, which is the largest Haring made in Europe. It was revealed and restored in 2018 after being concealed behind aluminum plates for nearly 30 years.
“Amsterdam Notes” is on view at the Stedelijk Museum, Museumplein 10, 1071 DJ Amsterdam, Netherlands, from May 26.
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It must have taken many hands to rush the Bolognese Mannerist artist Lavinia Fontana’s most ambitious extant painting, a nearly 10-foot-long canvas from 1599, out of a burning building during the French Revolution. Smaller artworks would have been easier to salvage from the Palais Royale when revolutionaries torched it during the days of the Paris Commune, but still, someone thought to rescue Fontana’s The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon. When it entered the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland the next year it was murky and darkened by smoke. And there it has remained for over 150 years, almost always displayed but never fully restored. Until now.
The National Gallery of Ireland has comprehensively conserved the work over the past few years, generating new insights into the practice and patrons of the painter, who was the rare Renaissance female artist to command prices equal to those of her male peers. At the base of an ornate clock held by one of the queen’s attendants in this Biblical story—which, in true Fontana fashion, is dominated by a female cast of exquisitely dressed characters—an inscription reads 1599 (a date previously unknown). And new theories have surfaced about possible real-life models for Solomon and Sheba, maybe the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara.
These discoveries, and others, have spurred the museum to organize a solo exhibition of more than 60 paintings and drawings, “Lavinia Fontana: Trailblazer, Rule Breaker,” opening May 6. It is the artist’s first major solo presentation in over 20 years.
Lavinia Fontana, The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon (1599). Image: National Gallery of Ireland.
Fontana is known mostly for her impressive life story. She was the first professional woman artist in Italy working outside a convent or court system, and fully supported her husband and children with her work (which included commissions from nobility and popes). She was also the first known woman painter to depict female nudes.
Less is known about the technical side of her work.
“We tend to be, as scholars, preoccupied by women’s biographies, which of course are fascinating when we consider the contexts in which they were working in 16th- and 17th-century Italy,” said Aoife Brady, the National Gallery of Ireland’s curator of Italian and Spanish art. “But sometimes that preoccupation comes at the expense of close looking at their artworks and defining exactly what it is that makes a Lavinia Fontana.”
Preparing around half of the artist’s oeuvre to be exhibited in the show has produced new technical data, better equipping scholars to make firm attributions to Fontana.
There isn’t a firm consensus about how many artworks Fontana produced, but around 130 extant paintings are attributable to her. Given the wave of interest in the artist over the past few years, more people are eager to pin paintings to Fontana and her attributions are “a moveable feast at the moment,” according to Brady. “We’re seeing this massive reassessment of her oeuvre.”
Lavinia Fontana, Minerva Dressing (1613). Courtesy of Galleria Borghese. Photo: Mauro Coen.
This comes as Fontana has recently featured in major group exhibitions at the Prado, the Wadsworth Atheneum, Detroit Institute of Arts, and Milan’s Palazzo Reale. Several Fontana works entered museum collections within the past year: The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. acquired Fontana’s portrait of musician Lucia Bonasoni Garzoni, for example, and the National Gallery of Victoria acquired the Mystic Marriage of St Catherine. The Getty acquired two Fontana works separately—a small painting on copper and the preparatory drawing made for it.
This swell of interest may seem sudden, but according to Babette Bohn, an art history professor at Texas Christian University and author of Women Artists, Their Patrons, and Their Publics in Early Modern Bologna, attention has come and gone for the Bolognese painter. “From my vantage point she’s always been famous,” Bohn said. “She received more biographies by early modern writers in Italy than any other woman artist during the 16th century.”
Thanks to these biographies, we know that she was born to a successful artist, Prospero Fontana, who was prominent in Bolognese society and trained her in his workshop. The future artist was born into the right family, and in the ideal location.
“Bologna as a city was a very special place, and that provided the perfect Petri dish for Fontana and her career,” explained Brady. Home to Europe’s oldest university, during Fontana’s lifetime it was ruled by an archbishop with liberal attitudes about both artists and women.
Lavinia Fontana, The Wedding Feast at Cana (c.1575-80). Courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
Bologna was one major factor, but Fontana also had a supportive family. This wasn’t a coincidence, since her father proactively found her a spouse who would support her career (and help her negotiate with clients, something decorum prevented 16th-century women from doing). She married Gian Paolo Zappi, a man with good social standing and little earning potential, and their unusual marriage contract (to be exhibited at “Lavinia Fontana: Trailblazer, Rule Breaker”) stipulated that he’d support her in pursuing a professional career.
