Censorship Clashes and a Market Reset Shock

Iris van Herpen is getting a major museum moment in New York, with “Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses” landing at the Brooklyn Museum. The show charts two decades of her practice with more than 140 pieces, but it’s rooted in forces far older than fashion trends—coral systems, skeletons, living algae, water, snakes, and the movement of birds’ wings. Van Herpen puts it plainly: “Nature is the best artist that we have on this planet.” Curated by Matthew Yokobosky and Imani Williford, the exhibition pairs her designs—including works for Lady Gaga and Björk—with art by Agostino Arrivabene, Courtney Mattison, Tara Donovan, and Heishiro Ishino, plus an Ernst Haeckel illustration, a 50-million-year-old fossil, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Staying in New York, the New Museum has unveiled Sarah Lucas’s first commission for its new public plaza on the Bowery. VENUS VICTORIA (2026) arrived Tuesday, 12 May, at the intersection of Bowery and Prince Street, right by the museum’s OMA-designed, recently opened Toby Devan Lewis Building. The Art Newspaper describes Lucas’s sculpture as a playful riff on a classic reclining nude: a pink-hued figure in yellow high heels straddling a giant cast-concrete washing machine. Her proposal was selected by an all-artist jury—Teresita Fernández, Joan Jonas, Julie Mehretu, Cindy Sherman, and Kiki Smith—and it’ll remain on view for two years. After that, another commission by a woman artist will take its place, continuing the program’s focus.

Also in the New York orbit, The Art Newspaper reports that White Cube now represents Cai Guo-Qiang—making it the British gallery’s first time representing the Chinese-born, New York-based painter known for gunpowder paintings. The timing lines up with White Cube’s solo presentation of Cai’s ongoing series of gunpowder paintings with birds, which he began in 2018, at Tefaf New York from 14–19 May. Capucine Perrot, the gallery’s director of artist and museum liaisons, says Cai has been on their radar since a studio visit in Beijing two decades ago. Cai calls the partnership a “natural progression” and says he wanted these paintings seen in a commercial gallery setting.

From the market desk, Artnet’s 2025 numbers show collectors leaned into familiar names as the market stayed cautious. The Impressionist and Modern category overtook postwar and contemporary to become the most lucrative segment, bringing in four dollars billion—up 29.5 percent from 2024. The article notes growth was especially strong at the top end, with the ten dollars-million-plus bracket rising 68.6 percent year over year, and the number of lots sold hitting a decade high of one hundred twenty two thousand two hundred thirteen. Postwar and contemporary totaled four dollars billion, up 2.5 percent, with one hundred seventy eight thousand four hundred forty five lots sold—but the average price per lot fell to a decade low of twenty three thousand twenty seven dollars. Ultra-contemporary art kept cooling for a fourth year, dropping 26.5 percent to two hundred twenty nine dollars million.

Switching to fair season, the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair is back in New York for its 12th edition at the Starrett-Lehigh Building in Chelsea, with 20 exhibitors from 12 countries. A key focus this year is Brazil Beyond Brazil, a special section foregrounding Afro-Brazilian artists—ten artists and six galleries—organized by Brazilian art historian and curator Igor Simões. Simões, who also co-curated Dos Brasis: Art and Black Thought at Sesc Belenzinho in São Paulo in 2023, says the goal is to challenge reductive readings that get stuck on stereotypical motifs like samba or the orixás. Highlights include Luana Vitra’s Geological suture 3 (2024) and Helô Sanvoy’s Parabrigar (2022), and the fair runs until 17 May.

In London and New York, a major new prize has a first winner: the Japanese artist and poet Gozo Yoshimasu, 87, has received the inaugural £two hundred thousand Serpentine x Flag Art Foundation Prize, which The Art Newspaper calls the largest contemporary art prize in the UK. Along with the award, Yoshimasu will stage a solo exhibition at London’s Serpentine North gallery in autumn 2027, followed by a presentation at the Flag Art Foundation in Manhattan in spring 2028. The organizers say his experimental poems “traverse diverse geographic and discursive topoi and test the limits of translation.” Hans Ulrich Obrist and Bettina Korek describe him as “one of Japan’s most radical living poets,” noting his six-decade practice dissolving boundaries between language, sound, and visual art.

