Venice on the Edge, Museums Get Schooled

Venice’s central exhibition for the 61st Biennale has been shaped by an extraordinary loss. When artistic director Koyo Kouoh died in May 2025, it sent a shockwave through the art world and raised immediate questions about whether her vision could be realised. In the months since, The Art Newspaper reports those questions have been answered through a structure Kouoh already had in place: a five-person group of collaborators, “la squadra di Koyo Kouoh,” who had been working with her for months and met with her in Dakar, Senegal, a little more than a month before her death. They finalised themes and scenography, refined the artist list and works, and even established the exhibition’s graphic identity. At a February press conference, they announced a full concept with 111 invited artists, duos, collectives, and artist-led organisations.

Staying in Venice, Marina Abramović is making a pair of firsts at the Gallerie dell’Accademia. The Art Newspaper says she’s the first living female artist to have a solo show there, and—also for the first time—her work will be installed in the galleries housing the permanent collection as well as in temporary exhibition spaces. The exhibition is titled Transforming Energy, and Abramović ties it to decades of interest in creating “transitory objects” that the public can use. Visitors are invited to physically engage with stone beds and crystal-embedded structures, designed around what she calls three body positions—lying, sitting, and standing—for “energy transmission.” Another work asks visitors to look at red, blue, and yellow panels for an hour each. No telephones are allowed, headphones can block ambient sound, and Abramović hopes people spend at least three hours inside.

Venice gets even more apocalyptic at the Austrian pavilion, where Florentina Holzinger’s Seaworld Venice imagines a flooded future. The Art Newspaper describes it as a dizzying, immersive, confrontational installation that functions at once as an underwater theme park, a sewage treatment plant, and a sacred building. Curator Nora-Swantje Almes says the scenario imagines Venice with water so high that dry land disappears and sewage seeps into daily life. Live performers will be present throughout the installation’s seven-month run, playing characters dependent on technology for survival—raising questions about what it means to live in “symbiosis” with technological extension, and how systems fail through human error. Almes also connects the work to Venice’s paradox: a city dependent on tourism for survival, even as tourism accelerates climate damage. “We are complicit,” she says, including Biennale visitors.

Not every nation is arriving in Venice this year. The Art Newspaper reports that Iran cancelled its participation in the 61st International Art Exhibition, In Minor Keys by Koyo Kouoh (9 May-22 November), just days before the opening on 9 May, according to organisers in a brief statement on Monday, 4 May. No reason was given. Iran had been expected to take part, but it had not announced an artist or pavilion details, listing only Aydin Mahdizadeh Tehrani—director general of visual arts at the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance (MCIG)—as commissioner. The cancellation comes as tensions rise in the Middle East, with a fragile US-Iran ceasefire in place since 8 April. A source familiar with Iran’s art world, speaking anonymously, pointed to practical complications: “There are no flights, no postage,” and said participation since 2015 hasn’t reflected Iran’s independent art scene.

And speaking of Venice’s realities, The Art Newspaper says the Biennale’s commercial side is more visible than ever. Although the Biennale is officially government-subsidised and non-commercial—meaning sales talk is usually downplayed—this year an unprecedented number of dealers, auction houses, and private foundations are openly pricing and selling works to collectors in the city. The article notes Italy’s year-old 5% VAT rate on art imports, now Europe’s lowest, as a possible spur. For the first time, Christie’s is hosting an invitation-only selling exhibition, Ghost Pavilion: A Venice Revealed, offering works from Lucas Cranach to Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, and Mark Bradford, priced from five hundred thousand dollars to fifty dollarsm, with viewings 4-10 May. The story also details how private patrons and dealers increasingly fund production, transport, and staffing—often recouping costs through sales.

Across the Atlantic, Hyperallergic heads to Pittsburgh, where the 59th Carnegie International is explicitly looking back at its own history. The review opens with artist Chris Ofili’s culture-war flashpoint “The Holy Virgin Mary” (1996) and then turns to “The Adoration of Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars” (1998), which the Carnegie purchased the year it appeared in the 53rd International and is now on view again in a gallery dedicated to the exhibition’s 130-year history. The Carnegie International, founded in 1896—just a year after the Venice Biennale—has long aimed to show the “old masters of tomorrow,” and has helped shape the museum’s collection over time. The new International opened to the public on Saturday, May 2, and expands beyond the main campus with installations at sites including the Kamin Science Center, the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, the Mattress Factory, and the Thelma Lovette YMCA.

