CULTURAL BULLETIN | HAPPENINGS | WORLD OF CABANA

 A monthly guide to the events and exhibitions on Cabana's Radar: a global cultural bulletin and a must-read for anyone looking to keep their finger on the pulse of art and design. Read on to discover our May highlights. A preview is available for all, while the full global cultural bulletin is exclusively available on our Substack. Join us for our newest and most intimate chapter.

BY TEAM CABANA | HAPPENINGS | 1 MAY 2026

The Flower Wall at TEFAF New York 2025 © TEFAF 

May feels incredibly busy, offering so much it seemed impossible to narrow down. Unparalleled events—TEFAF and Frieze New York held during New York Art Week, the Venice Biennale, London Craft Week and beyond—coencide with exhibitions spanning times and disciplines. From Tudor Queens to Thai Royalty, Baroque and Renaissance masters to contemporary voices, skilled artisans, fashion, print, photography, and far-reaching cross-cultural narratives of heritage and history; everything May happen, everywhere, all at once.

EXHIBITIONS

TURIN, ITALY

Giovanni Antonio Bazzi Known as Il Sodoma A journey into the Renaissance

Giovanni Antonio Bazzi known as Sodoma, Allegory of Heavenly Love, circa 1503-1504 Oil on wood. Collezione Chigi Saracini, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, inv. 12 MPS

A major exhibition dedicated to Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known as Il Sodoma, a master of the Italian Renaissance. Across more than 50 works—some rarely seen, others newly revealed from prestigious private and institutional collections—the painter’s early experiments surface with unusual clarity. Alongside Sodoma, works by Macrino d’Alba and Eusebio Ferrari, and a rare dialogue with Raphael’s Orléans Madonna, situate him within a charged network between Piedmont and central Italy.

Through September 17, 2026, Museo di Arti Decorative Accorsi-Ometto, TURIN, ITALY

CHICAGO, USA

Embroidered Traditions from Morocco to Afghanistan

Jatho Ceremonial Dress, mid-20th century  Indus Kohistani people. Kohistan (present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Iran) The Art Institute of Chicago, Louise A. Lutz Endowment Fund.

SWANA—Southwest Asia and North Africa—is a region where embroidery goes beyond embellishment. The AIC brings together over 70 works spanning the 18th to 20th century, drawn largely from its textile and jewellery collections, with many shown publicly for the first time. From Morocco to Uzbekistan, the exhibition traces a vast network of cultural exchange shaped by trade routes, migration, and shifting belief systems, where visual motifs travel and transform across deserts, mountains, and seas.

May 2, 2026 - January 25, 2026, Art Institute Chicago, CHICAGO, USA

LONDON, UK

Elizabeth I: Queen and Court

English School
Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), 1590s © Philip Mould & Co

Philip Mould & Company presents a tightly focused survey of Tudor portraiture as an instrument of control, image-making, and political power. Starring rare and previously unseen works from private collections, the exhibition centres on four portraits of Elizabeth I that examine her transformation from princess to Virgin Queen, and reveal how her likeness was continuously recalibrated to assert authority amid instability.

May 14, 2026 - July 10, 2026, Philip Mould & Co., LONDON, UK

SAN FRANCISCO, USA

The Etruscans: From the Heart of Ancient Italy

Etruscan, Balsamarium (perfume jar) in the shape of a female head, Hellenistic period, late third‒early second century B.C. Bronze. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 98.682. Photograph © 2025 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The Legion of Honor repositions a civilization long overshadowed by Greece and Rome, bringing together over 150 objects in the most comprehensive Etruscan survey staged outside Italy. Spanning the 9th to 1st centuries BC, the exhibition moves between ritual and daily life to reveal a culture defined by technical mastery and spiritual intensity, while rare loans—including the cryptic Liver of Piacenza—point to systems of belief rooted in divination and coded knowledge. Drawing on recent scholarship and archaeological discoveries, the show reframes the Etruscans as a formative force in their own right.

May 2 - September 20, 2026, Legion of Honor, SAN FRANCISCO, USA

NORFOLK, UK

Lynn Chadwick at Houghton Hall

Lynn Chadwick, Sitting Couple on Bench, 1990. Installation image. Courtesy of the artist's estate/Pangolin London Photo: Steve Russell Studios.

Set against the Neo-Palladian architecture and parkland of Norfolk's Houghton Hall, the Marquess and Marchioness of Cholmondeley present over 30 works by Lynn Chadwick in his largest UK presentation in more than two decades. Spanning the 1950s to the 1990s, the show charts his distinctive sculptural language, developed through a process of construction rather than modelling. Installed across interior and exterior settings, the works engage directly with space, architecture, and landscape, foregrounding a practice defined by structure, movement, and a persistent undercurrent of post-war unease.

May 2, 2026 - October 4, 2026, Houghton Hall, NORFOLK, UK

EVENTS

NEW YORK, USA

TEFAF New York 2026

Helmeted Athena Roman, 1st-2nd century AD Marble 30.3 × 8.5 × 11.4 inches (77 × 21.5 × 29 cm) PRESENTED BY GALERIE CHENEL (STAND 210) © TEFAF NY 2026

TEFAF New York returns to the Park Avenue Armory, bringing together over 90 international galleries to present a wide-ranging selection of modern and contemporary art, design, jewellery, and antiquities within one of Manhattan’s most historic settings. Alongside the exhibitions, a programme of talks connects collectors and visitors with leading voices from across the TEFAF community.

May 15 - 19, 2026, Park Avenue Armory, NEW YORK, USA

NEWBURY, UK

Little by Little: The Curious Collection of Antony Little

Details, the London home of Antony Little © Dreweatts

From the shopfronts of Biba to the founding of Osborne & Little, the late artist and tastemaker Antony Little helped define the visual language of 1960s London. As Dreweatts brings the contents of his Chelsea home to auction, Antony's vivacious life comes back into focus. Join Cabana for an exclusive tour of his London home.

Viewing dates: May 8 - 11, 2026, Dreweatts Donnington Priory, NEWBURY, UK

Auction dates: May 12, 2026 10:30 BST Dreweatts Donnington Priory, NEWBURY, UK

VENICE, ITALY

Golden Goose HAUS

© Golden Goose HAUS 

Golden Goose HAUS returns to Marghera, Venice during the Biennale with an interactive installation designed to be a dialogue between fashion, art, and contemporary culture. Taking over the concept of "host," the 2026 edition is led by LA–based multidisciplinary studio PLAYLAB, INC. who will transform the space into a participatory environment centred around "The Forest”. Visitors are invited into a programming of workshops, talks, and social activations together with international and local communities that blur exhibition and event, encouraging experimentation, exchange, and play.

May 9-10, 2026, Golden Goose HAUS Marghera, Venice – Italy

To read the full global cultural bulletin, including all the May events and happenings on our radar, join our community of like-minded, curious aesthetes on Substack.