Culture

Culture

Ed van der Elsken. Up Close

The Dutch Photographer Who Put Postwar Life Under the Skin

There are photographers who observe the world and those who seem to plunge straight into it. Ed van der Elsken belonged firmly to the second camp. Never coolly detached, rarely neutral, he photographed with appetite: for faces, for attitude, for youth, for cities in motion. That instinct is at the heart of Ed van der Elsken. Up Close, a major Rijksmuseum exhibition. Photographs, contact sheets, notes, letters, book dummies and film fragments from a number of Dutch institutional collections are all part of this show that delivers the artist's electric images and reveals the working mind behind them. Van der Elsken has long been celebrated as one of the most influential Dutch photographers of the 20th century, a pioneer of street photography, but what is less known is how constructed, searching and experimental that apparent spontaneity could be. Following the joint acquisition of his complete work archive by the Rijksmuseum and the Nederlands Fotomuseum in 2019, curators have been able to study his process in depth for the first time. The result is a layered portrait of an artist who was...

Culture

Barbara Hepworth: Reshaping the Rhythm of Art

Colour, Courage and Form at The Courtauld

As The Courtauld Gallery opens The Joseph Hage Aaronson & Bremen Exhibition: Hepworth in Colour this summer, London is looking again at Dame Barbara Hepworth, not only as one of Britain’s great modernist abstract sculptors, but as a woman who carved out a life of courage, independence and radical self-determination. She entered a world where […]

Culture

Pomellato, Le Joaillier Révolutionnaire

A Milanese Jewellery Revolution in Paris

Founded in Milan in 1967 by Pino Rabolini, Pomellato arrived at a moment when fashion, design and women’s lives were being rewritten, and treated jewellery with the same modern instinct that Italian prêt-à-porter was bringing to clothes: desirable, sensual, independent and made to be lived in. That spirit sits at the centre of Pomellato, Le […]

Culture

Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait

The Woman Behind the Hollywood Myth

Timed to mark the centenary of Marilyn’s birth, Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait is a landmark exhibition that brings together paintings, photographs and rarely seen material to discover the real woman behind the most recognisable face in 20th-century popular culture, the woman who understood, perhaps better than anyone, how images could both build and imprison a life.

That is what makes this exhibition feel so substantial. The National Portrait Gallery is not simply presenting Marilyn as Hollywood relic, tragic blonde or Pop fantasy. It is foregrounding her as an active participant in her own making: a performer who worked the camera with intelligence, instinct and control, and who would direct shoots and veto pictures she disliked.

This matters because Marilyn’s image has long suffered from overexposure and under-reading. We all know the platinum hair, the half-smile, the white dress over the subway grate. But the enduring fascination lies in the tension between surface and self-possession. The gallery’s decision to frame her through portraiture works. Portraiture is never just about likeness; it is about power, projection and what remains elusive, left to the imagination of the viewer.

Marilyn Monroe (reading Ulysses by James Joyce), Mount Sinai, Long Island, 1955, by Eve Arnold. © Eve Arnold Estate.

Left: Marilyn Monroe, 1946, by André De Dienes, © André de Dienes / MUUS Collection.
Middle: Marilyn Monroe (reading Ulysses by James Joyce), Mount Sinai, Long Island, 1955, by Eve Arnold. © Eve Arnold Estate.
Right: Marilyn Monroe, 1962, by Allan Grant, © 1962 MM LLC (Photographs by Allan Grant).

The line-up alone is enough to suggest the scale of the undertaking. There are photographs by Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Eve Arnold, André de Dienes, Philippe Halsman and Milton Greene, alongside works by Andy Warhol, Pauline Boty and James Gill. Warhol’s Marilyns, of course, remain the defining act of canonisation. As MoMA notes of Gold Marilyn Monroe, he based the work on a publicity still from Niagara, turning Monroe’s face into an icon suspended between celebrity culture and religious devotion. In other words, he embalmed Marilyn in modern myth.

Pauline Boty offers something more tender and more cutting. Her Colour Her Gone (1962), created in the wake of Marilyn’s death, actively subverts the sexualised male gaze. Thi oil-on-canvas masterpiece shifts the narrative away from Hollywood glamour to offer a deeply empathetic, woman-to-woman tribute. That is one of the strengths of the exhibition’s premise: it lets us see how different artists used Monroe to think about glamour, femininity, grief and fame itself.

Then there are the photographers who knew her in the round. Eve Arnold, for one, had a relationship built on trust. Marilyn came to see her in a pseudo-maternal role. Over a decade, Arnold photographed the star six times, capturing candid, naturalistic images that cut through the typical, male-dominated shots of the era. Milton Greene, too, was not a passing image-maker but a close collaborator whose archive describes years of friendship and repeated work together.

