Veronica Esposito

The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition It’s Alive! A Century of Animation from the Collection traces animation’s development from early character cartoons such as Gertie the Dinosaur and Felix the Cat through postwar experimental work, Sesame Street animation and MTV’s 1980s advertising. Curator Ron Magliozzi emphasizes animation’s expansion beyond conventional cartoon characters into socially engaged and artistically ambitious forms. The exhibition presents 20 films, often without sound to foreground their visual construction, and concludes with the transition to digital technology. MoMA hopes the show’s broad range will create a cross-generational connection among visitors.

An exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum traces tarot’s evolution from a Renaissance Italian card game into a global tool of divination and artistic inspiration. Curators highlight continuity and transformation in tarot imagery, showcasing early hand-painted Visconti-Sforza cards alongside modern interpretations by artists including Leonora Carrington, Chris Ofili, and Ithell Colquhoun. The show explores how the Rider-Waite-Smith deck democratized tarot through its illustrated minor arcana and how subsequent artists and movements adapted tarot’s archetypes. The exhibition reflects tarot’s surge in popularity since 2019 and emphasizes its universal symbolism and cross-cultural resonance.

A documentary by Josh Fox brings together people from regions heavily impacted by climate change, highlighting displacement, inequality and the experiences of marginalized communities, including LGBTQ+ groups and Indigenous residents of Kenya’s Turkana Basin. The film connects global warming’s effects with rising anti‑immigrant sentiment in the United States and critiques political and economic systems that restrict movement and worsen vulnerability. Despite visa barriers for some participants, Fox emphasizes collective joy, cultural exchange and solidarity as essential tools to counter oppression and authoritarianism.

Writers highlight their favourite LGBTQ+ film characters, celebrating figures ranging from queer anti‑heroes and drag icons to tender coming‑of‑age protagonists. Each contributor reflects on how these characters challenged stereotypes, embodied queer self‑expression or achieved cult status, underscoring their cultural impact and emotional resonance within LGBTQ+ cinema.

A major retrospective at the Berkeley Art Museum highlights Maren Hassinger’s five-decade career of sculptures and performances built from everyday gestures such as knotting, twisting and breathing. The exhibition recreates iconic works, integrates participatory workshops and emphasizes themes of connection, care and shared humanity. Curator Anthony Graham frames Hassinger’s practice as transformative, with pieces like Love (Pyramid) and Sign of the Times fostering collaboration and community involvement. Video works address race and identity, while her career trajectory reflects resilience within a historically exclusionary art world. The show ultimately encourages visitors to slow down, engage with simple materials and gestures, and recognize their potential to create collective meaning and change.

An exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art explores 4,000 years of musical history, examining how instruments and human bodies jointly shape musical expression and identity. Curator Bradley Strauchen-Scherer highlights connections across cultures and eras, from African drums to Prince’s symbol guitar and contemporary beatboxing. The show emphasizes the human voice as a foundational instrument and investigates themes such as gender, courtship, and symbolism in musical imagery. The exhibition aims to reframe music as central to human experience and is open through 27 September.

An exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art titled The Face of Modern Life presents nearly 80 works that expand the definition of portraiture, featuring artists such as Picasso, Lam, Beckmann, Klee, and Kandinsky. Curator Stephanie D’Alessandro emphasizes how portraits reveal the interplay between artist and subject, exploring likeness, memory, abstraction, and human connection. New acquisitions like Lam’s Ídolo and Picabia’s Elegance highlight the diversity of approaches, while poetic texts accompany select works to further question resemblance and representation. The show links past and present artistic concerns, underscoring portraiture as a timeless effort to understand human presence and experience.

The Photoville festival’s 15th edition presents a mix of whimsical and impactful photography, ranging from artistic explorations like Odd Apples to documentary work on immigration, incarceration and transgender histories. Exhibits highlight trans lives in the 1990s, gender self-portraiture by Dutch students, the impact of US immigration policies on families and a program where incarcerated men raise service dogs. Additional work documents cultural traditions within the Blackfeet Nation. The festival emphasizes emotional resonance, cultural visibility and moments of joy across its diverse collections, on display throughout New York from 16 to 30 May.

A Beverly Hills exhibition at Gagosian highlights Frank Gehry’s lesser‑known non‑architectural works, focusing on fish‑inspired forms that influenced his architecture. Curated by longtime collaborator Deborah McLeod, the show presents fish lamps, animal sculptures and the large stainless‑steel Bear With Us, emphasizing Gehry’s fascination with movement, light and material. The exhibition also honours Gehry’s generosity and legacy following his death in 2025, serving as a gathering place for friends, admirers and the Los Angeles arts community.

A new exhibition at San Francisco’s de Young Museum brings together Claude Monet’s extensive body of Venetian paintings, exploring how his late-life trip to the city inspired dozens of works and renewed his focus on waterlilies. Curator Melissa Buron highlights how the journey nearly did not occur and how Monet’s interactions with contemporaries, Venice’s artistic legacy and its atmosphere shaped the paintings. The show assembles more than 100 works, including pieces by Monet’s peers, and emphasizes the subtle variations across multiple views of iconic Venetian sites while linking the experience to a resurgence in Monet’s later artistic ambitions.

An exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art explores how ancient cultures in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome used magic to influence daily life, from protective amulets and love spells to political rituals. Curator Jeffrey Spier explains how magic emerged alongside literacy and permeated society through practical uses, fashion trends and statecraft. The exhibition highlights the continuity of magical traditions into modern practices such as crystals and copper bracelets, underscoring enduring human desires for control and protection.

