Exhibitions

The industrial halls of Berghain will soon be the site of Pierre Huyghe’s first artistic foray into quantum physics, with a new commission from the LAS Art Foundation’s Sensing Quantum program. The large-scale project, launched in partnership with Hartwig Art Foundation, opens January 23, 2026, and runs until March 8, marking Huyghe’s first solo institutional presentation in the German capital.
Though many details remain under wraps, Huyghe’s upcoming installation is said to revolve around uncertainty as both subject and method, drawing on quantum experiments and incorporating film, sound, dust, vibrations, and light. Concepts that have long fascinated Huyghe—indeterminacy, autonomy, and systems thinking, as well as the more-than-human—resonate naturally with aspects of quantum logic.
Halle am Berghain. Photo: Stefanie Loos AFP via Getty Images.
The monumental two-story halls of Halle am Berghain, a former thermal power station from the 1950s, provide a fitting backdrop. Huyghe is known for creating immersive environments that pulse with unpredictability, which are often referred to as “ecosystems.”
“Pierre is one of the leading artists of our generation,” said Bettina Kames, the director of LAS, in a video call. “He is wholly devoted to his projects—perfection, detail, and conceptual rigor guide everything he does.”
Few who saw it will forget his outdoor installation at Documenta 13, Untilled (2011–12), where he transformed a forgotten industrial site into a microcosm of autonomous life: a bee colony thrived on a statue, while a white greyhound with a pink leg wandered through the landscape. At the Pinault Collection’s Punta della Dogana in Venice last year, for his major work Liminal, visitors navigated a dark, cavernous installation of A.I.-inflected films, performances, and living marine life—an exploration of the boundary between human and nonhuman. The move toward quantum systems, with their inherent uncertainty and instability, is a logical continuation of this trajectory.
Pierre Huyghe Liminal (temporary title) (2024–ongoing). Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Marian Goodman Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Esther Schipper, and TARO NASU. © Pierre Huyghe, by SIAE 2023.
“At a moment when quantum and A.I. technologies are beginning to converge, this project not only stages their philosophical and perceptual implications, but also asks what worlds might be conceived of—impossible, unstable, or yet to come,” the institution said via email.
In a statement, Huyghe described the new work as “a hybrid creature, an infinite membrane carved by void… an observer witnessing the ambiguous nature of the entity, its monstrosity.” The accompanying film, he wrote, “portrays an inexistent being, a soulscape, a radical outside,” aiming to turn states of uncertainty into a cosmos.
Notably, the project stems from a collaboration with quantum physicist Tommaso Calarco, co-author of the Quantum Manifesto, which sets Europe’s agenda for quantum research. “Luckily, Calarco is an art lover,” Kames noted. Calarco’s discussions with the artist have informed Huyghe’s experiments with quantum systems “as raw material,” transforming quantum properties into perceptible experiences. “The project with Huyghe is at such a high level,” added Kames. “It is one of the most important projects we have ever done at LAS.”
Pierre Huyghe, 2025, video still. Commissioned by LAS Art Foundation and Hartwig Art Foundation. Courtesy the artist. © Pierre Huyghe, 2025.
LAS Art Foundation, a nomadic institution bridging art, science, and technology, launched the Sensing Quantum program to explore the implications of quantum computing and theory. Laure Prouvost’s inaugural project earlier this year, which examined audio and visual manifestations quantum noise, in an artistic collaboration with Google Quantum A.I. won the S+T+ARTS award from the E.U. Commission.
In addition to ambitious visual art projects, Sensing Quantum includes endeavors with composers, a learning program, and a symposium coming up this month, all of which aims to illuminate some of the most elusive principles and hard-to-grasp elements of quantum mechanics through direct experience. Huyghe’s project will certainly mark an apex of it.
After its launch in Berlin, the presentation will travel to Amsterdam in 2026, presented by the Hartwig Art Foundation, which is currently creating a brick-and-mortar museum. Beatrix Ruf, the director of the Hartwig Art Foundation, said she is “thrilled and grateful” to be involved in this new chapter in Huyghe’s work with the LAS Art Foundation, and that the “inspiring collaboration is now opening up exciting avenues into the forward-looking world of quantum.”
Pierre Huyghe’s Sensing Quantum will be on view from January 23 through March 8, 2026, at LAS Art Foundation, hosting at Halle am Berghain, Berlin. More

The pop culture feast that is New York Comic Con returns to the Javits Center from October 9 through October 12, bringing with it all manner of merchandise, collectibles, fan art, and vintage comic books. The event may have comics in the name, but it’s grown over the years to celebrate a wide range of books, toys, video games, television series, movies, and cosplay.
It’s a great place to meet original comic book artists and graphic novel authors, especially in the dedicated Artist Alley section downstairs. Most of these artists are completely independent, some traveling from across the country for the chance to sell their art and share their passion for all things superheroes, anime, science fiction, and fantasy.
This year’s edition of the con is of special interest to the art world at large, as Los Angeles’s eagerly awaited Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is hosting a special panel previewing the institution, slated to finally open next year. On Sunday, October 9, Hollywood legend Martin Scorsese will moderate a discussion between JR, the French artist famed for his photography and street art installations; Boris Vallejo, the noted science fiction and fantasy artist; and Julie Bell, illustrator and fantasy and wildlife artist.
And it’s an interesting time for the comic art world as well—even as the fine art market falters, the late fantasy artist Frank Frazetta just set a new record for the most expensive work of comic book or fantasy art with a $13.5 million sale at Heritage Auctions in Dallas.
But even if you didn’t snag tickets to the main event, there are exhibitions across the city celebrating the art of the comic book. Here’s our list of what to see during New York Comic Con.

“¡Wepa! Puerto Ricans in the World of Comics” at the New York Public LibraryOctober 4, 2025–March 8, 2026
Installation view of “¡Wepa! Puerto Ricans in the World of Comics” at the New York Public Library. Photo: courtesy of the New York Public Library.
In 2022, Manuel Martínez Nazario, a retired librarian in San Juan, Puerto Rico, made a major gift to the New York Public Library, donating the collection of some 1,600 comic books, political cartoons, and original art by or about Puerto Ricans that he had been amassing since the 1990s. The works on view in this bilingual show include comics set in Puerto Rico, as well as stories that focus on Puerto Ricans here in New York. There’s even Marvel’s first Puerto Rican superhero, White Tiger, who made his debut in 1975. Nazario and Rosa Colón Guerra, cofounder of Soda Pop Comics, whose 2014 anthology of female comic artists is featured in the exhibition, will speak in a Comic Con panel with curators Paloma Celis Carbajal and Charles Cuykendall Carter on October 9 at 3:30 p.m.
The New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Wachenheim Gallery, is located at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, New York. 

