Nairy Baghramian and Ibrahim Mahama to create major new commissions for Art Basel 2026. https://ift.tt/D0CtBlm

Art Basel has revealed further details about site specific sculptures by Nairy Baghramian and Ibrahim Mahama that will appear at the flagship fair in Switzerland this June. The artists are part of Art Basel’s inaugural class of Gold Awardees, and Art Basel announced the commissions this past February.

On the Messeplatz, Iranian-born, German sculptor Nairy Baghramian will present Modèle vivant (S’empilant) (2026), an elaborate installation conceived for the square’s fountain. The work is composed of four lavender, large-scale biomorphic forms that perch on geometric steel supports built around the fountain’s waterfalls. A bench-like pedestal to the side is covered in tiles and surrounded by photographic imprints of flies.

Elsewhere on the Münsterplatz, Ghanaian installation artist Ibrahim Mahama will unveil an installation entitled The God of Small Things (2026). The piece is composed of multiple sculptural elements that are suspended to create a large-scale immersive environment. It takes its title from the Arundhati Roy novel of the same name, and uses rubber castoffs from a factory that was established in Ghana following the country’s independence.

The fair also announced details about its various sectors. Unlimited, Art Basel’s platform for large-scale projects, will be curated for the first time by Ruba Katrib, MoMA PS1 chief curator and director of curatorial affairs. It will bring together 59 projects by 66 galleries, showcasing artists whose practices urgently engage with the current political, social, and ecological climate. Highlights include Isa Genzken’s Untitled (2018), presented by Galerie Buchholz, Hauser & Wirth, and David Zwirner; Tracey Emin’s Knowing my Enemy (2002), presented by White Cube; and Oskar Schlemmer’s Homo, Composition in Metal (1930–31), presented by Leandro Navarro and Thaddaeus Ropac.

In Parcours, curated by Stefanie Hessler, 22 projects presented by 31 galleries will take place in public spaces and historic locations around Basel, including outdoor venues, empty apartments, and shops. “Public space—from the commons to architectures of civic life—is central to conversations around how we live together,” said Hessler in a press statement. “This year’s presentation explores the promise and complexity of ‘conviviality’ through artistic interventions that extend into the fabric of the city of Basel. Bringing together a majority of new and recent works with key historic positions, the sector addresses ecology and labor, artistic community and intergenerational transmission, mythologies and systems of valuation underpinning economic and political formations through a multifaceted urban choreography.” Highlights include new posters by Sarah Crowner distributed across the tram and presented by Galerie Max Hetzler and Galerie Nordenhake in collaboration with Luhring Augustine, and Haegue Yang’s installations from her ongoing Intermediates series, which will be draped across the Mittlere Brücke as well as equipment from an artisanal distillery, and presented by Kukje Gallery and neugerriemschnieder.

Meanwhile, new information surrounding the main sector was announced, as was information for Kabinett, Features, Premiere, Statements, and Edition.

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8 Must-See Shows during Gallery Weekend Berlin 2026 https://ift.tt/9k5fx2E

Malte, 2026
Sophie von Hellermann
Wentrup

“Painting is dead, long live painting!” could be the motto of the 2026 Gallery Weekend Berlin. The event was founded in 2005 by a cooperative of local gallerists as an alternative to traditional art fairs that typically favor painting, yet the strong presence of the medium this year confirms its lasting power.

Following on its founders’ original idea to draw collectors to Berlin in a single coordinated art smorgasbord, the weekend kicks off with over 50 galleries spread across the city. In parallel, there are other major draws like the American digital artist Beeple (Mike Winkelman) presenting robotic dogs with human heads (from Andy Warhol to tech tycoon Elon Musk) in “Beeple. Regular Animals,” at Neue Nationalgalerie. Elsewhere, Gropius Bau has a major show by the renowned performance artist Marina Abramović, “Balkan Erotic Epic,” a multiscreen video installation exploring mythic rituals and sexual energies.

