The 17 biggest and best exhibitions worth travelling for in 2025

London, UK

It’s hard to believe, given she was part of Saatchi’s infamous ‘Sensation’ exhibition back in the ‘90s, but ‘The Anatomy of Painting’ will be the first major exhibition in London dedicated to the work of Jenny Saville. Since then, she has become one of the most important, influential and distinctive painters in the UK: a natural successor and heir to Bacon and Freud, a vicious, extreme, passionate painter of flesh, whose work tears bodies apart and rebuilds them in shocking, beautiful ways.

June 20 - September 7, 2025

Paris, France

Dolce & Gabbana, one of the world’s most renowned fashion houses, is celebrating its 40th birthday this year. To mark the occasion, a dedicated exhibition (which debuted at the Palazzo Reale in Milan) is coming to Paris’s Grand Palais. Featuring everything from the objects that inspired Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana (Sicilian ceramics, Venetian glassware) to the dazzling garments produced as a result, it will be an immersive journey taking visitors from the designers’ nascent ideas to their opulent creations.

 January 10 - March 31, 2025

Humlebaek, Denmark

In the first retrospective since her death from cancer in 2021, Kaari Upson’s evocative, boundary-pushing work will be showcased in Denmark’s gorgeous Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art. What will be on display? Well, Upson’s art spans everything from performances to paintings and sculptures to drawings, which probe themes of identity, the body, relationships, emotions and loss. Highlights include the warped figures of ‘Alice in the Land of Doom’ and the fantastical paintings of ‘When Kaari Met Larry’.

May 27 - October 26, 2025

Rome, Italy

Rome isn’t short of iconic masterpieces, so it’s pleasing that its museums continue to highlight artists in the shadows and their works that languish in storerooms. This exhibition tells the forgotten life stories and innovations of female painters often almost totally obscured by their male counterparts in the sixteenth – eighteenth centuries. The roughly 130 works on display include names that have now regained the spotlight, like Lavinia Fontana, Artemisia Gentileschi and Angelika Kauffmann, as well as lesser-known painters whose works were often attributed to male masters or family members, such as Laura Piranesi, Louise Seidler and Emma Gaggiotti.

Until March 23, 2025

Tokyo, Japan

‘Artist’ is a broad term, and Ryuichi Sakamoto, one of Japan’s most renowned creators, definitely pushed that title to its limits – he was one of the country’s most lauded musicians and composers, but also had a talent for multimedia art and became a prominent social activist. For much of the last 20 years until his passing in 2023, Sakamoto focused on three-dimensional sound installations, which will be showcased in this exhibition. Audiovisual installations will be on display both indoors and outdoors, with several works drawing upon the music Sakamoto created for his 2017 album ‘async’.

Until March 30, 2025

Madrid, Spain

The relationship between these two artists, who are seemingly so different, is the subject of the Museo Thyssen’s grand finale in 2025. The exhibition will address the artistic concerns and obsessions of both artists, as well as their shared preoccupations, such as the concept of space, the notion of background and figure, and camouflage as a central theme in their work. Through a selection of pieces by Warhol, Pollock and other artists from the same period who worked with similar themes, the exhibition will explore the presence of repetition, seriality and abstraction in art as mechanisms for seeking a place of one’s own in society.

From October 21, 2025 to January 25, 2026

Berlin, Germany

This wide-ranging exhibition at Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie will be a showcase of European painting from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, including 60 paintings from the Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odesa, a famous port city in Ukraine which is threatened by the ongoing war. Alongside 25 more paintings from the German capital’s collections, which will be divided into nine chapters, the project is a show of solidarity with Ukraine. 

January 21 - June 22, 2025

Edinburgh, Scotland

Pioneer of the concrete poetry movement and lauded writer and gardener alongside his artwork, Ian Hamilton Finlay was considered one of Scotland’s most prominent creators. To mark the centenary of his birth, Edinburgh’s Modern Two is hosting a free exhibition of 30 sculptures, installations, prints and archival materials in the springtime. 

March 8 - May 26, 2025

St Ives, UK

When we say surrealism, you likely imagine a painting by Frida Kahlo or Salvadore Dali, but there’s a remarkably talented British artist who should be on your radar, too: Ithell Colquhoun. Tate St Ives is hosting the first-ever major exhibition of her work in 2025, with 200 pieces and archival materials on display, depicting her engagement with the surrealist movement and interpretation of sexuality, myth, magic, and ecology. 

