Fendi unveils a Rome venue for its couture show, and a Karl Lagerfeld exhibition.
Maria Grazia Chiuri will make her Fendi couture debut on the evening of July 9 at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, a fitting setting for a designer returning to her hometown at the helm of one of Italy’s most storied luxury houses. Guests will be treated to a private view of “After un Percorso di Lavoro. Fendi/Karl Lagerfeld 1985. After Steps Through Work,” an exhibition meant to honor the brand’s late legendary couturier. The show opens to the public July 10 and runs through October 25. Housed in a 17th-century former Barefoot Carmelite monastery, the GNAM holds more than 3,000 works spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with pieces by Giacomo Balla, Giorgio de Chirico, and Renato Guttuso among its holdings. The event marks Fendi’s third couture show staged in Rome. The first, in 2016, saw Karl Lagerfeld send looks down a catwalk placed directly on the water at the Trevi Fountain, a restoration Fendi had supported, to mark the house’s 90th anniversary. In 2019, Silvia Venturini Fendi presented at the Temple of Venus, accompanied by a €2.5 million restoration pledge.
The Columbus Museum of Art will offer free admission for visitors under 25 as part of a new initiative.
Starting July 1, the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio will offer free admission to visitors aged 25 and under, as well as to adults accompanying children 16 or younger, a sweeping accessibility shift made possible by a $4 million lead gift from the Walter Foundation, the philanthropic organization led by Cardinal Health founder Bob Walter and his wife, Peggy. The funds will support Access 150, a five-year initiative aimed at cultivating a new generation of museum visitors. Research cited by the museum suggests that eliminating admission fees can boost overall attendance by 30 to 150 percent while broadening audience diversity.
After nearly a decade, Peter Zumthor’s Fondation Beyeler extension is opening this fall.
Swiss architect Peter Zumthor’s long-awaited extension to the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, near Basel, will begin opening to the public this fall, with the full ensemble scheduled to complete in January 2027. The project represents the most significant expansion in the institution’s history, extending Renzo Piano’s 1997 building into a broader cultural landscape and nearly doubling the size of the grounds. The program opens with a Ruth Asawa retrospective in October, followed by major solo exhibitions devoted to Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois, and Elizabeth Peyton. Concerts, film screenings, botanical programs, and artist talks will run alongside, using the expansion as a network of spaces for art and public gathering.
Barbara Hepworth’s use of color gets its first dedicated exhibition at London’s Courtauld Gallery.
When Sculpture with Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue and Red appeared at Christie’s London in March 2024, it had never been publicly held. Made in 1943, it had remained in private hands since its creation. Faced with the prospect of its export, nearly 3,000 donors, alongside Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, and a coalition of U.K. cultural funds, rallied to raise £3.8 million and secure the work for the nation through the Hepworth Wakefield museum. It now anchors “Hepworth in Color” at the Courtauld Gallery, the first exhibition devoted to Barbara Hepworth’s relationship with color, where it is shown alongside six progressively larger versions of the same form, united for the first time.
Fondation Cartier will host a symposium on data, museums, and the future of the humanities.
The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain will host Exit: The Image of the Present, a two-day symposium taking place in Paris on June 12 and 13, 2026, examining how museums might evolve in an era of ecological and political upheaval, and how data can serve as a living archive for understanding the contemporary world. The event takes its cue from Exit (2008–2025), an immersive installation currently on view as part of Exposition Générale, the Fondation’s inaugural presentation at its new Palais-Royal premises. Built from six animated maps drawn from scientific data, the work draws on philosopher Paul Virilio’s theories of human population movement in response to climate change, weaving together the contributions of philosophers, statisticians, artists, and architects to frame climate not only as an environmental crisis but a political and architectural one.
Today’s attractive distractions:
FIFA World Cup 2026 comes to New York through a series of artist-designed soccer-ball sculptures.
Bottega Veneta looks to mycelium for the future of the Intrecciato.
Paris’s most legendary rock ‘n’ roll nightclub is now a 35-room luxury hotel.
Herzog & de Meuron converts a former Swiss army antenna tower into a visitor center on Mount Titlis.
