Indonesian artist Dian Suci wins 2026 Max Mara Art Prize for Women. https://ift.tt/s2hWqdy

Indonesian multimedia artist Dian Suci has been named the winner of the 10th edition of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women. The news was announced by the prize’s curator and jury chair, Cecilia Alemani and others today in Venice at a celebration held at the Serra dei Giardini. Suci was selected from a shortlist of five finalists that included Betty Adii, Dzikra Afifah, Ipeh Nur, and Mira Rizki. She was chosen by a jury organized and chaired by Alemani and made up of Museum MACAN director, Venus Lau; Jakarta-based curator, Amanda Ariawan; gallerist Megan Arlin of Sullivan+Strumpf, Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo, and collector Evelyn Halim.

The award, which honors emerging and mid-career female artists at an inflection point in their careers, will provide Suci with a six-month traveling residency in Italy to embark on an ambitious new project. The resulting piece will be presented in a solo show at Museum MACAN in Jakarta in summer 2027, before being presented again that fall at the Collezione Maramotti in Italy, which will acquire the work.

Yogyakarta-based Suci works across painting, sculpture, installation, and video. Drawing upon her experience as a single mother, she makes art that addresses the oppressive forces of patriarchy, capitalism, authoritarianism, and fascism that women face. The project for which she was selected, Crafting Spirit: Cultural Dialogues in Heritage and Practice, examines the tension between commerce and spirituality inherent in mass-produced devotional objects, comparing practices across Italy and Indonesia. Her research will take her to Assisi in Umbria to study the lifestyle of monks; to Rome, for a special Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica; to a papier-mâché training program in Lecce, Puglia; and finally to Florence, Tuscany, to learn the art of egg tempera and ancient hand-weaving.

“I am deeply honored to be selected as the recipient of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women. My proposal, Crafting Spirit: Cultural Dialogues in Heritage and Practice, emerges from stories of the body and memory within the lives and gestures of women artisans, whose work often exists between devotion and survival,” said the artist in a press statement. “I receive this opportunity with gratitude and a commitment to listen, to learn, and to translate these encounters into forms that honor the intimacy of human labor and the depth of cultural continuity.”

This is the 10th cycle of the prize, which will run through 2027. With this edition, the event has transitioned to a traveling event, whereas previous editions were organized in collaboration with Whitechapel Gallery in London and centered on U.K.-based women artists. Previous prize winners include Dominique White, Emma Talbot, and Helen Cammock.

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The 10 Best National Pavilions at the 2026 Venice Biennale https://ift.tt/MN2oxPp

The Venice Biennale, contemporary art’s most closely watched international showcase, has opened its 61st edition, with more than 80 countries staging their own national pavilions across the city.

“In Minor Keys,” the theme of the Biennale, envisioned by the late curator Koyo Kouoh, is felt across the city as artists and curators ask visitors to slow down and pay attention—to their surroundings, and to a great deal of art.

And while controversy and loss have characterized the run-up to the Biennale’s opening, that spirit of careful contemplation registers across the national pavilions, from major presentations in the Giardini to an audio experience in a monastic garden next to the train station.

Here, we share the 10 standout national pavilions at the 2026 Venice Biennale.

The Bahamian pavilion

Artists: John Beadle and Lavar Munroe

Curated by: Dr. Krista Thompson

Venue: San Trovaso Art Space, Dorsoduro

The late artist John Beadle has long deserved a Venice moment. The Bahamian artist was originally slated to represent his country at the Biennale in 2015, but that presentation never came to be. After his death last year, The Bahamas’s arts community rallied to give his work the international platform it had long warranted. Largely privately funded by the country’s creative community, “In Another Man’s Yard” is itself an act of communal love—and one of the Biennale’s most affecting national pavilions.

Curated by Dr. Krista Thompson, the exhibition places Beadle in dialogue with fellow Bahamian artist Lavar Munroe, who is based in Baltimore. The two artists are connected by Junkanoo, The Bahamas’s centuries-old processional festival, whose traditions of costume-making, performance, and collective labor shaped Beadle’s practice both conceptually and materially.

That ethos carries through the works’ materials—cardboard, salvaged objects, remnants of Junkanoo costumes, and sailcloth—which tell stories of migration, labor, and survival. Beadle’s recurring forms, including mobile houses and oars, point to lives often pushed to the margins.

The exhibition’s emotional core is a sculptural installation that channels Junkanoo’s “rush out,” a procession honoring the deceased. Though the project began taking shape only last September, Munroe created the installation on-site in Venice in just a month, with extensive community support. Conceived as a posthumous collaboration with Beadle, it incorporates salvaged Junkanoo costumes and materials from Beadle’s studio, including tiny cardboard bird sculptures.

Upstairs, Munroe’s monumental 11-panel painting deepens the tribute, imagining a Junkanoo procession for Beadle. Together, the works feel less like a memorial than a collective act of remembrance and legacy- building—created, as the organizers noted, by thousands of hands.