Another big moment for Berlin’s art scene is the reopening of the Boros Collection’s vast bunker of contemporary art from the ’90s to the present, starting May 3rd. Plus, the luxury department store KaDeWe dresses its windows with a 24/7 pop-up show of multimedia and kinetic art by eleven artists, including Talking Heads musician and artist David Byrne, conceptual artist Hanne Darboven (1941–2009), and New York–based multimedia and performance artist Kayode Ojo.

Here are 8 of the most anticipated gallery shows during Gallery Weekend Berlin.

Tauba Auerbach

“Easy Assembly”

Esther Schipper

May 1–June 20

American artist Tauba Auerbach, who works in diverse media spanning painting, weaving, and sculpture, investigates sight and the limits of perception in their piercingly bright paintings. For instance, the New York–based artist’s first exhibition at Esther Schipper in 2013, “Tetrachromat,” centered on works inspired by colors outside the standard RGB spectrum. These colors are only seen by people—usually women—possessing four (rather than the normal three) retinal cones: a condition known as tetrachromacy.

Guided by a similar curiosity around the science of perception, Auerbach presents a series of Pointillist acrylic paintings in their second show with the gallery. These depict foam textures and investigate the role that chance plays in how foam particles interact with surfaces as they merge, collide, and break apart.

Vivien Zhang

“Field Conditions”

Galerie Max Hetzler (Goethestr.)

Apr. 30–June 27

Chance also informs the highly textured, rhythmic acrylic-and-oil paintings by rising artist Vivien Zhang, who has her debut solo show at Galerie Max Hetzler. Inspired by diverse biological sources, from flower patterns and nearly extinct plants to butterflies, the London-based artist ties perception to geopolitical considerations.

For instance, the geometric background in the painting slip between (Ithomia) (2026) refers to the 1909 “Butterfly” World Map. This projection was designed to translate the globe into two dimensions in a more proportionate way to viewers, which results in less bias in the size (and significance) of Western nations.

Robert Elfgen

“utopisch”

Sprüth Magers

May 2–Aug. 1

Acclaimed artist Robert Elfgen studied at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the early 2000s under the renowned conceptual artist Rosemarie Trockel. Since then, he’s become known for his Romantic-inspired paintings which draw from the natural world and have been shown at major galleries such as Marian Boesky and reside in collections like the Rubells’. His presentation at Sprüth Magers consists of sculptural and mixed-media works, including floor pieces and glass panes. His photocollages, sprayed with metallic paint and with added concrete and brass, are partially sanded down, giving them a grainy texture. The industrial landscapes they depict—liminal spaces with barren countryside and chimneys and rigs—feel equally scuffed and “collaged.” Elfgen paints a warm yellow-and-orange haze into these scenes, bathing the manmade deserts in ethereal light, hauntingly still and devoid of activity. Here and there, a lonely dachshund bears shadowy witness to industrial waste.

A utopia of progress? Doubtful: Elfgen’s wistfully post-Romantic vision suggests that the show’s title is rather darkly ironic. Perhaps there’s a hint of latent longing here, as Germany’s bustling towns turn to ghosts following the decline of industry.

Rodney McMillian

“In Other Realms”

Capitain Petzel

Apr. 29–June 13.

Los Angeles–based artist Rodney McMillian is known for incorporating everyday objects, such as blankets, chairs, and architectural debris, into his abstract paintings and sculptures with rugged textures that allude to the bodily experience of racial and social inequality in America.

In his inaugural solo show at Capitain Petzel, Rodney McMillian deploys acrylic paint and mixed media in a Postminimalist fashion to blur the line between abstraction and representation. The show follows his 2024 exhibition, “The Land: Not Without a Politic,” at the Marta Herford Museum in Herford, Germany (which was his first in the country).

Accordingly, the show at Capitain Petzel includes heavily layered acrylic-and-latex paintings from the “Black Painting” series, as well as misshapen sculptures, such as Untitled (Knoll’s Chair) (2023–26), a combined sculpture made of a chair, fabric, wire, and acrylic. Also included is a film work, based on a text by early American civil rights leader Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who fought to end lynchings of Black Americans.

