New Flagship Contemporary Art Museum to Open in Diriyah

Saudi Arabia’s government-funded Diriyah Company, which is currently developing the USD 63.2 billion Diriyah giga-project as part of Saudi Vision 2030, has announced plans to build a new flagship space for the Saudi Arabia Museum of Contemporary Art (SAMoCA). The USD 490 million contract was awarded to a joint venture between Albawani Company and Hassan Allam Construction – Saudi Arabia. Designed by the UAE-headquartered British architecture firm Godwin Austen Johnson and located in the core of Diriyah, the new institution will be dedicated to modern and contemporary Saudi art, spanning a total built-up area of over 77,000 square meters. Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Hammad, CEO of the kingdom’s Museums Commission, which oversees the project, said in press release: “Set against the historic legacy of Diriyah, [the new museum] is designed to document and champion generations of Saudi artists, from pioneers to emerging voices, while inviting international dialogue into that story.” SAMoCA’s existing space, which opened in 2023 in the city’s JAX District, will continue as an exhibition outpost.

Sharjah Art Foundation Announces Details for Sharjah Biennial 17

The Sharjah Art Foundation has revealed the curatorial framework and lineup for Sharjah Biennial 17 (SB17), which is slated to open in 2027. Titled “What remains, sits restive” and helmed by curators Angela Harutyunyan and Paula Nascimento, the forthcoming edition will feature a total of 109 artists from the region and abroad, exploring how our current conditions remain tethered to the ambitions of modernity and its unfulfilled promises of liberation. The curators will organize distinct yet interrelated presentations addressing the legacies of violent political suppression across the globe: while Harutyunyan’s project gathers 55 artists whose works foreground the enduring remnants of socialist modernity and anticolonial resistance, Nascimento’s section highlights 54 artists who follow infrastructure as method to consider the intersections of time, space, and memory. Participants include Rebeca Carapiá, Gabrielle Goliath, Lilianne Kiame, Ibrahim Mahama, Oscar Murillo, and Khaled Tanji, among others. SB17 will run from January 21 to June 13, 2027 across multiple sites in the emirate, such as Sharjah City, Al Dhaid, Khorfakkan, Kalba, and more.

Los Angeles to Debut New AI Art Museum in June

DATALAND, a new artificial intelligence art museum established by Turkish-born, Los Angeles-based artists Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, is scheduled to open on June 20 at The Grand LA. The launch follows the widespread attention garnered by Anadol’s 2022 generative-art installation, Unsupervised, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Occupying more than 3,200 square meters within the Frank Gehry-designed complex, the institution will devote approximately 2,300 square meters to five distinct galleries, while 900 square meters will house the technological infrastructure powering the digital artworks. The museum’s permanent displays will feature a new version of Anadol’s Infinity Room (2015), an immersive environment that pairs AI-generated scents with a 1987 audio recording of the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō, an extinct Hawaiian bird species. Meanwhile, the inaugural exhibition, titled “Machine Dreams: Rainforest” and presented by Refik Anadol Studio—co-founded by Anadol and Erkılıç in 2014—will simulate a multisensory rainforest environment, utilizing an AI model trained on extensive ecological data. The show will remain on view through January 31, 2027.

Australia’s MONA to Unveil New Wing

After a decade of planning and four years of construction, the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania, will open its new AUD 100 million (USD 71.5 million) wing in June. Dubbed the Phrontisterion—in reference to the “Thinkery,” a fictional institution run by a caricature of Socrates in Aristophanes’s ancient Greek comedy play Clouds—the new wing is connected to the existing museum buildings via underground tunnels in the sandstone, and will feature a library containing rare books and maps from museum founder David Walsh’s collection. The Phrontisterion is located beneath German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer’s Elektra (2003/25)—a multilevel, amphitheater-like concrete structure filled with sculptures and paintings—and Swiss artist Julian Charrière’s Breathe (2026), a permanent site-specific installation that extracts “ancient” oxygen from red-banded iron ore, inviting visitors to “breathe air that has never been breathed before.” Additionally, Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda’s light-tower spectra (2013/18)—which was permanently installed on the grounds of MONA in 2018—will reopen to the public, while In Absence (2019), a nine-meter-high architectural installation by Kokatha/Nukunu artist Yhonnie Scarce and Melbourne architects Aaron Roberts and Kim Bridgland, will make its MONA debut.