11 Must-See Shows During New York Art Week 2026 https://ift.tt/I80atoA

This May leaves no time for jetlag as the art world comes in hot off the Venice Biennale and cruises straight into a stacked New York Art Week. Get your coffee to go, too, because for the second year in a row, all the fairs—headlined by Frieze, TEFAF, and Independent—are locked into a single week.

And more art is waiting to be discovered beyond the fair circuit. New York galleries are opening their major spring shows while curators and collectors are in town. This season, there’s a mix of discoveries and deep dives, from a primer on the state of contemporary glass with “Glass Class,” a group show downtown at The Hole, to a pitch-perfect pairing of David Hammons and Jannis Kounellis uptown at White Cube.

There are also some can’t-miss New York gallery debuts to check out, with Chicago artists Tony Lewis and Lindsay Adams marking their first New York solo shows at Olney Gleason and Sean Kelly Gallery, respectively. These days, galleries are scattered all over the city, so should art fair malaise take hold, simply find the nearest exit and head out to see some shows.

Here, Artsy highlights 11 of the most noteworthy gallery exhibitions taking place during New York Art Week 2026.

Kelly Akashi

“Heirloom”

Lisson Gallery

May 13–July 25

Artist Kelly Akashi lost her Los Angeles home and studio in the devastating Eaton fire that swept through the city in January 2025. The artist, who is a Los Angeles native, escaped with her cat and just a few keepsakes. Returning to the land where her home and studio once stood, only the chimney remained. In “Heirloom,” her New York debut with Lisson Gallery, Akashi debuts new sculptures in glass, bronze, carved stone, and Corten steel, which grapples with grief, inheritance, and loss. Flowers—roses, irises, and branches in bronze—are a recurring motif, a reference to her garden and the scorched earth she has tended since the wildfire. This outing coincides with Akashi’s inclusion in the 2026 Whitney Biennial. There, she has installed a Monument (Altadena) (2026), a ghostly 13-foot chimney and path made of clear glass bricks on the museum’s terrace.

Giuseppe Penone

“The Reflection of Bronze”

Gagosian

Through July 2

Arte Povera pioneer Giuseppe Penone has been fascinated by trees for decades. In the late 1960s, Penone began exploring natural structures of trees, rivers, and stones—as well as the processes that shape them. His works have spanned sculpture, performance, works on paper, and photography. Now, at 79, Penone turns to bronze, an ancient and lasting material, to create a series of massive new sculptural castings of trees, inspired by the forests near his home in Piedmont, Italy. Gagosian has gone all-in on the presentation, too. Nearly 700 sheets of cork line the walls of one room, absorbing ambient sound, so that the gallery space seems like a woodland oasis.

The show is notably curated by Adam D. Weinberg, former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, who has said he hopes the exhibition introduces a new generation of American art lovers to Penone’s oeuvre.

Emma Webster

“Rues and Leaves Themselves Alone”

Petzel Gallery

Through June 6

Los Angeles artist Emma Webster brings a new series of her brooding landscapes to her New York solo show with Petzel Gallery. Known for creating paintings with apocalyptic undertones, here Webster presents works that meander through a nocturnal forest filled with animals—deer, horses, cows—that are haunting and strange, appearing like life-size figurines. Webster has a unique process for making these works, involving VR sketches, scanned handmade maquettes, and drawings. Here, she imbues the centuries-old landscape painting tradition with the unstable perception of our own times.

Lindsay Adams

“SOIL”

Sean Kelly Gallery

Through May 30

SOIL (Virginia Red Clay), 2026
Lindsay Adams
Sean Kelly Gallery

Chicago-based artist Lindsay Adams makes her New York solo debut at Sean Kelly Gallery with a new suite of abstract oil paintings. Adams describes her works as rooted in a sense of wonder. She uses Lamp Black pigment, an unusually intense noir, to create the background for her compositions. Instead of entirely obscuring this ground, she leaves the black only just perceptible. In this way, darkness seems a generative force beneath her sumptuous marks of pinks, blues, and greens.

Later this year, Adams will be among the 25 artists to have their work unveiled at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Adams’s site-specific installation, Weary Blues, a reworking of a 2024 painting by the same name, will be made of silkscreen panels on fabric and on view in the public café.

Tony Lewis

“Abstract Slavery”

Olney Gleason

Through June 6

Food & Drink, 2025
Tony Lewis
Olney Gleason

Sugar, 2025
Tony Lewis
Olney Gleason

Over the past 15 years, Chicago artist Tony Lewis has honed a conceptually rigorous drawing practice, working primarily with graphite, colored pencil, and paper. In the past decade, his works have explored alphabets and other written forms of language as modes of abstraction.

Now, in “Abstract Slavery” at Olney Gleason, a long-overdue New York solo debut for the artist, Lewis investigates the history of the Atlantic slave trade through three interrelated series: “Word Search” drawings, “Gregg Shorthand” compositions, and “White Drawings.” Across these works, Lewis both draws and obscures words tied to the slave trade, through the use of puzzles, shorthand marks, and personal scribbles, probing the structure and limits of written language in the face of history’s brutalities.

Firelei Báez

“Feet squelching on wet grass, nourished by uncertainty.”

Hauser & Wirth

May 12–July 31

Firelei Báez is celebrated for her fantastical large-scale paintings that draw on Afro Caribbean histories and myths. This week, she makes her eagerly anticipated New York solo debut at Hauser & Wirth. At the center of the show is View of Nature (2026), an eight-panel painting where Báez depicts shifting climate and geography from the tropics near the equator to the icy climes of the Arctic Circle. The colossal work is Báez’s reimagination of an engraving that cartographer John Emslie made in 1852.

