Powerhouse Parramatta, Australia’s largest museum project in decades, will open in November.
Powerhouse Parramatta, Sydney’s newest state museum, will open to the public on November 7, marking what officials describe as Australia’s largest cultural development since the Sydney Opera House. The fourth institution under the Powerhouse museum group—joining Powerhouse Ultimo, Powerhouse Castle Hill, and the Sydney Observatory—will launch with five international exhibitions featuring more than 3,000 objects, 1,600 drawn from the Powerhouse Collection, 120 new acquisitions, and 780 loaned from institutions across Australia. Highlights include “Task Eternal,” an immersive exploration of humanity’s relationship to space featuring contributions from the British Museum and artist James Turrell, and “The Mall,” an OMA/AMO-curated look at shopping centers as civic spaces, including a co-commissioned work by Ayoung Kim and objects like Steve Jobs’s Levi’s 501 jeans. Designed by Moreau Kusunoki with Australian firm Genton, the building took four years to construct and twelve years to complete overall. The 30,000-square-meter structure includes a 600-seat theater, a rooftop garden with telescopes, a demonstration kitchen, and 30 residential apartments for visiting artists.
Tokyo Gendai returns for its fourth edition with a curation of 63 galleries.
Tokyo Gendai has unveiled details for its fourth edition, returning to PACIFICO Yokohama from September 11–13. Launched in 2023, the fair once again opens Japan’s autumn cultural season. This year it hosts 63 galleries across five sectors. Returning international exhibitors include Pace Gallery, Sadie Coles HQ, Ceysson & Bénétière, and Gana Art, alongside local highlights like Taka Ishii Gallery’s presentation of Adam Pendleton and Fu Nagasawa, and KOTARO NUKAGA’s showcase of José Parlá, Tomokazu Matsuyama, and Keita Morimoto. New this year is the Miki Trunk sector, dedicated to works on paper, photography, and print, joining returning sections spotlighting emerging artists, digital art, and large-scale installation, including Marina Abramović’s avatar project and a Taiwanese gallery showcase.
Nieves González’s first museum exhibition opens in China next year.
Spanish painter Nieves González, whose portrait of Lily Allen became the singer’s West End Girl album cover, will mount her first solo institutional exhibition at Contemporary Gallery Kunming (CGK) in Yunnan, China, opening November 2027. Presented by Beijing’s HdM Gallery, the show will feature 25 new works, marking a significant milestone in a practice that has drawn swift international attention over the past year. González gained wider recognition in March 2026 when West End Girl (2025), a commissioned portrait of Allen in a pale blue polka-dot puffer jacket, was unveiled at London’s National Portrait Gallery, where it remains on view.
The Speed Art Museum returns sacred objects to Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.
The Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, returned 24 cultural items to the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes in a ceremony, marking the museum’s first repatriation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Among the returned items were three sacred objects: a Sundance rattle, a beaded turtle amulet, and a beaded pipe bag, along with objects of cultural patrimony including moccasins, a coupstick, a cradle board, and a lance. Most of the items had been gifted to the museum in 1930 by painter and ethnographer Frederick Weygold. The repatriation process began in 2023, when curators contacted tribal representatives, followed by a 2024 visit in which delegates reviewed roughly one hundred items from the collection to determine eligibility for return.
The Plaza gets a Lacoste makeover for the US Open season.
The Plaza is marking the US Open season with a renewed partnership with Lacoste, transforming the New York property into a tennis-themed destination through September 6. A Lacoste retail pop-up inside the hotel’s Edwardian Room offers curated accessories and limited-edition co-branded apparel, while Le Café Lacoste returns to The Palm Court with an afternoon tea. The hotel’s Fifth Avenue steps will be wrapped in Lacoste green, complemented by a US Open-inspired lobby installation and specialty cocktails, including the classic Honey Deuce and a new Ace Paloma.
Attractive Distractions:
France-based artist and illustrator Lou Benesch paints a dreamlike universe onto antique boards and chalkboards.
A Jony Ive–designed Ferrari Luce sells for $40 million, a new auction record.
Inside MAD’s Shenzhen Bay culture square, where buildings curve like landscape.
Diptyque’s new Les Rituels de Soin body care and home range draws inspiration from ancient bathing practices.