A Princeton University Art Museum exhibition highlights Willem de Kooning’s pivotal 1945–50 breakthrough period through 18 key works that showcase his transition between figuration and abstraction. Curator John Elderfield emphasizes the intensity created by de Kooning’s restricted palette and evolving style, influenced partly by rivalry with Jackson Pollock. The article traces the artist’s rise following his 1948 Charles Egan Gallery show, the role of Elaine de Kooning in promoting his career, and the lasting influence and high market value of his later works. The exhibition provides a focused look at formative paintings that continue to inspire artists and shape de Kooning’s legacy.

Artist Sage Ni’Ja Whitson’s exhibition These Walking Glories at the California African American Museum memorializes Black trans, gender nonconforming and intersex individuals who died between 2018 and 2025. Through site-specific ceremonies across 15 states, Whitson created liquid essences and commemorative pedestals honoring each person and engaged local trans communities through story-sharing gatherings. The work highlights ongoing violence and political hostility faced by trans people, particularly Black trans women, while offering a framework for resilience and collective memory. Supported by CAAM’s residency program, Whitson emphasizes the spiritual and communal importance of sustaining traditions that foster survival.

Alejandro González Iñárritu reflects on revisiting unused footage from Amores Perros for his immersive installation Sueño Perro, a seven-year project emphasizing the tactile, sensory power of analogue film in contrast to the rise of AI-driven cinema. Influenced by Latin American literary pioneers and Kurosawa’s Rashômon, he explores fragmented memory and nonlinear truth through smoke-filled spaces, real projectors, and archival celluloid. Expressing concern that AI will erode trust in moving images, he frames the exhibition as an argument for returning to the physical artistry of filmmaking. While developing his forthcoming Tom Cruise film Digger, he found the installation a creative refuge, reconnecting him with the raw energy of his early work.

A rare, fully preserved gilded copy of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead is now displayed at the Brooklyn Museum, showcasing its intricate craftsmanship and religious significance. The scroll, dating between 340BC and 57BC, underwent an intensive conservation process to separate it from acidic backing and stabilize the fragile papyrus. Egyptologists highlight its unique features, including gold elements symbolizing divinity and rebirth, as well as variations introduced by individual scribes. Visitors and curators describe the exhibition as astonishing for the scroll’s rarity, beauty and historical depth.

Writers highlight overlooked film romances spanning classic Hollywood, indie cinema, and international films, each celebrated for emotional depth, unconventional relationships, or inventive storytelling. The selections range from screwball comedies and silent-era love stories to contemporary psychological romances and genre-blending films, emphasizing how unlikely pairings, personal growth, and honest vulnerability create memorable love stories. The list underscores the variety and richness of lesser-known romantic films and encourages renewed appreciation through modern restorations and streaming availability.

A major retrospective at the Berkeley Art Museum reexamines the full scope of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s artistic work beyond her influential book Dictée, highlighting her experimentation with language, diaspora, and performance. Curator Victoria Sung emphasizes Cha’s lasting relevance and the depth of her creative practice, presenting early works, films, videos, and contemporary artistic responses that reflect her impact. The exhibition showcases Cha’s development within the UC Berkeley environment and the Bay Area avant‑garde scene, underscoring her confidence, innovation, and enduring influence across generations of artists.

A Phoenix Art Museum exhibition titled Muscle Memory examines how photographers depict the human body through images of athleticism, identity, vulnerability and ageing. Curated by Emilia Mickevicius, the show includes works from more than three dozen photographers and highlights themes such as physical exertion, body modification, cultural identity and the ethical considerations of representing vulnerable subjects. The exhibition emphasizes embodiment, empathy and the traces of lived experience that bodies carry, presenting photography as a medium that reveals both personal history and broader social realities.

Sarah Sze’s new exhibition Feel Free at Gagosian Beverly Hills explores how people navigate an image-saturated world, using large paintings and video installations that evoke disorientation and reorientation. Drawing on personal experiences and influences such as Muybridge and Marey, she emphasizes how art can reshape perception and reveal how individuals construct meaning from images. The works integrate landscape structures, movement, and intimate moments to create a sense of continual flux, encouraging viewers to examine their own memories and cognitive processes.

Writers highlight their favourite unlikable film characters, exploring why abrasive, selfish or morally corrupt protagonists such as Melvin Udall, Mavis Gary, Barton Fink, Ingrid Thorburn, Patrick Bateman, Daniel Plainview and others remain compelling. Through analyses spanning satire, character studies and dark comedy, they examine how these flawed figures reflect insecurity, ambition, obsession and cultural anxieties, often becoming relatable despite their cruelty or dysfunction. The piece underscores the enduring appeal of cinematic antiheroes across genres and eras.

Major US museums present a wide range of exhibitions in 2026, including major retrospectives of Roy Lichtenstein, Carol Bove, Raphael and Keith Haring, as well as focused shows on Monet’s Venice paintings, Matisse’s Jazz series and Georgia O’Keefe’s architectural works. New media, queer and feminist perspectives feature prominently through installations by Alejandro G Iñárritu, Shu Lea Cheang, Leilah Babirye and exhibitions building on Marianne Wex’s gender‑based body‑language studies. Additional shows highlight emerging artists and revisit influential figures across painting, sculpture and installation, signaling a diverse and expansive cultural year across US art institutions.