Green Marilyn, 1962, by Andy Warhol, © 2026

Left: Colour Her Gone, 1962, by Pauline Boty. © Pauline Boty Estate, Reproduction by permission of Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
Right: Green Marilyn, 1962, by Andy Warhol, © 2026 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Perhaps the exhibition’s most affecting draw, however, will be the previously unseen Allan Grant photographs made at Marilyn’s Brentwood home just a day before her death. Grant shot 432 images, of which only eight were originally published, capturing Marilyn in moods that shift from brightness to introspection. It is hard to imagine a more poignant closing note: not Marilyn the slogan, but Marilyn in the fragile space between performance and private reckoning.

The timing is clever. Across the river, BFI Southbank is also marking the centenary with Marilyn Monroe: Self-Made Star, a season explicitly designed to move beyond the tired caricature of Marilyn as tragic sex symbol and instead stress her intelligence, ambition and role in reshaping her own career. The National Portrait Gallery’s show appears to be doing something similar in visual terms.

Ultimately, this is a seminal show for all fans of Marilyn, and an essential destination for those who want to discover the brilliant woman behind the sex symbol.

Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait
National Portrait Gallery
4 June – 6 September 2026
More information and tickets, HERE.

Author: Lina Ress

Lead image: Marilyn Monroe, Ballerina Sitting, 1954, by Milton H. Greene. Milton H. Greene © MHG Collective, LLC.

Other unmissable art shows this summer in London include Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art at the V&A South Kensington, Winston Churchill: The Painter at The Wallace Collection, and The Serpentine Pavilion 2026, a serpentine at Serpentine South.

Culture

Serpentine Pavilion 2026 by LANZA Atelier

Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo Bend the Rules

For its 25th edition, the Serpentine Pavilion commissioned LANZA atelier, the Mexico City-based practice founded by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, whose design, a serpentine, is rooted in one of England’s most ingenious architectural forms: the crinkle-crankle wall.

The design is spectacular in its modesty. Its winding brick wall curves across the lawn at Serpentine South, borrowing its name both from this historic garden structure and from the nearby lake. The form is not just decorative, but structurally brilliant. The crinkle-crankle wall is gains stability from its undulation while using fewer bricks than a straight wall. In LANZA atelier’s hands, it becomes both boundary and invitation, an architecture of pause, movement and discovery.

Exterior view (design render) Serpentine Pavilion 2026 by LANZA atelier.

Interior view (design render) Serpentine Pavilion 2026 by LANZA atelier.

Exterior and interior view (design renders) of the Serpentine Pavilion 2026 by LANZA atelier. © LANZA atelier. Courtesy Serpentine.

For Abascal, the question of how a body inhabits space is not abstract. Her research into birth and caregiving has led her to think of architecture “not as an object to be observed, but as an environment that welcomes bodies, movement and human connection.” She links this to the profoundly atmospheric conditions of birth itself, where light, gravity, intimacy and proximity become fundamental. That sensibility carries into a serpentine, which is conceived not as a fixed route, but as a sequence of invitations. Visitors may cross through it, rest within it, move around it, touch it, listen to it, or simply allow the space to reveal itself slowly.

The Pavilion has been designed for movement. The crinkle-crankle wall greets visitors on arrival, while a long curving brick bench invites passers-by to sit, turning the edge of the Pavilion into a place of gathering. From the outside, the structure hints at an interior without immediately giving it away. As visitors approach, what first appears solid begins to dematerialise: stacked bricks form slim columns, small gaps open between them, and the wall becomes permeable. Inside, an enfilade of delicate brick columns draws the eye towards Serpentine South Gallery, while the translucent roof filters natural light, allowing the interior to change throughout the day as shadows move across the brickwork like a living painting.

Brick gives the Pavilion its warmth and tactility. Chosen partly in conversation with the brick façade of Serpentine South, originally built as a tea pavilion, the material lends the project a sense of continuity. A second wall responds to the surrounding tree canopy, while the roof rests lightly above the brick columns, allowing air and light to pass through. The overall effect is that of a permeable space for gathering, movement and public life.

LANZA atelier, chairs for 4 couples dining set, 2020. Photo: Fernando Ocaña.

Left: Conceptual sketch (worm’s eye view) of the Serpentine Pavilion 2026 by LANZA atelier. © LANZA atelier. Courtesy Serpentine.
Right: LANZA atelier, chairs for 4 couples dining set, 2020. Photo: Fernando Ocaña.

Alessandro Arienzo sees the crinkle-crankle wall as a type rich with intelligence rather than a historical curiosity. “Our work often begins with studying architectural types,” he explains, “not as fixed historical forms, but as repositories of accumulated knowledge that can be reinterpreted for the present.” For him, the wall’s appeal lies in the way it achieves “structural efficiency, spatial richness and material economy through its smart geometry.” There is also a pleasing linguistic and symbolic loop: serpentine names a wall, a lake and a place. For architects working from Mexico, where the serpent holds a powerful place in Mesoamerican cosmology, the coincidence adds another layer of resonance. As Arienzo notes, this is the first Serpentine Pavilion to truly revolve around the serpentine.

LANZA atelier also designed the chairs and stools for the Pavilion, made locally in sapele hardwood, continuing their belief that furniture and architecture belong to the same conversation, simply at different scales.

