Two months of arts and culture arrive in one edition. August and September 2026 brought farewells to two giants of the arts, a season of festivals that filled the streets of Edinburgh and London, a Golden Lion in Venice, and a run of museum openings that changed the map of the cultural year. Here is what happened, in the United States and around the world.

Farewells to Yayoi Kusama and Dolly Parton

The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama died in a Tokyo hospital on 14 August at the age of 97. Her studio and museum announced her death on 27 August and said she continued to paint until her final days. Known around the world for her polka-dotted pumpkins and her mirrored Infinity Rooms, Kusama saw her work shown at institutions from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to Tate Modern in London. As a young woman in Japan she wrote to Georgia O’Keeffe for advice, and the reply encouraged her to make the trip to the United States.

Her boldest gesture may have come at the 1966 Venice Biennale, where she scattered 1,500 mirrored spheres on the lawn outside the Italian Pavilion without an invitation and offered them to visitors for about two dollars each until officials stopped her. Six decades later, the work she built from dots, nets and reflected light remains one of the most recognizable visual languages in contemporary art.

Country music and American culture lost Dolly Parton on 25 August. She died peacefully in Nashville at the age of 80, after what her representatives described as a brief battle with cancer, and her family said the funeral would be private. Parton began her nearly sixty-year recording career with the 1967 album Hello, I’m Dolly and went on to write songs that became part of the national memory, among them Jolene, Coat of Many Colors and I Will Always Love You. She was also known for her philanthropy, above all the Imagination Library, which sends free books to children. Tributes poured in from fellow artists and political leaders, and fans left flowers at her star on the Music City Walk of Fame.

Festival season in Edinburgh and London

Edinburgh once again became a stage for the world. The Fringe and the International Festival filled the city through the month of August with theatre, comedy, dance and music, continuing a tradition that began in 1947 when eight uninvited companies performed alongside the first official festival.

On the August bank holiday weekend, 30 and 31 August, the Notting Hill Carnival returned to the streets around Ladbroke Grove. The celebration has taken place in London since 1966 and remains one of the largest expressions of Caribbean culture in Europe, with mas bands, sound systems and food stalls filling the neighbourhood.

Venice in two acts

The 83rd Venice International Film Festival ran from 2 to 12 September, with a jury led by Maggie Gyllenhaal. The Golden Lion went to Woman Unknown, directed by May el-Toukhy, a post-war drama about a young housemaid whose relationship with a German soldier threatens her future. El-Toukhy was the only woman with a film in the main competition, and she said she made it out of an urgent need to bring the unknown women of our shared history into view. The Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize went to Lee Chang-dong for Possible Love, the Silver Lion for best director to Ilya Khrzhanovsky for DAU, and the Special Jury Prize to Naza by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.

Mathilde Arcel won the Volpi Cup for best actress for Woman Unknown, and John Malkovich won best actor for Wild Horse Nine. The festival also gave Golden Lions for lifetime achievement to George Clooney and Ellen Burstyn.

Across the lagoon, the 61st Venice Art Biennale continued through both months. Titled In Minor Keys, it was conceived by the late curator Koyo Kouoh, who died in May 2025 after shaping the exhibition, and it remains open until 22 November.

Museums that opened and returned

On 10 September the Bayeux Tapestry went on public display at the British Museum, its first time in the United Kingdom since it was made nearly a thousand years ago. The 70-metre embroidery, which tells the story of the Norman Conquest of 1066, is laid flat under glass in a darkened room and will stay in London until 11 July 2027. Timed tickets for the first months sold out before the doors opened.

In Los Angeles, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opened to the public on 22 September, three days after a star-studded opening night. Founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson and designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, it sits in Exposition Park and presents the history of visual storytelling through about 1,300 works in its inaugural exhibitions, alongside a free park and research library.

In Berlin, Maurizio Cattelan opened NIGHT at the Neue Nationalgalerie on 10 September, his first major solo exhibition in Germany, as he receives the 2026 Preis der Nationalgalerie. It runs into March 2027.

In the United States

Marcel Duchamp’s long-awaited retrospective, the first major Duchamp survey in the United States in more than fifty years, closed at the Museum of Modern Art on 22 August. It travels next to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it opens on 10 October with more than 300 works and runs until 31 January 2027.

In Charleston, South Carolina, the MOJA Arts Festival ran from 24 September to 1 October, shortened to eight days and organized for the first time by the new nonprofit MOJA Arts together with the city. This year’s edition celebrated the cultural legacies of Barbados, the Gullah Geechee, Jamaica and Sierra Leone through music, gospel, theatre, poetry and visual arts.

Looking ahead

The autumn calendar is full. The Venice Biennale closes on 22 November, and the first Frieze Abu Dhabi runs from 19 to 22 November. On 11 December the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the Frank Gehry building first announced in 2006, is due to open on Saadiyat Island. Between now and then, expect queues for the Bayeux Tapestry in London, the Duchamp retrospective in Philadelphia and a new season of exhibitions to keep the conversation going. CreARTivity will be there for all of it, from New Jersey to the Caribbean and the world.

Sources consulted

NPR, The Japan Times, the Yayoi Kusama Museum and studio statements, Screen Daily, Variety and IndieWire for the Venice results, the British Museum exhibition pages and Medievalists.net for the Bayeux Tapestry, the Lucas Museum press release and ArchDaily, MoMA and Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibition pages for Duchamp, the Department of Culture and Tourism of Abu Dhabi, Artsy for Cattelan, and the MOJA Arts Festival announcements.