Here, Báez is also showing works in bronze, for the first time. Two monumental sculptures of ciguapas, chimerical female tricksters in Dominican folklore, loom over the exhibition, one of which Báez has adorned with plumes of real feathers.

Hyegyeong Choi

“Tethered, Untethered”

Harper’s

May 12–June 20

In her third solo exhibition with Harper’s, Brooklyn-based painter Hyegyeong Choi goes in for the kill—figuratively. Choi is known for her technicolor paintings of avatar-like humanoids, and here she brings these fanciful beings into dialogue with the history of hunting paintings. One new painting, for instance, reimagines Gustave Courbet’s Hunting Dogs with Dead Hare (1857), a scene of snarling dogs fighting over their lifeless prey, but with humanoids cast in the role of dogs. In the painting, Venery (2026), meanwhile, Choi depicts a Diana-like huntress who shoots a paintbrush from her bow rather than an arrow; it sails toward an abstract painting in the background, hinting at the element of pursuit that unites both painter and hunter in their quests.

Raven Chacon

“Score for Coming Storms”

Sikkema Malloy Jenkins

May 14–June 20

Pulitzer Prize–winning composer, performer, and artist Raven Chacon’s new exhibition, “Score for Coming Storms,” brings together a visual score for performance, a sound installation, textiles, and ink drawings.

Born in the Navajo Nation in 1977, Chacon has spent over two decades centering stories of Indigenous memory and resistance. In 2023, Chacon was awarded the MacArthur fellowship, and in 2024, the Swiss Institute organized “A Worm’s Eye View from a Bird’s Beak,” Chacon’s first major institutional solo exhibition.

Included in the exhibition is Storm Pattern (2021/2024), a sound installation composed of field recordings of flying drones captured at the Standing Rock Oceti Sakowin camp in 2016. The sounds of these drones, operated by both the police and private security, as well as those protecting the Missouri River from the pipeline build, create intertwined soundtracks of surveillance and countersurveillance.

Kim Dacres

“Lost on a Two-Way Street”

Charles Moffett

Through June 20

Until the ocean covers every mountain high (Blue Gears), 2026
Kim Dacres
Charles Moffett

Oval Medallion - Lady with Contained Crash out Braids, 2026
Kim Dacres
Charles Moffett

Living in Harlem and working in the Bronx, artist Kim Dacres salvages rubber tires, computer keyboards, and metal from the city streets around her. She transforms cast-off materials into abstract busts, a sculptural format historically reserved for people in power. Dacres, who is a first-generation American of Jamaican descent, first introduced her busts in her 2023 debut with Charles Moffett. Now, in “Lost on a Two-Way Street,” Dacres adds wall works, which she calls medallions, to her repertoire, a form that is reminiscent of Victorian cameos. In these new works, Dacres weaves tire treads into buns and braids, and uses found metal as jewelry, so that her busts resemble the Black women who live in the very uptown neighborhoods where she sources her materials.

“Glass Class”

The Hole

Through June 28

This group show is curated by glass artist and collector Eric Sullivan, and bills itself as a “crash course” in glass art—a medium that remains enigmatic to many even in the art world. The show is a mix of emerging, mid-career, and established artists. Notable artists featured include late German Australian glass artist and educator Klaus Moje, who innovated the influential kiln-formed glass technique, as well as contemporary artist Hannah Hansdotter, whose luminous vessels are rooted in Scandinavian craft traditions, but look deeply futuristic.

David Hammons and Jannis Kounellis

White Cube

Through June 13

Uptown at White Cube, the works of American artist David Hammons and the late Greek Italian artist Jannis Kounellis come together in an unusually fruitful pairing. The exhibition is curated loosely around the story of their friendship, which sparked in the early 1990s at the American Academy in Rome.

The earliest works in the show are Kounellis’s, from the late 1950s, part of his “Alfabeto” series of stenciled paintings based on signage in the urban environment. The earliest Hammons works on view are his influential body prints, made in Los Angeles in the 1960s using everyday materials like wallpaper and margarine grease. Over the years, both artists resisted the commercialization and aestheticization of the art world. To these ends, Kounellis began incorporating natural materials, like coal and stone, into his works, while Hammons repurposed materials he found on the streets of New York City. The wit and deceptive simplicity of their creations are both memorable and moving.

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Major new Jean-Michel Basquiat collector’s book, priced at $1,400, released from Assouline. https://ift.tt/xkADg9P

Assouline has released Basquiat: The World of Jean-Michel, a 348-page volume featuring more than 200 artworks and archival photographs from Jean-Michel Basquiat and priced at $1,400. The book launches as part of the publisher’s Ultimate Collection of large-format, hand-bound volumes.

The volume unfolds thematically across six chapters, including Basquiat’s depictions of heads, the imprint of New York City on his visual language, his use of silkscreens and multilayered surfaces, and the spiritual dimensions of his work. It draws on a decade of primary research conducted by Colour Themes, the independent art advisory and dealership co-founded by Philip Rebeiz and CJ Jones, which partnered with Assouline on the project.

The book assembles an expansive cast of contributors, including people who knew Basquiat personally and figures inspired by his legacy. Living contributors include artist George Condo, collector Peter Brant, and the musician Lenny Kravitz. Also included are writings from figures no longer living, among them the artist Keith Haring, cultural critic bell hooks, and the fashion designer Valentino Garavani. Also cited in the book is Swiss art dealer Bruno Bischofberger—Basquiat’s exclusive worldwide representative from 1982 until the artist’s death in 1988—who himself died last week.