The studio’s process is equally grounded. For this project, Abascal and Arienzo worked through hundreds of hand drawings, pencil studies, models, samples and full-scale mock-ups. Drawing, for them, is not presentation but thought. “As architects we should be able to build less and simpler,” they say. “For us, the drawing is as important as the building.” That attitude gives a serpentine its clarity. Simplicity here is not a lack of ambition, but the result of refinement.

Rolex’s new role as Official Timepiece of the Serpentine Pavilion adds another layer to the commission’s cultural significance. The partnership feels particularly apt: a project built around precision, craft, material intelligence and long-term cultural value, supported by a brand increasingly invested in architecture through its wider Perpetual Arts Initiative.

Trade the city rush for dappled light and park views: London’s most inspiring summer pop-up is here.

Serpentine Pavilion 2026, a serpentine
Serpentine South, London
6 June – 25 October
More information and tickets, HERE.

Author: Julia Pasarón

Culture

Sylvia Safdie: TERRA

Earth, Memory and the Quiet Weight of Time

Now on view at the National Gallery of Canadam Sylvia Safdie: TERRA, feels disarmingly modest. There is no drama, there are no pyrotechnics, just her lifelong, primal relationship with the Earth, using literal raw soil as her primary art medium.

This is the first major exhibition dedicated to the Montreal-based artist at the institution and it arrives, perhaps belatedly, as a corrective. Safdie has long occupied a curious position in Canadian art: widely respected, yet rarely foregrounded. TERRA makes a convincing case for her quiet persistence over five decades.

What emerges across the 19 works on display is not a linear narrative but a way of thinking. Safdie works with earth, stone, wax, bronze and pigment not as materials, but possibly more importantly ,as carriers of memory. Her practice sits somewhere between sculpture, archaeology and meditation.

The centrepiece, Earth II (1977–2025), is deceptively simple: hundreds of small piles of soil collected over nearly half a century. Yet its impact is cumulative. Each sample is tied to a place, a moment, a relationship. Seen together, they form an archive that resists borders and hierarchies. The work feels particularly resonant now, in an era defined by both displacement and ecological anxiety.

Sylvia Safdie, Heads Series IV, No. 5, 2010, earth, graphite, oil on Mylar, 206 × 107 cm.

Left: Sylvia Safdie, Earth Marks Series XVIII, No. 5 (detail), 2002–20, earth, graphite, oil on Mylar.
Middle: Sylvia Safdie, Heads Series IV, No. 5, 2010, earth, graphite, oil on Mylar, 206 × 107 cm.
Right: Sylvia Safdie, Heads (detail), 1993–2021, stone, steel, bronze, wax, 13 × 360 × 182 cm.
All images courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay.

Safdie’s approach has often been described as contemplative, and that is accurate, though perhaps insufficient. There is also a quiet insistence at play. In Assemblages II, begun in the 1980s and completed this year, natural objects sit alongside their cast counterparts in glass, bronze and steel. The doubling is both subtle and unsettling. It raises questions about authenticity, permanence and the human impulse to replicate the natural world in more durable forms.

Her paintings, particularly the Earth Marks series, extend this inquiry. Made with linseed oil and raw pigments drawn from her own collection of soils, they are literally composed of the material they reference. From a distance, they read as abstract gestures; up close, they begin to suggest landscapes, bodies, even traces of movement. Safdie has often spoken about transformation, and here it unfolds slowly, almost imperceptibly.

Sylvia Safdie: TERRA exhibition, National Gallery of Canada.

Over a multi-decade career, Sylvia Safdie has rejected traditional synthetic paints to masterfully use unrefined dirt, sand
and dust to paint, sculpt and build grand-scale installations. Sylvia Safdie portrait by Patrick Andrew Boivin

If there is a tension in the exhibition, it lies in its restraint. For some, the absence of overt narrative or political framing may feel elusive but to me, it is also its strength. Safdie’s work resists easy interpretation. It asks for attention rather than reaction.

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in artists working with natural materials and ecological themes. Safdie, however, is not following a trend. She has been doing this since the 1970s, long before such concerns entered the mainstream of contemporary art discourse.

TERRA does not seek to overwhelm. Instead, it accumulates meaning slowly, like sediment. By the end, what lingers is not a single image, but a heightened awareness of material itself, and of our place within it.

Sylvia Safdie: TERRA
National Gallery of Canada
10 December 2025 – 25 October 2026
More information and tickets, HERE.

Author: Lina Ress

Lead image: Sylvia Safdie, Assemblages II (detail), 1986–2025. Courtesy of the artist. © Sylvia Safdie. Photo: Simon Belleau.

Other international exhibitions recommended by I-M Inquisitive Minds include Dancing the Revolution, MCA Chicago; Carol Bove, Guggenheim New York; and Pedagogies of War, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza Madrid.

