The Venice Biennale's president has promised to provide space "dedicated to dissidents" at the event after facing a barrage of criticism over the return of Russia for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine.

In a letter to the Italian Il Foglio newspaper, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco said he was "inviting five current figures who are highly unpopular with their governments: the US, Israel, China, Russia, and even the EU" but said he would not name them yet.

He also announced a series of events "by and about Pavel Florensky" - a Russian priest and philosopher murdered by the KGB in Leningrad in 1937, adding: "I won't name the artists involved, just to allow for a launch closer to the performance."

The inclusion of Russia at this year's event has been widely condemned with the European Union threatening to withdraw $2.2 million of funding and more than 8,600 people signing a petition calling for Russia's entry to be withdrawn.

Critics have also pointed out Anastasia Karneeva and Ekaterina Vinokurova, whose business Smart Art is the official operator of the Russian pavilion, are the daughters of a former KGB agent turned executive of the state defense corporation Rostec and the country's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov respectively.

London's Tate Galleries are doubling down on David Hockney next year with two exhibitions marking his 90th birthday.

Tate Modern's Turbine Hall will host "a multimedia installation" featuring opera sets and costumes he designed for the stage projected on big screens, while Tate Britain will gather together more than 200 works showing the importance of his friends, family and lovers in his work.

Other shows planned for 2027 include exhibitions of work by Thomas Gainsborough, Claude Monet and Edvard Munch as well as contemporary artists including Sonia Boyce, Lynda Benglis and Chila Kumari Singh Burman.

The galleries, which will be led by interim director Karin Hindsbo when Maria Balshaw leaves this month, also announced next year's Turner Prize will be held at its St Ives gallery in the southwest of England for the first time.

The number of people in the UK called David Jones which according to the Reuters news agency is the new name taken by the graffiti artist Banksy to hide his identity.

Mona Hatoum has won Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof art museum's Lifetime Achievement award.

The museum, run by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, said the Beirut-born Palestinian artist was given the award "in recognition of her internationally influential body of work".

Hatoum, who divides her time between London and Berlin, was presented with her award during the gallery's benefit gala along with prizes for collector Kiran Nadar and London's Delfina Foundation.

The Studio award for artists under 35 was shared between Abdulhamid Kircher, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju and Jonas Roßmeißl.

A previously unseen painting by a 17-year-old Paula Rego is going on show for the first time next month.

The work, which the artist named Drought after finding it again in 2015, was inspired by a visit to an Edvard Munch exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1951 and will go on show at the museum that bears his name in Oslo.

In a letter published by the Guardian, 16-year-old Rego told her mother she thought his work was "so impressive you can't imagine".

Rego, who died aged 87 in 2022, painted the work a year after her visit but it then stayed in her archive for more than half-a-century.

Kari J. Brandtzaeg, from the Munch Museum, told the newspaper it showed "a kind of dialogue with Munch’s pictures" and seemed to be the product of Rego "having a silent conversation with Munch’s visual world".

The show, Dance Among Thorns, opens on April 24 and runs to August 2.

1 - Olafur Eliasson's virtual reality work Your View Matter will now have an extended run at Singapore's Padimai Art & Tech Studio where it will stay on show until June 13. The work, accompanied by a soundtrack composed by the artist, was the first ever exhibit at the studio opened by Singaporean tech pioneer Vignesh Sundaresan.

2 - Keisha Scarville has won the Brooklyn Museum's 2026 UOVO Prize which comes with a $25,000 grant and a commission for two public art installations. The winner of the prize, which recognizes emerging artists based in the New York borough, is chosen by a jury of curators from the museum which is led by director Anne Pasternak.

3 - The collection of the Acropolis Museum in Athens includes more than 4,000 ancient artifacts and has now been joined by a bespoke LEGO figure. The tiny toy is a plastic portrait of its late director Dimitris Pandermalis and is on permanent display in the LEGO model of the Acropolis in the museum's children's area.