In November 2025, an early 1981 canvas, Crowns (Peso Neto), made its first appearance on the auction block at Sotheby’s, selling for $48.3 million. This spring, Basquiat’s Museum Security (Broadway Meltdown) (1983) is heading to Sotheby’s with an estimate in excess of $45 million. His auction record—Untitled (1982), a skull painting—sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s in 2017, then the highest price ever paid at auction for an American artist’s work.

Works featured in the volume include Red Skull (1982), Untitled (Devil’s Head) (1987), and a group of 1984 silkscreen paintings that the book notes have rarely been studied in depth or displayed together. The book’s physical design also pays homage to Basquiat’s interest in unconventional materials: the clamshell case is crafted from a tactile, canvas-like material.

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Our Guide to New York Art Week 2026 https://ift.tt/cK3FdrI

New York is never short on great art. But New York Art Week is exceptional: Over the course of a week, an unusual collision of high-quality work descends on the city, spanning a half-dozen fairs—including Frieze New York, Independent New York, TEFAF New York, and NADA New York—alongside gallery openings from Tribeca to the Upper East Side, and auction previews ahead of the marquee sales at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips.

While it’s an especially exciting time for the out-of-town art crowd, it might be even more of a joy for New Yorkers. The art comes to us. You can go about your regular week with plenty of excuses to slip out of the office to catch a fair, end the day at openings, or make time for a gallery talk or museum visit.

Most gallery shows and auction house previews are free and open to the public, while fairs and many museums require tickets. Plenty of these exhibitions will remain on view after the week is over, yet there is something energizing about seeing it all amid the rush.

Instead of one long list, we’ve mapped three routes for tackling the week, each built around a different neighborhood and mood: polished and grand uptown, high-energy in Chelsea, and fresh and off the beaten path downtown. We’ve also put together a Google Maps list so you can save the key stops to your phone.

Route 1: Uptown, from TEFAF to Sotheby’s to the Studio Museum

Best for: A polished day of museum-quality art, blue-chip galleries, and an uptown finish.

While you might think the city’s art scene revolves around downtown haunts, this itinerary might change your mind. Between TEFAF, Sotheby’s, Madison Avenue galleries, and the newly reopened Studio Museum in Harlem, Upper Manhattan offers a day that feels stylish and very New York.

Take in TEFAF

Begin with TEFAF New York (May 15th to 19th) at the Park Avenue Armory, where the building itself is part of the experience. The main drill hall and corridors lend the fair a sense of occasion that suits TEFAF’s mix of Old Masters, modern and contemporary art, design, and jewelry. I’ll be especially keen to see Kathleen Ryan’s gem-encrusted fruit sculptures at Gagosian’s booth; an Ithell Colquhoun painting presented by Richard Saltoun Gallery; and a presentation of Formafantasma designs with Friedman Benda.

TEFAF also offers a talks program each day. Two I’m eyeing are “Who Supports Art Now? Patronage in a Shifting Cultural Landscape” on Friday, May 15th at 4:30 p.m., and a conversation with the fantastic painter Eva Helene Pade, who has a solo booth with Thaddaeus Ropac, on Saturday, May 16th, at 2:30 p.m.

Pop into the Sotheby’s preview

At Sotheby’s, in its stylish new home of the Breuer Building on Madison Avenue, you can see works from the May marquee sales before many of them leave public view, maybe forever. The best part: Auction previews are free and open to the public, even if you have no intention of bidding. There are exhibitions on view through May 18th, but you’ll need to stop by before May 13th to see the most closely watched piece: Mark Rothko’s Brown and Blacks in Reds (1957), estimated to sell for $100 million, from the “Robert Mnuchin: Collector at Heart Evening Auction.”

Sotheby’s is the most natural stop on this uptown route, but fellow auction houses Christie’s and Phillips are worth keeping in mind, too, especially if you’re near Rockefeller Center or Park Avenue. Their previews are also free and open to the public, and they offer the same low-pressure chance to see major works up close before they head to auction.

Gallery hop along Madison Avenue

With many galleries clustered along or near Madison Avenue, gallery hopping on the Upper East Side is efficient and comes with an air of glamour. The Madison Avenue Spring Gallery Walk takes place on Saturday, May 16th, with participating galleries from East 57th to East 86th Streets. Here are some shows I’m particularly excited about:

• Eliza Douglas at Gagosian’s Park and 75th outpost: Douglas is best known for her gripping performances with Anne Imhof and walking Balenciaga runways, but she’s an accomplished painter, too. This show marks her debut New York solo with Gagosian.
• Magdalena Abakanowicz at GRAY New York: A selection of work from the 1960s to 1990s tracing the Polish artist’s evolving inquiry into the human condition.
• David Hammons and Jannis Kounellis at White Cube: The first two-person exhibition of the legendary artists’ work in more than 30 years.
• “Set in Stone” at David Zwirner’s East 69th Street location: Organized with Paris’s Galerie Kugel, this clever exhibition pairs contemporary works with hardstone sculptures dating from antiquity to the 19th century.

Make a museum visit—or two

When it comes to museums, you’ll need to make some tough choices. Here are the ones I’d prioritize:

• “Costume Art” and Raphael at The Met: The Costume Institute’s annual exhibition pairs roughly 200 garments with 200 artworks spanning 5,000 years in the Met’s new 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries. While there, don’t miss the sweeping Raphael survey.
• Carol Bove at the Guggenheim: The sculptor’s first museum survey spans 25 years of work and sings in the museum’s architecture.
• Joan Semmel at the Jewish Museum: A long-overdue New York museum moment for the 90-year-old artist. The show closes May 31st, so this is an opportune time to catch it.
• The Studio Museum in Harlem: My top recommendation, especially if you haven’t yet visited the museum’s stunning new home on 125th Street. Newly on view is “Fade,” featuring 17 early-career artists of African and Afro Latinx descent, plus Kapwani Kiwanga’s new site-specific commission. On May 17th, the museum hosts Studio Sundays, with free admission and programming for kids.