“Super Duper” at the Metropolitan Opera HouseSeptember 21, 2025–2026
Art Spiegelman, Superman in the Blottosphere (2023). ©Art Spiegelman.
This fall, the Met is hosting the premiere of the new opera The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, based on Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name about a pair of Jewish cousins who create a superhero comic during World War II (through October 11). This accompanying exhibition is inspired by the American origins of the superhero, featuring new works by contemporary artists such as George Condo, Dana Schutz, Rachel Feinstein, Roz Chast, and Rashid Johnson exploring what the superhero would look like in 2025. Only one work in the exhibition, by Art Spiegelman, author and illustrator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, was not commissioned for the occasion.
The Metropolitan Opera is located at 30 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, New York.

“Nightmares in Blood” at Below GrandOctober 4–November 8, 2025
James O’Barr, The Crow (2018). Courtesy of Below Grand.
Artist Arthur Peña has curated this group show featuring important horror illustrators ranging in age from 36 to 76, celebrating artists who have pushed censorship to the limits with their gory imagery. There are well-known fixtures of the genre such as Clive Barker, who has turned his tales of horror into films like Hellraiser, which he directed, and Candyman, which he executive produced. But the show also includes underground cult figures like “The Gurch,” a mysterious British artist making his U.S. debut here. Expect plenty of blood, guts, and monsters—perfect not just for Comic Con, but for Halloween.
Below Grand is located at 53 Orchard Street, New York, New York. 

“Frank Cho” at Philippe Labaune GallerySeptember 18–October 25, 2025
Frank Cho, Broken Angel (2025). Courtesy of Philippe Labaune Gallery, New York.
Comic artist Frank Cho prides himself on melding art and storytelling, letting his expert draftsmanship help guide the narrative in his illustrations for leading Marvel and DC titles such as Wonder Woman and Savage Wolverine. He is particularly known for his work in ballpoint pen and his fine crosshatching technique, which he uses to create impossibly detailed drawings that appear to leap off the page.
Philippe Labaune Gallery is located at 534 West 24 Street, New York, New York.

“Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey, Edel Rodriguez” at the Society of IllustratorsJuly 19–October 11, 2025
Edel Rodriguez, Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey. Photo: courtesy of Metropolitan Books.
Illustrator Edel Rodriguez, who has done covers for publications such as Time and Der Spiegel—you may remember his powerful image of President Donald Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty—presents the original art from his graphic memoir Worm. It tells the story of his flight from Cuba aboard a tiny shrimping boat in 1980, one of the “worms,” as Fidel Castro derisively referred to those leaving the island nation in the boatlift. The show also includes Rodriguez’s political art, silkscreened posters, and paintings.
Society of Illustrators is located at 128 East 63rd Street, New York, New York.

“Comics in the City: Sequential Art Is” at Flushing Town HallSeptember 25–October 20, 2025
A comic by Chris Gomez. Courtesy of Flushing Town Hall.
Comics writer Regine L. Sawyer, the founder of Women in Comics NYC Collective International, has curated this showcase of New York City comic book artists such as Will Heydecker, Bryan Angrand, and MARICAMA. It focuses on the narrative power of sequential art and how comics use panels to to tell a story image by image.
Flushing Town Hall is located at 137-35 Northern Blvd, Flushing, New York. More

Frieze Week approaches in London, and with it, a veritable buffet of incredible museum shows to see around the city. A bumper crop of summer exhibitions remains on view in the U.K.’s capital city that are worth seeing before they close, including Tate Modern’s historic survey of Australian First Nations artist Emily Kam Kngwarray and a sweeping Do Ho Suh show. There is also a major mounting of works by pioneering 19th-century Realist Jean-François Millet at the National Gallery, and Grayson Perry’s irreverent “Delusions of Grandeur” at the Wallace Collection.
But plenty more exhibitions are fresh to the scene. From the long-awaited Kerry James Marshall survey at the Royal Academy to a rare outing of Wayne Thiebaud’s dessert-themed paintings at the Courtauld, here are 10 must-see shows to hit during the busy fair week.

Gilbert and George: 21st Century Pictures
Hayward Gallery, October 7–January 11, 2026
Installation view of “Gilbert & George: 21st Century Pictures” at the Hayward Gallery in London. Photo: Mark Blower, courtesy of the Gilbert and George and the Hayward Gallery.
Are there many artists more London than Gilbert and George, the duo of “living sculptures” who have been stalwarts of Spitalfields for decades? Though in their smart, suited presentations they may seem like relics of a bygone age, it turns out the artists’ practice has long been evolving alongside new technologies.
This exhibition traces these changes over 25 years, but at their core, these some 60 floor-to-ceiling installations evince Gilbert and George’s enduring preoccupation with societal taboos and anxieties around sexuality, class, and nationalism. Their work excavates the everyday artifacts of modern life, from road signs to newspaper headlines, to reflect our world back at us but, always, with their characteristic wit.
Dedicated fans of the duo will be excited to see the debut of two new works from this year’s “Screw Pictures” series. With Gilbert and George behind the scenes, you just know the word “screw” is going to have all manner of meanings.
—Jo Lawson-Tancred

Kerry James Marshall: The Histories
Royal Academy of Arts, through January 18, 2026
Kerry James Marshall, School of Beauty, School of Culture (2012). Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; Museum purchase with funds provided by Elizabeth (Bibby) Smith, the Collectors Circle for Contemporary Art, Jane Comer, the Sankofa Society, and general acquisition funds, 2012.57. © Kerry James Marshall. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Photo: Sean Pathasema.
Marshall’s largest exhibition in Europe to date stages an audacious conversation with art history’s giants. Again and again, the artist takes up a different mode of painting and retools it to express a worldview that reflects Black experience, everyday life, and history from the inside out.
Past Times (1997), Marshall’s riff on Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (famously bought by Diddy in 2018) recasts the protagonists of a leisurely Sunday afternoon in a Chicago park. The nearly monochrome Black Painting (2003/2006), among the show’s most powerful works, nods to a long lineage of “black paintings”—from Ad Reinhardt to Norman Lewis—while reclaiming the notion on Marshall’s own terms: Within the darkness emerges the faint image of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, asleep in bed moments before his life was taken by Chicago police in 1969. There’s more, and more.
If postcolonial literary criticism “writes back” by rewriting the master narrative—the overarching cultural story imposed by power—Marshall “paints back,” reworking the master image from within. The show’s scale feels perfectly suited to the Royal Academy’s grand galleries: intellectually satisfying, visually forceful, and deeply layered. Make enough time for it.
—Naomi Rea