Bernd Koberling

“Rooted in Time, Rooted in the Sky, Paintings 1992-2026”

Buchmann Galerie

May 1–June 20

Duft der Steine, 2019
Bernd Koberling
Buchmann Galerie

Momentane Vision 11, 2025
Bernd Koberling
Buchmann Galerie

At 88, Bernd Koberling is one of the most renowned living post-war German painters. And the works from his mid-to-late career, shown at Buchmann Galerie, evidence his continued reinvention. He was part of the 1980s Cologne-based Neo-Expressionist art movement Junge Wilde, the members of which opposed the cool rationalism of minimalist art with a messier, gestural approach. At Buchmann Galerie, this style is highlighted in paintings like the oil Erdstelle (1992), notable for its darkly brooding palette and agitated strokes.

By contrast, his more recent works presented in the show—for example, the oil-on-wood work Echo (2024), with rhythmic flickers of bright colors (mostly parakeet green)—are much airier. Elsewhere, in the “Aquarelle” series, Momentane Vision (2025) conveys a keen interest in color, inspired by the Arctic region—he’s frequently visited Iceland, Scotland, and Lapland—particularly its rugged landscapes and diaphanous light.

“Hyperacuity”

Bode

Apr. 30–June 21.

From Abundance, He Took Abundance, 2026
Alteronce Gumby
Bode

Sitting on the moving box, 2025
Teresa Murta
Bode

Though diverse in their approaches and supports, the artists in “Hyperacuity,” a group show at Bode Gallery, all experiment with the means of “polluting” painting, expanding its pictorial possibilities.

For instance, the Bronx, New York–based abstract painter Alteronce Gumby—a 2016 graduate of the Yale School of Art—is fascinated equally by chromatic painting and astrophysics. He combines glass, blue quartz, and acrylic in his densely patterned works. Another Yale MFA graduate, Gabriel Mills, who was 2021’s resident artist at MASS MoCA, shows his panels oscillating between heavy impasto and smudgy blurs. Meanwhile the young Portuguese Berlin-based artist Teresa Murta creates paintings with nervously blobby lines that produce a visual confusion.

Together, the show suggests that “hyperacuity” is a kind of oversaturation.

Sophie von Hellerman

“Letters to a young painter”

Wentrup

May 1–June 12

Paula Modersohn Becker malt Rilke in Paris, 2026
Sophie von Hellermann
Wentrup

The German mid-career painter Sophie von Hellermann revives the country’s legacies of Romantic and Expressionist art in her fluid acrylic works. In her works, which are shown by galleries such as Pilar Corrias and Greene Naftali, she often turns to dream and fantasy, with supple and agile lines, pulsing with energy. Recently, she has also portrayed art history, as in her vibrant 2024 mural for the Brücke Museum, Berlin, depicting Jewish art collectors tied to the museum’s history who were persecuted by the Nazis.

Her fourth solo show at Wentrup takes its title from poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s 1929 book, Letters to a Young Poet. Here the England-based artist’s febrile landscapes in pure pigment convey Romanticism’s fascination with nature. Other works, for example, Paula Modersohn Becker paints Rilke in Paris (2026) (referring to the pioneering German Expressionist woman painter and Rilke’s close friend) reimagine scenes from the poet’s life.

James Turrell

“sensing fields”

Max Goelitz

May 1–July 4.

Consumed by the desire to capture light’s full effects on the mind since the 1960s, James Turrell has become famous for large site-specific installations in far-flung locations. For decades, he’s been involved with constructing an enormous sky observatory at the Roden Crater, in the Arizona desert, for example.

As part of his highly anticipated show, “sensing fields,” at Max Goelitz, the American artist brings to Berlin for the first time a work from his acclaimed “Glass” series (2001–present), Small Elliptical Glass First Cause (2024), in which visitors can see a glass plane, embedded in a wall, radiating a purple computer-programmed light.

“My work is not so much about my seeing as about your seeing.... You are looking at you looking,” he once said in an interview. His works, which at Max Goelitz also include aquatint etchings (Turrell thinks of them as afterimages of light’s glow) and a skyscape sculpture, highlight the subjectivity of vision as a space of self-awareness and contemplation, bypassing conscious thought.