Route 2: From Frieze to NADA and Chelsea galleries

Best for: Those who want the week’s biggest fair, major galleries, and an easy Chelsea itinerary.

Frieze New York (May 13th to 17th) is the anchor of the week—and conveniently, it’s an easy walk to younger counterpart fair NADA (May 13th to 17th) and major gallery shows in Chelsea. If you’re seeking out the week’s greatest hits, this route is for you.

Frieze first

Frieze New York returns to The Shed in Hudson Yards. This year’s theme, “Bold Solos, Global Dialogues,” promises a high percentage of single-artist presentations, which typically make for a more enjoyable fair. Some solo booths I’m looking forward to include Pia Camil at OMR, Reika Takebayashi at Public Gallery, and Joe Bradley at David Zwirner.

NADA next

For a change of register, head to NADA New York at the Starrett-Lehigh Building—which is also where you’ll find the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair. NADA typically hosts smaller and younger galleries, with a focus on emerging and lesser-known artists. Some booths and painters to watch include Shangfeng Zhang at Latitude Gallery, Margaret R. Thompson at Red Arrow Gallery, and Emily Ponsonby at Gillian Jason Gallery.

If you want guidance, NADA is offering tours of the fair on May 16th. And if you’re serious about buying and need help, you can book a private walkthrough with an advisor—though it will set you back $500.

Hop through Chelsea galleries

Chelsea galleries are a moving target, with plenty of new shows opening and more already on view. Thursday, May 14th is a solid night to visit, as galleries stay open late for the ADAA Chelsea Gallery Walk. A few shows at the top of my list:

• Lisa Yuskavage and Gerhard Richter at David Zwirner: From Yuskavage’s lush, humorous figurative paintings to Richter’s celebrated landscapes, there’s a feast of major painting across Zwirner’s spaces in Chelsea.
• David Hockney, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, and Paul Thek at Pace Gallery: Pace shows the range of its program, from Hockney’s iPad drawings to Kam Kngwarray’s celebrated paintings to its debut Thek survey.
• Giuseppe Penone at Gagosian: Major installations lend fresh spotlight to the Arte Povera artist’s interest in nature, human intervention, and time.
• Katharina Fritsch at Matthew Marks Gallery: A must for anyone drawn to sculpture that is deadpan, uncanny, and instantly memorable.
• Huguette Caland and Kelly Akashi at Lisson Gallery: Two starkly different yet equally intriguing shows. Akashi is known for visceral bronze and glass sculptures, while Caland’s show traces five decades across painting, drawing, sculpture, and writing.
• Tony Lewis at Olney Gleason: Lewis’s debut New York solo brings together drawings reflecting his ongoing research into the Atlantic slave trade.
• Erwin Wurm at Lehmann Maupin: A survey of Wurm’s absurdist sculptures, with a focus on the humor of the figure.

Make time for a gallery talk or Whitney stop

If you’d like something more structured than gallery hopping, Saturday brings several programs. On May 16th at 10:30 a.m., Sean Kelly Gallery hosts a talk between Lindsay Adams, whose solo show is on view, and curator Sadaf Padder. A few blocks away at 11 a.m., Galerie Lelong hosts a walkthrough of its Lucia Laguna exhibition with curator Larry Ossei-Mensah. Later that day, Hauser & Wirth launches the latest issue of its Ursula magazine with Firelei Báez, whose work is on view at the gallery’s 22nd Street location. Earlier in the week, on May 12th at 5 p.m., Karma is hosting a talk at its Chelsea gallery between artist Jeremy Frey and art historian Thom Collins.

The obvious museum pairing here is the Whitney, especially if you’re moving downtown from The Shed through Chelsea. The Whitney Biennial 2026 is on view, and a highlight of the week will likely be Jonathan González’s three-hour durational performance on the museum’s outdoor terraces from May 15th to 17th, co-presented with Frieze. On Friday, May 15th, it’s also the museum’s Free Friday Night, and González performs from 6 to 9 p.m.

Route 3: Downtown, from Independent to Tribeca

Best for: Discovery, younger galleries, downtown energy, and a Friday night gallery crawl.

Finally, we follow the art-world crowd downtown. Independent (May 14th to 17th) takes over Pier 36, Tribeca openings abound, and a visit to the New Museum may be in order. This route offers a sleeker fair experience, smaller galleries, and an evening of openings that will almost certainly be buzzing.

Start with Independent

Begin with Independent at Pier 36, the fair’s new, larger home on the Lower East Side waterfront. Compared with the week’s bigger fairs, Independent tends to feel more edited, with strong solo presentations—more than 70% of this year’s 70-plus booths—and fresh work by younger and underrecognized artists alike.

I’ll be looking out for Uffner & Liu’s first solo presentation of Bernadette Despujols, as well as PENTIMENTI’s solo presentation of Dan Gunn, part of Independent’s Debuts program for artists having their first New York solo outing.

Take a lunch break in SoHo

While Tribeca is the place to be on Friday evening, Hauser & Wirth’s Wooster Street gallery offers a strong midday anchor. At noon, the gallery hosts a walkthrough of Allison Katz’s first major New York solo show, “Outta the Bag,” with curator Cecilia Alemani. Katz’s paintings often consider the act of looking itself, usually with a wry sense of humor. To stay in the mood, make a reservation across the street at Manuela, the gallery’s restaurant, for lunch surrounded by eye-watering art.