Wayne Thiebaud, American Still Life
The Courtauld Gallery, October 10, 2025–January 18, 2026
Wayne Thiebaud, Cakes (1963). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. © Wayne Thiebaud VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2025. Image Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.
It’s shocking that Wayne Thiebaud, one of the greatest American painters of the last century—of confectionery, at the very least—is only receiving his first U.K. museum show now, four years after his death at the age of 101. The “laureate of lunch counters,” as critic Lawrence Alloway once called him, Thiebaud rendered humble cakes, pies, sweets, coffee cups, and hot dogs in vivid hues and brushy strokes, bestowing upon these cheap eats a historical if not philosophical gravitas in much the same way Chaïm Soutine did with meat.
The Courtauld’s exhibition, featuring works from the 1960s hailing from numerous American collections—including the iconic Cakes (1963), on loan for the first time outside the U.S. from the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.—is a sweet treat indeed, as very few of this Modern master’s paintings are held by museums on this side of the Atlantic.
—Margaret Carrigan

Nigerian Modernism
Tate Modern, October 8, 2025–May 10, 2026
Uzo Egonu, Stateless People an artist with beret 1981. ©The estate of Uzo Egonu. Private Collection.
Just about a week after Nigeria celebrated the 65th anniversary of its independence from the U.K., Tate Modern opens “Nigerian Modernism,” the first exhibition in the country that traces the footprint and evolution of Modern art in the African country against its transformative socio-political backdrop. Featuring more than 250 works of various disciplines by more than 50 artists across five decades, the exhibition links the development of Modern art in Nigeria with the cultural and artistic influences resulting from British colonial rule and the growing emphasis on the country’s own cultural identities and rich heritage amid the calls for decolonization.
Curated by senior curator Osei Bonsu and assistant curator Bilal Akkouche, the exhibition starts from the 1940s, showcasing works by pioneers such as painter and sculptor Ben Enwonwu and ceramist Ladi Kwali, who fused their British training with Nigerian art traditions. The show then explores the legacy of the Zaria Arts Society following the country’s independence in 1960 and artists’ struggle amid the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War in 1967. The show concludes with a focus on Uzo Egonu, the Nigerian-born British artist whose work reflects the identity of the Nigerian diaspora.
—Vivienne Chow

Peter Doig: House of Music
Serpentine South Gallery, October 10, 2025–February 8, 2026
Peter Doig, Painting for Wall Painters (Prosperity P.o.S.) (2010–2012) © Peter Doig. All Rights Reserved.
Peter Doig is known for his paintings of landscapes drawn from his personal experiences and surroundings. But how would these paintings sound?
In “House of Music,” the British painter takes the opportunity to present what could be understood as a soundtrack for his art for the first time. Music selected by Doig will be played from a set of high fidelity wooden Klangfilm Euronor speakers from the 1950s to accompany the viewing of his recent works on show, primarily created during the artist’s years in Trinidad with his family between 2002 and 2021. The music comes from the artist’s vast collection of vinyl records and cassette tapes accumulated throughout the decades.
Installed alongside the paintings created during the artist’s years in Trinidad with his family between 2002 and 2021 is a restored Western Electric/Bell Labs sound system. Originally from the late 1920s to 1930s, the sound system was created to meet the growing demands for talking movies at the time. The sound system was recovered by Laurence Passera, an expert in the field and a collaborator with Doig on this project.
Want to tune in? Live listening sessions will take place on Sundays under the banner of Sound Service, where musicians, artists, and collectors will share their collections of music.
—V.C.

Karimah Ashadu: Tendered
Camden Art Centre, October 10, 2025–March 22, 2026
Karimah Ashadu, MUSCLE (still), 2025. Courtesy of the artist, Camden Art Centre, Fondazione In Between Art Film, Sadie Coles HQ and The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago
Karimah Ashadu burst onto the international stage after her nine-minute video of modish male motorcyclists in Nigeria premiered to acclaim at the Venice Biennale last year. Titled Machine Boys, it earned her the prestigious Silver Lion for Promising Young Artist.
Ashadu, who was born in Nigeria and is now based in Hamburg, continues her probe into performative masculinity and patriarchy in West African culture with her show at the Camden Art Centre, “Tendered.” It features the newly created body of work, MUSCLE (2025), a moving-image installation and series of sculptures sensually depicting bodybuilders in Lagos’ slums.
“I was drawn to the dedication to getting and maintaining that muscle,” the artist told the New York Times, while wanting to expose the “softness” that existed below the surface.
Co-commissioned by the Fondazione In Between Art Film, the exhibition will travel to the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago next year.
—M.C.

Ghost Objects: Summoning Leighton’s Lost Collection
Leighton House Museum, October 11, 2025–March 1, 2026
Annemarieke Kloosterhof, Ghost Objects (2025) for Leighton House. Image: Jaron James.
The west London house of leading Victorian artist Frederic Leighton became a museum in 1926. It is beloved by those in the know for its ornate interiors, most famously the Arab Hall—replete with Islamic tiles, a golden dome, and a fountain—that the artist designed after several trips to the Middle East. The opulent rooms are also home to plenty of artworks, including a painting by the studio of Tintoretto and a trove of Leighton’s drawings.
This year, Leighton House is celebrating its 100th anniversary with a special exhibition, “Ghost Objects: Summoning Leighton’s Lost Collection,” by contemporary paper artist Annemarieke Kloosterhof. Her work recreates four legendary treasures that have been lost from the artist’s original collection, including a 15th-century carved and gilt Italian tabernacle shrine acquired by Leighton for his studio in 1886. Another object, a mysterious brass jardiniere, was very much a product of its time, appearing to blend influences from both Indian art and the Arts and Crafts movement. Kloosterhof’s paper art brings to light the efforts of the museum’s curators to search high and low for many more of these missing pieces, some of which have been successfully recovered and returned to the house.
—J.L-T.

We Sinful Women: The Library Project
The SOAS Library, SOAS University of London, September 18–December 7, 2025
Naiza Khan, New Clothes for The Emperor II (2009), Taimur Hassan Collection. Photography by Justin Piperger.
The beauty of London is its cultural diversity; and as such, among all the blockbuster institutional shows happening this month, the independently organized “We Sinful Women” at the SOAS Library is worth paying attention to.
Following the well-received exhibition “(Un)Layering the Future Past of South Asia: Young artists’ voices” at SOAS Gallery earlier this year, curators Salima Hashimi and Manmeet K. Walia return to the premises of the famed academic institution to stage this exhibition platforming voices of women artists from South Asia and the Middle East, regions that have been gaining momentum on the global art stage in recent years.
Drawing from the private collection of Pakistani collector Taimur Hassan, the show explores how women artists of various disciplines from the region, from Modernists to contemporary, have continuously  been redefining themselves individually against a backdrop of shared histories and resilience. Featured artists include Shilpa Gupta, Bani Abidi, and Arpita Singh.
—V.C.