Culture

Winston Churchill: The Painter

A Private Life on Canvas

When Winston Churchill is brought back into view, it is usually as war leader, orator, bulldog spirit of defiance. Much less often is he considered as a painter, which is precisely what makes Winston Churchill: The Painter such an intriguing proposition. Opening at the Wallace Collection this May, the exhibition is billed as the first substantial UK show devoted to his art since his death, bringing together more than 50 works, many from private collections rarely seen in public.

That alone gives the exhibition a certain charge. Churchill’s painting has long hovered at the edge of his public story, treated as an appealing footnote rather than a serious part of his inner life. Yet he produced more than 500 canvases over five decades, beginning in 1915, when painting became both consolation and discipline after the Dardanelles disaster. The Wallace Collection’s chronological approach promises to show not a hobbyist dabbler, but a man who kept returning to the canvas with persistence, appetite and, eventually, confidence.

What emerges from the exhibition materials is not the image of a great hidden master, which would be a silly claim, but something more compelling: Churchill as an intelligent, committed amateur whose paintings reveal a side of him politics could never hold. The range sounds impressive. There are wartime scenes, still lifes, views of Chartwell, harbours in the South of France and Italy, and the Moroccan landscapes that became the high point of his painterly maturity. The studio at Chartwell, now under the care of the National Trust, still holds the largest collection of his paintings, which helps explain why works from his home loom large in this show.

Sir Winston Churchill, The Beach at Walmer C316 (1938) America's National Churchill Museum at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri. © Churchill Heritage Ltd.

Sir Winston Churchill, The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell C344 (1932). Private Collection. © Churchill Heritage Ltd. Photo: Matthew Hollow.

Left: Sir Winston Churchill, The Beach at Walmer C316 (1938) America’s National Churchill Museum at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri.
Right: Sir Winston Churchill, The Goldfish Pool at Chartwell C344 (1932). Private Collection. Photo: Matthew Hollow.
Both images © Churchill Heritage Ltd.

The Morocco pictures are likely to be among the main attractions. Churchill made six visits to Marrakech between 1935 and 1959, drawn to its light, colour and the theatrical contrast between foliage, plain and mountain. The most famous result was The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque, painted after the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, when Churchill persuaded Franklin D Roosevelt to join him in Marrakech. It was, as the exhibition notes, the only painting Churchill made during the Second World War.

There is also a pleasing sub-plot in the Royal Academy story. Encouraged by Sir Alfred Munnings, Churchill submitted works to the Summer Exhibition in 1947 under the pseudonym David Winter. When his identity emerged, the novelty was irresistible, but so too was the broader point: he wanted the work judged before the name. He was elected Honorary Academician Extraordinary the following year, a distinction that confirmed painting as something more than private therapy or aristocratic pastime.

The real interest of this exhibition, though, lies not in whether Churchill can be ranked among major British painters. He cannot. It lies in what painting offered him: silence, control, pleasure, concentration. The Wallace Collection describes a figure defined by politics but sustained by art, and that feels exactly right.

For all Churchill’s monumentality in public life, painting seems to have returned him to something more human: a man standing before a canvas, looking for balance, light and calm. That may be the most revealing portrait of all.

Winston Churchill: The Painter
The Wallace Collection
23 May – 29 November 2026
More information and tickets, HERE.

Author: Lina Ress

Lead image: Sir Winston Churchill painting in Belgium, September 1946 (c) Churchill Archives Centre, CSCT 5-6-160.

Culture

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art at the V&A

A Masterclass in Beautiful Disobedience

At the V&A South Kensington, Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art is a reminder that Elsa Schiaparelli treated fashion as provocation, performance, wit and visual shock long before such words became part of the industry’s default vocabulary.

Born in Rome in 1890, Schiaparelli arrived in Paris with none of the obedient instincts expected of a couturier. Where Chanel streamlined the modern woman, Schiaparelli disturbed her, amused her and armed her with imagination. Hollywood stars, wealthy socialites and the era’s most independently minded women wore Schiaparelli.

Salvador Dalí, Telephone (1938). © Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí FoundationDACS, London 2026.

Left: Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí, Skeleton Dress (1938). V&A © 2025 Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, DACS. Photo © Emil Larsson.
Middle: Salvador Dalí, Telephone (1938). © Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí FoundationDACS, London 2026.
Right: Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art at V&A South Kensington. Photo: David Parry / PA Media Assignments.

She famously said, “For me, dress designing is not a profession but an art.” Her trompe l’oeil bow sweater of 1927 announced the method: a garment could be practical and still play tricks on the eye. From there came sportswear, city suits, eveningwear and accessories that refused to behave: shoe hats, fantastical buttons, embroidered faces, skeleton ribs and lobsters placed where lobsters had no business being.

The V&A understands that Schiaparelli’s genius was not simply eccentricity, but how smart she was about the alliances she established. Across more than 400 objects, the exhibition places her clothes in conversation with the artists who helped shape her world: Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, Eileen Agar and others. Rather than fashion T “inspired by” art, her work represented fashion operating as art’s most intimate, unruly cousin. The Skeleton dress and Tears dress still unsettle because they turn the body into a site of illusion, injury and desire.