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$33.5 million set of mirrors by Claude Lalanne sets a new record for a work of design https://ift.tt/tDpbCOY

A set of bronze mirrors by French sculptor Claude Lalanne sold for $33.5 million with fees at Sotheby’s in New York yesterday, smashing multiple auction records in the process. The sale of Lalanne’s Ensemble of Fifteen Mirrors from 1974 is now the most expensive work by the artist sold at auction, and also marks the highest price ever achieved at auction for a work of design. It sold for more than double its high estimate of $15 million in a 10-minute bidding war between five collectors.

The ensemble of mirrors surpasses the previous record for Les Lalanne, which was set in December 2025 when Hippopotame Bar, pièce unique by Claude’s husband, François-Xavier Lalanne, sold for $31.4 million. While the two artists worked together in their distinct styles and rarely collaborated on a piece, they jointly presented their work under the moniker of Les Lalanne.

The set of leafy mirrors had been commissioned in 1974 by Yves Saint Laurent for his residence in Paris that he shared with his then-partner, the industrialist Pierre Bergé. The mirrors, 15 in total, were made by Lalanne by hand in gilt bronze, galvanized copper, and mirrored glass, with leaves modeled after those found in the artist’s garden. They were the first mirror works Lalanne ever created, which would become a cornerstone of her practice. At Sotheby’s, they were offered from the collection of Jean and Terry de Gunzberg, who had acquired them in 2009 at the legendary three-day sale organized by Bergé at the Grand Palais in Paris of the masterful collection he had amassed with Saint Laurent. The works have been exhibited at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain in 1975, as well as in the 2010 retrospective at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

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Tate announces 2026 Turner Prize shortlist. https://ift.tt/9oJ8yuG

Artists Simeon Barclay, Kira Freije, Marguerite Humeau, and Tanoa Sasraku have been shortlisted for the 2026 Turner Prize. Each artist will receive £10,000 ($13,500), and an exhibition of their work will take place at Teesside University’s Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA) in North England, from September 26 through March 29th, 2027. An awards ceremony on December 10th, also at MIMA, will announce the winner, who will be awarded £25,000 ($33,760).

Presented by Tate Britain, the Turner Prize is the United Kingdom’s most prestigious recognition of contemporary visual art. Named for the painter J.M.W. Turner and established in 1984, the prize is awarded annually to a British artist to honor an exceptional exhibition or presentation of their work. Last year, it was awarded to Nnena Kalu, and previous winners have included Anish Kapoor, Steve McQueen, and Lubaina Himid.

The 2026 Turner Prize nominees

Multidisciplinary artist Simeon Barclay works across performance, installation, video, sound, writing, and sculpture, using a mix of industrial fabrication techniques and found materials and images (he worked in the manufacturing industry before turning to art making). He is nominated for The Ruin, the artist’s first live performance, which took place at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and The Hepworth Wakefield in 2025.

The work interrogates the layers of identity surrounding class, masculinity, and inheritance that make up the modern British experience. It employs spoken word, early modern music, and manufacturing sounds, with performers in costumes evoking the industrial landscape of Northern England in the 1980s and 1990s.

Sculptor Kira Freije is known for her abstract aluminium corporeal forms that incorporate faces cast of loved ones, fabric, lighting, handblown glass, and found materials. The sculptures, which include casts of Freije’s hands and feet, draw on her experience working with blacksmiths following her graduation from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at the University of Oxford in 2011.

She is nominated for her exhibition, “Unspeak the Chorus” at the Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire, which is currently on view through May 6th. It marks her first major solo presentation in the U.K.

Installation artist Marguerite Humeau explores worlds, both imagined and research-based, from prehistoric times through to the speculative future. She makes visually rich, intricate installations that fuse poetry, sound, video, and drawing to interrogate the transition between life and death, origin and ending; posing questions about existence along the way.

She is nominated for “Torches,” an exhibition presented at Denmark’s ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art and Finland’s Helsinki Art Museum in 2025. In the show, a multisensory landscape represents a partly-imagined ecosystem in transition, using a mix of organic and found materials like beeswax, wasp venom, yeast, bronze, and alabaster.

