Puerto Rican artist Angel Otero explores the concept of memory and place in his layered paintings, and across film and installation in ‘Agua Salada’ (Salt Water) at Hauser & Wirth Somerset.

Hauser & Wirth and Comité Picabia present ‘Francis Picabia. Expanding Horizons’ at the Mayfair gallery spanning five decades of work for a rare glimpse into the career of one of the twentieth century’s most influential and exciting artists.

The new Rolls-Royce Black Badge Cullinan gives little away outside. A gradient coachline and a tag on the umbrella canopy are the only hints at the Kongoverse within. Cyril Kongo, the French-Vietnamese artist who came up through 1980s Parisian street art, worked alongside Goodwood's craftspeople on five privately commissioned Cullinans, each with more than seventy paint colours on the headliner and 1,344 stars in every ceiling.

The 61st Venice Biennale arrives charged with the moment, with pavilion closures, boycotts and demonstrations gathered alongside the art. At its centre is 'In Minor Keys', this year's main international exhibition, imagined by the late Koyo Kouoh and realised by her trusted curators after her death last May. What unfolds at the Arsenale, around a poem by the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, is ultimately a show about hope — a quieter kind of politics, a stage for softer voices gathered in chorus.

Deep beneath Reims and Épernay, in the historic crayères where champagne ages in darkness and silence, houses are installing contemporary art that questions climate, terroir, and a 300-year-old industry facing an uncertain future. As part of our book research, I descended into these chalk cellars to investigate why champagne's custodians are turning to artists to articulate anxieties they cannot yet express in words.

From Kerry James Marshall's unapologetic presence at the Royal Academy to William Kentridge's provisional coherence at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2025 has been a year of exhibitions that refuse easy answers. These shows — spanning London's major institutions and smaller galleries, reaching into memory, music, movement and collective resistance — demonstrate how art and spirit remain our engines through fractious times.