—Casey Lesser

The Austrian Pavilion

Artist: Florentina Holzinger

Curated by: Nora-Swantje Almes

Venue: Austrian Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale

Austrian choreographer and theater-maker Florentina Holzinger is insistent that her performance-turned-installation is not a spectacle. This might be hard to believe given the shock value of confronting things we generally try to avoid—our own waste, nudity, bodily discomfort—but once the initial provocation wears off, the implications of system failure (ecological, civic, even the Biennale itself, now without a jury) begin to sink in.

“SEAWORLD VENICE” turns the Austrian Pavilion into a closed-loop system powered by the bodily waste of the audience. In the central courtyard, visitors are encouraged to use one of two portable toilets that feed a filtration system connected to an aquarium-like tank inhabited by a live performer wearing nothing but a scuba mask. Like a siren or a mascot, the performer watches the chaos unfolding in the adjacent engine room, where pavilion attendants attempt to contain murky brown water spewing from valves and tubes. “It’s flooding,” one calls out as another scoops buckets in what increasingly feels like a futile attempt.

The pavilion’s energies are calibrated. A massive weathervane spins slowly, performers suspended from rigging and harnesses. Traditionally used to signal shifting winds and impending floods, the weathervane becomes both a symbol of hope and a warning system. Turn around, and a jet ski circles through the flooded interior—a nod to tourism-fueled ecological catastrophe.

The project opened on the Venetian lagoon with Holzinger herself suspended as the clapper of a recovered bell hoisted from the canal by crane, striking violently against its sides above the water. Those familiar with the artist’s body-horror performances had the chance to wince as another performer hung beneath Holzinger by hooks piercing the skin of her shoulders. The bell now sits outside the pavilion, where, every hour for the next seven months, a performer’s body tolls it in the same suspended fashion. If Venice has long aestheticized its own fragility, Holzinger forces visitors to sit inside the infrastructure of collapse itself.

—Jameson Johnson

The Holy See pavilion

Artists: Alexander Kluge, Benedictine Nuns of the Abbey of St. Hildegard Eibingen, Bhanu Kapil, Brian Eno, Carminho, Caterina Barbieri, Devonté Hynes, FKA Twigs, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst, Ilda David, Jim Jarmusch, Kali Malone, Kazu Makino, Laraaji, Meredith Monk, Moor Mother, Otobong Nkanga, Patti Smith, Precious Okoyomon, Raúl Zurita, Soundwalk Collective, Suzanne Ciani, Tatiana Bilbao – MAIO Architects – DOGMA, and Terry Riley

Curated by: Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers

Venue: The Mystical Garden of the Discalced Carmelites, Cannaregio and Santa Maria Ausiliatrice Complex, Castello

At the Mystical Garden of the Discalced Carmelites, a hidden monastic garden near the train station in Cannaregio, visitors to the Holy See pavilion put on headphones before setting out on a path through lush greenery. Almost immediately, celestial music fills the ears. The opening work, by Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst, is warm and all-consuming, setting the tone for an exhibition that is less about looking and more about physically and spiritually absorbing the work.

Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers, the pavilion centers on Saint Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th-century abbess and mystic whose many talents included major contributions to musical composition. “Fundamental to her theology was the union of heaven and earth through song,” Vickers told Artsy. Hildegard understood “sound and song and music” as “the truest act of prayer.”

That idea comes alive as you move through the garden, listening to new commissions by artists including Brian Eno, FKA twigs, Meredith Monk, and Patti Smith. The musical group Soundwalk Collective helped shape the pavilion’s ambitious audio experience, weaving the works into a seamless journey. As you drift from one part of the garden to the next, and from one sound piece to the next, it becomes difficult to tell where the art and reality begin and end. FKA twigs’s piece surrounds you with the anxious buzz of bees; Patti Smith’s voice arrives whispering in the ears. The effect is enveloping, occasionally eerie, and—cliché as it may sound—heavenly.

The setting deepens the experience. Vickers noted that the garden already carried “this incredible contemplative context”: it is overseen by a Carmelite order and organized around Saint Teresa of Ávila’s seven “mansions” of the soul. Soundwalk Collective extends that spiritual architecture through a site-specific instrument—an antenna that tracks plant life, bioelectricity, and atmospheric shifts. Vickers described it as “almost like a technological sensing” that brings to life Hildegard’s idea of viriditas, the greening force of nature.

—C.L.

The Saudi Arabian pavilion

Artist: Dana Awartani

Curated by: Antonia Carver

Venue: Campo della Tana, Arsenale

Dana Awartani transforms the Saudi Arabian pavilion into an imagined archaeological site of fragile clay mosaics that crack slowly under the pressure of time and movement. Curated by Antonia Carver, “May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones” draws on the geometries and material histories of destroyed hammams and mosque floors across the Arab world while nodding to Venice’s own history of mosaic and craft traditions. The installation invites visitors to move through intricate geometric, floral, and faunal floor patterns that reference sites across Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine damaged or destroyed by war and violence in recent years.

Awartani—who is of Palestinian and Syrian heritage, holds Jordanian nationality, and was born and raised in Saudi Arabia—has long worked through questions of craft, preservation, and inherited forms of making. Here, those concerns extend beyond the imagery itself into the labor required to produce the work. Created over 30,000 hours in collaboration with 32 Saudi-based artisans, the installation comprises more than 29,000 handmade clay bricks.

