In Minor Keys — 61st International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice
Dubbed the “art world Olympics” (not just because every country is represented, but for the literally marathon-like fitness required for hopping among pavilions and walking through the Arsenale), this year’s Venice Biennale carries unusual emotional weight: In Minor Keys was conceived by the esteemed art curator Koyo Kouoh before her death, and La Biennale has chosen to realise it through the curatorial vision she set in motion. The title suggests a move away from spectacle toward quieter registers: as the world gets louder and scarier, enter marginal histories, subtle forms of resistance, and artistic practices that speak through nuance. This edition may be most interesting not for a single thesis, but for how it asks visitors to listen differently.
May 9 – November 22, 2026
Michael Armitage / Lorna Simpson / Paulo Nazareth — Palazzo Grassi & Punta della Dogana, Venice
As for every Biennale, Pinault Collection’s Venetian programme offers a dense counterpoint to the main exhibition. Palazzo Grassi presents a major focus on Michael Armitage, whose layered paintings turn political memory into richly unstable images. At Punta della Dogana, Lorna Simpson (who, in 1990, became one of the first African-American women to exhibit at the Venice Biennale) comes full circle with a big tribute to more than a decade of painting, while Paulo Nazareth’s Algebra brings together over twenty years of work around movement, race, history and displacement. Another perspective on image-making and storytelling.
March 29 – November 22, 2026
Fondazione Dries Van Noten: The Only True Protest Is Beauty — Palazzo Pisani Moretta, Venice
Just when you thought that le fondamente could not take any more fondazioni, here comes Dries Van Noten. Installed in the lavish Palazzo Pisani Moretta, his newly opened foundation — a project he shares with his partner Patrick Vangheluwe — aims at showcasing every form of craft, what he calls a way of “thinking with the hands.” The inaugural exhibition, The Only True Protest Is Beauty (a line borrowed from legendary songwriter and protest singer Phil Ochs), unfolds as a kind of contemporary cabinet de curiosités, with over 200 works, from couture to glass, ceramics, jewelry and unexpected objects. The uncanny beauty of the display is mesmerizing. And we wouldn’t expect anything less from this kind of very cerebral collector.
April 25 – October 4, 2026
Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector — Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
A rather bold curatorial move to turn away from the myth of Peggy Guggenheim in Venice and return to an earlier, riskier moment of her life in London and her gallery Guggenheim Jeune, which stayed open only for a short time in 1938–39. This thoughtful exhibition studies taste at the point of formation: instinct, timing, friendships, letters, exhibitions and bets placed on the avant-garde before the canon had fully settled. Fascinating and very revealing about how a collector’s eye is built.
April 25 – October 19, 2026
Sèvres: Une passion Rothschild — Mobilier national, Paris
Speaking of a collector’s eye, this exhibition is where one’s eyes are filled with beauty and wonder. Focusing on the Rothschild family’s long-standing fascination with Sèvres, it brings together exceptional 18th-century pieces, vases, services, and ornamental objects, once displayed in their private residences across Europe. Through these exceptional ceramics, we understand collecting as a form of power: taste shaped through inheritance, diplomacy, and circulation between courts and salons. This idea is reinforced by the scenography, placing objects within reconstructed interiors and archival narratives. Porcelain as both luxury and language, from decorative object to cultural obsession. (full disclosure, Mobilier national is a longstanding partner of Invisible Collection)
April 17 – July 26, 2026
Collection of Jean & Terry de Gunzburg: Design Masters — Sotheby’s, New York
The sale was held on April 22 and so many records were broken! The collection totalled nearly $96 million, led by Claude Lalanne’s extraordinary ensemble of fifteen mirrors for Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, which sold for about $33.5 million. Beyond the headline result, the sale confirmed that the 20th-century design masters — the very ones who inspire us at Invisible Collection — are very much relevant; and that collectible design is more than mere décor, but a category capable of competing with major art. This is what happens when a collector’s confident taste (might we say collection obsession?) outweighs passing trends.