Before their marriage was cinched, Fontana painted Self Portrait at the Spinet (1577) and sent it to Zappi’s family as a testament of her skill. This visual proof of her breadwinning abilities proved true. One of her 17th-century biographers, Carlo Cesare Malvasia, pointed out that Fontana’s fees were equal to those of Anthony Van Dyck and Justus Sustermans.
What those male contemporaries didn’t have to contend with, though, was the challenge of working while pregnant and postpartum. Fontana gave birth 11 times between 1578 and 1595, meaning she was pregnant or post-childbirth for a major part of her professional life. Most of her work during her childbearing years (and she sometimes had to return to work sooner than was medically recommended, because she was her family’s earner) was of small- or medium-scale work—more suitable for postpartum recovery. On the other hand, some of her largest works date to the late 1590s when she was no longer having children.
The smaller scale works that were Fontana’s bread and butter were her portraits of important Bolognese figures, at first men and then by the 1580s the noblewomen of the city. She painted more portraits of women than either her predecessors or successors, focusing on their strength of character and detailed rendering of their clothing and jewelry, bringing a distinctly female perspective to female subjects.
Lavinia Fontana, Venus and Cupid (1592). © Réunion des Musées Métropolitains Rouen Normandie, Musée des Beaux-Arts.
“All the ladies of the city flocked in want of her,” wrote Malvasia, “considering themselves lucky to see her in the streets, or to have meetings in the company of the virtuous young woman; there was nothing greater that they desired than to be portrayed by her.”
Fontana’s portraits of women highlight one of her most distinctive qualities—her painstakingly accurate depictions of textiles and jewelry. Written contracts survive between Fontana and her clients showing that the artist sometimes borrowed her sitters’ jewelry, to paint it as accurately as possible when sittings were no longer necessary.
This attention to detail extended to garments, too. “She has this great understanding of paint and can use it like a weaver uses thread,” said Brady. “Just by manipulating lead white pigment and using it almost like thread, she applies paint in a way that’s very intuitive and almost craftsman-like.”
In the late 1590s Fontana moved to Rome, where she was a portraitist for Pope Paul V. Also around this time she painted Vision of Saint Hyacinth (1599), the first altarpiece by a woman to be publicly displayed in Rome, and the ambitious Queen of Sheba canvas that was later rescued from a burning Palais Royale.
As scholars and audiences look closer now at Fontana’s life-sized Queen of Sheba, freshly cleaned from the smokey veil that hid the subtleties of her features all these years, a greater understanding of Fontana also comes into focus.
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As collectors and curators ritualistically shuffled around Berlin, donning Moncler jackets during this unseasonably cold week in April, the mood of the annual Gallery Weekend Berlin felt, in any case, bright.
Spring is certainly here, and, in terms of the Berlin art world, it felt in some ways like the first real spring in years: after several seasons of largely locally attended editions due to the pandemic, Gallery Weekend now, is officially back on its feet. As such, many out-of-towners were spotted perusing the city’s 50 participant galleries, including collector Uli Sigg, Folakunle Oshun from the Lagos Biennial, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea’s Marcella Beccaria, and Hiuwai Chu from MACBA, as well as Cusson Cheng, Para-site Hong Kong.
In the time between normal editions of the art event, Berlin has evolved, too. A new social energy pulses as four of its major institutions welcome new directors. This week, Klaus Biesenbach was touring the preview on April 27, affectionately documenting artists and dealers on his Instagram at various participating galleries. At Gropius Bau, Performance Space’s Jenny Schlenzka will be arriving this summer to take over the reigns from Stephanie Rosenthal; at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is preparing for his official program unveiling in early June. Tomorrow, April 29, at the Hamburger Bahnhof, new directors Sam Bardaouil und Till Fellrath will host the annual Gallery Weekend dinner, attended by the nearly 50 participating galleries and scores of their invited VIPs.
The apparent influx has radiated back on the galleries, which have been perhaps Berlin’s most consistently strong suit over the years. Artnet News tied together a loose grouping three core themes that are worth exploring at this year’s Gallery Weekend Berlin, which opens today, April 28.

The Post-Internet Art Scene’s Eternal Returns
Timur Si-Qin, Untitled (2023) (sculpture) and Untitled (natural origin, 1) (2023) (wall work). Courtesy the artist and Société, Berlin.
