The best exhibitions of 2025, as chosen by curators and museum directors – The Art Newspaper

‘Wolfgang Tillmans: Nothing Could Have Prepared Us, Everything Could Have Prepared Us’, Centre Pompidou, Paris

“Wolfgang Tillmans’s photographs and films of intimate proximity and everyday encounters found home in the expanses of the Pompidou’s decanted library alongside open stacks and other remnants. They engaged in a process of slowing down and reflecting on public life, probing how we want to share our public spaces and inhabit time.” Elena Crippa, senior curator of contemporary art, Courtauld Gallery

“Probably the largest monographic exhibition I’ve ever seen and definitely the most generous. He offered us his photographs, his archive, his videos, his art collection and a chance to make our own photocopies of his images.” Mark Godfrey, curator and co-director of New Curators

“This stood out because it combined architectural daring, conceptual depth, institutional significance and sensory inventiveness. It wasn’t just a big exhibition, it was a cultural moment that asked serious questions about how art works today, how museums work, how images work.” Bettina Steinbrügge, director general, Mudam Luxembourg

“I loved how the library became part of the experience—a living context rather than a backdrop. The installation was inseparable from the work: the hang, the desktop-screen pieces, the table works, the reflections, even the books on the shelves.” Bengi Ünsal, director, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

‘Encounters: Giacometti x Mona Hatoum’, Barbican Art Gallery, London (until 11 January 2026)

“Bringing Mona Hatoum’s work in to dialogue with Alberto Giacometti’s not only draws out the formal synergies and intellectual concerns of both artists but creates an elegant and thought-provoking conversation across time and space about how artists have addressed the absurdity, violence and cruelty of lived experience.” Gilane Tawadros, director, Whitechapel Gallery

“Hatoum extends Giacometti’s study of the fragile, isolated body into today’s world of displacement and control. Their shared language of tension and restraint makes Giacometti feel startlingly alive.” Aaron Cezar, director, Delfina Foundation

‘Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds’, Tate St Ives

“Ithell Colquhoun was long regarded as a Surrealist footnote—eccentric, irrelevant, embarrassing even. This show finally put paid to that. Beautifully staged, meticulously curated, and exhaustive in terms of the range and development of her work. It ran from mythic and muscular queer figuration to her occult watercolours, sacred landscapes and late ‘mantic’ works.” Martin Clark, director, Camden Art Centre

‘Noah Davis’, Barbican Art Gallery, London

“Full of great, wonderful, and I want to say even honest paintings. These qualities are even further accelerated by how Noah Davis immersed himself in—and famously supported—his Los Angeles community. They move me in ways paintings haven’t in a long time.” Lars Nittve, curator and former director of Tate Modern and Moderna Museet

‘Linder: Danger Came Smiling’, Hayward Gallery, London

“A masterclass in dismantling spectacle. Linder’s scalpel cuts through the soft tissue of ideology, exposing the power beneath seduction. In a time of populist simplifications, her complexity feels radical and reminds us that feminist critique is not a posture but endurance: an act of care sharpened into resistance, refusing to let the system rest.” Sarah Munro, director, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

‘Hamad Butt: Apprehensions’, Whitechapel Gallery, London

“Powerful, provocative, pleasurable, potent (literally!) and poignant. This overdue Hamad Butt retrospective asked that the contours that mark the legacies of minimal and conceptual art be redrawn.” Shanay Jhaveri, head of visual arts, Barbican

‘Caroline Walker: Mothering’, Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire

“These stunning, beautifully realised paintings depict scenes of motherhood rarely found within contemporary art. The show was superbly curated, with a mix of ambitious large canvases of hospital scenes alongside intimate and moving ink sketches of her sister-in-law Lisa with her new baby, and paintings of Walker’s own children.” Andrew Nairne, director, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge

‘Steve McQueen’, Dia Beacon, Beacon, NY

“Steve McQueen’s installation Bass (2024) is an ambient work that offers an immersive, durational experience that exemplifies his interest in light and sound but this time without images. It is just a space that keeps changing through subtly evolving light.” Vicente Todoli, artistic director, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan

‘Scientia Sexualis’, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

“I was struck by the delicate balance between rigorous intellectual framing and sensory experience. Touch, smell and sound were employed to subvert the traditional clinical or scientific gaze, inviting the viewer into a more embodied form of knowing.” Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz, director of exhibitions, Centro Botín, Santander