Spend the night in Tribeca

The centerpiece of the downtown scene is Tribeca Gallery Night on Friday, May 15th when more than 80 galleries stay open from 6 to 8 p.m. The streets will be thick with gallery-goers, and some spaces will be packed. This is a nice opportunity to forego too much planning and instead wander door to door, following the crowds spilling onto the sidewalk.

Some shows I’d recommend:

• Julie Mehretu at Marian Goodman Gallery: Mehretu’s seventh solo with the gallery brings together recent bodies of work featured in her 2024 Venice exhibition at Palazzo Grassi.
• Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Jack Shainman Gallery: New paintings and works on paper by the London-based artist, on view across both Jack Shainman locations.
• Martin Wong at P·P·O·W: Wong’s first New York solo in more than a decade is anchored by Popeye cutouts painted in his signature brick motif.
• Usha Seejarim at Southern Guild: The inaugural exhibition at the Cape Town–founded gallery’s new Tribeca space, and Seejarim’s U.S. solo debut. The show runs through May 17th.
• Janet Werner at Anat Ebgi: Werner’s first New York solo with the gallery features the Montreal-based painter’s strange, alluring figures, often women culled from fashion imagery.
• Jane Yang-D’Haene at Bienvenu Steinberg & C: The Brooklyn-based, South Korean–born ceramist is increasingly known for fresh takes on the Korean moon-jar tradition.

Make a museum visit

For a change of pace, take a more leisurely stroll through one of these downtown museum shows:

• “New Humans: Memories of the Future” at the New Museum: The first show in the museum’s expanded OMA-designed building explores how artists, writers, and scientists have shaped what it means to be human, with more than 150 artists, including Meriem Bennani, Pierre Huyghe, Wangechi Mutu, Anicka Yi, Francis Bacon, and Salvador Dalí.
• Ceija Stojka at The Drawing Center: The first major U.S. exhibition of the self-taught Austrian Romani artist, writer, and Holocaust survivor brings together more than 60 paintings, drawings, books, and archival materials.

Explore East Side galleries

If you find yourself heading to the Lower East Side or East Village, I’d recommend making time for:

• Nick Doyle and GaHee Park at Perrotin: Doyle continues his explorations with denim, while Park offers typically wonderful, strange paintings of figures, still lifes, and interiors.
• Keith Haring at The Brant Foundation: This sprawling show focuses on Haring’s breakthrough years of 1980–83, fittingly set in the neighborhood where the artist had his formative years. It’s a quintessentially New York art story—and a fitting endpoint to New York Art Week.
• Aiza Ahmed at Half Gallery: Ahmed is a closely watched, rising artist exploring issues of migration and diasporic histories, particularly on the Indian subcontinent. She opens this new show, curated by Los Angeles gallerist Rajiv Menon, on May 15th at 6 to 8 p.m.

Click here to save Artsy’s New York Google Map so you can navigate Art Week with ease.

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5 Standout Artworks at Carnegie International 2026 https://ift.tt/CZrpe0x

This spring, Abraham González Pacheco’s monumental series of murals, collectively titled Orogenic (2026), engulfs the façade of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These concrete, metal, and pigment depictions of a maelstrom of archaeological objects take inspiration from the museum’s collection and introduce viewers to the 59th edition of the institution’s Carnegie International. The newly commissioned work suggests a key theme of the show: the ways in which museums and history itself have assigned value to certain civilizations, acquiring and displaying their objects in fraught ways.

Carnegie International is the longest-running contemporary art survey in North America. Industrialist Andrew Carnegie established the annual show in 1896 with a vision to boost the city’s cultural footprint. Though it initially centered on European painting and Gilded Age art, the exhibition has evolved over the past century to become a research-driven project that enlivens the city every four years. Different curatorial teams take the helm each time, bringing diverse, global art practices to Pittsburgh in order to consider timely sociopolitical questions.

This edition of the exhibition, which opened on May 2 and will be on view through January 3, 2027, is its most expansive to date. It features over sixty artists and collectives, as well as more than thirty commissions. Curators Ryan Inouye, Danielle A. Jackson, and Liz Park have chosen the title “If the word we,” from an essay by the Egyptian writer Haytham el-Wardany, which considers collective experience and connection in the face of global challenges. The curators propose that the world “cannot be fully understood from a single point of view or universal framework,” but rather through ongoing inquiries that help us “navigate [the] contradictions of life while being receptive to the frequencies of our surroundings.”

Their ideas unfold in the museum and sites across Pittsburgh, from the Kamin Science Center to the Mattress Factory. Throughout, artists consider themes ranging from geopolitics to diasporic and Indigenous histories, often through immersive, site-responsive installations and architectural interventions. During the opening days, Artsy was on-site to discover standout works. The following five newly commissioned projects offer compelling entry points to the show:

Cinthia Marcelle, Green Hall Annex (2026)

B. 1974, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Lives and works in São Paulo.

A centerpiece of the exhibition, Cinthia Marcelle’s monumental installation reflects on political and cultural parallels between the United States and Brazil. Its subject is the aftermath of the far-right attacks on the U.S. Capitol and on federal buildings in Brasília, Brazil’s capital city, on January 6, 2021, and January 8, 2023, respectively, and the subsequent processes of renovation and repair.

The work takes the form of a flat-roofed pavilion with minimalist pillars, which evokes the targeted government buildings in Brasília, designed by Brazilian modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer. The curators have installed the piece in the museum’s striking Hall of Sculpture, which features white marble pillars sourced from the same quarries used for the Parthenon. Here, the curators reference the Neoclassical architecture of the U.S. Capitol.