The 59th Carnegie International also comes with an ambitious curatorial frame. Hyperallergic says curators Ryan Inouye, Danielle Jackson, and Liz Park assembled an exhibition titled if the word we, drawn from a line in an essay by Egyptian writer Haytham el-Wardany. The show includes 61 artists representing roughly the same number of countries across every continent, with half commissioned for the event. The review connects the exhibition to Pittsburgh’s changing cultural ecosystem, noting a pamphlet-map by local publication Middle Node highlighting 60 galleries and museums across the city, and pointing to local construction of a new Institute for Contemporary Art across the street. The piece argues the International has never been only local, and frames it as a predictor of future global luminaries—while also suggesting today’s curatorial practice struggles to fully interrogate its position within a compromised environment.

Down in New York, a sharp critique is aimed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s spring Costume Institute show, “Costume Art.” The article describes it as an anomaly for the department because it places artworks from the Met’s collection—ranging from ancient Greek statues to Andy Warhol screenprints—beside fashion by designers including Charles James and CFGNY. Curator Andrew Bolton said the exhibition aspires to “suggest that fashion can expand our understanding of what art can mean,” but the piece argues the show often fails to produce meaningful comparisons. One pairing it praises: a 1997 Jean Paul Gaultier shirt next to a 1971 Joe Brainard drawing, both featuring heart-shaped tattoo imagery and linked by artists who died of AIDS-related causes. But it calls many other juxtapositions vague, like an Ottolinger dress paired with an Adriana Varejão painting, or a de Kooning lithograph near a Nadia Pinkney coat for little more than shared colors.

Staying in New York, Hyperallergic reports that MoMA PS1 will present the first United States survey of Mexican artist Teresa Margolles, opening September 24 and running through spring 2027. Formally trained as a forensic pathologist, Margolles has spent over 30 years making sculptures, performances, and installations using organic and bodily materials sourced from homicide victims, morgues, and crime scenes. The survey will bring together works confronting murder and violence along the US-Mexico border, as well as the treatment and remembrance of bodies after death. A new 2026 evolution of her Air (2003–) series will humidify a PS1 gallery with water imbued with degradable material from homicide sites. Another featured work, “El agua de la ciudad, Dallas” (2016), documents Margolles and volunteers cleaning multiple murder sites across Dallas. MoMA in Manhattan will also host a new installation starting September 17.

Across to London, an unrealized project by Christo and Jeanne-Claude is finally being mounted—this time at Gagosian. The exhibition “Christo: Air” opens May 21 and runs through August 21, and it will feature Air Package on a Ceiling, conceived in 1968 for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia but never realized due to technical limitations. Gagosian describes it as a “vast, internally illuminated and suspended form,” measuring around 32 by 52 feet and hanging just over viewers’ heads. In the Guardian, Christo’s studio manager Lorenza Giovanelli—who began working with him in 2017—said it will look like a cloud lit from within, and called it “very magical.” Giovanelli found the original plans in 2018, two years before Christo’s death at 84. The show also includes Wrapped Automobile—Volvo, Model PV-544 (1981), not shown in 30 years.

Back to Venice, but this time the story is about what’s meant to last beyond the opening-week crush. ARTnews reports that Chanel and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation are launching a transatlantic curatorial fellowship connecting New York and Venice. Beginning in 2027, the Chanel Culture Fund Fellowship will be a one-year program for MA- and PhD-level scholars focused on collection studies and curatorial research. Each fellow will start at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and then continue at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, working across archives and exhibitions. The open call begins this fall, and fellows will receive a stipend and travel support. Chanel’s president of arts, culture, and heritage, Yana Peel, described it as building “an ecosystem of support.” Guggenheim director Mariët Westermann said the fellowship will help emerging curators pursue original research and contribute fresh insights.

That’s today’s download—links to every story are in the show notes. Come back tomorrow for more art world news, analysis, and a little bit of chaos.

Today's Stories