In France, Cultured reports that Air de Paris will close and declare bankruptcy after 36 years, according to cofounders Florence Bonnefous and Edouard Merino. Bonnefous says the gallery owes money only to the landlord and the bank, not to its artists, and the closure is tied to fragile finances and the founders’ health—Bonnefous has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, and Merino has unspecified health issues. The gallery’s farewell show, “Oh What a Time,” included artists such as Trisha Donnelly, Joseph Grigely, Pati Hill, Pierre Joseph, Allen Ruppersberg, Lily van der Stokker, Mona Varichon, and Amy Vogel. Founded in 1990 in Nice, headquartered in Paris since 1994, and based in Romainville since 2019, it also participated in fairs like Art Basel and FIAC.

Over in Venice, a sweeping ARTnews report describes how artists across the city are mourning and memorializing Gaza amid debates over censorship and where political speech is allowed to land. Inside the 2026 Biennale’s main exhibition, “In Minor Keys,” visitors encounter a poem by Palestinian poet and professor Refaat Alareer—“If I must die / you must live / to tell my story”—lines that became a rallying cry after he was killed in Gaza by an Israeli airstrike in December 2023. The article points to works engaging the conflict, including Mohammed Joha’s No Shelter 12-29 (2025), Manuel Mathieu’s GENOCIDE (2026), and Avi Mograbi’s Between a River and a Sea (2026), while noting that some of the most direct projects have unfolded outside the Biennale’s gates.

One of the most specific Venice censorship stories centers on South African artist Gabrielle Goliath. ARTnews reports she was chosen to represent South Africa with a new edition of her ongoing performance series Elegy, but when her proposal included mourning Gazan poet Hiba Abu Nada—killed by an Israeli airstrike in October 2023—culture minister Gayton McKenzie pulled the commission. Goliath sued in January to get it reinstated, but a judge declined to reverse the decision. Even so, organizations banded together to present the work in Venice at the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin, with help from the Patriarchate of Venice. In that 12th-century church, the new iteration mourning Palestine occupies five channels, alongside earlier editions mourning South African femicide and the Herero and Nama genocide.

Another Venice flashpoint: ARTnews says the Russian Pavilion and Pussy Riot are publicly sparring over the use of protest footage. The Pavilion posted on Instagram claiming, “Pussy Riot asked us to remove the footage featuring them from the documentary film about the project,” alongside an image reading “Censored on request by Pussy Riot.” Pussy Riot responded in the comments, joking, “lol are you even allowed to use Instagram,” referencing Russia’s 2022 ban of Instagram and Facebook after Meta was labeled an “extremist organization.” Speaking to ARTnews, Nadya Tolokonnikova rejected the Pavilion’s framing as an “honest dialogue about censorship,” pointing to the Russian government’s repression and calling attention to the power imbalance between “a random exiled girl” and “a literal nation state.”

Back in Washington, D.C., ARTnews reports the Cultural Landscape Foundation has sued the Trump administration over changes to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court, seeks to halt the project through a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction. The group argues the Interior Department violated the National Historic Preservation Act by pushing forward without the standard review process, and claims the Commission of Fine Arts was bypassed. The dispute centers on President Donald Trump’s decision to coat the pool in a bright blue surface he called “American Flag Blue.” Trump initially estimated a cost under two dollars million, but federal contracting records show roughly thirteen dollars million was awarded to Atlantic Industrial Coatings LLC.

That’s the download for today. Links to every story are in the show notes—meet me back here tomorrow for more art world headlines and hot takes you can actually use. Chinga la migra

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