Rather than asking viewers to tower over the work as they might at an archaeological site, Awartani raises the installation just enough that visitors move alongside it, shifting the relationship between audience and artifact away from detached observation. The pavilion is visually arresting in scale and detail, but it refuses to become a purely aesthetic encounter—each crack and fissure pulls visitors back toward the histories of violence and loss embedded in the sites it references.

—J.J.

The Moroccan pavilion

Artist: Amina Agueznay

Curated by: Meriem Berrada

Venue: Arsenale, Artiglierie

Traditional Moroccan carpets are revered worldwide—and the techniques behind them are increasingly finding a place in contemporary art. For Morocco’s first national pavilion at the Arsenale, artist Amina Agueznay foregrounds that legacy through her sweeping installation Asǝṭṭa (2026)—the title is an Amazigh term for ritual weaving.

he pavilion brings together the work of 166 Moroccan artisans from across the country who collectively completed the ambitious project in six months. The result reflects deep expertise in weaving, embroidery, basketry, jewelry-making, and other specialized techniques.

Agueznay approaches weaving not merely as decoration or function, but as a communal space where ideas, histories, and forms of creativity intermingle. Woven panels wrap around the room and drape from the ceiling like tapestries or suspended sculptures, blending the earthy palette and geometric patterns of Morocco with details that nod to Venice: shimmering sequins that evoke reflections on water, abstract forms suggesting the city’s map, and Murano glass pieces that reference historic trade routes.

Personal symbols run through the installation, as well, including protective “eye” motifs that pay homage to Agueznay’s mother, the Moroccan artist Malika Agueznay. There is even a bed of snow-white wool where tired visitors can rest. The result celebrates Morocco’s stunning textile traditions while also revealing how such rituals shift and build over time—how even the most ancestral art forms evolve through collaboration and experimentation.

—C.L.

The Belgian pavilion

Artist: Miet Warlop

Curated by: Caroline Dumalin

Venue: Belgian Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale

Miet Warlop turns the Belgian pavilion into something between a locker room, an arena, and an active construction site. “IT NEVER SSST” marks the first time Belgium has centered performance in its pavilion at the Venice Biennale, unfolding continuously over the run of the exhibition as performers in black jerseys move through waves of music, sweat, noise, and destruction.

A bleacher-like wooden armature lines the space, numbered towels hang from hooks, and instruments cling to the walls as if the entire pavilion were waiting to be played.

Throughout the installation, plaster tiles bearing fragmented greetings, commands, and utterances in multiple languages—“hello,” “salam,” “stop,” “why,” “ha”—move from hand to hand as both language and sound. Some read as attempts at communication, while others function more like rhythm. Tiles bearing “SSST” (the equivalent of “shhh”) are gradually replaced by words and utterances in the performers’ own languages. Nearby, workers continuously pour plaster into silicone molds only for the newly formed objects to be smashed apart during performances.

The pavilion borrows heavily from the visual language of sport, but it feels less about competition than repetition and endurance. The performances drift closer to ritual and to children’s games: hand-clapping sequences performed with plaster hands, a giant parachute wave, spinning, dancing, stomping. Elsewhere, newly produced relief sculptures made by students from the nearby Accademia di Belle Arti depict performers mid-action, monumentalizing fleeting athletic gestures inside a system that never fully stops.

—J.J.

The Argentinian pavilion

Artist: Matías Duville

Curated by: Josefina Barcia

Venue: Arsenale

Upon arriving at the Argentine pavilion, visitors are told to stay on the white paths. Inside, that instruction immediately makes sense: The entryway opens into a dark, almost cinematic environment where a field of snow-white salt undulates across the floor, marked with drawings in black charcoal. This is Monitor Yin Yang (2026), a site-specific installation by the Buenos Aires–based artist Matías Duville, curated by Josefina Barcia.

Duville has long worked with drawing, but here he pushes it off the page and into an environment visitors can physically enter. The yin-yang of the title goes deeper than the use of black and white; it’s felt in the tensions running through the space—the bright salt against the black charcoal, the invitation to wander versus the instruction to keep to a path, the soft, impressionable surface against the weight of bodies moving across it.

The work is a landscape of sorts, its marks suggesting topographies and plant life, though it could also be read as one giant abstract composition. A sound piece created from environmental data gathered in Venice deepens that sense of disorientation. Duville draws us in, but also keeps us slightly off balance, asking us to move with attention and care.

—C.L.

The Indian Pavilion

Artists: Alwar Balasubramaniam, Ranjani Shettar, Sumakshi Singh, Skarma Sonam Tashi, and Asim Waqif

Curated by: Amin Jaffer

Venue: Isolotto, Arsenale

Curated by Amin Jaffer, “Geographies of Distance: remembering home” is India’s first Venice pavilion in seven years. It brings together five artists representing India’s geographic diversity, with installations using materials deeply rooted in the country’s craft traditions, including clay, thread, bamboo, and papier-mâché.

Though the works occasionally veer in different formal directions, they settle into a shared atmosphere shaped by scale and material precision.

