The Best Art Exhibitions to See in Europe 2025

American Photography

Rijksmuseum
1 Feb - 9 June 2025

The Netherlands’ first major retrospective of American photography features over 200 works by iconic artists like Nan Goldin, Andy Warhol, Diane Arbus, and Richard Avedon. “American Photography” also highlights powerful images by lesser-known and anonymous photographers, uncovering authentic and overlooked moments of American life.

Anselm Kiefer 

Stedelijk Museum
7 March - 9 June 2025

For the first time, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Van Gogh Museum unite to celebrate Anselm Kiefer, one of today’s most important artists. The Van Gogh Museum pairs Kiefer’s works with Van Gogh’s masterpieces, while the Stedelijk showcases its full Kiefer collection, including the iconic “Innenraum.” Both places also unveil new, never-before-seen pieces by Kiefer.

Ghosts Visualizing the Supernatural

Kunstmuseum Basel
20 Sep 2025 - 1 Feb 2026

Ghosts haunt fiction, pop culture, and even science, embodying our desire to confront the unknown. For over 80 artists from the 19th century to today, this fascination with the supernatural and the urge to make the invisible visible has sparked endless creativity.

Yayoi Kusama

Fondation Beyeler
12 Oct 2025 - 25 Jan 2026

In autumn 2025, the Fondation Beyeler will host Switzerland’s first retrospective of Yayoi Kusama, celebrating over seven decades of her groundbreaking art. The exhibition will showcase iconic works, early pieces never seen in Europe, new creations, and one of her famous “Infinity Mirror Rooms.” After Basel, the exhibition travels to Museum Ludwig in Cologne (14 March – 2 Aug 2026) and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (11 Sep 2026 – 17 Jan 2027).

Ayoung Kim — Many Worlds Over

Hamburger Bahnhof
28 Feb - 20 July 2025

Ayoung Kim’s first solo exhibition in a German museum spans five years of her innovative practice. Blending AI, VR, video, game simulations, sculpture, and sonic fiction, she crafts speculative universes where viewers become players, navigating narratives that merge myth, humanity, and virtual entities. At Hamburger Bahnhof, her works explore migration, queerness, xenophobia, geopolitics, and the symbiosis of data, humans, and the planet.

Vaginal Davis — Fabelhaftes Produkt

Gropius Bau
21 March – 14 Sep 2025

Celebrating 20 years since artist, writer, and performer Vaginal Davis made Berlin her home, Gropius Bau hosts her first comprehensive solo exhibition in Germany. “Fabelhaftes Produkt” brings together punk and glamour, queer activism and Black counterculture, resistance and desire. Featuring large-scale installations, paintings, films, zines, music, and performances, the show offers a bold dive into Davis’ artistry and collaborations.

Yoko Ono — Music of the Mind

Gropius Bau
11 April – 31 Aug 2025

Starting in spring 2025, the Gropius Bau will celebrate the visionary work of Yoko Ono with a major solo exhibition. “Music of the Mind” spans seven decades of her transformative practice—from instruction pieces and scores to installations, films, music, and photography. This landmark exhibition highlights Ono’s radical approach to art, language, and participation, and her lasting influence on contemporary culture.

Berlin Biennale

KW Institute for Contemporary Art
14 June – 14 Sep 2025

The Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, held every two years across the city, has championed bold artistic and political voices since 1998. Known for its experimental approach and freedom from market constraints, this year’s edition is curated by Zasha Colah, assisted by Valentina Viviani.

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas

Kunsthaus Bregenz
7 June – 28 Sep 2025

In 2022, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas gained international acclaim with her textile collages in the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, addressing the marginalization of Sinti and Roma communities. At Kunsthaus Bregenz, she expands her practice with intricate wax sculptures, featuring life-size figures and animals like bears from her hometown in Poland’s Tatra Mountains.

Robert Longo

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
11 April – 31 Aug 25

American artist Robert Longo is renowned for his monumental black-and-white drawings that capture the chaos of our times. Transforming striking snapshots into giant charcoal works—a process taking up to a year—his art mesmerizes while reclaiming the image’s power to “bear witness.” Louisiana’s first Scandinavian showcase of Longo’s work includes key pieces, “The Freud Cycle” studies, and a haunting new piece inspired by Copenhagen’s 2015 terrorist attack.