Tanoa Sasraku, whose practice spans drawing, filmmaking, and sculpture, is known for her work that uses printmaking, sewing, and garment construction to consider how power structures and landscapes are shaped over time.

She is nominated for her solo show “Morale Patch,” which opened last year at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, which comments on the power struggles and conflicts surrounding diminishing natural resources. Crude oil plays a starring role, both as subject and material, alongside found objects tied to the oil industry presented as relics of an empire.

“It is a privilege to announce this outstanding shortlist,” said Alex Farquaharson, director of the Tate Britain and the chair of the prize’s jury, in a press statement. “The Turner Prize continues to offer the public a compelling reflection of the breadth and vitality of contemporary British art. This year’s selection presents a rich and diverse range of work, spanning installation and performance, and with a strong emphasis on sculptural practice. Each artist invites us into carefully constructed scenarios, both real and imagined, that offer distinct perspectives through which to explore the world around us, and to reflect on our place within it.”

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5 Standout Artists at MoMA PS1’s “Greater New York” https://ift.tt/0metzb9

What is the state of New York’s art scene today? It’s a question that has reverberated across the city over the last few weeks, as Josh Kline’s essay “New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art” for October has inspired conversations about how hard it is to make ambitious, exciting new work here.

MoMA PS1’s quinquennial “Greater New York” showcases what’s still possible, in spite of various nightmarish economic and political circumstances. The sixth edition of the event, which remains on view through August 17th and celebrates the institution’s 50th anniversary, proposes specific throughlines. “Attuned to New York City as a nexus of flows and exchanges—of goods, labor, and capital—many of the artists trace how these factors converge to shape everyday experiences,” the press materials state. The expansive curatorial team chose to highlight both intimate, tactile works and larger spectacles. A performance program runs concurrently with the show.

Below are five standout artists from the show, whose practices speak to this multiplicity of artmaking in New York today. They use materials both radical and traditional, from teeth and dead coral to paint and mass media images that worm their way into the collective consciousness. For all New York’s pleasures and problems, these artists prove that vital energy still courses through the city, ready to be metabolized out into memorable new work.

Chang Yuchen

B. 1989, Shanxi Province, China.

For seven years, Chang Yuchen has collected coral fragments and transformed their shapes into a vast semiotic system. The resulting project—Coral Dictionary (2019–present)—exemplifies the single-minded obsession that’s typical of her art practice.

Across delicate graphite drawings, charts, and accordion booklets shown both on walls and in vitrines, the artist elaborates on her expansive lexicon and “translates” each form into English, Mandarin, and Malay. The project bridges gaps between languages, between word and image, and between organic forms and the gallery space.

Chang’s work makes use of the Kamus Sari, “a trilingual dictionary whose example sentences still reflect the political dimensions of life in 1970s Malaysia” according to the press materials. She pairs its sentences, such as “That ship disappeared from sight,” “That body isn’t alive,” and “Take good care till total recovery, in order to prevent relapse,” with coral forms that become signs for each individual word and punctuation mark. The dried corals serve as ghosts of marine life past, no longer living, but speaking through the artist.

Alongside her art practice, Chang teaches in the Dance MFA program at Bennington College. During a 2024 artist fellowship with the New York Public Library, she compiled “Body Dictionary,” an experimental curriculum which, according to the library, linked the “somatic and semantic.”

Akira Ikezoe

B. 1979, Kochi, Japan.

Akira Ikezoe’s paintings are impressive catalogues of visual information. Chart of Darkness (2025), for example, has more in common with an Excel spreadsheet than with a gestural abstract work. The painting features a broad table of icons against a bright yellow background. Each row features objects of similar shapes: A row of pairs, for example, presents the twins from The Shining, butterfly wings, ears, and mittens. Each column presents a category, like food: in one you’ll find an ice cream cone, pizza slice, and churro (a pair of plated sushi rolls is at the intersection of both). Warmth and humor infuse the composition, which evokes the aesthetics of emojis.

