11 Must-See Museum Exhibitions in 2025
Rashid Johnson, detail of Untitled Anxious Audience, 2019. © Rashid Johnson, 2024. Photo by Martin Parsekian. Courtesy of the artist.
This past year was a landmark one for blockbuster exhibitions worldwide. Major retrospectives honored beloved historical artists, from Caspar David Friedrich’s “Infinite Landscapes” at Berlin’s Alte Nationalgalerie to “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers” at London’s National Gallery. The latter is so popular that people are scrambling to secure tickets before it closes. Meanwhile, shows celebrating the centennial of Surrealism spotlighted the movement’s profound influence on visual art, film, and literature.
It was also a significant year for biennials, from the Whitney Biennial to the Venice Biennale. The main exhibition at the latter, “Foreigners Everywhere,” was themed around concepts of migration and globalization, and placed an emphasis on the work of Indigenous, queer, outsider, and folk artists. This focus is set to extend into 2025, as museums around the world have programmed major exhibitions giving marginalized voices their flowers—from those who have labored in obscurity for years to the next generation of creatives poised to shape the future of the art world.
From debut solo exhibitions to expansive surveys, here are 11 museum shows to visit in 2025.
Christine Sun Kim, “All Day All Night”
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (also traveling to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis)
Feb. 8–July
Christine Sun Kim, My Voice Acts Like ROYGBIV, 2015. © Christine Sun Kim. Courtesy of the artist.
California-born, Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim is renowned for creating work that explores sound, language, and the complexities of communication. Drawing from her lived experience, she has continuously campaigned against the systemic marginalization of the Deaf community, both within and outside the art world. Those who haven’t seen her work in a gallery may still be familiar with her 2015 TED Talk, “The Enchanting Music of Sign Language,” or her performance of the U.S. national anthem in American Sign Language at the 2020 Super Bowl.
Spring 2025 will be a season of milestones for Kim: As well as presenting her first major London exhibition at the Wellcome Collection with collaborator Thomas Mader, she will open her first major solo museum survey at the Whitney in New York before it tours to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Titled “All Day All Night,” the show will feature over 90 works from 2011 to the present day, including rarely seen drawings, site-specific murals, paintings, video installations, performance documentation, and sculptures.
Together, these exhibitions will demonstrate Kim’s expansive approach to artmaking, and showcase the recurring elements across her oeuvre—from the use of musical notation and scores to infographics and language play—that enable her to make poignant yet humorous observations about communication, family, trauma, and the future.
Anselm Kiefer, “Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind”
Stedelijk Museum and Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Mar. 7–June 9
Anselm Kiefer, The Starry Night, 2019. © Anselm Kiefer. Photo by Georges Poncet. Courtesy of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Amsterdam’s Stedelijk and Van Gogh Museums both have strong links to Anselm Kiefer. While the former has acquired and displayed the German artist’s work since the 1960s, the latter, as its name suggests, is dedicated to showcasing the work of Vincent van Gogh, whom Kiefer cites as a major inspiration. As a result, the two institutions have joined forces for the first time to present “Sag mir, wo die Blumen sind” (“Tell me where the flowers are”), a two-part exhibition spread across both venues.
At the Van Gogh Museum, previously unexhibited works by Kiefer will be shown in combination with key paintings by Van Gogh, highlighting the connections between their practices. Meanwhile, the Stedelijk’s contribution will offer an unprecedented opportunity to see all of Kiefer’s works in the museum’s collection displayed together, and to understand his important role as one of the first German artists to address his homeland’s fraught history. The exhibition will also feature more recent paintings by Kiefer, alongside new spatial installations. Notably, a 24-meter-long painterly piece will fill the space around the Stedelijk’s historic staircase.
“Paris noir: Artistic movements and anti-colonial struggles 1950–2000”
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Mar. 19–June 30
Gérard Sékoto, Autoportrait, 1947. © Adagp, Paris, 2024. Courtesy of Centre Pompidou.
Roland Dorcély, Leda et le cygne, 1958. Photo © Fabrice Gousset. Courtesy of Loeve&Co.
Paris is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, yet the voices of its diverse communities are often overshadowed by enduring stereotypes about what it means to be French. The backlash faced by French Malian singer Aya Nakamura following her selection to perform at last year’s Olympic opening ceremony serves as a prime example of the ongoing legacy of racism in the country.
This year the Centre Pompidou will present “Paris noir,” one of its final shows before a five-year closure for renovations. The exhibition will celebrate Black artists who worked in Paris between 1950 and 2000, including figures like Beauford Delaney, Guido Llinás, and Aimé Césaire. Despite their significant contributions to art movements like Surrealism, free figuration, modernism, and postmodernism, many of their works have never been shown in France.