Jon Rafman — Nine Eyes

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
8 Oct 2025 – 4 Jan 2026

Since 2008, Jon Rafman’s pioneering “Nine Eyes of Google Street View” has explored life in the digital age, blending the everyday with the existential. Inspired by Google’s mission to document the world, Rafman archives billions of images, revealing unexpected beauty and surreal moments. This ever-evolving work is a cornerstone of his career and 21st-century art.

Tracey Emin — Sex and Solitude

Palazzo Strozzi
16 March - 20 July 2025

Tracey Emin’s art spans drawing, painting, sculpture, video, installation, and photography, focusing on the body and human relationships. Blurring life and art, her intimate works turn personal stories into existential metaphors, defined by vulnerability, raw emotion, and the interplay of love, desire, pain, and sacrifice.

Rendezvous of Dreams — Surrealism and German Romanticism

Hamburgerkunsthalle
13 June - 12 Oct 2025

Emerging in 1924 Paris, Surrealism transformed art in the wake of World War I. A century later, “Rendezvous of Dreams” uncovers surprising parallels between 20th-century Surrealism and 19th-century German Romanticism. Featuring hundreds of works—paintings, sculptures, film, photography, and more—the exhibition explores shared themes like dreams, the supernatural, and humanity’s evolving connection to nature.

Helsinki Biennale

Various locations
12 June – 21 Sep 2025

Helsinki Biennial 2025 celebrates art on land and sea, with the theme “Taking Shelter.” Featuring works by around 35 artists, including Olafur Eliasson and Tania Candiani, roughly half are site-specific commissions debuting in Helsinki. This edition explores humanity’s fragile bond with nature, shifting focus to non-human actors—plants, animals, fungi, and even minerals—challenging human-centric views.

Sarah Lucas

Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma
10 Oct – 1 March 2026

The body, in all its forms, is central to Sarah Lucas’ art. A key figure in the Young British Artists movement, Lucas is celebrated as one of Britain’s most influential contemporary artists. This first Nordic solo show spans three decades of her irreverent sculptures, photography, and installations, using everyday objects—furniture, tights, cigarettes, and more—to evoke the human form with wit and subversive charm.

Leigh Bowery!

Tate Modern
27 Feb - 31 Aug 2025

Leigh Bowery’s extraordinary life left an indelible mark on art and culture. As an artist, performer, fashion designer, and provocateur, he defied conventions at every turn. From London’s 1980s nightlife to daring performances in galleries and streets, Bowery redefined clothing and makeup as art, using the body as a transformative tool to challenge aesthetics, sexuality, and gender norms.

Ed Atkins

Tate Britain
2 April – 25 Aug 2025

For over a decade, Ed Atkins has crafted videos and animations that blur the line between representation and embodied experience. Using his own body and desires, he critiques modern technologies and their impact on identity. This exhibition pairs his moving-image works with paintings, writings, and drawings in immersive installations, balancing melancholic humor with explorations of loss, intimacy, and love.

Kerry James Marshall

Royal Academy of Arts
20 Sep 2025 - 18 Jan 2026

Kerry James Marshall centers Black figures in paintings rooted in the traditions of Western art he encountered as a child. His lyrical, large-scale works draw on personal memories, art history, contemporary culture, and science fiction to reflect on the past, celebrate everyday life, and envision brighter futures.

Philippe Parreno — Voices

Haus der Kunst
Untill 25 May 2025

Philippe Parreno transforms exhibitions into immersive, choreographed experiences where artworks, spaces, and events intertwine. In this dynamic show, dancers activate rooms, guiding visitors through a living, responsive environment. A moving wall dances, a tower broadcasts stories, and films flicker in and out. Driven by ∂A, Parreno’s invented language, and a customized super-computer, the exhibition evolves into a symphony of motion, sound, and prophecy.