In a second painting, Frog Stories Around Windmill (2025), Ikezoe diagrams a network of frogs that live and labor across a flat visual field, like a group of Sims across different frames. Ikezoe’s dual contributions to the exhibition suggest a keen interest in digital aesthetics and the power of visual symbology to communicate across language barriers.

Ikezoe’s work is also included in the 2026 Whitney Biennial and was featured in the 2025 Sharjah Biennial.

Nickola Pottinger

B. 1986, Kingston, Jamaica.

Nickola Pottinger creates totems from a blend of family relics—quite literally. She grinds printed matter, including old book reports and shredded documents, with her mother’s handheld cake mixer, then sculpts the pulp into human and animal forms. The artist embeds these figures with pigment, toys, family heirlooms, and bone. She began collecting teeth as a teenager on visits to her mother’s dental lab, and anonymous ivories feature in the artist’s sculpture Genkle Jesus meek and mild II (2026). The work also counts frankincense, mushroom spores, hair, heliconia, and doily cloth among its materials. The pulpy piece stands on two fungus-like feet, with mushroom horns extending from its head and a feathery brown tail extending behind. The creature has a mouth full of real teeth and two large hands, one extended to the viewer. It looks born from a cauldron, an apt metaphor, perhaps, for an artist’s studio.

The catalogue states that Pottinger’s interests include nurturing and devotion, themes that have emerged since she became a mother and began to contend with the recent wreckage of Hurricane Melissa on the coast of Jamaica, her home country. These sculptures of mythic new beings offer hope and tenderness in the face of all we can’t control.

Julia Wachtel

B. 1956, New York, NY

Julia Wachtel presents what’s perhaps the funniest work in “Greater New York”: the five-panel painting McSwift (2024). A photograph of Taylor Swift on her Eras tour appears to stutter across the first two panels. We see the pop star from behind, her shimmering, fringed dress rippling, her booted feet firmly planted, one hand pointing to the sky in a choreographed gesture while the other, ostensibly, holds the mic. The next panel features a waving Ronald McDonald, and the next two return to Swift’s stage, this half with no pop star to animate it. Ronald becomes a commercial break, a literal clown interrupting a mass entertainment. The quiet of the empty stage, and the darkness in front of it, seem like a reprieve, until you remember that there’s a vast audience out there, hungry and worshipful. The work raises some philosophical questions: Is a painting a stage? Is the painter more similar to a clown or a pop star? And is it her job to entertain? Regardless, she does.

Wachtel rose to prominence as a member of the Pictures Generation, a loose consortium of artists whose great subject was the proliferation of images across pop culture and media and advertising in particular. In 2026, when AI can create infinite images and mash-ups via a simple prompt, this work feels as relevant as ever.

Farah Al Qasimi

B. 1991, Abu Dhabi.

Farah Al Qasimi’s photographs span two walls on the second floor of “Greater New York.” One features wallpaper patterned with a photographed red curtain, a theatrical backdrop to the artist’s bright compositions. Another captures a stone countertop with a wooden cutting board, a sliced watermelon on top of it. The fleshy pink face of the halved fruit gapes at the viewer, while a bright yellow jug of corn oil and a pot of flowers hover in the background.

The scene suggests an everyday riff on art historical still lifes, with an oven range off to the side. Al Qasimi’s vibrant palette extends to other works, which feature a parrot perched on an outstretched hand and a girl lying on her bed in jeans and a headscarf, next to her cat. Elsewhere, the artist captures the interiors of cars, replete with Gatorade bottles, a devotional car ornament, or a flower on the dash. All these images, in fact, come from Al Qasimi’s larger project of documenting the Arab community from Dearborn, Michigan (where the population is half Arab), and the United Arab Emirates, where she grew up. Together, they create a sense of exuberant multiplicity. If patterns occasionally clash, the scenes are only richer for it.