Maxwell Alexandre: Sanctuary and the Shadow of its Walls
Delfina Foundation, October 10–November 23, 2025
Maxwell Alexandre, detail of Pátio do Clube do Flamengo na Gávea (Flamengo Club Courtyard in Gávea) (2025). Photo: Julia Thompson.
Maxwell Alexandre, a former pro in-line skater who hails from Rio de Janeiros’ Rocinha favela, has had a meteoric rise in the art world since 2020, buoyed by solo shows in quick succession at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, David Zwirner in London, and New York’s The Shed. Part of a new wave of Black Brazilian artists reshaping representation and race narratives through figurative painting, his large-scale portraits on kraft paper (pardo) are infused with street culture and nods to his Evangelical upbringing.
For his debut institutional show in the U.K., at the Delfina Foundation near Buckingham Palace, he shifts his focus from people to places. Newly commissioned paintings take as their inspiration the Clube de Regatas, an elite sports club in Rio and transforms the foundation’s basement gallery into an immersive space exploring themes of privilege, leisure, and sanctuary.
—M.C.

Joy Gregory: Catching Flies with Honey
Whitechapel Gallery, October 8–March 1, 2026
Joy Gregory, Stockwell Siren performance from the series “CelebrityBlonde” (2003). Photo: © Joy Gregory.
After the success of Hamad Butt earlier this year, Whitechapel Gallery appears to be on a roll when it comes to bringing our attention to important British artists who have been overlooked. The spotlight is now on Joy Gregory, courtesy of the Freelands Award, a £110,000 ($148,000) prize that she and Whitechapel Gallery won in 2023 to stage an exhibition dedicated to a mid-career female artist. Those not yet acquainted with Gregory’s work will encounter her through no less than 250 works, including film, textile, performance, and, most predominantly, photography. She has explored this latter medium in many of its manifestations, from Victorian cyanotypes to digital.
Early self-portraits and private domestic scenes, both from the early 1990s, offer a highly personal take on Black womanhood. Later works, like Memory and Skin (1998) and Seeds of Empire (2021), are ambitious, research-led explorations of colonial history. A deep sensitivity and humanity is at the core of Gregory’s work, shining through in her newly commissioned film, the result of a two-decade collaboration with the San People of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa.
–J.L-T. More

In an era when global biennials and triennials seem to appear with ever-increasing frequency, organizing a major international art event outside of traditional art world hubs has become a daunting challenge. It is not uncommon for these initiatives to fall into the trap of vague and grandiose narration. The real test lies in how a regional biennial or triennial can balance local grounding with global ambition, all while responding to the pressing urgencies of politics, environmental crises, and cultural conflict.
The 2025 edition of the Aichi Triennale, one of Japan’s leading international art festivals held every three years since 2010, manages to meet this moment with rare clarity. Titled “A Time Between Ashes and Roses,” this year’s edition is curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, president and director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, who drew inspiration from a poem by modernist Syrian poet Adonis. Written in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, Adonis’s verses lament environmental devastation while also making space for regeneration and hope.
Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2025 Mulyana, Between Currents and Bloom, 2019- present ©︎ Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee
“This exhibition brings a lot of these issues to the forefront—our destruction of the planet and all living things—but also a reminder of how connected we are to this earth,” said Al Qasimi, who has also spoken publicly about the ongoing Israel-Palestine crisis. “This Triennale serves as a reminder that we all live under the same sky, and none of us are free until all of us are free.” That political resonance was felt even during the opening on September 13, when a small protest briefly took place outside one of the venues.
Her and the curatorial team’s vision for the sixth edition of the event focuses on how humans relate to their environment, in which the exhibition seeks to “unearth alternative land-based and Indigenous assemblages,” while challenging anthropocentric perspectives that frame land purely in terms of territory, nationhood, or resource extraction. Instead, the works on view encourage viewers to consider the environment not as a passive backdrop, but as a co-agent with its own timelines and memory—sometimes geological, sometimes ancestral.
This curatorial ethos is reflected not only in the artworks selected, but also in the exhibition design itself. Across multiple venues, installations echo the visual language of natural history museums. Rather than adopting a didactic or overtly activist tone, the shows favor an atmospheric, geological pace—eschewing binary oppositions in favor of slow, layered unfolding. After all, when breathing the same ocean air, it is often the subtle and specific—rather than the grand and abstract—that allows us to relate across distance, to feel the elsewhere within the here.
Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2025 Adrián Villar Rojas, Terrestrial Poems, 2025 ©︎ Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee Photo: Kido Tamotsu
This orientation is visible in the artist lineup. Among the 61 participating artists and collectives, the majority are from non-Western backgrounds, many with Indigenous heritage. Japan, as the host country, is well represented with 26 artists, but much of the remaining roster comes from the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific. Notably, there is a strong presence of Southeast Asian and Indigenous Australian voices, while East Asia is relatively underrepresented—only two artist groups (ikkibawiKrrr and Kwon Byungjun) are from Korea.
This is a Triennale worth experiencing in person—and you have until November 30 to do so. But before you go, here’s a preview of three (group) works, among all, that I encountered on site.
Ota Saburo, Mizutani Kiyoshi, Miyamoto Saburo, and Hiroshi Sugimoto atAichi Arts Center
Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2025, Sugimoto Hiroshi. Miyamoto Saburo ©︎ Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee Photo: ToLoLo studio
In a spacious room at the Nagoya City Art Museum, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s large-format photographs are displayed alongside mural works by three painters—Ota Saburo, Mizutani Kiyoshi, and Miyamoto Saburo—from the postwar era. The presentation evokes the subdued ambiance of a natural history museum, offering an understated counterpoint to the immersive videos and large-scale installations that dominate much of the Triennale.
The three murals were originally commissioned in the aftermath of World War II as part of a project to revive Nagoya’s Higashiyama Zoo, which had been devastated by the war. In 1944, as air raids intensified, large carnivores were culled at the military’s request over fears they might escape and harm civilians. Disease and starvation further decimated the zoo’s population, from over 3,000 animals across 300 species to just over 20 survivors. To compensate for the absence of these creatures, local newspapers proposed the creation of murals depicting animals from around the world—a gesture of both remembrance and imagination.
Sugimoto’s celebrated “Dioramas” series began in 1975, when he encountered the astonishingly detailed wildlife displays at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Over the next 40 years, he photographed dioramas across the United States. Many of the background paintings were created by artists who had actually visited the depicted regions during the golden age of diorama-making, spanning the 1920s to 1940s. Shot with 20-minute exposures, Sugimoto’s images could easily be mistaken for photographs of living animals.
The juxtaposition in this room is quietly poignant. These works resist spectacle, instead offering a space for reflection on extinction, memory, and the long arc of natural history.
Sasaki Rui at Seto City
For the first time, the Aichi Triennale has included Seto City as one of its three main venues. Since its second edition, the Triennale has made it a point to incorporate cities beyond Nagoya—such as Toyota City in 2019—into its programming.
This year, 11 artists’ works are dispersed throughout Seto, a city long known as the heart of Japan’s ceramic industry. With a legacy of embracing new techniques and cultural influences, Seto provides a fitting context for site-specific installations. The trio in Seto City feels more like a hike, tucked into speakeasy-like settings—including abandoned elementary schools, ceramic factories, and ordinary residential neighborhoods—that invite visitors to engage with art through exploration.
Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2025 Sasaki Rui, Unforgettable Residues, 2025 ©︎ Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee Photo: Kido Tamotsu.
Japanese artist Sasaki Rui transformed a former family-run sento (public bathhouse) into an immersive installation that reflects Seto’s intertwined social and ecological histories. Collaborating with local residents, Sasaki collected seasonal plants tied to different eras of the city’s evolution—from species that predate the ceramics boom, to trees once felled for kiln fuel, and flora preserved or naturalized through industrial activity. Encased in reclaimed glass from old kominka (folk houses) and deadstock from a local glass factory, these specimens emit a ghostly green glow in the darkened bathhouse, like lingering spirits in the room.
Installed where hot water once filled the communal bath, the glossy, translucent glass recalls the fluidity of water, yet its material permanence stands in stark contrast to water’s transience. Sasaki wanted to preserve fading memories and embodied experiences, holding time still in a fragile yet enduring form.
Wangechi Mutu at Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum
Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2025. Wangechi Mutu, Sleeping Serpent, 2014-2025 ©︎ Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee. Photo: Ito Tetsuo
Wangechi Mutu’s striking sculpture Sleeping Serpent (2014–2025) has slithered into Japan. Measuring approximately 9.5 meters long, the black snake lies quietly coiled on the floor, its belly swollen. A blue ceramic head rests peacefully on a matching pillow, surrounded by personal objects, including four newly added small ceramic objects that respond to the site. The sculpture’s head is a self-portrait Mutu made in her youth and kept for over a decade before finally integrating it into the piece.
The exhibition offers Mutu a remarkably generous space for expression. In another gallery, her three-channel video The End of Carrying All (2015) is on view. A female figure—evoking an archetype of African womanhood—walks uphill with a basket on her head, which grows increasingly heavy with modern detritus. Eventually, she and her burden morph into a massive form that plummets off a cliff. “It connected to interests that I’ve always had,” Mutu explains, “this worry I have about the earth, the environment, and how we are implicated in that… how every gesture we participate in impacts the planet, impacts other people, impacts women.”
Right: Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2025 Wangechi Mutu, The End of Carrying All, 2015 ©︎ Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee. Photo: Ito Tetsuo; Left: Installation view at Aichi Triennale 2025 Wangechi Mutu, The End of Carrying All A site specific intervention for Aichi Triennial 2025, 2025 ©︎ Aichi Triennale Organizing Committee Photo: Ito Tetsuo
Across from the video, Mutu has handwritten a statement on the wall, paying tribute to the late Kenyan environmentalist and feminist Wangari Maathai. The show even spills into the museum’s courtyard, where two monumental bronze baskets—modeled after handmade Kikapú baskets from Kenya—house ancient symbolic creatures. One holds a large green snake evoking duality, mythic power, and wisdom. The other contains an African sea turtle representing beauty, resilience, patience, and longevity. More