One could argue if it really went anywhere at all, but, at least in Berlin—an incubator of the post-Internet art aesthetic that peaked during the 2016 DIS-curated Berlin Biennale—there was a small but noted hiatus. In due course, many of the artists associated with the scene have had celebratory comebacks; last fall, during the annual Berlin Art Week in September, Jon Rafman opened a pair of major exhibitions at Sprüth Magers and the art institution Schinkel Pavilion; at Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, video artist Ed Atkins returned to town as well. Given the city’s own history with the the aesthetics and discourse, artists working at this cusp of technology find an engaged and well-versed audience. For Berlin Gallery Weekend this year, the welcome home party continues with artists who intersect with that cohort.
At Société, New York-based artist Timur Si-Qin (who presented at the 2016 Berlin Biennale) has transformed the gallery into a darkened and serene semblance of a greenhouse using technologically-embedded nature, culled from memories and field notes of physical locations the artist has visited. He folds these disparate geographic sites together here into one all-encompassing environment for his exhibition “Natural Origin.” At Galerie Neu, through a new array of cozy sculptures, Olso-based Ynge Holen explores the contentious 5G networks which have already deeply infiltrated society and the landscape. Across town at Wentrup, German artist Britta Thie brings together a series of paintings depicting the backdrops behind the camera of the cinema industry, including solemn and sentimental portraits of the mechanical hardware—lighting, cameras, and other gear—that quietly drive, document, and populate film sets. More

For children growing up in the New York City metro area over the last three decades, New Jersey’s Liberty Science Center looms large in the imagination as a place of endless experiments and creativity. Now, the interactive science museum and learning center is also becoming a hub for contemporary art, thanks to a new “Big Art” initiative that launched at the start of this month with two installations by artists Dustin Yellin and Leandro Erlich.
“When I was a kid, you sort of had to wear a badge that either said you were an art person or a science person, but I always thought that there was a false dichotomy,” Liberty Science Center president and CEO Paul Hoffman told Artnet News. “Both art and science get at big questions that are at the core of the human experience. Artists and scientists both take risks. The creativity involved is very similar.”
The large-scale art installations are part of a wider overhaul at the center in celebration of its 30th anniversary, which includes a new 30-acre campus. While the majority of the installations planned won’t be ready until 2025, in the meantime, Erlich agreed to kick off “Big Art” early with an ambitious artwork called The Building.
Leandro Erlich’s The Building at Liberty Science Center, Jersey City. Photo by BFA.
The site-specific work, part of the Argentine conceptual artist’s renowned “Bâtiment” series, and the first one shown in the U.S., is an optical illusion that recreates the facade of a New York City apartment building in one-to-one scale—but it lies flat on the floor, reflected into a mirror angled above so that it appears that visitors interacting with the piece are literally scaling the walls or hanging precariously from the fire escapes.
Less monumental but equally stunning is Yellin’s sculpture The Politics of Eternity, a Boschian tableau made from 10,000 pounds of layers of glass laminating tens of thousands of paper cutouts and painted details. (There’s even, hidden somewhere in there, a tiny image of the Mona Lisa and a Where’s Waldo, which Yellin is confident will elude all but the most persistent searchers.)
“Leandro takes quotidian everyday objects and gets you to look at them in a different way,” Hoffman said. “Dustin’s piece is more phantasmagorical.”
Dustin Yellin with his piece The Politics of Eternity at Liberty Science Center, Jersey City. Photo by BFA.
In Yellin’s work, there are animal-headed figures surrounding an ancient totem on one side, and jetpack-powered astronauts building a technologically advanced society on the other, both burrowing into underground warrens, diving deep into the aquatic depths, and soaring toward the sun. Together, they tell an elaborate, seven-part story about civilization—past, present, and future.
“I’m really thrilled to present this work here,” Yellin said. “These kind of projects where we are able to collaborate and create things beyond the boundaries and specifications of our practice will lead us to something to new.… We can come up great new ideas that potentially help us with the challenges that we have ahead.”
The artist and a team of four assistants spent 20,000 hours making the piece over five years. This is the first time it’s been out of Yellin’s studio. (He hopes it will continue to travel to other institutions.)
Dustin Yellin, The Politics of Eternity (detail). Photo courtesy of Liberty Science Center, Jersey City.

“I think any institution that is creating a crossover of interdisciplinary things is building something unexpected,” Erlich said of the new initiative. Hoffman, who is effectively the institution’s curator, plans to stage two exhibitions a year, and is open to suggestions.
“We’re trying to make a statement with the art world that we’re open [and that] there are things that you can do in our space that you can’t necessarily do in a gallery,” he said. “I want stuff that can speak across ages, across cultures, across economic background.”
“The Building” and “The Politics of Eternity” are on view at Liberty Science Center, Liberty State Park, 222 Jersey City Boulevard, Jersey City, New Jersey.

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