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National Gallery receives $116 million donation to send its collection around the U.S. https://ift.tt/F0mRhDY

The National Gallery of Art has received a staggering endowment of $116 million to permanently fund its nationwide loan program, “Across the Nation.” The gift is courtesy of the Mitchell P. Rales Family Foundation on behalf of Mitchell Rales, a collector and the National Gallery’s former president and a board member for 20 years. The transformational donation is the largest gift to endow programming in the institution’s history, and was made to mark the 250th anniversary of America this year. The gift comes at a pivotal moment in time as regional museums across the nation struggle with slashes in funding and declining attendance.

“Across the Nation” was launched in the spring of 2025 as a way to facilitate broader access across the country to key pieces from the National Gallery’s collection of 160,000 works of art. The program invites small and mid-size partner museums to select works from its collection, which the National Gallery then supports by way of fully underwritten transport, installation, insurance, training, and regional marketing initiatives. “We have an incredible asset base in the form of 160,000 works of art, most of which end up in storage for long periods of time, because you just can’t show it all,” said Rales in an interview with the New York Times. “And so I started to say, ‘What do we need to do to put the word ‘national’ into the National Gallery of Art?’”

Kaywin Feldman, the National Gallery of Art’s director added: “Through his remarkable partnership and thanks to this landmark gift, the National Gallery is able to establish ‘Across the Nation’ as a core pillar of our work and fulfill a central part of our vision—of the nation and for all the people. We will not only be able to introduce beloved works of art from our collection to new audiences for generations to come, but will also establish a dynamic model for collection-sharing and build a collaborative network with our museum colleagues nationwide.”

The pilot program, also supported by Rales, launched with 10 partner museums and reached nearly 900,000 visitors; the next cycle will launch in the fall of 2027 and run through 2029. The inaugural cycle placed paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe and Mark Rothko at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska; a selection of Impressionist works by Henri Matisse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Paul Cézanne at the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington; and works by Sandro Botticelli, Hans Memling, and Andy Warhol at the Flint Institute of Arts in Michigan.

With the program now funded into perpetuity, the National Gallery intends to loan works to museums in all 50 states over the next decade to ensure that millions of Americans who might not otherwise make it to Washington, D.C. will be able to experience the collection.

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Why This Swedish Gallery Set Up Shop in a 19th-Century Chapel https://ift.tt/x5vTXij

Loyal founders Martin Lilja and Amy Giunta are choosing to slow down. In Lund, a quiet university town in southern Sweden, the gallery now occupies a 19th-century chapel. Exhibitions will unfold in the historic brick building, through the massive green church doors, and under softened light filtering through stained-glass windows.

“The scale, the light, and the verticality all invite a different kind of exhibition-making,” Giunta told Artsy of the space, designed by Swedish architect Helgo Zettervall. “It allows for things to slow down a bit, and the work can hold space rather than compete for it.… For the artists, it creates an opportunity to think beyond standard gallery formats.”

Giunta described the Swedish art scene as “strong” but happening within a small, occasionally insular community. For the gallerists, who had been based in Stockholm for two decades, the chapel “offers a shift in pace and perspective.” “It’s a space where the work can expand and settle differently, and where exhibitions can unfold more slowly,” she said.

The move follows two decades in Stockholm, where Loyal built a reputation as a reliable engine for discovering new talent. The two gallerists share a propensity for experimentation, evident in their latest move and their consistently exciting programming. Some of the early solo shows mounted at their previous Stockholm space featured now-widely known artists Eddie Martinez, Katherine Bernhardt, and Wes Lang.

How Loyal’s publishing roots laid its tastemaking foundations

Loyal started as a magazine, launched by Lilja in 2000. Giunta, who was living in New York, met Lilja during a trip to Stockholm the next year. “We quickly found that we shared a similar sensibility and way of working: similar enough to see eye to eye, and different enough to keep it exciting and surprising,” she told Artsy. In 2001, Lilja joined the magazine, which had a dedicated following for its edgy arts and culture–focused reporting. Publishing offered Lilja and Giunta a way into culture that felt self-determined and accessible. “It was a way of paying attention and forming a point of view,” Lilja said.

