Barbarians at the gates
The art-world establishment made room for digital art this year at Art Basel. The question Charlotte Kent is asking that no one else seemed to: did anyone return the favor? While a new generation of collectors finally has a seat at the table, how many are curious about the art world they’ve landed in?
One of the striking features of Basel this year was the support given to digital art by local institutions beyond the fair itself: from HEK’s virtual exhibition “404_LAND” in partnership with the Tezos Foundation, to Cao Fei’s monumental three-floor show “Testimonies to the Near Future” at the Kunstmuseum, to the Fondation Beyeler’s breathtaking display of Pierre Huyghe. What was abundantly clear from ArtMeta’s Digital Art Summit is how much longer museums have been embracing digital artists than have commercial galleries. Perhaps these different art worlds are finally syncing up.
Following the sad passing of David Hockney just recently, this week Hannah Redler-Hawes pays tribute to the artist and disability activist Alistair Gentry, while trailblazer Analivia Cordeiro remembers kinetic artist Julio Le Parc.
— Danielle King, Head of Community at Right Click Save
Features
Installation view of Zero 10 at Art Basel 2026. Photography by Right Click Save
Julio Le Parc with Continual Light Cylinder, 1962. © Atelier Le Parc 2026 ADAGP Paris, and DACS London
Alistair Gentry, Eco-Terror, 2026. From Folk Heroes of the Pre-Apocalypse character sketches. Courtesy of the Gentry family
Trending
Happening
Quantum Lens, a collaborative work using mixed reality to explore the invisible nature of quantum mechanics, is on view at the newly opened Shenzhen International Museum of Art as part of “A Glimpse of the Infinite”, the first Shenzhen Art & Technology Biennale, curated by Zikang Zhang, Naiyi Wang, and Mónica Bello. Quantum Lens is a collaboration between Studio Above & Below, London, the astrophysicist Ulrike Kuchner, Gravity Laboratory, and VIP Studio at the University of Nottingham, with sound design by Einar Fehrholz. Photography via Instagram.com/studioaboveandbelow
Xin Liu shows her audiovisual performance NOAA: A Fall Towards Home! at The High Line NYC, June 23 to 25, 2026
“Design Ah! Experience the Wonder of Everyday Design” is at M+ Hong Kong, June 27, 2026 to January 10, 2027
Installation view of “Design Ah! Experience the Wonder of Everyday Design” at M+ Hong Kong, with work: The Create Song (2025) by Soichiro Hiramoto and Yu Yamanaka. Photography by Lok Cheng. Courtesy of M+, Hong Kong
Launching
Rome New Media Week (RNMW) is a free public program, set in both cultural and non-traditional venues across the city, using classical sculpture, architecture, and urban space as frames through which to examine how works in new media by a series of international practitioners, including Auriea Harvey and Ana Maria Caballero, can reactivate the past rather than replace it. Courtesy of RNMW
The city of Oulu, the European Capital of Culture for 2026, is hosting Lumo Art & Tech Festival — with installations by artists including Jakob Kudsk Steensen — as an extension of the annual Lumo light festival. Photography by Tero Suutari
Appointment
Firstsite, a public contemporary art gallery in Colchester, Essex, UK, has appointed Lewis Dalton Gilbert—director of A Vibe Called Tech, a studio and creative agency that encourages a culturally diverse lens in design, technology, arts, and culture—to lead a research project on the work of the artist Ken Kiff (1935–2001), for an exhibition at Firstsite in 2028. Photography by Ejatu Shaw
Reading
Travess Smalley, Pixel Rugs | A monograph of the artist’s evolution from generative work to print, via screen and studio process
The “Pixel Rugs” series is founded on the generative works Travis Smalley released on the Tezos platform hic et nunc in 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Vetro Editions