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art - Schiaparelli Haute Couture Fall Winter 2024. Photo © Giovanni Giannoni.

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art-Kuba Dabrowski Awar Odhiang, Paris, 2025. Schiaparelli by Daniel Roseberry. Haute couture AW 2024 © Kuba Dabrowski.

Left: Schiaparelli Haute Couture Fall Winter 2024. Photo © Giovanni Giannoni.
Middle: Kuba Dabrowski Awar Odhiang, Paris, 2025. Schiaparelli by Daniel Roseberry. Haute couture AW 2024 © Kuba Dabrowski.
Right: Schiaparelli Haute Couture Fall Winter 2024 Look 30. Photo © Giovanni Giannoni.
All three images courtesy of Patrimonie Schiaparelli, Paris.

What gives the show extra weight is its London thread. Schiaparelli opened a Mayfair salon in 1933, and the exhibition restores that chapter with rare garments bearing the London label, including pieces connected to coronation dressing, British clients and the city’s own surrealist circles. It makes the V&A setting feel a lot like a homecoming.

The final section brings the story to Daniel Roseberry, Schiaparelli’s American creative director since 2019. Roseberry has made the house culturally visible again, by absorbing the DNA of the maison and enlarging it for the red carpet age. His gilded anatomy, exaggerated silhouettes and celebrity moments can be spectacular to the point of theatre, but here they make sense. It pays tribute to the spirit of Schiaparelli: to make the impossible walk into the room.

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art
V&A South Kensington
The Sainsbury Gallery
28 March – 8 November 2026
More information and tickets, HERE.

Author: Lina Ress

Lead image: Mae West wearing Elsa Schiaparelli in Every Day’s A Holiday (1937). Moviestore Collection Ltd – Alamy.

Culture

Jadine Collingwood: A Curator in Motion

From MCA Chicago to Arts Leadership Praxis

There is no such thing as overnight success. Jadine Collingwood, Pamela Alper Associate Curator at MCA Chicago, has carved her own path through the world of art, moving between scholarship, institutional practice and contemporary exhibition-making with a consistent interest in performance, feminist theory, new media and the pressures produced by contemporary life.

At the MCA, she has curated or worked on projects including Chicago Works: Caroline Kent in 2021, and Gary Simmons: Public Enemy with René Morales in 2023. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Chicago, previously worked at the Walker Art Center, and before that was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The latest recognition of her work has come in the form of The Studio Museum in Harlem’s 2026 Arts Leadership Praxis. The annual six-month programme was conceived to support mid-career museum professionals of colour and those deeply invested in Black cultural production. It is aimed at people with roughly five to ten years’ experience in curatorial, education or public programming roles, and its long-term purpose is to help address inequities in arts institutions by developing the next generation of museum leaders.

Arts Leadership Praxis 2026 participants

The participants in this year’s Arts Leadership Praxis with Ilk Yasha, Director of the Studio Museum Institute at the Studio Museum in Harlem (front row left): Maggley Vielot, Camille Brown, Annissa Malvoisin, Jadine Collingwood, Mia Matthias, Devin Malone, Michael J. Ewing and Ilk Yasha.
© Shanta Lawson / The Studio Museum in Harlem.

The 2026 cohort brings together eight mid-career professionals of colour for a programme built around seminars, conversations with senior arts professionals, studio visits, individual mentorship, in-person workshops in New York, Los Angeles and Detroit, and the building of a cross-institutional professional network.

Across her practice, Collingwood thrives when working in dialogue with others, an attitude very much encouraged by the Arts Leadership Praxis. “To have a cohort of other curators has been great to generate ideas and to think more broadly about the curatorial field as a whole and about what I would like the future to look like. This programme has given me the chance to realise that institutional leadership is actually one of the ways to reshape the values and priorities that you want to see in the field.”

This question of institutional leadership is central not only to Collingwood’s development, but also to the MCA itself. Since opening its doors in 1967, MCA Chicago has built its curatorial philosophy around being an artist-activated and audience-engaged institution. Unlike traditional fine art museums that often focus on preserving the past, the MCA prioritises the work and ideas of living artists and the social contexts of our time.

From its early performances by artists such as Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik and Carolee Schneemann, the museum has long given space to practices that test the boundaries between art, performance, technology, politics and the body. Underpinning this strategy is the museum’s commitment to course-correct historical imbalances in the art world. According to the Burns Halperin Report, the MCA collects historically underrepresented artists at rates significantly higher than the national average, with women-identified artists, Black American artists and Black American female artists all represented well above national acquisition figures.

Jamillah James, Manilow Senior Curator at MCA Chicago since 2022, shares that ethos. “We’ve been very supportive of different emerging practices at early stages of their visibility. Performance, installation and video are all very present in our programme. We have different initiatives to support emerging talent, among them the Ascendant Artist series, which features career-defining first major museum exhibitions and catalogues for artists, offering them a significant platform for their work.”