‘A New Look at Cimabue’, Museé du Louvre, Paris

“Centred on the historic restoration of the Maestà and the newly acquired Mocking of Christ, the show illuminated Cimabue’s revolutionary vision in introducing a new sense of humanity to sacred figures and naturalistic detail to their representation.” Arturo Galansino, director general, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

‘Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues’, Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens

“Exhibitions that create truly open-ended, open-eyed and open-hearted conversations between historic and contemporary art are rare. Considering the formal relationships between this most ancient of Greek art and Marlene Dumas’s equally elemental works led to a poignant, generous meditation on childhood, parental love, sexual power and death. It acknowledged time passing but stilled its passage.” Luke Syson, director, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

‘Meriem Bennani: Sole Crushing’, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (until 8 February 2026)

“Here, 201 flip-flops animated by a pneumatic system to clap in rhythmic unity transform humble sandals into a breathing orchestra channelling Moroccan dakka marrakchia and flamenco’s duende. It felt like witnessing collective uprising and communal joy simultaneously.” Clarrie Wallis, director, Turner Contemporary, Margate

‘When We See Us’, Bozar, Brussels

“This celebration of contemporary African figurative painting and the multiplicity of Black subjectivities challenged Western-centric narratives by foregrounding artists from across the African continent and diaspora who reclaim representation through intimacy, joy and collectivity.” Amira Gad, curator, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam

‘Vija Celmins’, Fondation Beyeler, Basel

“Some artists’ work is so understated and poetic that it might be overlooked in a world of shouty, instant imagery. Vija Celmins is one of those: so quiet, so subtle. Her paintings and drawings take as their subjects the things that others would overlook—the fall of light on a cobweb or the creases of a discarded letter. But in noting them, and carefully marking down every gradation of light, she gives them such intensity.” Simon Martin, director, Pallant House Gallery

‘Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry’, Musée Condé, Chantilly

“One of the most moving things I saw this year. It depicts high and low life with exceptional artistic expression that makes for an unparalleled intimate and human experience.” Taco Dibbits, general director, Rijksmuseum

‘Matt Copson: Coming of Age. Age of Coming. Of Coming Age’, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

“Matt Copson’s laser-projected drawings are intimate yet epic, drawing from myths, ancient philosophy and medieval folklore, while subtly riffing on contemporary pop culture.” Edward Gillman, director, Chisenhale Gallery, London

‘The Life Journey of Isaac Díaz Pardo’, Museo de Belas Artes da Coruña

“In charting the career of Isaac Díaz Pardo, this show’s rigorous structure and emotional resonance, plus the sheer unexpected creativity of Díaz Pardo’s works, made it, for me, the standout exhibition of 2025.” Jonathan Fine, director general, KHM Museums Association, Vienna

‘Tolia Astakhishvili: To Love and Devour’, Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, Venice

“This new foundation is set to commission artists in a radical and very open and innovative way. What makes the project special is the osmosis between the architecture, which was given to the artist before renovation, and the works [by eight invited artists] infiltrating into this very rich ‘canvas’.” Francesco Manacorda, director, Castello di Rivoli

‘Petrit Halila: Syrigana. An Opera in Five Acts’, Syrigana, Kosovo

“Petrit Halilaj’s collaboration with the Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra challenged the typical parameters of an exhibition. Rather than being confined to beginning and ending in one fixed location, it began with a ‘prelude’: an opera performed on the ancient hillside of the artist’s rural hometown in Syrigana, Kosovo, before showing at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof.” Billy Tang, artistic director, Yan Du Projects, London

‘Picasso for Asia: A Conversation’, M+, Hong Kong

“This dynamic and thought-provoking show brought unexpected perspectives on Picasso and the Cubist influence on Asian art (and vice versa).” Tone Hansen, director, Munch Museum, Oslo

‘Opening Documents, Weaving Memories’, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

“This exhibition was an important reconsideration of the so-called Operation Record Paintings, commissioned by the Japanese military during the Second World War. [With] an impressive array of supplementary materials, from magazines to posters, postcards, maps, and board games, the curators illustrated how the sensationalised depictions of beach landings, dogfights and other events were part of a comprehensive propaganda ecosystem.” Atsuko Ninagawa, co-founder and director, Art Week Tokyo, and Take Ninagawa gallery director