Europe’s Top 8 Must-See Shows, From Forgotten Masters to Living Legends

From rediscovered Old Masters to living legends, Europe’s cultural capitals are bursting with blockbuster exhibitions this fall. Florence is celebrating its native son Fra Angelico while the Flemish Baroque painter Michaelina Wautier receives an overdue survey in Vienna. Milan is mounting the first major show to consider Nan Goldin as a filmmaker and, in Paris, the chameleonic Gerhard Richter is the subject of a sweeping survey just in time for Art Basel Paris.

Plus, it wouldn’t be spooky season without a touch of the supernatural, which the Kunstmuseum Basel serves in spades with a haunting show about ghosts. Here are our top picks of museum shows to see across the continent.

“Fra Angelico” at Palazzo Strozzi and Museo di San Marco, Florence
Through January 25, 2026

Where better to pay homage to the Dominican friar-turned-early Renaissance marvel Fra Angelico than in the city where he made his name? The devout painter’s serene, elegantly proportioned frescoes that depict classic religious scenes were originally intended for the contemplation of his fellow monks or wealthy patrons. Nearly six centuries later, they are world-famous masterpieces, celebrated for ushering in a new, transformative era of art-making in Western Europe.

Palazzo Strozzi’s once-in-a-lifetime blockbuster, the first major exhibition in Florence dedicated to Fra Angelico, contains more than 140 artworks. Many of these paintings, sculptures, drawings, and illuminated manuscripts have been loaned from 70 of the top institutions across the world. The exhibition is something of a citywide event, being jointly organized by the nearby Museo di San Marco, formerly the medieval Dominican convent where Fra Angelico lived. There, he painted frescoes to decorate the friars’ tiny cells as well as one of his best-known works, (c. 1440–1445). Other treats on a special trail that runs in and around the city include a recently restored fresco in a remote church in the hilltop town of Fiesole.

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“Ghosts. Visualizing the Supernatural” at Kunstmuseum Basel
Through March 8, 2026

Trick or treat? Just in time for Halloween, this spooky show brings together 160 works spanning 250 years to trace how spirits and the supernatural have inspired generations of artists, from historical figures like Eugène Delacroix, Marcel Duchamp, and Max Ernst to contemporary makers such as Glenn Ligon, Gillian Wearing, and Rosemarie Trockel. Blending science, spiritualism, and popular culture, the exhibition explores how ghosts have served as eerie mediators between life and death, the visible and the invisible, while constantly haunting the edges of our collective imagination.

Not going to make it to Basel? At least take a moment to appreciate the website for the exhibition, which turns your mouse cursor into a ghoul floating around your screen.

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“Radical Harmony: Neo-Impressionists” at the National Gallery, London
Through February 8, 2026

In the late 19th century, a cohort of artists took the once-radical ideas of the Impressionists and innovated upon them, departing from their easy spontaneity to think more deeply about how the viewer perceives paint on canvas. The discoveries of the so-called Neo-Impressionists would become a vital reference for many leading modernists, including Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, and Piet Mondrian. A trove of their placid, pleasing masterpieces—predominantly made by Pointillist painters like Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, among lesser-known but important figures—is currently on display at the National Gallery in London. The standout is no doubt Seurat‘s notorious and, to this day, still surprising , an ambiguous but lively image of Parisian nightlife that has never previously been shown in the U.K.

The collection was amassed by one of the most notable women art patrons in history, Hélène Kröller-Müller, whose collection usually resides in an eponymous museum built on her former estate in the Netherlands. Widely credited as one of the first art collectors to seriously appreciate the talents of Vincent van Gogh, also celebrates her discerning eye and lasting legacy.