Marcelle has blanketed the gallery and structure of her roof with green carpet. It’s sourced from the same manufacturer responsible for the green carpet removed from Brazil’s government buildings following the attacks. On the underside, the artist collaged newspaper clippings in English and Portuguese from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the New York Times, and Brazilian publications that address political events and legal proceedings. In one corner of the room, the carpet is slightly lifted, revealing fragments of these newspaper clippings beneath. The work prompts reflection on how we record, interpret, and circulate history and current events.

The installation furthers Marcelle’s larger project to explore how political systems are organized and dismantled. It expands on her 2023 exhibition “Blue Hall Annex” at Galeria Luisa Strina in São Paulo, which similarly took blue carpet—which replaced the damaged carpet in the Brazilian government buildings—as a metaphor.

Dineo Seshee Bopape, Fiela, fiela (I’ve come to take you home) (2026)

B. 1981, Polokwane, South Africa. Lives and works in Johannesburg.

Dineo Seshee Bopape aligns with the exhibition’s larger theme of “we” as she continues her research into the relationship between land, memory, and healing. Her immersive, multimedia environment in the Carnegie Museum’s lobby gallery references Yoruba cleansing rituals. The circular structure, made of clay and soil, invites visitors to gather and pause; jute mats and plastic chairs encourage respite and extended viewing. Bopape produced an ambient soundtrack that loops from various speakers suspended throughout the space. Mounds of dirt, rocks, cowrie shells, and crystals are dispersed throughout alongside several projections onto the walls and floor that show nature scenes and snippets of Yoruba rituals. One, projected onto a stone, features a figure who rhythmically sweeps the earth.

The artist says that sweeping, a recurring motif in her work, is a metaphor for spiritual cleansing and a meditative gesture with a mantra-like potential. The artist also noted in a catalogue interview with curator Danielle A. Jackson that the “vibrations and rhythms of the strokes” collectively resemble waves and currents. The theme of “waves” also connects to various drawings on display from Bopape’s series “Master Harmoniser” (2020), in which the artist used soils from various sites related to the transatlantic slave trade to render water-like forms. These pieces suggest the metaphysical properties of water and earth and their capacity to hold memory.

Claudia Martínez Garay and Arturo Kameya, La ceniza ya no recuerda qué causó el incendio. / The ash no longer remembers what caused the fire. (2026)

B. 1983, Ayacucho, Peru. Lives and works between Amsterdam and Lima.

B. 1984, Lima. Lives and works in Amsterdam.

This dual presentation by the Peruvian artists Claudia Martínez Garay and Arturo Kameya, whose practices both engage with colonialism and national identity, brings together sculptures, multichannel videos, paintings, and other works. It takes over three floors of a building within the Mattress Factory complex in Pittsburgh’s North Side and examines how state power shapes history and collective memory.

The artists take inspiration from Túpac Amaru II, an Indigenous chief and descendant of the last Inca ruler, who led an Andean rebellion against the Spanish in Peru in the 1780s. He became a lasting symbol of anti-colonial resistance and emancipatory movements. The installation of nine interconnected rooms unites mythic narratives with such political history. Martínez Garay presents psychedelic sculptures and acrylic paintings that reference contemporary Peruvian and ancient Andean visual traditions, often marked by distinct symmetry and geometric patterning. Kameya assembles a sprawling amalgamation of found and sculptural objects, from iPhones looping the news on social media to everyday domestic materials. They are strewn across debris-filled galleries that appear dilapidated or in a state of construction, evoking the plastered adobe houses of the artist’s childhood and reflecting on fragmentation and reconstruction.

Torkwase Dyson, Tomorrow Was Yesterday (2026)

B. 1973, Chicago. Lives and works in Beacon, New York.

Torkwase Dyson presents an approximately eight-minute animation in the Kamin Science Center’s Buhl Planetarium on select days throughout the run of the exhibition. The work continues the artist’s research into the effects of oil and gas drilling in the Caribbean, particularly off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago. The film immerses viewers in an underwater environment, where a robotic figure taps and chips at the seabed until the bedrock collapses. Before the animation begins, we see the artist in her studio creating abstract sculptures from fragments of stone that aim to evoke the broken bedrock. Dyson anchors her practice in broader questions about the pervasive effects of colonization and the slave trade in the Caribbean, and how the degradation of the environment will disproportionately affect Black diasporic communities in the region.

The artist works across disparate media to consider how the Black diaspora exists within and resists extractive systems of power. At the Carnegie Museum, she presents a series of drawings, paintings, and sculptures that expand this inquiry, using abstract spatial compositions to evoke underwater topographies and infrastructural systems such as pipelines and drilling sites. The project addresses urgent themes of environmental depletion, infrastructure, and architecture in contemporary life.

G. Peter Jemison, Across the Crick (All Roads Lead to Irving) (2026)

B. 1945, Silver Creek, New York. Lives and works in Victor, New York.

G. Peter Jemison’s newly commissioned, multi-panel painting is part of a larger reimagining of Iroquois and Native American art. The artist organized the touring show in 1975 to display the work of artists from the six tribes that make up the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in the northeastern United States and Canada. An enrolled member of the Heron Clan of the Seneca Nation, the artist has been a lifelong advocate for Native American art. He has served as a curator for many pioneering institutions including the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Ganondagan State Historic Site in New York, while maintaining his studio practice.