He’s spent years climbing the charts—now, RM has his eye on the gallery wall. The art-loving BTS frontman is teaming up with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) to reveal his personal collection for the very first time.
Opening October 2026, “RM x SFMOMA” will be the first museum show to feature selections from the star’s trove of contemporary artworks, which will be placed in dialog with pieces from the museum’s holdings. RM’s hope is for the dual presentation to serve as a bridge across divides.
“We live in an age defined by boundaries. This exhibition at SFMOMA reflects those boundaries: between East and West, Korea and America, the modern and the contemporary, the personal and the universal,” he said in a statement. “I don’t want to prescribe how these works should be seen; whether out of curiosity or study, all perspectives are welcome.”
Philip Guston, Untitled (Red and Black Book) (1969). Collection of RM; © The Estate of Philip Guston, courtesy Hauser & Wirth.
RM’s love for visual art has long been writ large in his lyrics, album covers, and Instagram posts. Things began, he said, in 2018 when he decided to pop by the Art Institute of Chicago during a break in his tour schedule. The visit was transformative: “It was like: wow,” he told the New York Times in 2022. “I was looking at these art pieces, and it was an amazing experience.”
Since then, RM has documented his regular visits to art venues—from London’s Tate Modern to New York’s Skarstedt Gallery to Jeju’s Bonte Museum—across social media. His 2022 solo album, Indigo, would feature tributes to South Korean painter Yun Hyong-Keun on its sleeve and its first track, “Yun.”
Chusa Kim Jeong-hui, Orchid Paintings and Writings, 19th century, Joseon dynasty; Collection of RM.
The multihyphenate, who has been spotted at fairs including Frieze Seoul and Art Basel, has also quietly built a sizeable art collection. It’s a trove that encompasses Korean art, including the seminal likes of Park Soo Keun and Nam June Paik, as well as contemporary, red-chip pieces by KAWS and Bearbrick. In 2022, RM loaned a Kwon Jin-Kyu sculpture to the Seoul Museum of Art for the artist’s retrospective.
“Art is like every basic thing in life, like eating and sleeping,” he said earlier this year. “It’s a beautiful process to be an art man.”
Yun Hyong-keun, Blue-Umber ’79-C6 (1979). Collection of RM; © Yun Seong-ryeol, courtesy PKM Gallery.
At SFMOMA, RM will be surfacing key Korean artworks from his collection, some never before exhibited. Among the artists featured will be pioneering figures of Korean Modernism Park Rehyun and Chang Ucchin; abstract artist Kwon Okyon; sculptor Kim Yun Shin; master of realism To Sangbong; and of course, Yun, best known for his meditative canvases of blacks and blues. Other works in the show include canvases by Giorgio Morandi, Roni Horn, and Philip Guston.
Kim Whanki, 26-I-70 (1970). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gift of Mrs. Whanki Kim; © Estate of Whanki Kim. Photo: Katherine Du Tiel.
For its part, the museum is contributing highlights from its collection, such as pieces by abstract painter Kim Whanki. Elsewhere are works by Modern masters Henri Matisse and Georgia O’Keeffe as well as Abstract Expressionists Mark Rothko and Agnes Martin.
“Visitors will have an unprecedented opportunity to explore RM’s beautiful and contemplative collection of paintings and sculpture in dialogue with works from SFMOMA’s holdings,” Janet Bishop, chief curator at SFMOMA, noted in a statement, “inviting us to make new discoveries and reflect on our own relationships with art.”
“RM x SFMOMA” will be on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third Street, San Francisco, California, October 2026–February 2027. More

