A Centre Pompidou outpost in New Jersey may have been nixed but it is full speed ahead in South Korea where a former aquarium will be the home of Pompidou Hanwha.

The Paris institution’s second satellite in Asia will open in Seoul in June with a show of Cubist masterworks from Paris. Works by Picasso, Kandinsky and Matisse will go on show alongside Korean works inspired by the radical movement that emerged in Paris on the eve of WW1.

The Pompidou outpost will present two major exhibitions annually, in an initial four-year deal with Hanwha Group, a ship building, defence and aerospace conglomerate.

Centre Pompidou president Laurent Le Bon said: “A museum cannot be summed up by the building that houses it, but is embodied by a spirit, a set of values and expertise,” stressing that it can be “shared worldwide,” The Korea Herald reports.

The new museum is housed in a four-story building that was formerly an aquarium in the Yeouido district of Seoul.

Meanwhile in Seoul, the MMCA is on an attendance high. The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, which has just opened Damien Hirst’s first major solo show in Asia, attracted 28% more visitors in 2025, attracting 2.11 million visitors, according to The Art Newspaper's annual survey.

The US sculptor Melvin Edwards, who has died aged 88, is best known for his politically charged abstract works made of scrap metal.

As a young man growing up in Texas and when studying in Los Angeles he was an athlete. “I love to run five yards and knock the hell out of somebody,” he recalled. “That means I was a football player.”

He took a similar combative approach to overcoming the hurdles faced by Black American artists in the 1960s and 70s.

After becoming the first African American sculptor to have a solo show at the Whitney in 1970, a year later he withdrew from a group show there when the museum declined to include a catalog essay about its history of ignoring Black artists.

The Baltimore-based artist lived long enough to enjoy late career success. A major touring exhibition opened at the Fridericianum in Kassel in August 2024 and was presented by the Kunsthalle Bern, followed by the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, where it closed last month

One of Edwards' last major works of public art is Column, a 25-feet-tall chain-link sculpture for Destination Crenshaw in LA. The location had a special significance for the artist who first exhibited his sculpture nearby.

Maurizio Cattelan will play the role of a priest in a virtual confessional.

The livestream on April 23 will follow the release at Easter of a limited edition of miniatures of his dramatic 1999 sculpture of the stricken Holy Father, 21 years after the death of Pope John Paul.

The Italian artist is inviting people to go to confession—via a free US number or, if you’re abroad, you can send a WhatsApp voice note revealing your bad thoughts and deeds.

The hotline opens tomorrow and the penitent will hear a message beginning: “If you’re here to confess your sins, press one …” Cattelan said he will then choose callers to take part in the livestreamed event later this month.

The hand-painted miniatures of the trickster artist's work La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour) go on sale on Good Friday, in an edition of 666, priced €2,200 ($2,540) each.  Buyer beware: a time-limited draw for 50 has opened today, April 1.

“I like working with symbols people think they understand, and then shifting them slightly,” Cattelan told the Guardian.

The number of years ago Jim and Helen Ede transformed old cottages in Cambridge, England, into a home filled with modern art, which is now a museum. A selling show featuring Anni Albers prints, Edmund de Waal ceramics and a sculpture by Antony Gormley marks the anniversary.

1 - Gladstone Gallery now represents the estate of Pope.L, the charismatic artist who once crawled up Broadway in a Superman costume. The gallery plans a solo show in New York in 2027. The artist’s estate will continue to work with Modern Art in London and Vielmetter Los Angeles.

2 - The Louvre may have lost a director but Laurence des Cars oversaw a rise in attendance in her last year in post. The most-visted museum in the world welcomed more than 9 million visitors in 2025, up from 8.7 million in 2024. Meanwhile, the National Gallery of Art saw attendance tumble 28% to 2.9 million, hit hard by shutdowns in Washington, DC, The Art Newspaper reports in its latest annual survey.

3 - The Edo-Tokyo Museum reopened yesterday after a four-year revamp of its historical displays and landmark Brutalist building in Ryogoku, near the Sumida River, in Japan’s capital.

4 - Art UK, the charity that puts online works of art in the UK’s museums and public collections has expanded to street art. So far volunteers have documented more than 5,000 murals for its database.

5 - The Trisha Brown Dance Company is reviving Robert Rauschenberg’s Pelican, a dance he choreographed in 1963. The company will take over the Xanadu roller rink in Brooklyn on May 18 for a one-off gala performance.