The standout installation belongs to Sumakshi Singh, whose life-sized reconstruction of her demolished family home in New Delhi stretches through the back of the pavilion in suspended embroidered thread. Visitors move through and around walls, doorways, staircases, and even individual bricks that the artist measured by hand before the home was torn down. The structure of a home becomes something ghostly and delicate. Singh recently received a Special Mention at the 2025 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize for Monument, a thread-based recreation of a historic column from Delhi’s Qutb Minar complex.

Nearby, Asim Waqif’s sprawling bamboo scaffolding installation cuts through the pavilion like a structure permanently caught mid-construction—or evolving out of itself. The bamboo was brought in raw and assembled on-site. Several exhibitions in the Biennale are using fragrance as a material, but this pavilion produces its own: sweet bamboo, clay, and dust linger in the air—surely the familiar smells of someone’s home.

—J.J.

The Japanese pavilion

Artist: Ei Arakawa-Nash

Curated by: HORIKAWA Lisa and TAKAHASHI Mizuki

Venue: Giardini

At the Japanese pavilion, visitors can temporarily adopt a baby—a baby doll, that is. Each one wears tiny sunglasses and has the weight of a four-month-old infant. Grass Babies, Moon Babies (2026) is by Japanese American performance artist Ei Arakawa-Nash, who was inspired in part by their recent experience becoming a parent to twins.

There are 208 dolls in all: some sit on tables waiting to be picked up; others lounge in the greenery around the pavilion, dangle from armatures, or sit facing a film by the artist. Visitors are invited to carry them through the space and, at the end, change their diapers and scan a QR code to receive a short poem corresponding to each doll’s assigned birthday.

The premise is wonderfully strange, and the pavilion is undeniably humorous—but the humor doesn’t flatten the experience. Holding one of these weighted bodies in public quickly shifts from silly to alert, even vulnerable, especially as the dolls’ reflective sunglasses mirror the caregiver back to themselves. The work makes you acutely aware of your own gestures, how you hold the baby, and how you see yourself in this act of public caregiving. Arakawa-Nash turns the pavilion into a playful, wonderfully chaotic reflection on care—from the awkward and performative to the unexpectedly moving.

—C.L.

The German pavilion

Artists: Sung Tieu and Henrike Naumann

Curated by: Kathleen Reinhardt

Venue: German Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale

No national pavilion weaponizes institutional self-consciousness quite like Germany’s. Curated by Kathleen Reinhardt, “Ruin” continues a decades-long tradition of artists turning the pavilion’s Nazi-era architecture into both subject and antagonist—a lineage that includes Hans Haacke’s 1993 destruction of the marble floor in Germania and Maria Eichhorn’s 2022 excavation of the building’s foundations.

This year, Sung Tieu and Henrike Naumann eschew destruction for accumulation. The pavilion becomes a dense tableau of charged symbols and competing narratives in which East German history, migration, militarization, and bureaucracy surface through the aesthetics and objects of daily life.

Tieu wraps the pavilion’s façade in a 1:1 trompe l’œil mosaic reconstruction of the East Berlin housing complex where she grew up—once one of the largest dormitory sites for Vietnamese contract workers in the GDR and now in the process of being torn down. Built from more than 3 million marble tesserae, the façade overlays the visual language of socialist housing onto the pavilion’s fascist architecture through the Venetian tradition of mosaic. Inside, her minimalist steel and aluminum sculptures gesture at the bureaucratic systems that governed those same Vietnamese workers in East Germany—many of whom were left without work or legal certainty after reunification.

Naumann’s The Home Front (2026) transforms the central hall into an East German interior pushed to the point of ideological overload. Mint-green walls reference former Soviet barracks while tacky curtains line the pavilion’s towering windows. Chairs sliced in half are mounted to the walls or tucked beneath crown molding, forming a domestic frieze around the hall.

Furniture, locks, weapons, and decorative objects flatten into relief-like, almost hieroglyphic forms.

Naumann, who died suddenly in February after finalizing plans for the installation, spent much of her practice examining the unresolved aftereffects of reunification and the ways ideology survives through taste, décor, and the home itself. The exhibition keeps returning to the idea that history settles into ordinary objects long after political transitions are declared complete.

—J.J.

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National Portrait Gallery to stage landmark Marilyn Monroe exhibition. https://ift.tt/am2ubwy

This June, the National Portrait Gallery in London will unveil a landmark exhibition of portraits chronicling the life and work of Marilyn Monroe in celebration of her 100th birthday. The show will bring together works by artists including Andy Warhol, Pauline Boty, and Marlene Dumas, as well as portraits from more than twenty titans of twentieth-century photography such as Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, and Eve Arnold. Monroe's personal effects, including books, scripts, and clothing, will also be on view as part of “Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait,” which opens on June 4 and runs through September 6.

Monroe, an American actress and model, was one of the most photographed people of her time, appearing on a vast number of magazine covers and in newspapers and advertisements. She began as a pinup model, going by her given name, Norma Jeane, and became the preeminent portrait subject of her era and a defining figure of pop culture. Her most notable film performances include Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Seven Year Itch, and Some Like It Hot.