February 1 - May 5 at Tate St Ives, June to October at Tate Britain.

Adelaide, Australia

When an artist opts to display their work outside, the natural world brings a dash of extra drama and dimension, thanks to changing light and weather. And that’s what Dale Chihuly has done with the ‘Garden Cycle’ at Adelaide’s Botanic Garden. After displaying his large-scale glass sculptures in the US, London, and Singapore, Chihuly has brought 15 of the hand-blown pieces (including some newbies, just for Adelaide) to the city in a major exhibition, which will be on display until the Aussie autumn. 

Until April 29, 2025

Bilbao, Spain

Hawaiian-born artist Paul Pfeiffer is taking his exhibition Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom, a critical examination of the concept of celebrity, to Europe this year. His multimedia approach, which utilises footage from sporting events, films and gigs as well as sculpture and photography, debuted at LA’s MOCA in November 2023, and will be on at Bilbao’s Guggenheim until March 2025. Can’t make it to Europe? No worries – after departing Spain, the exhibition is moving to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. 

Until March 16, 2025

Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s Sun Museum has finally opened the doors of its new Sai Ying Pun location (after moving from Kowloon), and its first exhibition features 132 works by 92 Hong Kong artists, all aiming to showcase the diversity and culture behind the city’s art scene. Mediums include everything from ink, charcoal, oils, watercolour and marker pens. It’s a great chance to learn a little more about the artistic minds who hail from the city. 

Until February 16, 2025

Kristiansand, Norway

You’ve probably heard that hair-raising fact that we know more about space than we do about the sea – and now, there’s an exhibition all about it. ‘Ocean Deep’ combines The Nordic Ocean Series (Marpi Studio) with The Sentinel Self (Sissel Marie Tonn) to drag us into an immersive, digital exploration of the ocean’s underbelly, alongside a look at the connection between marine ecosystems and human bodies. 

Until March 9, 2025

Whanganui, New Zealand

Alexis Neal (Ngāti Awa, Te Ātiawa), an Auckland-based artist who specialises in printmaking and weaving, uses her practice to enhance and contextualise artefacts, drawing our attention to the stories they tell. That’s what this exhibition is all about: Neal’s works embody the Māori concept of ‘taonga tuku iho’, which means ‘treasures handed down’, reminding the audience that no object is without ties; each artefact exists within the context of its own history and ancestry.

Until May 11, 2025

Canberra, Australia

Great things take time, and that certainly applies to this dazzling new showcase at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA). Chinese-Australian artist Lindy Lee was commissioned to celebrate the NGA’s 40th anniversary back in 2022, and now, after 60,000 hours of work, ‘Ouroboros’ has finally been unveiled after three years of waiting. The piece is worth a staggering AU$14 million. Alongside the sculpture, the NGA is hosting a self-titled exhibition all about Lee’s sparkling career, which spans four decades. 

Until June 1, 2025

Toronto, Canada

You know those tiny little white shells you often see round people’s necks and wrists when they arrive home from a sunny getaway? Those are called cowries, and while to many they are associated with beachy accessories, the egg-shaped trinkets mean a whole lot more to Nigerian-Canadian artist Oluseye. In his exhibition Merindinlogun – named after a ritual in Yoruba culture in which cowrie shells are used for divination – 16 large bronze cowrie shells will be displayed as part of a nuanced take on cultural identity and the Black experience. 

Opening February 15, 2025

New York, USA

New Yorkers will finally be getting back the gorgeous Frick Collection at its original historic buildings at 1 East 70th Street this year. The buildings have been closed to the public for renovations since 2020, and it’s been a long five years not being able to walk those glamorous Gilded Age halls. Some of the museum’s collection was relocated to the Met Breuer Building on Madison Avenue for a couple of years, but that iteration closed in March 2024. In April, we’ll be invited back to its restored spaces on the first floor and a new roster of galleries on the mansion’s second floor, open to the public for the very first time. Even better, to celebrate the reopening, the Frick will throw a weeklong music festival and present an installation of paintings by Vermeer that will inaugurate its new special exhibition galleries.

June 18 – September 8, 2025

The Frick Collection reopens in April 2025