Hypercritic

The 2026 Hangartfest, the annual international contemporary dance festival held every September in Pesaro (Italy), closed on 20 September after two weeks and 26 events, including 11 debuts and Italian premieres, spread across six venues in Pesaro and the surrounding area. The final performance, Viktor Černický’s PNEU, sold out. The story goes well beyond the numbers. For Hangartfest, the September program is the visible part of a much longer process.

The fourth season of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s anthology seriesseemed different from its predecessors. And it is, though perhaps not in the way one might have hoped. After Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers and Ed Gein, Monster puts a woman at the center of its story for the first time and, more importantly, a very different kind of “monster”: Lizzie Borden was never legally found guilty.

Pizzica means “stinging” in Italian. It refers to a tarantula’s bite that was believed to cause a cultural-bound illness called tarantism. This condition caused – especially in women – depression, catatonia, and physical pain. Dancing was the cure for it. Pizzica became the name for both the music and the dancing, and it spread widely across Southern Italy, especially in Salento (Apulia) and Basilicata. The exorcism meant becoming the tarantula and acting like it to shake off its venom.

These days, the city of Milan is hosting Metafisica/Metafisiche, a wide-ranging exhibition on the concept of metaphysical art developed by the Italian painter Giorgio De Chirico. Not many exhibitions make you question how you read a room. This one does. Curated by Vincenzo Trione, the show gathers around 400 works – paintings, sculptures, photographs, design objects, architectural models, videos and more – loaned by over 150 institutions from across the world.

The Turin International Book Fair concludes today, 18 May 2026, closing its 28th edition with 254,000 visitors. The final figure confirms the Salone’s role as a central infrastructure within the Italian and international publishing ecosystem, where each edition functions as a consolidated snapshot of an evolving cultural system shaped by readers, publishers, and institutions. The Turin International Book Fair operates year-round as a continuous platform.

At the historical literature festival in Legnano, Italian author Stefania Auci discussed L’alba dei leoni, the new novel that expands the Florio saga, made internationally famous by The Lions of Sicily. There comes a moment at literary festivals when literature stops being just something on the page and becomes voice, presence, something embodied. It happened at La storia tra le righe, the historical literature festival that from April 10 to 12, 2026, animated the Visconti Castle of Legnano.

Met Gala 2026 transformed the red carpet into a living museum. Under the theme Fashion is Art, celebrities and designers reinterpreted iconic paintings, sculptures, and films through couture, turning each look into a visual statement. From Van Gogh-inspired textures to classical marble illusions, here are the most striking outfits and the artworks behind them. Met Gala 2026 organizers asked, and guests delivered.

On May 6, 2026, the exhibition Transforming Energy, dedicated to the Serbian artist Marina Abramović, opens at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. In this temple of Venetian painting – a place where Titian, Giorgione, and Bellini reign supreme – contemporary art makes its mark. Marina Abramović is, in fact, the first living woman artist to be honored with an exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia.

The Michael Jackson biopic, released in theaters this weekend, has rekindled the nostalgia for millions of MJ fans. His biggest hits are once again among the most-streamed songs on Spotify’s overall chart. But the story of the artist’s greatest moment also reveals how the pop star revolutionized the world of music videos. The sequel to MICHAEL, in its first weekend in theaters, has already made history. It broke all biopic box office records: it grossed over $217.4 million globally.

Home Magazine Cluster Michael Biopic Review: A Safe Portrait That Misses the King of Pop’s Genius The Michael biopic is finally out, after a long and tormented path, delayed by the screenwriters’ strike in 2023 and several legal disputes over what could be depicted in the movie. So we can finally know if the wait was worth it.