One of the city’s most unique cultural events is back for 2025, with architectural sites and cultural organizations welcoming the public for Open House New York, a weekend-long event running October 17 to 19.
Open House New York has been celebrating the city’s most beloved landmarks, as well as its forgotten corners, since 2003, offering free or low-cost access to spaces that aren’t normally open to the public. Want to check out the filtration system at the massive Astoria Pool, for instance? The Open House tour will mark the first chance in the modernist landmark’s 89-year history. Or you can go behind the scenes at the Goodwill in Downtown Brooklyn.
The offerings include a passive house in Harlem, a Department of Sanitation composting facility on Staten Island, and, if you’re willing to show up at 4 a.m., the Fulton Fish Market in the Bronx. There are also architecturally stunning landmarks, like the Beaux Arts Hall of Records designed by John Rochester Thomas and completed in 1907, or the Lever House, the groundbreaking 1952 International Style office building by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
There’s also plenty of museums to visit and art to see, such as four separate MTA Arts and Design subway tours, or a rare look at the flood mitigation system architect Renzo Piano installed at the Whitney Museum of American Art after Hurricane Sandy flooded the construction site. (There’s a reason we likened the building to Noah’s ark when it opened back in 2014.)
This year’s edition features 342 venues across all five boroughs, 164 of which are open for drop-in visits. The other 178 sites are ticketed, with timed reservations for just $7 a person which will be released on Friday, October 3, at 12 p.m. We’ve compiled a list of the most intriguing options for both ticketed and open-access venues. Enjoy!
DROP-IN VISITS
32 Avenue of the Americas Lobby
Hildreth Meière’s Continents Linked by the Telephone and Wireless ceiling mosaic for 32 Avenue of the Americas, the former AT&T Long Distance Building. Photo: courtesy of the International Hildreth Meière Association
Today, lobby art is easy to ignore, your eyes skipping past whatever bland, large-scale, painting is hanging on your way to the elevator bank. But the Art Deco muralist and mosaicist Hildreth Meière (1892–1961) was a master of incorporating artwork into public spaces, like the dazzling glass mosaic ceiling representing the connectivity of telephones she did for the former AT&T Long Distance Building. Stop by for a tour from members of the International Hildreth Meière Association, which is also offering ticketed Open House visits to see her stunning, landmarked Red Room at the new Printemps department store.
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New YorkOctober 17–19, 12 p.m.–4 p.m.
Morbid Anatomy Museum
The Morbid Anatomy Museum. Photo: courtesy of the Morbid Anatomy Museum, Brooklyn.
This quirky Brooklyn museum closed after just two-and-a-half years in business due to money issues, but it was revived at Greenwood Cemetery and most recently in Industry City. There will be free tarot readings for Open House New York, plus the opportunity to peruse the collection of all things related to death, medicine, anatomy, taxidermy, and much more.
Morbid Anatomy Museum, Industry City, 254 36th Street, Building 2, Floor 2, Suite C248, Brooklyn, New YorkOctober 17–19, 12 p.m.–4 p.m.
Materials for the Arts
Materials for the Arts. Photo: by Samantha Paradiso.
You may not know it, but this city keeps 6.1 million pounds of materials out of landfills thanks to this creative reuse center, which distributes to free materials to the NYC Department of Education and upwards of 7,000 arts and cultural organizations.
Materials for the Arts, 33-00 Northern Boulevard, Floor 3, Long Island City, New YorkOctober 19, 10 a.m.–6 p.m, last tour 5 p.m.
Allison Eden Studios
Allison Eden at her mosaic studio. Photo: by Gary Goldenstein.
Allison Eden has made glass mosaics for all 50 states, as well as abroad, including for private homes as well as bars, restaurants, casinos, and even cruise ships. Now you can get a glimpse into her art factory.
Allison Eden Studios, 164 Cook Street, Brooklyn, New YorkOctober 18–19, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
M&S Schmalberg Flowers
M&S Schmalberg Flowers. Photo: John Ng.
M&S Schmalberg opened in the Garment District in 1916. Now it’s the city’s last-remaining fabric flower factory, stocked with vintage brass molds, hand-shaped petals, and century-old pressing irons.
M&S Schmalberg Flowers, 242 West 36th Street, Floor 7. New York, New YorkOctober 19, 9 a.m.–3 p.m, last tour 2:30

TICKETED TOURS
Harlem River Bridges, Parks and Landmarks Walking Tour
Photo: Nathan Kensinger, courtesy of Open House New York.
Led by Nathan Kensinger and Duane Bailey-Castro, who have photographed the Bronx shoreline for 15 years, the tour offers an artist’s view of the Harlem River, surfacing its rich history and ecology.
Highbridge, BronxOctober 18, 12:00 p.m.—2.30 p.m.
Cathedral of St. John the Divine
The stained glass windows at St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York. Photo: by David Hogarty, courtesy of Open House New York.
If you’re not afraid of heights and want to climb 124 feet, up 12 flights of stairs, this is your chance to get up close and personal with the stained glass at St. John the Divine, the world’s largest Gothic cathedral. Tickets for the vertical tour are normally $27.50, so this is a great deal. (Note, however, that children under 12 are not allowed.) The architect Ralph Adams Cram insisted that the colorful panes be manufactured with medieval techniques, from pot-glass made of sand and metal ash. There are over 150 windows from different artists and eras—the church is still technically under construction—but the central rose window was designed by Boston’s Connick Studio, run by artist Charles Jay Connick, under Cram’s guidance.
Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue, Morningside Heights, New York, New YorkOctober 18, 12 p.m.–1 p.m., 2 p.m.–3 p.m.
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Artwork by Robert Rauschenberg at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Photo: courtesy of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.
It’s Robert Rauschenberg’s centennial year, with major exhibitions in the city at the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of the City of New York. The artist turned this former religious orphanage into his home and studio in 1965; now it is home to his foundation and the current exhibition “Autobiography and Other Stories: Robert Rauschenberg in Words and Images.”
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, 381 Lafayette St, New York, New YorkOctober 18–19, 12 p.m.–1 p.m., 1:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m., 3 p.m.–4 p.m.
Socrates Sculpture Park and Mark di Suvero Studio
Spacetime, Mark di Suvero’s studio. Photo: courtesy of Socrates Sculpture Park.
In 1986, the great sculptor Mark di Suvero turned an illegal dumpsite on the Queens waterfront into a free sculpture park. But Open House New York is the only time you can visit Spacetime, his incredible studio next door. Richard Morales, director of public programs at Socrates; Shaun Leonardo, co-director at Socrates; and Ivana Mestrovic, director at Spacetime.
Spacetime and Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, Queens, New YorkOctober 18, 2 p.m.–3:30 p.m.
Jack Shainman Gallery
Jack Shainman Gallery. Photo: courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery.
This tour of Jack Shainman’s stunning new Tribeca space inside the landmarked New York Life Insurance Company Building includes special access to the gallery’s private spaces, including the former bank vault. The current exhibition is a massive Hank Willis Thomas show.
Jack Shainman Gallery, 46 Lafayette Street, New YorkOctober 17–19, 10:30 a.m.–12 p.m.; 1 p.m.–2:30 p.m.
Hispanic Society Museum & Library
Hispanic Society Museum & Library. Photo courtesy of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library.
Get a behind-the-scenes tour of the ongoing restoration work from Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners at the landmark Audubon Terrace cultural campus in Washington Heights.
Hispanic Society Museum & Library, Audubon Terrace, 3741 Broadway, New York, New YorkOctober 18, 11 a.m.–11:45 a.m.; 1 p.m.–1:45 p.m.
WTC Rebuilding Gallery & Artists Studios
Murals on the 79th floor of 3 World Trade Center. Photo: courtesy of Silverstein Properties.
The real estate firm Silverstein Properties has long given artists space at the World Trade Center, where it holds a 99-year lease. Artists can apply for a free-year-long residency on the 28th floor of 4 World Trade Center with Silver Art Projects, but the views are even better at 3 World Trade Center, where there’s an on-site resident artist program and mural collection on the 79th floor. The company is offering tours of the artist studios there, as well as its private art collection galleries up on 80.
3 World Trade Center, New York, New YorkOctober 17, 10 a.m.–10:45 a.m., 11 a.m.–11:45 a.m., 12 p.m.–12:45 p.m.
Colossal Media
The headquarters of hand-painted outdoor advertising company Colossal Media. Photo: courtesy of Colossal Media.
Hand-painted outdoor advertising company Colossal Media paints murals around the world. A tour of its Brooklyn warehouse—part paint store, part art studio, and part painted signage museum—will show what goes into the pre-production process, before the artists go on site and work their magic.
Colossal Media, exact address TBA, East Williamsburg, BrooklynFriday, 10 a.m.–11 a.m., 11 a.m.–12 p.m. More