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Gerhard Richter at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
October 17, 2025–March 2, 2026

One of the most influential painters alive, Gerhard Richter has spent six decades defying categorization—and this sweeping retrospective aims to capture that restless spirit. Curated by former director of Kunst Museum Winterthur, Dieter Schwarz, and Sir Nicholas Serota, previously the director of Tate, the show brings together 270 works spanning Richter’s vast range of styles, from photo-based realism to luminous abstraction. Key loans from major institutions, alongside highlights from the Fondation’s own collection, offer an unprecedented look at the artist’s chameleonic career, era by era. It’s a must-see survey of a master who’s always refused to stand still.

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“Michaelina Wautier” at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Through February 22, 2026

As the craze for rediscovering long-overlooked women artists who found widespread acclaim in their day shows no signs of slowing, the Kunsthistorisches Museum has planned a tribute to the Flemish Baroque painter Michaelina Wautier. Active in Belgium in the 17th century, Wautier was largely forgotten because many of her paintings were wrongly attributed to male artists, including her brother Charles. Even her self-portrait was once attributed to the Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. These errors have only been corrected in recent decades, and Wautier only got her first major museum show at Rubens House in Antwerp in 2017.

The few historical women painters who made it in a deeply patriarchal art world often were pushed towards softer subjects, like still life or genre painting, but Wautier confidently produced sizeable history paintings. Many of these ambitious, masterful canvases were collected by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, who bequeathed them to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Experts tend to agree that Wautier‘s greatest masterpiece is the magnificent (1650–56), which she painted in her mid-forties. It will take pride of place in this triumphant exhibition, which will tour to the Royal Academy in London in 2026.

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Nan Goldin, “This Will Not End Well” at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan
October 11, 2025–February 15, 2026

This is Nan Goldin’s first major exhibition devoted to her filmmaking, and it features her iconic slideshows reimagined as immersive installations. The show spans six major works, including her magnum opus (1981–2022); (2019–21), which highlights the agony of addiction and withdrawal; and (1992–2021), a collective portrait of her trans friends whom she photographed between 1972 and 2010. Two new works, and , will also premiere, alongside a new sound installation. All of these are housed in architect Hala Wardé’s custom-built pavilions, creating intimate viewing spaces within the museum. It’s a raw, poetic, and deeply personal journey through memory, trauma, and intimacy, with a touch of Goldin‘s signature wry humor.

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“Christian Marclay: The Clock” at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin
November 29, 2025–January 18, 2026

Since winning the prestigious Golden Lion award at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, Christian Marclay‘s (2010) has been touring major institutions across the globe, including MoMA, Tate Modern, and the Centre Pompidou. This fall, it comes to Berlin for the very first time.

Notoriously long, the looped 24-hour video work takes viewers on a journey through the history of cinema by stitching together clips featuring clocks or watches from a century of film into one rolling montage. The mammoth endeavor took some three years to make with the help of a research team and the support of White Cube. In each location, the film correlates to local time so that, as time passes, the subjects’ activities roughly correlate with those expected in a typical day. The video’s vast scope, which encompasses blockbusters and lesser-known pieces, drawing from a wide range of genres from thrillers to westerns, makes for a surprisingly exhilarating watch, and is a moving testament to the many expanding avenues of human creativity.

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Jacques Louis-David at Louvre Museum, Paris
October 15–January 26, 2026

Our understanding of several key moments in French history has been formed through the lens of Jacques-Louis David, no matter how idealized his Neoclassical masterpieces may be. Though initially embraced by the , the illustrious painter made his name in the late 18th century as a dedicated revolutionary who captured its triumphs, as in the (1789), as well as its tranquilly rendered tragedies, like the (1793). By the early 19th century, he had instead become a prominent propagandist for Napoleon Bonaparte, valorizing the emperor with majestic portraits like (1800–05). Where better, then, to celebrate David‘s achievements on the bicentenary of his death, in 1825, than in the very heart of Paris?

It is little surprise that some of the best paintings on view already belong to the Louvre, but visitors can still anticipate a whopping 100 loans. Among the star attractions is the original , which arrives from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels, and (1787) from the Met. An unfinished painting has also been temporarily retrieved from long-term loan at the Palace of Versailles.

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Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com