“Paris noir” will offer a visual survey of how Black artists have challenged dominant narratives and reflected political shifts, from African independence to the fall of apartheid. The exhibition will also feature four installations by contemporary Black artists Valérie John, Nathalie Leroy Fiévee, Jay Ramier, and Shuck One—all of whom are based, or have been based, in the French capital—providing fresh perspectives on how the past shapes the contemporary Parisian art scene.
Ruth Asawa, “A Retrospective”
SFMOMA, San Francisco (also traveling to MoMA, New York; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; Fondation Beyeler, Basel)
Apr. 5–Sep. 2
Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.535, Hanging Five-Lobed Continuous Form within a Form with Spheres in the First and Fourth Lobes and a Teardrop Form in the Third Lobe), 1951. © 2024 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of David Zwirner.
Almost 12 years after Ruth Asawa’s death, SFMOMA will present the first major national and international museum retrospective of her groundbreaking work. Born in California in 1926, Asawa was displaced to an internment camp during World War II due to her Japanese heritage. When released, she studied at Black Mountain College in North Carolina before embarking on a prolific six-decade career, working across a wide range of mediums from drawing to sculpture, and often referencing organic forms in line with her deep affinity with nature.
Three hundred of Asawa’s works will feature in the exhibition, arranged chronologically. Her signature hanging looped-wire sculptures of forms within forms will be prominently displayed, as will documentation of her dedicated arts advocacy and public sculpture practice. A gallery evoking Asawa’s beloved Noe Valley home and studio will also offer an intimate insight into her family life and artistic inspirations. Not only will it feature her sketchbooks and examples of her experiments in copper, clay, electroplating, and bronze, as well as the original hand-carved redwood doors from the house, but also work by other artists she admired, such as Josef Albers, Ray Johnson, Peggy Tolk-Watkins, and Marguerite Wildenhain.
“Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly”
Museum Brandhorst, Munich (also traveling to Museum Ludwig, Cologne)
Apr. 10–Aug. 17
Robert Rauschenberg, Odalisk, 1955–58. © Robert Rauschenberg, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024. Photo by Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln. Courtesy of Museum Ludwig.
Jasper Johns, Flag on Orange Field, 1957. © Jasper Johns, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024. Photo by Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln. Courtesy of Museum Ludwig.
This year marks the centennial of American artist Robert Rauschenberg’s birth. To honor this milestone, the artist’s foundation has coordinated a diverse program of exhibitions and events across Europe and the United States. A highlight will be “Five Friends,” a landmark group show placing Rauschenberg’s work in dialogue with that of his closest collaborators—John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, and Cy Twombly—all of whom profoundly influenced the fields of music, dance, painting, sculpture, and drawing in the post-war period.
Opening at Munich’s Museum Brandhorst before touring to Museum Ludwig during Art Cologne 2025, “Five Friends” will feature over 150 works of art, scores, stage props, costumes, photographs, and archival materials. At Brandhorst, there will also be a series of dance performances and concerts taking place within the show, highlighting the close personal and professional relationship between choreographer Cunningham and composer Cage.
Rashid Johnson, The Broken Five, 2019. © Rashid Johnson, 2024. Photo by Martin Parsekian. Courtesy of the artist.
Rashid Johnson is known for exploring race, masculinity, mysticism, and the conditions of artmaking through his multidisciplinary practice. Spanning the last three decades of his career, “A Poem for Deep Thinkers” will be the Chicago-born artist’s largest exhibition to date and the first expansive museum survey of his work in over a decade.
Named after a poem by American poet, writer, teacher, and political activist Amiri Baraka, “A Poem for Deep Thinkers” will take over the entire rotunda of the Guggenheim in New York. Around 90 works considering themes of social alienation, rebirth, and escapism will be on display, including Johnson’s films, black-soap paintings, and spray-painted text works. His well-known series “The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club,” “Anxious Men,” and “Broken Men,” among others, will be on view.
The exhibition will also feature site-specific works, such as Sanguine (2025) located on the museum’s top ramp. Featuring a piano as part of the work, it will serve as a stage for musical performances and other events created in collaboration with the local community.
Jenny Saville, Drift, 2020–22. © Jenny Saville / DACS 2024. Photo by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. Courtesy of Gagosian.
Jenny Saville’s first major museum exhibition in the U.K. will bring together 50 works from throughout the British artist’s career, including charcoal drawings and large-scale oil paintings of the human form. The exhibition will illustrate Saville’s pivotal role in the reinvigoration of figurative painting, particularly through her unique use of thick paint layers to create visceral portraits.
“The Anatomy of Painting” will be largely chronological, tracing Saville’s development from her acclaimed degree show at the Glasgow School of Art to her monumental nude works of the early 1990s, on to her more recent, highly saturated images interrogating the increasingly blurred line between the physical and virtual worlds. Works spotlighting her critical attitude toward women’s beauty standards will also be prominently featured.
Emily Kam Kngwarray, Ntang Dreaming 1989. © Estate of Emily Kam Kngwarray / DACS 2024. Courtesy of National Gallery of Australia.