Time has been kind to New York’s Guggenheim. Today, it’s considered Frank Lloyd Wright’s crowning statement and an unequivocal masterpiece of modern architecture, but upon opening in 1959, its revolutionary form drew comparisons to a washing machine, marshmallow, and a giant corkscrew.
The chairs Wright designed for the museum’s café were no less futuristic. Sleek and minimalist with a spun aluminum tulip base and an eye-shaped backrest, they seem to belong on the flight deck of a ship gliding through the solar system. They were never realized. Now, nearly seven decades later, the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) has commissioned a pair as part of a new exhibition that reframes Wright’s furniture within the Wisconsinite’s practice and American modernism more broadly.
Frank Lloyd Wright Café Chairs for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo: courtesy MOWA/the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ.
To produce the café chairs, curators worked with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to uncover his drawings, before sharing them with a multigenerational metal-spinning company in Milwaukee. It’s an approach organizers have taken a further 10 times working with master artisans (including Wright’s great-grandson, S. Lloyd Natof) for “Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design.” Across 40 pieces, the show highlights five distinct periods between 1911 and 1959, years in which Wright drifted from the horizontal lines and design strictures of his Prairie School.
If there’s one thing a person with even a passing interest in Wright knows, it’s his concept of organic architecture, a vision in which every element, from the carpet to the planters to, yes, the chairs, forms part of a harmonious whole. And yet, Wright’s furniture has received little attention, with few scholarly books and even fewer exhibitions on the subject.
Frank Lloyd Wright in his studio at Taliesin, Wisconsin, 1957. Photo: Tony Vaccaro / Hulton Archive / Getty Images.
This absence caught the attention of Eric Vogel, scholar-in-residence at the Taliesin Institute, who began digging into the archives and networking, a journey that led him to MOWA, which was showing a collection of Wright chairs. In Thomas Szolwinski, the museum’s curator of architecture and design, Vogel found a partner.
“I’d long been interested in curating a chair exhibition,” Szolwinski said over email. “The central premise is that Wright’s homes and studios, Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and later Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, functioned as laboratories of creative experiment.”
Frank Lloyd Wright chair and table for the Tree Room. Photo: courtesy MOWA/the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ.
Wright would design around 200 chairs and enjoyed a fraught relationship with them—at once considering them key to a room’s integrity, while also calling sitting “an unfortunate necessity.”Here, the story begins with Wright rebuilding Taliesin East following major fires in 1914 and 1925. There, he combined a new architecture with unprecedented furniture forms (ones whose originality would, in time, be rejected by clients). MOWA has recreated Wright’s armchair, which is made from sandy cypress wood that matches the building’s color and horizontal gold leaf joints that echo the exterior’s window slats. Elsewhere, there’s the triangular chair and table for the complex’s tree room that chimes with elements of the ceiling and a chair for the Hillside dining room chair.
Frank Lloyd Wright “Mori” chair for the S. Mori Oriental Art Studio and Japanese Print Shop, Chicago. Photo: courtesy MOWA/the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ.
Out west, a highlight is the origami armchair Wright designed in 1946. It sees the designer looking back to his frequent visits to Japan in the 1910s with sides like well-creased paper and arms that unfold before the sitter. Its seat takes on the copper-red tone (known as Cherokee Red) that traced throughout the property. It’s a far heftier proposition than the slender oak chair he designed for a Chicago gallery of Japanese art in 1914, which arrives at MOWA on loan from the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust in Oak Park.
At a time when the lines between architecture, interior spaces, and product design are well and truly blurred, “Modern Chair Design” is a reminder of Wright’s prescience. “Time and again, Wright was ahead of what later became standardized or popularized techniques,” Szolwinski said. “We highlight these parallels and make comparisons to global trends, showing how Wright’s furniture fits into a larger narrative of modern design.”
“Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design” is on view at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205 Veterans Ave, West Bend, Wisconsin, October 4, 2025–January 25, 2026. More

History’s great women artists have, in recent years, received glimmers of the institutional attention they’ve long deserved. While Hilma af Klint and Artemisia Gentileschi have broken through to the mainstream with major museum exhibitions, still many more influential and daring talents are waiting to be rediscovered by the wider public. Enthusiasm and momentum continue to grow for these stories, thankfully, and this year, a number of museums big and small have turned their attention to their work. Below, we’ve selected just a few of the solo exhibitions highlighting historic women artists worth seeking out this fall.

