Crystal Bridges opens doors to its architecturally significant expansion.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, is opening a major 114,000-square-foot expansion on June 6, increasing the Safdie Architects–designed institution’s footprint by roughly 50 percent and adding new galleries, studios, community spaces, and art-and-wellness programming across its 134-acre campus. The more than $100 million expansion includes 29,000 square feet of new exhibition space, with around 200 previously unseen works from the museum’s permanent collection going on view alongside recent acquisitions by artists including Mary Cassatt, Theaster Gates, Jun Kaneko, and Kiki Smith, as well as new ceramics and digital-art studios and an outdoor children’s playscape designed by landscape architect Bryan Hanes.
Maurizio Cattelan’s banana has gone missing again.
Maurizio Cattelan’s infamous artwork Comedian—the banana duct-taped to a wall that became a global symbol of contemporary art spectacle—has once again disappeared, this time after being stolen from the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France, where it is on view as part of the exhibition “Dimanche sans fin” (Endless Sunday). Museum staff discovered the missing banana on May 30 and filed a police complaint, though the institution quickly replaced the fruit in accordance with the work’s installation protocol, emphasizing that the artwork’s value resides in its certificate of authenticity and conceptual framework rather than the banana itself.
The Mondrian estate has collaborated with former NFT sensation Doodles.
The estate of Piet Mondrian is entering the digital art space through a new partnership that will transform a series of the Dutch modernist’s rarely seen sketches, notes, and doodles into a curated NFT project, marking one of the most prominent posthumous artist-estate entries into Web3 since the peak of the NFT market. The initiative focuses on informal drawings and experimental studies that reveal Mondrian’s creative process beyond his geometric abstractions, offering collectors access to digital works derived from archival material that has largely remained outside public view.
OMA designed a pyramidal “three-dimensional village” in China.
OMA has completed Hangzhou Prism, a striking mixed-use development in Hangzhou’s Future Tech City that reimagines the conventional tower as a faceted, pyramid-like volume carved by two dramatic diagonal cuts. Designed by OMA partner Chris van Duijn for Zhejiang Xinhu Haichuang Group, the approximately 50,000-square-meter project contains hotel, retail, loft, and public garden spaces organized around a vast interior atrium that incorporates water features, playgrounds, and landscaped communal areas.
Artist and art world commentator “Jerry Gogosian” has died.
Art world commentator and former gallerist Hilde Lynn Helphenstein, best known for creating the influential Instagram persona Jerry Gogosian, was found dead on May 31 in São Paulo, according to Brazilian media reports. Police have classified the death as suspicious and are awaiting toxicology and forensic test results. Helphenstein rose to prominence through her satirical account, which amassed roughly 145,000 followers by lampooning collectors, dealers, auction houses, and art world power structures, later expanding into projects including the Art Smack podcast, the Jerry Report newsletter, collaborations with Sotheby’s and luxury brands, and a 2022 curated Sotheby’s sale.
Today’s attractive distractions:
Already viral interdisciplinary alt-pop duo Gener8ion will release their debut album in conjunction with a London exhibition.
Levi’s 2026 pride collection nods to queer motorcycle clubs.
Pili’s bio-based pigment “eco-indigo” receives a French fashion honor.
Leica has introduced a metallic grey finish across its cameras and lenses.