The Portrait Gallery show will also feature previously unseen images that were taken for—but not included in—her iconic 1962 Life magazine feature, which was published just one day before her death. The images were captured by Allan Grant at Monroe's home in Brentwood, California. Her shocking death at the age of thirty-six inspired a number of artworks across Europe and the United States by artists including Joseph Cornell, James Francis Gill, and Rosalyn Drexler, a selection of which are included in the show. A publication bearing the same name will also be released by the National Portrait Gallery and will feature contributions from Rosie Broadley, Lena Dunham, and Bonnie Greer, among others.

“Marilyn Monroe remains one of the most recognizable people in modern history: a shorthand for glamour, distilled from the films that she appeared in and the wealth of photographs of her, reinforced by the generations of artists she has inspired,” said the gallery's director, Victoria Siddall, in a press statement. “We are proud to be staging this exhibition celebrating Marilyn in her centenary year, exploring her extraordinary life and influence as well as her enduring legacy.”

The exhibition is curated by Rosie Broadley, the National Portrait Gallery's joint head of curatorial and senior curator of twentieth-century collections, and Georgia Atienza, assistant curator of photography.

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How to Buy Minimalist Art https://ift.tt/jxraD2T

Geometric shapes. Limited color palettes. Repetition. Although the principles of Minimalist art are rooted in reduction, the broader movement encompasses a rich collection of works—from the austere brick sculptures of Carl Andre to the vibrant velvet floor installations of Polly Apfelbaum—that continues to resonate with art lovers.

At its heart, Minimalism involves stripping a work down to its material essence. “It’s less about the artist’s talent, but rather the idea behind it and how these forms take up space,” explained Isabella Lauria, senior vice president and specialist in the post-war and contemporary art department at Christie’s. “It’s a departure from putting all the onus on the artist’s hand and more so on putting the onus on the viewer and how they inhabit the space these works take up.”

15 x 15 napoli square, 2010
Carl Andre
Alfonso Artiaco

In a world of information overload, and where the very phrase “minimalism” has been commercialized to sell everything from fashion trends to holidays, Minimalist art offers collectors a unique prospect: an object that strips away distraction, inviting the viewer to reconsider how they engage with the world around them.

Indeed, the power of Minimalist artworks can make them deceptively demanding to collect and display. The impact of Minimalism often depends on space, restraint, and precision. That means that scale, sightlines, lighting, installation, and surrounding objects can all affect whether the work feels powerful or merely plain.

For collectors curious about the movement, here’s Artsy’s guide to buying minimalist art.

What is Minimalist art?

Jill, 1967
Frank Stella
Gemini G.E.L.

Minimalism first emerged in 1950s New York in reaction to the gestural art of the previous generation. It rejected the emotionally expressive work of Abstract Expressionist artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning in favor of a radical simplification of forms. “What you see is what you see,” explained the painter Frank Stella, whose black stripe paintings, which began in 1958, became among the first works associated with the movement.

Although the artists who pioneered the movement in the 1960s—Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Dan Flavin, Agnes Martin, Anne Truitt, and Sol LeWitt—distanced themselves from labels, they were unified in their intentions. To create these “specific objects,” as Judd described them in a 1965 essay, they sought to erase traces of the “artist’s hand” from their work. Some did this by replacing the brushstrokes of painting with printing and industrial materials such as fiberglass and aluminium. Others employed mathematical systems to determine the composition of their works.

Night Sea, 1963
Agnes Martin
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

Untitled, 1961-1963
Donald Judd
Susan Sheehan Gallery

This group of artists was consolidated as the “canon” of Minimal art by the art philosopher Richard Wollheim’s eponymous essay in 1965 and the “Primary Structures” exhibition the following year at the Jewish Museum in New York. However, this show set out a narrow definition: almost all the artists were from the U.S. or the U.K., working in sculpture, and men.

In the years since, the movement has undergone a sweeping re-evaluation, and in 2014 the follow-up exhibition “Other Primary Structures” at the Jewish Museum retrospectively acknowledged women, a greater diversity of mediums, and global artists including Alejandro Puente, Noemi Escandell, and Edward Krasinski as pioneers of the movement.

Vector, 1966
Noemi Escandell
Herlitzka & Co.

Today, a new generation of artists is making the tenets of Minimalism their own. Virginia Overton puts a sensual spin on the stark geometries of Flavin’s neon sculptures by wrapping them with translucent scans of her hair; Michelle Grabner and Katja Strunz are experimenting with more organic forms; and artists including Eric Butcher, Lydia Okumura, and Cordy Ryman are branching out into materials including graphite, recycled textiles, and industrial glass.

But with this broad range, where should collectors looking to get into Minimalism start?

Back to basics: Where new collectors should start with Minimalism

Irregular Wavy Horizontal Color Bands, 1992
Sol LeWitt
Hollis Taggart

Emily Chun of New York’s Hollis Taggart gallery recommends hitting the books: “It’s important to educate yourself historically and ask a lot of questions.” She singles out chapter seven, “The Double Negative: A New Syntax for Sculpture,” in Rosalind Krauss’s book Passages in Modern Sculpture as a thought-provoking primer on the philosophical context of Minimalism and how the movement upended traditional sculpture.