1. “Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I Will Not Bend an Inch” at Spelman College, AtlantaThrough December 6, 2025
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet,​ Discontent (1929).​  Gift of Miss Eleanor Green and Miss Ellen D. Sharpe. Courtesy of Spelman College.
Born to a Narragansett father and a Black mother, sculptor Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (1890–1960) was the first woman of color to graduate from the acclaimed Rhode Island School of Design. Her career would take her to New York and Paris. Still, throughout her lifetime, the Afro-Indigenous artist navigated an often-hostile art world and struggled, at times, with extreme poverty. She nevertheless continued to produce sculptures of intense poignancy and precise technical skill. “I Will Not Bend an Inch,” co-curated by the RISD Museum and the Brooklyn Museum, now makes its third stop in Atlanta; the exhibition is the first museum presentation of Prophet’s works, many of which have, unfortunately, been lost or destroyed over the decades. Twenty rare works make up the exhibition, including nine portrait heads carved in hardwood, as well as marble carvings, reliefs, and works on paper. These works are a testament to a remarkable and unyielding artistic vision and one deserving of much wider scholarly attention.
2. “Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within” at Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WIThrough December 23, 2025
Toshiko Takaezu with works later combined in the “Star Series” (ca. 1994–2001), including (from left to right) Sahu, Nommo, Emme Ya, Unas, and Po Tolo (Dark Companion), 1998. Photo: Tom Grotta, © Family of Toshiko Takaezu, Courtesy browngrotta arts
Interest in American artist Toshiko Takaezu has ignited over the past few years, driven in part by this very exhibition, which originated at the Noguchi Museum in New York last spring. Takaezu, who was born in Hawai‘i of Okinawan heritage, is best known for her glazed “closed form” ceramic sculptures. These forms ranged in scale from the handheld to the monumental; she approached these vessels as her three-dimensional canvases painting onto their surfaces. Takaezu was known for arranging her works to create unique environments. Her practice also incorporated weaving and bronze-cast sculpture, also highlighted in the exhibition.  In some ways, this exhibition is a homecoming for Takaezu; the artist taught at UW-Madison from 1954 to 1955.
3. “Edmonia Lewis: Indelible Impressions” at the Cantor Arts Center, StanfordThrough January 4, 2026
Edmonia Lewis, Asleep, (1871). Photo: John Janca.
Sculptor Edmonia Lewis, a 19th-century woman of Black and Native American (Ojibwe) heritage, was internationally famous in her own time, celebrated for her stirring Neoclassical marble sculptures. Visitors to her studio included President Ulysses S. Grant, Pope Pius IX, and Frederick Douglass.
Born in upstate New York in 1844, Lewis briefly enrolled in Oberlin College (one of the few schools to accept Black women), before moving to Boston in 1863, where she began her career. By 1866, Lewis had set sail for Rome, where she studied alongside the most celebrated sculptors of her time.
In 1873, she visited the Bay Area, where she presented her sculptures, Asleep (1871),  Awake (1872), and Bust of Abraham Lincoln (1871), to great acclaim. These three sculptures are presented reunited for the first time in three decades in an intimate exhibition. The show marks an important moment of renewed interest in Lewis. Early next year, the Peabody Essex Museum will present “Said in Stone” which positions Lewis’s works alongside those of her contemporaries in an expansive 100-object exhibition.
4. “Lee Miller” at Tate Britain, LondonThrough February 15, 2026
Lee Miller, Model with lightbulb, Vogue Studio, London, England (ca.1943). © Lee Miller Archives, England 2024. All rights reserved. leemiller.co.uk
The mania for all things Lee Miller reaches its zenith. The surrealist photographer and war journalist has been everywhere in culture over the last few years, from the release of Lee, a biopic of her life starring Kate Winslet, an exhibition of her works at Gagosian New York, and the publication of a book of her correspondence with her husband, Arthur Penrose.
Now, Tate Britain has opened the most extensive retrospective of her photography in the U.K. to date. The exhibition includes approximately 250 vintage and modern prints, from her years in Paris’s Surrealist scene to her unflinching bravery as a war photographer documenting World War II. The exhibition also includes rarely seen works, such as a series of Egyptian landscapes taken in the 1930s. The highlights are her tender and unusual portraits of fellow artists.
5. “Michaelina Wautier, Painter,” at Kunsthistorisches Museum, ViennaThrough February 22, 2026
Michaelina Wautier, Der Triumph des Bacchus. Image Courtesy of © KHM-Museumsverband.
For centuries, Michaelina Wautier’s paintings were attributed to men, particularly her brother, the artist Carl Wautier. The Flemish Baroque painter, who lived from 1604 to 1689, worked across a dazzling range of genres, from portraits and history scenes to flower still lifes and religious tableaux. Historians doubted a woman would have had that ability. Wautier could have been lost to history if art historian Katlijne Van der Stighelen hadn’t found a painting by Wautier in a storage area of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum back in 1993. The discovery set Van der Stighelen on a decades-long mission to discover Wauter’s story. Now, in a fitting moment, the Kunsthistorisches Museum is hosting the largest exhibition of Wautier’s works to date, with 29 paintings, a drawing, and a print—the near entirety of her known work—on view.  The star of the exhibition is arguably her monumental Triumph of Bacchus (1655–59), which some historians believe includes a goddess-like (and provocative) depiction of the artist herself.
6. “Grace Hartigan: The Gift of Attention” at the Portland Museum of Art, OregonOctober 10, 2025–January 11, 2026
Grace Hartigan, Barbara Guest Archaics (1968) Grace Hartigan Estate © Grace Hartigan Estate Photo: Courtesy of the Estate of Grace Hartigan/ACA Galleries, New York
During the 1950s, Grace Hartigan was an artistic sensation who mingled with poets and writers, including Frank O’Hara, Barbara Guest, James Schuyler, Daisy Aldan, and James Merrill. Hartigan was critically acclaimed for her works that freely danced between abstraction and figuration.  This major exhibition, which was organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art, brings together 40 of her works created between 1952 and 1968, which show her at the pinnacle of her powers, and the deep influence of poetry on her art-making, particularly her deep and at times fraught friendship with O’Hara.
7. “Ruth Asawa” at the Museum of Modern Art, New YorkOctober 19, 2025–February 7, 2026
Ruth Asawa at Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective View, San Francisco Museum of Art, 1973. Photograph by Laurence Cuneo. © 2024 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy David Zwirner.
California artist and educator Ruth Asawa devoted her over six-decade-long career to abstract explorations of form. Having studied at Black Mountain College, she developed a practice committed to making art every single day. Asawa is most celebrated for her undulating looped-wire sculptures that mirror organic shapes. “Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective,” co-organized by SFMoMA and MoMA, is now making its long-anticipated East Coast debut. The sweeping exhibition brings together over 300 artworks. And while her famed wire sculptures are here in all their graceful glory, so are lesser-known works in bronze casts, drawings, paintings, and prints that offer new dimensions to Asawa’s practice.
8. “Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.October 24, 2025–July 12, 2026
Grandma Moses, We Are Resting, 1951 2019.55, © Grandma Moses Properties Co., NY.
The artist Anna Mary Robertson Moses, or Grandma Moses (1860–1961), didn’t start painting in earnest until her late 70s.   Then, in 1940, at the age of 80, she was given her first gallery exhibition by the dealer Otto Kallir. She became an overnight popular sensation whose fame outstripped many other women artists of her time. Her folkloric paintings—often of rural landscapes—combined direct observation of nature with memories in idiosyncratic, distinctly American visions. Thirty-three artworks from the Smithsonian Museum of American Art’s own collection, including many of her most beloved paintings, make up the core of this exhibition. More