Across the Crick (All Roads Lead to Irving) depicts a map of Cattaraugus Reservation, where Jemison was born. His motifs, such as wildlife and rivers, speak to themes like the displacement of Native Americans, persistent colonial policies, land and water rights, and the preservation of Native knowledge and culture. Alongside his canvas, Jemison has mounted works by the artists Jay Carrier, Tom Huff, Craig Marvin, Diane Schenandoah, and Randee Spruce, whose works were in the original exhibition. These pieces, which range from beadwork to stone and animal bone carvings, demonstrate other contemporary expressions of Haudenosaunee art. Jemison transported all these artworks to the museum from his studio in upstate New York in a vintage van that is parked in the museum’s plaza. It’s splashed with a painting of the Ganondagan State Historic Site, where he established the Seneca Art and Culture Center in 2015, a Native American–led arts and education institution dedicated to preserving and sharing Seneca and Haudenosaunee history and culture.

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Radiohead singer Thom Yorke opens Venice exhibition with Stanley Donwood. https://ift.tt/vYEOWaF

Radiohead singer Thom Yorke and writer and artist Stanley Donwood have unveiled a new body of work in a solo show at Castello 2432 in Venice this week. Timed to the start of the 61st Venice Biennale, the show, titled "No Go Elevator (Not Without No Keycard)," brings together new ink drawings and a large-scale painting, the majority of which were executed in London earlier this year. It is the duo's first-ever exhibition outside the UK and will run through June 7.

Yorke and Donwood have collaborated for more than thirty years on original paintings for Radiohead album covers, lyric sketchbooks, and digital compositions. This exhibition, which is accompanied by a website, brings together fourteen walnut ink drawings on mulberry paper and one painting, which was executed in tempera and gold leaf on linen. The works are united by a visual language that employs stacked geometric towers, haunting orb-like entities, and liminal spaces reminiscent of the works of M. C. Escher.

I have read, understood & agree to the terms (2026), for instance, sees a row of these bulbous figures with antennae-like protrusions extending from their heads, cast upward as if plugging into something. It is accompanied by a text that reads, in part, "Let me refresh your glass! Go ask the unicorns! The mad king… no happy ending… Throwing knives reflect what you have in mind." Works such as Everything's Brilliant (2026), meanwhile, depict a landscape of these stacked towers while anonymous, shadowed figures approach, and The Voice from the Empty Chair (2026) and Numbers That You've Never Seen (2026) expand the contours of this visual world.

Details surrounding the show are intentionally vague. There is no press release, artist's statement, or information on the artworks. The exhibition poster offers only dates and an address, and is accompanied by a string of text scrawled in ink that reads like a poem, lyrics, or perhaps a track list: "joyless / pointless / senseless / worthless / loveless / what's best? / darkness / blindness / sleepless / thoughtless / witless / your mess."

In an email interview with Artnet News last month, the Radiohead frontman cryptically shared, "There is no unifying theme, no concept… What is left out is more important than what is included right now… what may appear simple has a whole forest of confusion behind it!" Added Donwood, "It is very important to look at the words, and if you do not, then you will have missed half of the work… However, it is not important to understand the words, so do not worry about that."

"No Go Elevator (Not Without No Keycard)" is the latest exhibition for the duo, who have collaborated on past shows, including a two-part exhibition in 2023 titled "The Crow Flies" at Tin Man Art in London, and "This Is What You Get," their first institutional show, held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The latter gathered more than 180 objects and ran from September 2025 through January 2026.

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6 Artworks That Define the 2026 Venice Biennale’s Main Exhibition https://ift.tt/UAGPeQx

It’s the art world’s most important art exhibition. But for 2026, the Venice Biennale arrives carrying unusual baggage. Koyo Kouoh was announced in 2024 as the curator—the first African woman to hold the role—for the 61st edition of the main show, which opens this week and runs through November. A tour de force, she had built her name connecting the international art world to artists and institutions from Africa and the Global South.

She passed away suddenly in 2025, leaving behind an artist list and a theme—“In Minor Keys”—for the five members of her curatorial team to execute. The curatorial text frames the show through a musical metaphor (a “minor key” refers to a somber musical mood) to explore the subtle and atmospheric power of art today. Despite this framing, the exhibition contains little music or sound work. The whispered rhythms and subtle melodies it references appear most clearly in human bonds across generations and in the raw materials extracted from contested land. For example, in Theo Eshetu’s Garden of the Broken Hearted (2026), a real olive tree rotates on a pedestal to the sound of tinkling chimes, like a poignant ballerina in a jewelry box.

The show is unavoidably tinged with loss, and the strangeness of living under the knowledge of certain death. Cut flowers, a perfect metaphor for blooming but stunted potential, recur throughout: from Dan Lie’s flower garlands in Ephemeral temple for decaying beings (2026), which give off strong vegetal whiffs, to Eric Baudelaire’s five-channel video of a commercial flower factory, Death Passed My Way and Stuck This Flower in my Mouth (2026).

“In Minor Keys” offers many such satisfying, quiet echoes that connect between rooms—and yet it’s hard to find a resounding message. Perhaps that is the point. In a moment of chaos on all sides, the quieter modes of human connection may be all we have left.

Here are six artists’ works that define the 2026 Venice Biennale.

Cauleen Smith, The Wanda Coleman Songbook, 2024

While “In Minor Keys” is not organized around themes, poetry is a recurring motif—blue hangings printed with poems by writers and artists such as Palestinian poet Refaat al-Areer and artist Big Chief Demond Melancon (whose artwork opens the Giardini) appear throughout the Arsenale. American multimedia artist Cauleen Smith’s installation The Wanda Coleman Songbook (2024) crystallizes these threads—an experimental four-channel video and installation paying homage to its namesake poet.