Artists who have benefited from this kind of support include Christina Quarles, Carolina Caycedo and Martine Syms. Another of the MCA’s key initiatives is Chicago Works, a solo exhibition series highlighting local Chicago-based artists. One such artist is Rashid Johnson, known for his exploration of Black identity. It was at the MCA that Johnson had his first major museum survey, Message to Our Folks, in 2012. Later this year, the museum will host his retrospective, A Poem for Deep Thinkers. “We have the capacity to throw our institutional weight behind artists,” says James.

A third initiative worth mentioning is the Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellowship, considered one of the premier curatorial training opportunities in the nation. The Fellow assists the Deputy Director and Chief of Curatorial Affairs and the Manilow Senior Curator with all aspects of exhibition programming and organisation.

Taken together, Collingwood’s selection for Arts Leadership Praxis and the MCA’s wider programme form one story: museums need talent, but they also need structures that allow that talent to grow.

There are clear benefits for the MCA too. “Since Jadine joined,” James continues, “she has brought a really innovative way of thinking and of working with artists. Her participation in the Praxis programme is not just an opportunity for her to expand her work as a curator, but also to bring ideas and intelligence back to the museum and its programme. Her forthcoming show, Slow Dance, is going to reframe how the MCA has interfaced with performance historically and is taking up many ideas that Jadine has brought to the table.”

Opening in September 2026, Slow Dance brings together artists Brendan Fernandes, Gordon Hall, Geumhyung Jeong, Carolyn Lazard, Melanie McLain and Cally Spooner. The exhibition looks at performance in two senses: as a live artistic medium and as a social demand placed on bodies under capitalism. Its core subject is not dance in the spectacular sense, but the body under pressure.

Melanie McLain, Peripersonal, 2020. OTRXS MUNDXS, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, (2020–21). Courtesy of the artist.

Left: Installation view, Gary Simmons: Public Enemy, MCA Chicago (2023). Photo: Shelby Ragsdale, © MCA Chicago.
Right: Melanie McLain, Peripersonal, 2020. OTRXS MUNDXS, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, (2020–21). Courtesy of the artist. This installation/performance work will show at Slow Dance, at MCA Chicago, opening in September this year.

The exhibition asks what happens when artists slow down, suspend, wait, pause, fail, recover or refuse. It looks at fatigue not simply as weakness, but as a condition through which new forms of intimacy, reciprocity and resistance might emerge. “In this exhibition,” explains Collingwood, “artists investigate the use of different forms of slowness in order to resist this contemporary demand to constantly perform. It is about returning to the body, restoring it.”

That concern with art as a way of testing social structures is visible in Collingwood’s previous work too. In Gary Simmons: Public Enemy, the MCA presented the most comprehensive survey of Simmons’s work to date, spanning 30 years and around 70 works. Simmons’s practice examines histories of racism within American visual culture, drawing on hip-hop, sports, vintage cartoons, horror, science fiction and other popular forms.

By supporting curators such as Collingwood and James, while giving emerging and under-recognised artists the space to test new ideas, MCA Chicago is proving that a museum can be more than a place of display. It can be a training ground, a public forum and, at its best, a structure through which culture learns to move differently.

Author: Julia Pasarón

Exhibitions at MCA Chicago covered by I-M Inquisitive Minds include The Living End: Painting and other Technologies, 1970–2020 (2025); City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago (2025-26); and Dancing the Revolution (2026).

Culture

Dancing the Revolution

Rhythm, Resistance and the Politics of Movement

At the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Dancing the Revolution approaches dancehall and reggaetón from an entirely new perspective, as cultural engines shaped by colonial histories, diasporic movement and collective resistance. Opening in April 2026, the exhibition marks the first major museum presentation to explore how these forms have influenced contemporary visual art while remaining deeply rooted in Caribbean political and spiritual traditions.

Dancehall emerged in Jamaica in the late 1970s from street-level sound system culture, where DJs and selectors transformed everyday spaces into communal arenas. Reggaetón followed a similarly grassroots trajectory, developing through Panama’s reggae en español and Puerto Rico’s underground scene before reaching global audiences. Dancing the Revolution charts these parallel evolutions, emphasising how migration, censorship and social struggle shaped both genres.

Josefina Santos, Dominican Soundsystems 1, 2021.

Left: Charlie Ace’s Swing-a-Ling mobile record and recording shop and studio, 1973. Run by Charley Ace, (real name Vernel Dixon) a legendary DJ in the 1970s owner of the label “Swing A Ling Records”. He worked with many producers, including Lee Perry & Studio One. Sadly, Ace was gunned down in the early 1980s.
Right: Josefina Santos, Dominican Soundsystems 1, 2021. Chromogenic print. Courtesy of the artist.

The exhibition places particular importance on the sound system as both object and idea. More than a musical apparatus, it functioned as a civic institution: a space for storytelling, debate and social cohesion. This influence is felt throughout the exhibition’s visual language, from sculptural installations that echo speaker stacks to works that translate rhythm into abstraction.