By 2005, opening a gallery felt like the right next move, and it opened a space in Stockholm’s Vasastan neighborhood. “At a certain point, we realized that what we were really doing was building relationships with artists and curating what were essentially exhibitions in print,” Giunta said. “The magazine was one way of doing that, but the gallery became a more direct way to continue that conversation. It wasn’t a strategic shift so much as a natural progression.”

That editorial instinct remained a key part of the gallery’s programming. “Instead of pages, it became exhibitions. Instead of documenting, we were now responsible for context, for how the work meets the audience,” Lilja said. But even as it evolved, the gallery has remained intentionally lean and is operated almost exclusively by the two founders. The approach, they say, “allowed us to stay very close to both artists and collectors, and to build something that feels consistent over time rather than programmatic.”

Staying Loyal to its artists

La Tierra de la Culebra, 2025
Michelle Blade
Loyal

Magic Hour Eze, 2025
Daniel Heidkamp
Loyal

Some artists that the gallerists have worked with began in the magazine days, including Brian Belott, a New York–based performer and artist. They’ve continued to add artists to the roster, including now-stalwart artists like Michelle Blade and Daniel Heidkamp.

“Loyal has always been about building long-term relationships with artists and staying close to the work as it develops over time,” Lilja said. “The mission is to create the right conditions for artists to take risks, evolve, and be seen in a focused way.”

Conduct, 2025
Zoé Blue M.
Loyal

Old Tree, 2026
Ross Caliendo
Loyal

This mission now extends across continents. While the gallery is grounded in Sweden, its program is also shaped by the gallerists’ ties to London, New York, and especially Los Angeles, where Lilja and Giunta live for a quarter of the year. In 2002, artist and curator Rich Jacobs connected the gallerists with a group of artists and became a part of their lives.

“We would go for three months every winter to escape Sweden’s darkest days and be around the sun and the dynamic art scene,” said Giunta. “In Los Angeles, we met Mario Ayala, and things kept building from there as connections continued to grow, with artists like Chanel Khoury, Alex Gardner, Zoé Blue M, and Ross Caliendo,” she said.

A gallery program split between L.A. and Lund

Now, the gallery hosts an annual pop-up at the El Royale apartment buildings during L.A. Art Week in February. “It also allows us to bring together artists in a way that feels specific to that context, rather than replicating what we do in Sweden,” Lilja said. The first exhibition took place in 2023; it featured 13 artists, including Michelle Blade and Andrea Marie Breiling, and was situated within the iconic William Douglas Lee–designed parlor. This year, they held the first of a two-parter, “Infinite Planes High,” a show featuring artists whose work conceptually engages with expansiveness. Part two, which consecrated the Lund space, opened in mid-March.

“Moving between Sweden and L.A. creates a dialogue between contexts that are quite different in energy and scale,” said Giunta. That tension is good. It keeps things from becoming too fixed and allows artists to be seen in multiple frameworks. So ‘local’ becomes something you build through repetition and trust, not just where you’re based.”

This rethinking comes as the gallery looks to centralize its efforts. After years in Stockholm, jumping across several spaces across the city, most recently a townhouse on Odengatan (coincidentally designed by Zettervall’s son, Folke), the gallerists felt it was time to change things up.

Lund felt like a better use of resources, time, and energy, “where we have full control over context and presentation,” Giunta said, pointing to the legendary Lund gallerist Anders Tornberg, who, between 1970 and 1990, featured notable New York artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Sol LeWitt, and Richard Serra.

The chapel in Lund brings the gallery’s ethos into sharper focus. As with the exhibition at El Royale, the work is set in direct dialogue with the building. This setting illuminates the bright, explosive colors that characterize most of this group show, such as Jean Nagai’s Goat Mountain (2025), a textured pumice-on-canvas work that evokes a burning flame, or Alice Faloretti’s psychedelic landscape, Mirage #2 (2025). Compared to its first iteration in L.A., this show feels less compressed, bending to the chapel’s rhythm while still linking the gallery’s program across continents.

While the formats shift, the approach remains the same: to bring work into contact with an audience in a way that is carefully “edited,” where, as Giunta says, “relationships can develop in a way that felt more our own.”

from Artsy News https://ift.tt/3Cnixe1