The next logical step is to “anchor your expectations,” she said, by visiting great examples of Minimalist work in museums. The Guggenheim Museum and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the Netherlands, and Tate Modern in London are strong starting points for the “canon.”

Horatio Heart, 2021
Gregor Hildebrandt
Saenger Galería

Visiting the work in person is particularly important when it comes to Minimalism. “It’s more silent. It may not have as much information as a figurative artwork where you can see something and understand the work better,” said Bernardo Saenger, founder of Saenger Galería. “I would say it is more about the feelings. How does that work move you?”

Once you’ve identified your personal tastes, there’s a world of opportunity.

At the highest level, works by the “founding fathers” of Minimalism come to market consistently and regularly command blue-chip price tags. An upcoming Christie’s sale of the late Henry S. McNeil Jr.’s groundbreaking Minimalism collection is expected to exceed $30 million, led by a Judd copper and red fluorescent Plexiglas stack estimated at $10 to $15 million.

These works demonstrate everything that makes a minimalist work valuable: provenance, scarcity, pristine conservation, and history. But even within this collection, there are more accessible price points in the day sales.

The Way, 2018
Carmen Herrera
Baldwin

Untitled NRW, 2017
Carmen Herrera
Baldwin

Saenger suggests that new collectors ease themselves in with multiples. “A lot of people who cannot buy fine art or unique works can buy an edition, and that’s their stepping stone.”

For example, while the Cuban artist Carmen Herrera’s auction record is $2.9 million, achieved for her painting Blanco y Verde at a Sotheby’s auction in 2019, editions of her work on fine bone china are available from around $1,000.

Key practical considerations for buying Minimalist artworks

“With Minimalism, we always think of white-box gallery spaces and cement floors,” said Lauria. But displays don’t have to be cold and detached.

The Christie’s sale is a perfect example of this. “He curated this collection in a way that felt very domestic, very warm, almost very cozy, which is a weird word to use alongside Minimalism,” she explained.

One of the things to consider is the lighting. McNeil’s placement of a Fred Sandback orange-thread work on a sunlit wooden staircase in his Philadelphia home imbued a warmth to the work, while placing a reflective Judd stack opposite one of Tuttle’s wood slats at the top of the staircase put the works in conversation with one another. “It really is this balance between not letting the design overpower the fine art, and rather having them work in tandem,” said Lauria.

Untitled ( Sculptural Study, Mikado), 1999
Fred Sandback
Galerie Greta Meert

Scale is also important. While pieces like the larger Judd stacks and bullnoses might be better suited to a gallery, there are plenty of smaller formats that work well in a domestic space—it just takes a little planning.

“It’s important to think about what happens after the purchase,” Saenger said. “Many times, collectors stay just on the very edge of the purchase. The second layer of it is: ‘How am I going to move that home?’ ‘Who’s going to install it?’ or ‘Do I have the space?’”

When looking to buy a Minimalist artwork, consider the space, lighting, installation support, and architectural restraint that it will be around.

Embrace conservation

Untitled (for Ad Reinhardt) 2e, 1990
Dan Flavin
Paul Stolper Gallery

Many of the objects are delicate and require great attention to detail when it comes to installation and aftercare. Flavin’s neon sculptures need to have the fluorescent tubes replaced by a conservator; the Judd stacks need to be repolished; and LeWitt’s wall paintings require the estate’s input every time they are installed.

“There is a real long-term commitment surrounding the way these works are brought to life, and that’s what’s so exciting about them,” Lauria said.

“Every so often, you do address the works and continue to—as the future custodian—make sure they are exhibited in the artist’s intent.”

If you’re unsure, it’s always wise to ask.

Three tips for first-time buyers of Minimalist art

Untitled (from Paintings and Drawings: 1974-1990), 1991
Agnes Martin
Composition.Gallery

• Look beyond the canon. If you want to collect works from the first wave of Minimalism, your options are far broader than Flavin or Morris. “There are so many lesser-known artists who were working in the Minimalist tradition in the 1960s and 1970s whose approaches provide a fuller picture of the movement,” said Chun. “I’m thinking of artists like Karen Carson who builds Minimalist geometric compositions out of fabric bound together by zippers, allowing the viewer to open and close zippers, and thus change the composition itself.”
• Don’t dismiss design. McNeil’s engagement with Minimalism extended beyond fine art, and Lauria encourages new collectors to follow suit. His selection of George Nakashima furniture brought balance to his home collection and will be on the block at the Christie’s design auction in June.
• Seek inspiration. The best way to figure out how Minimalism might work in your own home, Lauria said, is to observe how different institutions and collectors live with these objects and juxtapose them with the rest of their art. “The works take on a different life every time that they’re installed, which is really quite special.”

Ultimately, collecting Minimalist art is not about living with less, but looking closely. These works ask for patience, precision, and a willingness to consider the object in relation to the space, light, architecture, and care that allow it to come alive. For collectors, that can make Minimalism both challenging and deeply rewarding: a field where restraint opens up feeling, and where the simplest forms can transform the way we inhabit a room.

