Two major additions to American culture opened their doors within days of each other after multi-year projects strategically planned to culminate during the country’s 250th anniversary: the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago and the Tang Wing for American Democracy at the New York Historical in Manhattan.
Art Galleries & Museums
Willem de Kooning is a name recognized worldwide for his impact on the development and growth of Abstract Expressionism in America. However, back in his early days, he was one of a small group of struggling New York painters attempting to create work expressing new ideas in a world recovering from the calamity that was WWII.
On a quiet residential corner in the Coyoacán section of Mexico City sits the cobalt blue house where Frida Kahlo was born, painted, and lived for more than four decades. The Casa Azul is at once a home and a monument: its courtyard garden hums with fountains and dappled shade, while its rooms hold the intimate wreckage and triumph of a singular life.
It has been roughly 10 years since data artist Refik Anadol opened his studio in Los Angeles, leaving an indelible mark on the city.
Joan Miró, the Catalan painter, had a successful retrospective at MoMA in 1941 and an exhibit with his dealer, Pierre Matisse (Matisse’s son), in 1945. Miró first visited the United States in 1947—one of seven visits to the States—and was included in the New American Paintings at MoMA in 1991.
There is a mystical aura that surrounds Celia Paul’s paintings, as if they lived in another atmosphere. The air around and within them emanates a different frequency: vibrations almost not human. Her figures are not corporal; they’re more like music, phrases in the air. Even the colors are not flesh, as if in a dream. Each painting, whether figure or object, seascape or self-portrait, is distinctly hers.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recently announced deal to merge with cosmetic billionaire Ronald Lauder’s Neue Galerie reflects a quietly growing trend among museums as limited funding and specialized collections press new priorities on leadership.
As the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Autry Museum of the American West is shifting the lens westward. In Life, Liberty, and Los Angeles, opening May 30, the museum reframes the founding ideals, not as settled history, but as questions still being argued over in Los Angeles.
The Stars We Do Not See is the poetic, but also challenging, title of the biggest, most comprehensive exhibition of Australian Indigenous art to be exhibited outside the continent to date, some shown for the first time abroad. The title is partly inspired by the late Yolŋu artist Gulumbu Yunupiŋu from Yrrkala in Arnhem Land, known for her mesmerizing mappings of the night sky, several of which are in the exhibition.
At a Venice Biennale often defined by spectacle, scale, and geopolitical performance, some of the most consequential exhibitions of 2026 unfold quietly—through the language of vessels, memory, and care.