Huge screens enclose two sofas cozily huddled atop layers of Turkish rugs. The films are hazy and memory-laden, portraying the sights and sounds of Los Angeles—seagulls, dog walkers, and a close-up of the Hollywood sign—interspersed with shots zooming in on the pages of Coleman’s poetry books. Known as the unofficial poet laureate of L.A., Coleman wrote with clear-eyed lucidity about the realities of L.A.’s poor and Black communities, with humor that shadows the unflinching content. Her books are also displayed in a glass case in the installation.

Lyrical reworkings of her jazz- and blues-inspired poetry by contemporary musicians play through the speakers while a scent designed to recreate the smell of Griffith Park drifts through the space.

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Anatomy of the Magnolia Tree for Koyo Kouoh and Toni Morrison, 2026

Kouoh’s presence is felt throughout the show, but this work by Cuban American artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons pays direct tribute.

Huge vertical panels form a kind of delicate paper mural portraying the curator in a long dark cloak alongside the author Toni Morrison. Stalks of magnolia weave between them in delicate watercolor, ink, and gouache, sprawling across an entire wall near the Giardini’s entrance. Morrison, the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature, was a crucial inspiration for this Biennale: a quote from her essay “The Site of Memory” hangs from a banner in the Arsenale.

A symbol of the American South, the magnolia in the panels is also recreated in glass and resin flower sculptures arranged on seven plinths in front of the mural. The luxuriant blooms’ gold-and-red leaves droop and curl, a stunning tribute to these women’s advocacy. A 15-minute score by Kamaal Malak, layering bass and synth, accompanies the work.

The installation honors the gigantic impact of these Black women who worked to make quiet interiority the star of the show, placing them on the center stage themselves.

Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Ruinous, 2026

Throughout “In Minor Keys,” artists work in subtext, a theme that is at the heart of Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s new suite of works, all centered around the new two-channel video, Ruinous (2026). The two screens are placed apart from each other like stereo speakers framing the rest of the room. On them, McClodden plays an abstract painter—a character loosely based on herself, per the wall text—contemplating a painting she has mixed feelings about.

The viewer watches from behind the artist as she gazes at the canvas, narrating; her face stays unseen. On the other screen, a tenuous narrative of queer longing and family unfolds in a restaurant, centering around the theme of scarring.

Pleasure and pain seem to intertwine in these images: hurt and rejection are threaded with flashes of joy, like a halo of light around a beloved’s head. Alongside the videos are several sculptural works (also props in the film): a delicate chainmail head covering embroidered with 24-karat gold thread, and an épée sword mounted in a custom box titled The Giver of Scars (2026). Behind them hang three small leather canvases, scratched and sliced, raw and alive. Together, the installation captures the intense poetic rush of being alive through it all—the depth of longing and the way it marks us, sometimes forever.

Alfredo Jaar,The End of the World, 2023–24

Critical minerals— such as rare earth minerals—are the unseen sacred objects of modern Western economies, essential to everything from solar panels to semiconductors to batteries.

Chilean artist and architect Alfredo Jaar makes that reverence material: an extra-long room flooded with eye-popping red light, a single pedestal at the far end.

Inside the small glass box is a tiny, four-centimeter cube of thin-layered metals, each described on a wall label according to its uses and the geopolitical web it plays a role in. Like a radioactive church aisle, the artwork conjures the toxic violence these materials are linked to: the wars and global tensions they help create.

The long walk to reach these tiny deposits is one of the Biennale’s boldest reminders of the political volatility of the present. It’s an unmissable image of how minuscule elements of contemporary geopolitics, as recent trade escalations have shown, can have an outsized impact on everyday life.

Walid Raad, Postscript to the Arabic Edition, 1938–2025

At the end of the Lebanese Civil War in 1990, the country’s militias sold off their weapons. The readiest customers were combatants in the Balkans. When fighters opened their pallets full of weapons, they discovered something surprising: Their slatted undersides were painted with copies of famous Turkish and Arabic paintings. In the Arsenale, several of these pallets stand upright in Lebanese artist Walid Raad’s installation, their painted undersides exposed. The pallet paintings appear exactly as they were unloaded into a Ljubljana, Slovenia, warehouse—tarpaulins for a backdrop, duct tape, and A4-printed DIY notations giving an ad-hoc impression of a show mid-install.

As with much of Raad’s work, it’s a clever reframing of fiction, anecdote, and geopolitical complexities. Within “In Minor Keys,” the piece becomes a striking example of how art historical influence travels along unexpected paths—and surfaces in the least expected places.

Kaloki Nyamai, Kwata Kau, Ithyonze nitwavika vaa, and Ithyonze nitwavika vaa, all 2026

The vast, curtain-like paintings of Kaloki Nyamai are unmissable as visitors move through the Arsenale. Sewn together from horizontal strips, the works are built up in rough layers of splattered, bright paint, their surfaces studded with oversized faces and bodies stitched through with hairy tufts of yarn—a symbol of deep social connection in Nyamai’s home region of Kitui, Kenya.

In a triangular installation of new works—Kwata kau, Ithyonze nitwavika vaa, and Ithyonze nitwavika vaa II (all 2026)—Nyamai portrays crowds of people, visible only in their raised arms against the dense, layered surface.

Hung so the viewer can walk around all sides, the paintings reveal the hems and details that hold them together. Kwata kau is painted on both sides; up close, the figures’ faces almost disappear. Textiles carry a generational charge for Nyamai: his mother is a textile artist, and he cites his grandmother’s storytelling as an inspiration. The works hold the breadth of community and the closeness of family all in one.

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