The Art World This Week, 26 September 2025

Pavilion announcements for the Gwangju and Venice Biennales, a new art fair comes to Detroit, the Turner Prize exhibition opens, and more. Here’s Ocula’s briefing on the art world news you might have missed.

Art Fairs and Market

Season Fair Debuts in Detroit

The Motor City gets its first contemporary art fair this weekend with the inaugural Season Fair. The nascent fair opens with 11 galleries from across the United States and Canada, as well as a curated exhibition of ten Detroit artists and public programming throughout the city.

Biennales and Institutions

Billy Tang Named Artistic Director of YDP

London’s newest non-profit project space has appointed Vietnamese British curator Billy Tang as its artistic director. Tang was previously executive director and curator of Para Site in Hong Kong. Founded by philanthropist Yan Du and committed to artists from Asia and its diaspora, YDP will open its inaugural exhibition with work by Duan Jianyu on 14 October.

Birke Gorm to Represent Austria at the Gwangju Biennale

Vienna-based artist Birke Gorm has been tapped to represent Austria for the country’s second national presentation at the Gwangju Biennale in 2026. Entitled the evening and the morning and the night and curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini, Gorm’s exhibition will see the Austrian Pavilion turned into an attic-like space, exploring the storage of both physical objects as well as the mind’s emotions and memories.

Turkish Representatives for the Venice Biennale Announced

Interdisciplinary Turkish Kurdish artist Nilbar Güreş will represent Turkey at the 61st Venice Biennale next year, with an exhibition curated by Başak Doğa Temür. The pavilion is coordinated by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts.

Burmese Curator Flees Thailand for Fear of Arrest

The New York Times has reported that Sai, a curator and artist from Myanmar, fled for London two days after the July opening of his group exhibition at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, when Thai officials came to the museum asking for him. The exhibition Constellation of Complicity criticises authoritarianism in China, Myanmar, and elsewhere. Names of Hong Kong, Uyghur, and Tibetan artists were later removed at the request of Chinese authorities.

Galleries

Tilton Gallery in New York to Close

Founded in 1983, Tilton Gallery will close its Upper East Side space in mid-November, at the conclusion of its current Ruth Vollmer exhibition. The gallery’s founder Jack Tilton died in 2017, and it has since continued under the direction of his wife Connie Rogers Tilton. She announced the closure along with her intention to ‘reformulate [her] role in the art world’ but ‘in a more private setting’.

Awards and Residencies

Kateryna Lysovenko Receives the Inaugural Münze Österreich Prize

Austrian art fair viennacontemporary has announced Kateryna Lysovenko as the recipient of the inaugural Münze Österreich Prize, in partnership with the Austrian Mint and the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, recognising outstanding achievement for a mid-career artist. The Ukrainian artist has won £35,000, along with an exhibition at MAK next autumn. She is represented by TBA Gallery in Warsaw.

Turner Prize 2025 Exhibition Opens to the Public

On Saturday, the U.K.’s top art prize will open its annual exhibition, hosted this year by Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford. Visitors can venture to the West Yorkshire venue to see installations by the four shortlisted artists: Nnena Kalu, Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami, and Zadie Xa. The winner of the £25,000 prize will be announced on 9 December 2025.

Mohamed Bourouissa Awarded Mario Merz Prize

French Algerian artist Mohamed Bourouissa has been revealed as the recipient of this year’s Mario Merz Prize for art. The Paris-based artist works across photography and video, exploring themes like migration, media systems, and the expropriation of the body. As the winner, Bourouissa will be commissioned to create a site-specific solo exhibition at the Fondazione Merz in Turin in 2027.

Obituaries

MoMA Philanthropist Agnes Gund Dies at 87

Agnes Gund, a contemporary art collector and former president of the Museum of Modern Art, died at home in Manhattan last Thursday. Besides her museum patronage, Gund founded the criminal justice reform initiative Art for Justice Fund and the art education non-profit Studio in a School. She donated many artworks to major American museums, and sold others to fund her philanthropic efforts, including reproductive rights advocacy. —[O]

Main image: Zadie Xa. Exhibition view: Turner Prize 2025, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford (27 September 2025–22 February 2026). Photo: © David Levene.