How Frida Kahlo Became This Year's Cultural Obsession
At Large “Fridamania” is reaching new heights as museums, opera houses, and cinemas across continents celebrate the enduring legacy of Frida Kahlo in 2026. This collective reckoning with her highly curated self-image and body of work comes at a time when many are searching for personal meaning and unity in an age of simultaneous hyper-connectedness and geopolitical division.
Celia Paul’s Paintings Speak to Loss, Solitude, and Identity
Gallery There is a mystical aura that surrounds Celia Paul’s paintings, as if they lived in another atmosphere. The air around and within them emanates a different frequency: vibrations almost not human. Her figures are not corporal; they’re more like music, phrases in the air. Even the colors are not flesh, as if in a dream. Each painting, whether figure or object, seascape or self-portrait, is distinctly hers.
A Critique of the Dialogue Surrounding the Whitney Biennial
At Large The 82nd edition of the Whitney Biennial opened to the public on March 8, 2026. Curated by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, Sawyer comes to the Whitney after several years at the Brooklyn Museum, and Guerrero took on her role in 2022—the first Latina to co-curate the Biennial. With press and VIP previews starting as early as March 3, the arts media was flooded with wildly varied opinions on this iteration, most leaning towards the negative.
The Parma Heist and Europe's Escalating Museum Security Crisis
Museum In the late hours of March 22, four thieves broke through the front door of the Magnani-Rocca Foundation, a private museum housed in a Neoclassical villa outside Parma in Italy. It only took three minutes for them to steal paintings collectively valued at roughly $10 million.
Los Angeles Rewrites the Story of American Democracy at the Autry
Gallery As the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Autry Museum of the American West is shifting the lens westward. In Life, Liberty, and Los Angeles, opening May 30, the museum reframes the founding ideals, not as settled history, but as questions still being argued over in Los Angeles.
