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The Headlines
HASUER & WIRTH X CRISTINA IGLESIAS. Hauser & Wirth has announced its global representation of Spanish sculptor Cristina Iglesias, Maximilíano Durón reports for ARTnews. The gallery will include a new work, Entwined VI, by the artist in its booth at Art Basel later this month and will mount an exhibition for her at its London gallery in October. The representation deal means she will depart Marian Goodman Gallery, which has shown her for over two decades. Iglesias is the latest high-profile artist to leave Marian Goodman in the past few years, with the most recent one being William Kentridge, who also joined Hauser & Wirth last year. Iglesias has become known for creating site-specific installations that transform the environments in which they are installed. These have taken the form of suspended pavilions, hedge-like mazes made of bronze and steel, hanging sheets of lattice that play with light and shadow, aluminum casts of vegetation that seems to sprout from out of the floors and walls, and more.“ I am interested in the symbolic connotation of growth and metamorphosis,” Iglesias said in a statement. “The growth of living creatures has its own rhythm and is unstoppable. However, we constantly affect the environments in which we exist, and not always in a positive way. The idea of slowing down proliferation, solidifying millennia of evolution within layers of hardened matter puts our temporal existence into perspective.”
The Museu Nacional-UFRJ [National Museum of Brazil] in Rio de Janeiro is temporarily reopening three of its galleries this month, seven years after a devastating fire, reports the Art Newspaper. The fire destroyed around 90 percent of the museum’s collection and severely damaged the building itself. The opening is a chance to show the public what efforts the institution is making to rebuild, and what exhibitions are planned for 2028, when the entire museum should be open. The Bendegó meteorite, which was found in 1784 in Bahia, is one of a few artifacts to have survived the fire, and will be on view in one of the newly opened rooms, which also features newly discovered, previously hidden wall decorations.
The Digest
Museum workers at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art have been protesting daily outside the institution’s public entrance since April. They represent a broad range of stances about ending the war in Gaza, which has been echoed in growing protests across Israel. “We stand because the pain has become unbearable,” the museum’s Israeli art curator Dalit Matatyahu said. [The Art Newspaper]
Related Articles
The 2025 Serpentine Pavillion is opening to the public on June 6th in Kensington Gardens, and it has revealed the first photographs of Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum’s design installation. Marking the 25th anniversary of the annual pavilion, the lightweight structure named “A Capsule in Time,” is made of wooden, arched frames that hold translucent panels, which filter in light, reminiscent of a tree canopy, located on either side of a central courtyard containing a single tree. [Dezeen]
The Centre Pompidou has received a major donation of about 70 pieces by Brazilian designers and brothers, Humberto and Fernando Campana. Gifted by the designers’ studio and Friedman Benda gallery, the acquisition will be the subject of a Paris exhibition in 2027. [Le Figaro]
Over the weekend, Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art 2025 gala raised $3.1 million with its new “Legends” format honoring three people who have shaped Los Angeles culture: Theaster Gates, architect Frank Gehry, and philanthropist Wendy Schmidt. The art and Hollywood star-studded event was capped by a surprise visit from House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who introduced Gehry. [Cultured]
The Kicker
INTO THE SHARJAH DESERT. Writer Tosia Leniarska has followed artists Raven Chacon and Luke Willis Thompson to an abandoned village in the southeastern Arabian Desert of the Sharjah Emirate and a town hall, respectively, for Elephant. There, they’ve installed their artworks as part of the Sharjah Biennial 16, which Leniarska’s elegantly contextualizes with descriptions of the region’s social, political, and geographic characteristics, not to mention its art scene, backed by the Sheikh and his daughter daughter, Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi. This also brings up the looming question of the Sheikh’s death, which many fear “may undercut the generous funding for the arts,” that Sharjah has enjoyed. “It seems uncertain that the successor shall be as enthusiastic about contemporary art,” writes Leniarska. While identifying common threads in the beinnial, as well as political coherence may be impossible, Leniarska offers that “the two artworks I want to tell you about faced this deadlock, with questions, without answers, and found their way through.” With that, we leave the rest for your reading pleasure. [Elephant Magazine]