The Art Collection of the de Gunzburg will be auctioned in May, coinciding with TEFAF.
TEFAF New York — Park Avenue Armory, New York
With a more intimate scale than its sister fair in Maastricht, TEFAF New York is the sort of rendez-vous collectors truly enjoy. The setting itself lends it a warm atmosphere as the Armory’s historic rooms turn into a sequence of interiors rather than a neutral commercial grid of booths and stands. With more than 90 international galleries presenting modern and contemporary art, design, jewelry and antiquities, the fair’s appeal is its cross-category ethos.
May 15–19, 2026
Costume Art — The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Linked to the 2026 Met Gala theme, Costume Art inaugurates the Met’s new Condé M. Nast Galleries with a broad argument: fashion is not adjacent to art history but embedded in how bodies have been represented for millennia (hello Rubenesque bodies!). The exhibition pairs garments with artworks from across the museum, shifting attention from celebrity dressing to the dressed body itself — proportion, posture, surface, identity. Its most contemporary gesture is the introduction of mannequins reflecting more varied bodies, making the show not only about fashion as art, but about who art has historically allowed to be seen.
May 10, 2026 – January 10, 2027
The Devil Wears Prada 2 — directed by David Frankel
We couldn’t help it: if we talk fashion at the Met, then how can we not spend a word on the return of the dreaded Miranda Priestly and her cohort of Emilys… It seems like a geological era has passed since the first The Devil Wears Prada… so many societal changes! The most important being that now nobody in the movie will complain about dieting to death to wear couture: Ozempic took care of that! So, Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci are back in a fashion-media landscape driven by feeding-frenzy social media with a very uncertain future. How will they navigate the post-print era? Very groundbreaking, like florals for spring… That’s all.
In cinemas May 1, 2026
Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style — The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London
So where were we? Fashion, right: the Queen’s clothes. This exhibition brings together more than 300 items from across Queen Elizabeth II’s life, tracing how wardrobe became a tool of continuity, visibility and soft power. Yes, the canary yellows and powdery blues were diplomatic color-coding from a distance for cameras and crowds. The clothing is the message. Shame we never get to know what was in Her Majesty’s bag…
Until October 18, 2026
Cento lettere — Gio Ponti
Spend time in Milano during Salone and the name Gio Ponti inevitably comes up. A true renaissance man, he could seamlessly juggle disparate projects, from designing one of the city’s tallest skyscrapers to date, to founding and managing the magazine Domus, or creating ceramics for Ginori and Fornasetti. There is this quiet obsession among design enthusiasts and bibliophiles: to seek out and find Cento lettere, a very unconventional book with some of Ponti’s correspondence in the form of drawn-written letters to friends. Such a visual feat of ornament and affection. It is currently out of print and appears only intermittently on the secondary market. Check out rare-book platforms such as AbeBooks.
Feeling Home — Virginie & Nathalie Droulers (Rizzoli)
Spend time in Milano during Salone and another name inevitably comes up. Actually, two names: sisters Nathalie and Virginie Droulers, their studio behind some of the most exclusive and sophisticated interiors across the globe. Their book, Feeling Home, may read like a classic coffee-table monograph with lavish aesthetics and Mongiardino-like decors. However, the more you leaf through, the more you are drawn into a world of sumptuous atmospheres and textured poetry. A domestic elegance that speaks of culture, history and fantasia. Full disclosure: the designs from Collezione Droulers are available exclusively on Invisible Collection and will be on show at our New York gallery.
bonus track
Just a couple of days ago, Deezer revealed that 44% of all new uploaded tracks is AI-generated. The kind of shocker that makes us revert to “slow listening,” the act of listening to an entire album without frantically track-hopping every 20 seconds, and above all enjoying the kind of music that no AI can possibly compose. At least not yet. It’s been 7 hours and 3700 days since fate took Prince away… Let’s go crazy and listen — slow listen — to every song he ever made.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2SMue88faMPNfQZRSbsu0d