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Jon Batiste, Troye Sivan, and Amy Sherald lead a Met Gala rooted in art-historical homage. https://ift.tt/v4IP7Y3

Is fashion art? Last night's Met Gala returned to the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to make that case. The annual convergence of fashion, art, entertainment, and high society marked the opening of the Costume Institute's spring exhibition, "Costume Art," with a dress code that made its position explicit: "Fashion Is Art."

On the red carpet, that proposition unfolded through citation, homage, and self-reference. Singer Troye Sivan, in Prada, channeled Robert Mapplethorpe, echoing the late photographer's 1980 self-portrait in a fur coat. Amy Sherald, arriving on the heels of her "American Sublime" solo show opening at the High Museum of Art next week, turned inward, referencing her own Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance) (2014) in collaboration with designer Thom Browne. Actor Luke Evans leaned into the coded eroticism of Tom of Finland with a full brown leather look, while singer Sam Smith's embellished robe by Christian Cowan nodded to the glamour of Erté illustrations.

Elsewhere, singer Gracie Abrams in Chanel and actor Hunter Schafer in Prada played with interpretations of Gustav Klimt paintings, while Jon Batiste offered one of the evening's most direct tributes to Barkley L. Hendricks. The singer began in a blue Superman T-shirt and shades, evoking Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved Any Black People—Bobby Seale) (1969). He later changed into an all-white puffer coat, pants, and cummerbund, bringing to mind Hendricks's Steve (1976). Actor Angela Bassett, meanwhile, paid homage to Laura Wheeler Waring's Girl in Pink Dress (1927), a painting in the Met's permanent collection.

If the red carpet made the argument outwardly, "Costume Art" brings it into focus within the galleries. Organized around thematic "body types"—the Classic Body, the Pregnant Body, the Anatomical Body, and so on—the exhibition examines the dressed figure as both subject and surface. It traces the interplay between clothing and the body, revealing how representations of the figure are shaped by what it wears, and how garments, in turn, construct the body they adorn.

The show also inaugurates the Costume Institute's new Condé M. Nast galleries, tucked just beyond the museum's Byzantine displays. It opens with a meditation on the nude and the naked body: Adam-and-Eve–like garments by designers Lùchen and Walter Van Beirendonck placed in dialogue with sixteenth-century engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi and Heinrich Aldegrever. This curatorial strategy, pairing dress with objects across the museum's encyclopedic collection, sets the tone for the exhibition. A veiled silk dress by Maison Margiela is positioned alongside Raffaello Monti's The Veiled Woman (1854). Duran Lantink's bulbous "Morphing Suit" sits near a Polaroid by Lucas Samaras. Miriam Beerman's painting Bloody Heads Number 39 (1969) is paired with a red crocheted dress by Yuma Nakazato, both evoking the anatomical.

This is an exhibition designed for immersion. Mirrored mannequin heads fold the viewer into the display, reflecting the body into fashion's frame. What emerges is both a survey and a reframing: a concise history of dress. Early twentieth-century couturiers Madame Grès, Madeleine Vionnet, and Mariano Fortuny stretch through to contemporary designers like Richard Quinn, Batsheva, and Vetements—set in dialogue with a broader history of art. From Cycladic marble figures and ancient Egyptian limestone busts to Yayoi Kusama's Red and White Pumpkin (2011) and Jane Hammond's Tabula Rosa (2001), the exhibition moves fluidly across disciplines and centuries.

In doing so, "Costume Art" reframes the premise it sets out to test. Fashion is not merely adjacent to art, nor is it borrowing its language—it is operating within the same lineage. The exhibition opens May 10 and runs through January 10, 2027.

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The Story Behind Tschabalala Self’s Met Gala Dress by Brandon Blackwood https://ift.tt/lBH9cMa

Tonight, the 2026 Met Gala kicks off “Costume Art,” the newest exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute (the show officially opens on May 10). For artist Tschabalala Self, it’s a major milestone: She serves as a gala co-chair and will attend the fete for the first time. To celebrate one of the most important moments on the global fashion calendar, Self enlisted her friend, designer Brandon Blackwood, to create her gown and style her look for the evening. He worked with New York’s Atelier YQS on the dress, his first for the major event.

It’s a full-circle moment for the pair, who were both born and raised in New York City, Blackwood in Brooklyn and Self in Harlem, before attending Bard College together. Since then, Blackwood has earned acclaim for his statement anti-racism handbags and has expanded into shoes and ready-to-wear. He’s also designed custom gowns for Beyoncé, Serena Williams, and Megan Thee Stallion. Self, meanwhile, has become a rising name in the contemporary art world. Major exhibitions of her paintings, which employ fabric and mixed media to depict the exaggerated silhouettes of her dynamic Black subjects, have taken place at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Finland’s Espoo Museum of Art, and other galleries and institutions. She was also awarded London’s Fourth Plinth Prize in 2024 and featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2019. She recently installed a sculpture of an embracing couple, titled Art Lovers (2025), at the newly reopened New Museum in Lower Manhattan. In advance of their Met Gala moment, Blackwood and Self spoke to Artsy about their long friendship and the influences they drew on for the dress, from Degas’s ballerina sculptures to unconventional textiles.

Read their conversation with Artsy below (answers have been edited for length and clarity).

