Field Notes
Biennale Arte 2026: In the Absence of… 2/2
Maja Ćirić reviews the second part of Minor Keys, the 61st Venice Biennale, tracing Koyo Kouoh’s absence through delegated curating, mourning, accumulation, and polyphonic form.
Field Notes
Field Notes
When Recognition Cannot Become Continuity
Women are already central to the art world’s labour. The question is why recognition so often fails to become protected time, authority, and continuity.
Field Notes
Pace Gallery and the Cost of Remaining Large
As Pace cuts artists and staff while calling the gallery model “unfixable,” the question is not only whether the market has weakened, but how many obligations a gallery of this scale can still credibly hold.
Field Notes
Biennale Arte 2026: In the Absence of… 1/2
Maja Ćirić reviews Minor Keys, the 61st Venice Biennale, tracing absence through protest, authority, national pavilions, and institutional rupture.
Field Notes
When Narrative Becomes the Institution
As the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens with a founder‑curated inaugural programme, the question shifts from what is being shown to how narrative authority is being positioned before the institution fully enters public use.
Field Notes
Scale Forces the Museum to Rethink Who the Visitor Is
As museums navigate unprecedented scale, technological mediation, and shifting demographics, the question is no longer only how to attract audiences, but how institutions organise themselves for the publics already shaping their future.
Field Notes
LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries and the Cost of Letting Order Soften
As the David Geffen Galleries open in Los Angeles, the issue is no longer only whether Peter Zumthor’s building succeeds as architecture, but what an encyclopedic museum has to build around art once chronology, geography, and medium stop doing as much of the public work.
Field Notes
Singapore Art Book Fair, Flexible Entry, and the Walking Exhibitor Backlash
Singapore Art Book Fair’s withdrawn Walking Exhibitor open call exposed a deeper question about access, constraint, and how smaller art fairs distribute instability across emerging participants.
Field Notes
British Museum Hires Dedicated Recovery Specialist to Track Missing Antiquities
After the 2023 theft scandal, the museum is moving to make recovery a full-time function—pursuing missing gems and jewellery while confronting a deeper problem of cataloguing and control.
Field Notes
Tracey Emin’s Second Life at Tate Modern
At Tate Modern, A Second Life situates biography within institutional time, where survival, controversy, and public access settle into structure.
Field Notes
From Monument to Capacity: The Louvre and the Recalibration of Presidential Authority
As leadership shifts at the Louvre, executive monumentality yields to managerial legitimacy, recasting the museum from legacy instrument to demonstration of state capacity.
Field Notes
Eugenio Viola to Depart MAMBO Following Board Termination
After seven years shaping the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá’s international profile, Eugenio Viola will leave in May 2026 following a board decision he links to concerns over working conditions.