Shu Lea Cheang — Kiss Kiss Kill Kill

Haus der Kunst
14 Feb – 3 Aug 2025

The first institutional survey of Taiwanese artist and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang uses her debut feature “Fresh Kill” (1994) as a springboard to showcase three decades of world-building. “KI$$ KI$$” transforms the exhibition into a journey through Cheang’s bold sci-fi narratives, exploring non-human intelligences—natural and artificial—through ancient and new technologies, reimagining contemporary transmedia art.

John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly — Five Friends

Museum Brandhorst
10 April - 17 Aug 2025

For the first time, “Five Friends” highlights an influential circle of artists—John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly—who reshaped post-war art. Through their close collaboration, they blurred boundaries between music, dance, painting, sculpture, and drawing, forging an extraordinary dialogue between artistic disciplines.

Corps et âmes

Bourse de Commerce
5 March – 25 Aug 2025

The Bourse de Commerce presents “Corps et âmes,” showcasing around 100 works from the Pinault Collection that explore the body in contemporary art. Featuring artists like Auguste Rodin, Ana Mendieta, David Hammons, and Arthur Jafa, the exhibition spans painting, sculpture, video, and more to examine the profound ties between body and soul.

David Hockney

Fondation Louis Vuitton
9 April – 1 Sep 2025

David Hockney, a giant of contemporary art, takes center stage in this vibrant exhibition. Spanning his last 25 years of creativity, it revisits iconic works like “A Bigger Splash” while showcasing his bold landscapes, intimate portraits, dynamic still lifes, and innovative digital creations.

Wolfgang Tillmans — Nothing Prepared Us for It - Everything Prepared Us for It

Centre Pompidou
13 June - 22 Sep 2025

The Centre Pompidou gives carte blanche to Wolfgang Tillmans for a bold project closing its program. Transforming 6,000 square meters of the Public Information Library, he reimagines the space as a curatorial experiment, blending his work with the library’s architecture and role in knowledge sharing. Spanning 35 years, the retrospective features portraiture, still life, abstraction, video, sound, music, and contributions from performance artists, defying categorization.

Pablo Picasso — The Late Picasso

Moderna Museet
22 Nov 2025 – 5 April 2026

Pablo Picasso’s later years were marked by a prolific and restless creative output. This exhibition showcases 70 paintings from 1963–1972, revealing Picasso’s direct, experimental approach that influenced future generations. Featuring self-portraits, models, and fantastical scenes, these works—often overlooked in previous retrospectives—are now recognized as pioneering in their bold exploration of form.

Adrian Ghenie — Shadow Paintings

Albertina Museum
Until 2 March 2025

Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie pays tribute to Egon Schiele with a groundbreaking exhibition, reimagining the Expressionist’s lost works through his own haunting creations. Inspired by black-and-white photographs, Ghenie’s “Shadow Paintings” invites viewers on a metaphysical journey of dissolution and reincarnation, bringing Schiele’s vision back to life.

Erwin Wurm — A 70th-Birthday Retrospective

Albertina Modern
Until 9 March 2025

To celebrate Erwin Wurm’s 70th birthday, Albertina Modern unveils a sweeping retrospective of his influential work. Featuring sculptures, drawings, videos, and photographs, Wurm redefines the boundaries of sculpture, performance, and photography, inviting reflection on the absurdities of contemporary life.

Julius von Bismarck

Kunsthaus Wien
10 Sep 2025 - 8 March 2026

Julius von Bismarck’s kinetic sculptures, photographs, and video installations probe humanity’s constructed notions of nature. His work questions how systems of classification and control have fueled environmental destruction, challenging the boundaries between humans, nature, and other life forms.

Nick Cave — The Devil: A Life

Museum Voorlinden
Until 9 March 25

At Voorlinden, Nick Cave presents his first solo museum exhibition with “The Devil – A Life.” Best known as a musician, Cave revisits his roots in visual art to tell the devil’s story—from birth to death—through a captivating series of 17 hand-painted ceramic figures.

Michaël Borremans — A Confrontation at the Zoo

Museum Voorlinden
Until 23 March 2025

Michaël Borremans masterfully blends centuries-old technique with a sharp, contemporary voice. Known for his striking oil paintings, his work spans drawing, sculpture, film, and photography, brimming with tension between tradition and modernity. With a deadpan flair for the absurd, Borremans explores the dark—and darkly humorous—complexities of human experience.