Alina Cohen: How did you two meet?

Brandon Blackwood: We met on the quad in 2009. She was sitting with future friends of mine, and we all ended up talking. We had the New York connection. When you go to a small liberal arts school upstate, in the middle of nowhere, and you meet someone who kind of looks like you in a space where that isn’t the norm, you bond very quickly. I’ve always wanted a sister, and Tschaba’s like a sister to me.

Tschabalala Self: We lived together for one year in this dorm called “Feitler.” It was a vegan co-op but also like a black fraternity house on campus.

A.C.: Did you connect over creative interests?

B.B.: We’d go to each other’s dorms or, when we were living together, meet in the kitchen and talk about our ideas, which ranged from movie scripts to designing. For a second, we wanted to launch a brand together and call it “Self Love.” So this is very full circle.

T.S.: We wanted to make gender-neutral clothing that was ready-to-wear, with an elevated street style vibe.

A.C.: Is this the first time you’re truly collaborating?

T.S.: I’d say the second. Brandon designed my wedding dress last year. That was a big milestone. Brandon was also essentially a bridesmaid. He was with me every step of the way.

That was the first time we collaborated on something that was out in the world, even in our shared community. But I’ve always been able to talk to Brandon about ideas.

B.B.: Tschaba has custom pieces of mine. I also have a custom piece of hers.

A.C.: That’s Tschaba’s painting behind you?

T.S.: Yes, it’s called Dancer (2026). Brandon just moved. It was a piece for his new home.

B.B.: I have a few pieces of Tschaba’s throughout the house. Two feature female figures, and one is a man and woman together. When you walk in my door, her art is the first thing you see. It’s very powerful; it makes me feel good; and it’s low-key a little sexy: the shapes, the colors. I’m very proud of it. When you surround yourself with things you love so much, you can’t help but incorporate that into your day.

A.C.: How did the Met Gala collaboration come about?

T.S.: I told Brandon that I was going to be on the host committee. I asked if he wanted to make my dress for the gala. He was really excited and just jumped in.

B.B.: It’s a huge milestone. We started brainstorming. The theme is “Fashion Is Art,” and I wanted the dress to border on costume but feel refined…like a period piece come to life.

T.S.: When Brandon was describing the silhouette, he’d say that it should look like an upside-down tulip: a form found in nature that is also regal, feminine, and timeless. The gown is super contemporary, with lots of different silhouettes. It makes me think of Degas’s ballerina sculpture, which is a fusion of this hard bronze sculpture with textile. This garment’s unique textile elements really speak to me, because textiles are such an important part of my practice. The dress is a perfect combination of both our aesthetics and formal concerns.

A.C.: What are the unique textile elements in the dress?

B.B.: We have a silk corseted gown with a draped-over skirt held up by this really beautiful, soft tulle underlay. I played around with volume in an unconventional way and tried to layer texture in a way that’s easy to read. We used a lot of satin, a lot of chiffon. The bodice is a matte chiffon, which is cool. It’s usually shinier, more exposed. We’re doing a corset-lace bodice, which will hug the body and help tell the overall story of the dress.

T.S.: When I put on the dress, I felt like I was embodying an artwork. And that fits the theme perfectly for the gala.

A.C.: Were there other visual references?

B.B.: I was looking a lot at Tschaba’s work. She loves to mix textures, loves a kooky mash-up of things. I wanted to translate that. You’ll see how the skirt drapes over the tulle, how what we're doing is unconventional, like her artwork.

T.S.: The dress also creates an emphasized silhouette to the body through construction and costume. This really elevated, feminine hourglass shape is also a throughline in my practice. That’s a peak symbol of beauty for us, for our background. We’re accentuating that. I’m almost becoming an embodiment of the subjects in my work. I love the shape.

B.B.: It’s really severe. Choosing a cinched lace corset, dropping where the skirt starts so that you get the hip. You get the bust. You get the waist. There’s a lot of body.

A.C.: Are there elements that feel very “New York?”

T.S.: Right now in the Hudson Valley, where Brandon and I met, there are tulips everywhere. Many of our memories are here. There’s a certain lightness and easy elegance that remind me of this region. There’s a throughline, the city to here, and back.

B.B.: The dress still has a severe moment that feels true to a native New Yorker. It’s Hudson-meets-Harlem.

T.S.: That’s my whole thing!

A.C.: Tell me about the color.

B.B.: We chose a really muted, sexy gray. This is the first gray piece I’ve ever made. It’s cool and impactful and looks beautiful on her skin tone. We’ll add jewelry, some diamond detailing. It’s gonna be a moment.

A.C.: Shoes?

T.S.: Gray Jimmy Choo. Very simple. Pointed-toe pump, something that complements the dress but doesn’t take any attention away.

A.C.: What does it mean to work together for the Met Gala?

T.S.: I feel blessed I’m working on this with a friend. And not just any friend. I’ve known him since I was 20, and Brandon was a teenager. Our brains weren’t finished growing! I’m excited and also nervous. It’s nice to have a friend who’s also family—to do it together. It’s fun and I feel more carefree, more myself. It’s another creative moment we can share. It’s really beautiful.

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