A senior Anmatyerr woman from the Utopia region of Australia, Emily Kam Kngwarray created vibrant batik textiles that encapsulated her ritual, spiritual, and ceremonial connection to her native land. A custodian of women’s dreaming sites in Alhalkere and a founding member of the Utopia Women’s Batik group—a collective of 21 Aboriginal women artists—Kngwarray turned to painting in her late seventies. During the eight years before her death, she produced an astonishing 3,000 canvases—roughly one per day—that are now celebrated for their detail and precision.
Though regarded as one of the greats of Australian art, Kngwarray has never received a large-scale presentation in Europe. That is set to change in 2025. In collaboration with the National Gallery of Australia, London’s Tate Modern will stage a major solo exhibition dedicated to Kngwarray, offering international audiences a rare opportunity to engage with her oeuvre. The show will feature textiles, paintings, and works on paper from the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, many of which have never been seen outside Australia.
According to the Tate, this exhibition reflects its ongoing commitment to better representing Australian art in its collection and programming. Following the museum’s recent acquisition of Archie Moore’s Golden Lion–winning installation kith and kin (2024)—an exploration of the expansiveness of First Nations Australian history—Kngwarray’s show could mark a new chapter for the recognition of Australian art at one of the U.K.’s leading art institutions.
“The Stars We Do Not See”
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (also traveling to Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto)
Oct. 18, 2025–Mar. 1, 2026
Wingu Tingima (Pitjantjatjara), Minyma Tjuta (Seven Sisters), 2006. © Wingu Tingima / Copyright Agency, Australia 2023. Courtesy of National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
In 2025, Indigenous Australian art will take center stage on both sides of the Atlantic. Organized by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and curated specifically for North American audiences, “The Stars We Do Not See” will be the largest international exhibition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art ever presented. Traveling to five museums across the U.S. and Canada, it will showcase 200 works by more than 130 artists—many of them masterpieces from the NGV’s collection, never before seen outside Australia. There’ll be conceptual map paintings of the Central and Western deserts, ocher bark paintings, cultural objects, and experimental weavings on display, as well as innovative new media works utilizing video, sound, neon, and photography to challenge perceptions of what First Nations art can be.
Kngwarray’s work will again have a strong presence, as will that of Senior Yolngu artist Gulumbu Yunupiŋu—whose extensive paintings depicting visible and invisible stars in the night sky inspired the exhibition’s name. It will also feature contemporary artists such as Brook Andrew, Destiny Deacon, and Betty Muffler. By bringing together different generations in one show, “The Stars We Do Not See” aims to chart pivotal moments in the evolution of Indigenous Australian art, from its rich roots before European colonization to its dynamic and thriving expressions today.
Lee Bul, “My Grand Narrative”
Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul
September (also traveling to M+, Hong Kong, in spring 2026 before touring internationally)
Lee Bul, installation view of Mon grand récit: Weep into stones…, 2005, in “Lee Bul: From Me, Belongs to You Only” at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2012. © Lee Bul. Photo by Watanabe Osamu. Courtesy of the artist and Mori Art Museum.
One of the most important contemporary artists to emerge from Asia in the last few decades, Lee Bul is known for an artistic practice conjuring both utopian potentials and dystopian possibilities. Spanning performance, painting, and sculpture, her practice often involves unexpected, contrasting materials—everything from silk and mother of pearl to fiberglass and silicone.
A broad selection of Bul’s oeuvre, created between the 1980s and today, will be showcased in “My Grand Narrative,” the most comprehensive survey of her career to date. The title references her ongoing project “Mon grand récit,” a series of architectural installations that will be presented as immersive, room-scale environments reflecting on the grand narratives of modernism and its failed utopias. Meanwhile, her “Cyborg Series” (1997–2011) will combine her critiques of female representation and idealized beauty standards with her fascination for science fiction aesthetics.
J.M.W. Turner, The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire, 1817. Courtesy of Tate.
J. M. W. Turner and John Constable’s rivalry is one of the greatest in art history. Born in London in 1775 and Suffolk in 1776, respectively, the artists are considered two of Britain’s greatest landscape painters. While they both had strong connections to nature, they depicted it in very different ways. Where Turner portrayed sublime scenes from his travels with bold brushstrokes and a dramatic use of light and color, Constable returned time and time again to familiar places, seeking freshness through repetition.
Two hundred and fifty years after their births, these two archnemeses will be brought together for a landmark exhibition at London’s Tate Britain. Through a combination of paintings, sketchbook pages, and personal effects, “Turner and Constable” will develop a comprehensive view of each artist, offering visitors the opportunity to compare and contrast their distinct approaches. Highlights will include Turner’s later abstract paintings, which shocked his contemporaries and went on to inspire Claude Monet, as well as Constable’s cloud sketches, which showcase his unique ability to depict the dynamic, ever-changing quality of light and nature.