Featuring artists such as Isaac Julien, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Carolina Caycedo and Alberta Whittle, the show connects contemporary practice with historical urgency. Basquiat’s presence is especially resonant; his work has long channelled Afro-diasporic histories through visual rhythm, sampling and repetition, mirroring the structures of music itself. Julien’s cinematic approach, meanwhile, extends the exhibition’s exploration of the moving body as both subject and symbol.

A standout element of Dancing the Revolution is its attention to political mobilisation through dance. The exhibition references Puerto Rico’s Verano del 19, when reggaetón artists and activists gathered in mass protest against government corruption. During these demonstrations, LGBTQ+ and feminist groups reclaimed perreo, transforming a dance often dismissed or sexualised into a visible form of protest.

The exhibition’s title operates on multiple levels, referencing both political revolution and revolutions per minute, the measure of musical tempo. Complemented by a commissioned mixtape project and a bilingual catalogue, Dancing the Revolution positions music and dance as forces that do not merely reflect culture, but actively shape it.

Dancing the Revolution
Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago
14 April – 20 September 2026

Author: Lina Ress

Lead image: Denzil Forrester, Duppy Deh, 2018. Oil on linen. Collection of Margot and George Greig. © Denzil Forrester. Courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and New York. Photo: Stephen White & Co.

Other international exhibitions recommended by I-M Inquisitive Minds include Pedagogies of War (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid), Metamorphoses (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) and Carol Bove (Guggenheim New York).

Culture

Vanbrugh at Castle Howard

A Grand Tribute to the Master of English Baroque

Castle Howard is the jewel in the crown of the English country house, designed by the “Rockstar of the English Baroque”, Sir John Vanbrugh. After a meeting of minds with the 3rd Earl of Carlisle, Charles Howard, at the Kit-Cat Club in London, the patron and architect became lifelong friends and the seeds of Castle Howard and its beautiful grounds were sown.

Now, 300 years after Vanbrugh’s death in 1726, Castle Howard is presenting Staging the Baroque: Vanbrugh at Castle Howard, the first of a year-long of celebratory events, allowing audiences to engage with and learn about this larger-than-life character, Vanbrugh, and his relationship with Castle Howard.

Castle Howard as depicted in Vitruvius Britannicus (The British Architect) by Colen Campbell (1725. Par of the Castle Howard Collection.

This first exhibition not only celebrates the architect’s genius, but also highlights the relationship between the house and the landscape beyond. Once described as “Rome under a Yorkshire sky”, Castle Howard was born of the shared vision of two remarkable men: Sir John Vanbrugh, playwright, adventurer, soldier, spy, diplomat and, ultimately, architect; and his patron and friend Charles Howard, newly returned from his Grand Tour and enthralled by the classical architecture of Ancient Rome. Together, they gave England one of its most theatrical expressions of the Baroque.

Roz Barr has designed and curated the exhibition to honour the life and works of Vanbrugh, celebrating his bold theatrical vision for what would become one of Europe’s most iconic stately homes. Castle Howard is possibly the most poetic and enchanting of his creations. Roz hopes that the show helps to “Inspire visitors to explore the grounds and appreciate the impact of the house, with its grand elevations and imposing dome, against the backdrop to trees, water, sculpture and other buildings such as his Temple of the Four Winds and distant monuments.”

L-R: Exterior Castle Howard (© Mattia Aquila); The Great Hall ( © Chris Horwood); and The Temple of the Four Winds ( © Mattia Aquila).

Barr took special care to highlight the relationship between the house, its creator and its patron. You can read the letters written by Vanbrugh to the Earl, which hint at the closeness of their relationship. A glimpse at the Earl’s accounts will leave you wondering how such masterpieces could have been built, when costing £78,240 – a mer £22 million today. Was the 3rd Earl a master of money or a lucky gambler?

Also on show is a large-scale model of the Castle Howard Estate. Laid out to the exact proportions, set so visitors can look through the window towards the Atlas Fountain and the Harksmoor’s Pyramid, which leaves you wondering how Vanbrugh, who had never built anything before, could have created such splendour.

Take your time to wander through the entire house. Admire the restored dome, destroyed by fire in 1941, and then enjoy the exhibition in rooms, which, although are yet to be restored to their former glory, give you a fascinating insight into the bones of this incredible building.

Installation view of the model of Castle Howard (left) and of Staging the Baroque: Vanbrugh at Castle Howard ( © Carole Poirot).

Vanbrugh pleaded with the 3rd Earl to complete the house before he died, but the Earl had become distracted creating the gardens; tragically, neither ever saw the completion of Castle Howard. Building started in 1699 and took over 100 years, three Earls and several architects to complete, with the final alteration by Burne-Jones in 1870 in the Arts and Crafts style chapel.

Nicholas and Elizabeth Howard have said, “It was Vanbrugh’s vision that brought Castle Howard to life, and now the House has the honour of celebrating its creator.”

Visit Castle Howard this year and discover something for every generation, from interactive play installations and storytelling to the chance to explore the Library of the Four Winds.

Plan your visit and get your tickets, HERE.

Author: Rebecca Dickson

Culture

Laura Dern

Apathy Is Not an Option

Praised for her emotional depth, versatility and fearless choices over a four-decade career, Laura Dern is that rare breed of Hollywood actress who speaks fluent film. Her latest film, Is This Thing On?, received both critical and public acclaim. Despite her success, there is still something gloriously unmanufactured about her. She remains disarmingly direct, funny and deeply human. That is what makes her such a compelling cover star for the spring issue of I-M Inquisitive Minds.

In this interview with Guy Kelly, Dern speaks with rare candour about love, family, fame, activism and the changing nature of Hollywood. She reflects on the kind of intimacy modern cinema too often overlooks, the value of enduring connection in a world addicted to novelty, and why emotional honesty still matters, both on screen and off. From her memories of David Lynch, whom she describes as a formative force in her life, to her clear-eyed views on the so-called “nepo baby” debate, Dern comes across as both self-aware and completely unbothered by easy labels.

“If there is something that seems broken, you respond to it” – Laura Dern

There is real depth here, but also plenty of wit. She is warm, irreverent and wonderfully unfiltered, moving with ease between the absurdity of celebrity culture and much weightier reflections on motherhood, vulnerability and the responsibility of using one’s voice. The result is a portrait of an actress who has not only endured, but stayed curious, politically awake and artistically fearless.

More than a film star, Laura Dern emerges in these pages as a woman who has grown up inside the machinery of cinema without ever becoming mechanical herself. She talks about childhood, protest, purpose and the pressure placed on women to turn themselves into brands, offering the kind of insight that feels both intimate and refreshingly unscripted.

If Laura Dern has always stood apart, this interview shows exactly why. Intelligent, funny and full of feeling, it is one of the standout reads of the new issue.

Read the full interview with Laura Dern in the spring issue of I-M Inquisitive Minds, available NOW.

TEAM:
Photographer: Victor Demarchelier @victordemarchelier
Styling: Andrew Gelwicks @andrewgelwicks
Hair: DJ Quintero @djquintero
Makeup: Gita Bass @gitabass
Photo assistants: Brandon Abreu, Margaret Gibbons and Evan Lee
Stylist assistant: Kyle Gleason
Location: 45 Walker Street Penthouse, New York

Culture

Ed van der Elsken. Up Close

The Dutch Photographer Who Put Postwar Life Under the Skin

Barbara Hepworth: Reshaping the Rhythm of Art

Colour, Courage and Form at The Courtauld

Pomellato, Le Joaillier Révolutionnaire

A Milanese Jewellery Revolution in Paris

Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait

The Woman Behind the Hollywood Myth

Serpentine Pavilion 2026 by LANZA Atelier

Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo Bend the Rules

Sylvia Safdie: TERRA

Earth, Memory and the Quiet Weight of Time

Winston Churchill: The Painter

A Private Life on Canvas

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art at the V&A

A Masterclass in Beautiful Disobedience

Jadine Collingwood: A Curator in Motion

From MCA Chicago to Arts Leadership Praxis

Dancing the Revolution

Rhythm, Resistance and the Politics of Movement

Vanbrugh at Castle Howard

A Grand Tribute to the Master of English Baroque

Laura Dern

Apathy Is Not an Option

“If there is something that seems broken, you respond to it” – Laura Dern

Read the full interview with Laura Dern in the spring issue of I-M Inquisitive Minds, available NOW.

TEAM:
Photographer: Victor Demarchelier @victordemarchelier
Styling: Andrew Gelwicks @andrewgelwicks
Hair: DJ Quintero @djquintero
Makeup: Gita Bass @gitabass
Photo assistants: Brandon Abreu, Margaret Gibbons and Evan Lee
Stylist assistant: Kyle Gleason
Location: 45 Walker Street Penthouse, New York

Subscribe to the I-M Newsletters:

contact us on: 020 8741 8967

I-M Magazine – Inquisitive Minds

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Culture

The Dutch Photographer Who Put Postwar Life Under the Skin

Colour, Courage and Form at The Courtauld

A Milanese Jewellery Revolution in Paris

The Woman Behind the Hollywood Myth

Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo Bend the Rules

Earth, Memory and the Quiet Weight of Time

A Private Life on Canvas

A Masterclass in Beautiful Disobedience

From MCA Chicago to Arts Leadership Praxis

Rhythm, Resistance and the Politics of Movement

A Grand Tribute to the Master of English Baroque

Apathy Is Not an Option

“If there is something that seems broken, you respond to it” – Laura Dern

Read the full interview with Laura Dern in the spring issue of I-M Inquisitive Minds, available NOW.

TEAM:Photographer: Victor Demarchelier @victordemarchelierStyling: Andrew Gelwicks @andrewgelwicksHair: DJ Quintero @djquinteroMakeup: Gita Bass @gitabassPhoto assistants: Brandon Abreu, Margaret Gibbons and Evan LeeStylist assistant: Kyle GleasonLocation: 45 Walker Street Penthouse, New York

contact us on: 020 8741 8967

I-M Magazine – Inquisitive Minds

Sign-up to our newsletter