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

Wolfgang Tillmans: Nothing May Have Ready Us, All the pieces May Have Ready Us, Centre Pompidou, Paris

“Wolfgang Tillmans’s pictures and movies of intimate proximity and on a regular basis encounters discovered house within the expanses of the Pompidou’s decanted library alongside open stacks and different remnants. They engaged in a technique of slowing down and reflecting on public life, probing how we need to share our public areas and inhabit time.” Elena Crippa, senior curator of latest artwork, Courtauld Gallery

“In all probability the biggest monographic exhibition I’ve ever seen and positively probably the most beneficiant. He supplied us his pictures, his archive, his movies, his artwork assortment and an opportunity to make our personal photocopies of his pictures.” Mark Godfrey, curator and co-director of New Curators

“This stood out as a result of it mixed architectural daring, conceptual depth, institutional significance and sensory inventiveness. It wasn’t only a large exhibition, it was a cultural second that requested critical questions on how artwork works at present, how museums work, how pictures work.” Bettina Steinbrügge, director basic, Mudam Luxembourg

“I beloved how the library turned a part of the expertise—a dwelling context reasonably than a backdrop. The set up was inseparable from the work: the cling, the desktop-screen items, the desk works, the reflections, even the books on the cabinets.” Bengi Ünsal, director, Institute of Up to date Arts, London

Encounters: Giacometti x Mona Hatoum, Barbican Artwork Gallery, London (till 11 January 2026)

“Bringing Mona Hatoum’s work in to dialogue with Alberto Giacometti’s not solely attracts out the formal synergies and mental considerations of each artists however creates a sublime and thought-provoking dialog throughout time and area about how artists have addressed the absurdity, violence and cruelty of lived expertise.” Gilane Tawadros, director, Whitechapel Gallery

“Hatoum extends Giacometti’s research of the delicate, remoted physique into at present’s world of displacement and management. Their shared language of pressure and restraint makes Giacometti really feel startlingly alive.” Aaron Cezar, director, Delfina Basis

Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds, Tate St Ives

“Ithell Colquhoun was lengthy considered a Surrealist footnote—eccentric, irrelevant, embarrassing even. This present lastly put paid to that. Superbly staged, meticulously curated, and exhaustive by way of the vary and growth 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 Artwork Centre

Hamad Butt: Apprehensions, Whitechapel Gallery, London

“Highly effective, provocative, pleasurable, potent (actually!) and poignant. This overdue Hamad Butt retrospective requested that the contours that mark the legacies of minimal and conceptual artwork be redrawn.” Shanay Jhaveri, head of visible arts, Barbican

Noah Davis, Barbican Artwork Gallery, London

“Filled with nice, great, and I need to say even sincere work. These qualities are even additional accelerated by how Noah Davis immersed himself in—and famously supported—his Los Angeles neighborhood. They transfer me in methods work haven’t in a very long time.” Lars Nittve, curator and former director of Tate Trendy and Moderna Museet

Linder: Hazard Got here Smiling, Hayward Gallery, London

“A masterclass in dismantling spectacle. Linder’s scalpel cuts via the comfortable tissue of ideology, exposing the ability beneath seduction. In a time of populist simplifications, her complexity feels radical and reminds us that feminist critique is just not a posture however endurance: an act of care sharpened into resistance, refusing to let the system relaxation.” Sarah Munro, director, Baltic Centre for Up to date Artwork, Gateshead

Caroline Walker: Mothering, Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire

“These beautiful, superbly realised work depict scenes of motherhood not often discovered inside modern artwork. The present was beautifully curated, with a mixture of bold giant canvases of hospital scenes alongside intimate and transferring ink sketches of her sister-in-law Lisa together with her new child, and work of Walker’s personal kids.” Andrew Nairne, director, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge

Steve McQueen, Dia Beacon, Beacon, NY

“Steve McQueen’s set up Bass (2024) is an ambient work that provides an immersive, durational expertise that exemplifies his curiosity in gentle and sound however this time with out pictures. It’s only a area that retains altering via subtly evolving gentle.” Vicente Todoli, inventive director, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan

Scientia Sexualis, Institute of Up to date Artwork, Los Angeles

“I used to be struck by the fragile stability between rigorous mental framing and sensory expertise. Contact, odor and sound had been employed to subvert the standard medical or scientific gaze, inviting the viewer right into a extra embodied type of figuring out.” Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz, director of exhibitions, Centro Botín, Santander

A New Take a look at Cimabue, Museé du Louvre, Paris

“Centred on the historic restoration of the Maestà and the newly acquired Mocking of Christ, the present illuminated Cimabue’s revolutionary imaginative and prescient in introducing a brand new sense of humanity to sacred figures and naturalistic element to their illustration.” Arturo Galansino, director basic, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues, Museum of Cycladic Artwork, Athens

“Exhibitions that create really open-ended, open-eyed and open-hearted conversations between historic and modern artwork are uncommon. Contemplating the formal relationships between this most historic of Greek artwork and Marlene Dumas’s equally elemental works led to a poignant, beneficiant meditation on childhood, parental love, sexual energy and demise. It acknowledged time passing however stilled its passage.” Luke Syson, director, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Meriem Bennani: Sole Crushing, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (till 8 February 2026)

“Right here, 201 flip-flops animated by a pneumatic system to clap in rhythmic unity rework humble sandals right into a respiratory orchestra channelling Moroccan dakka marrakchia and flamenco’s duende. It felt like witnessing collective rebellion and communal pleasure concurrently.” Clarrie Wallis, director, Turner Up to date, Margate

When We See Us, Bozar, Brussels

“This celebration of latest African figurative portray and the multiplicity of Black subjectivities challenged Western-centric narratives by foregrounding artists from throughout the African continent and diaspora who reclaim illustration via intimacy, pleasure and collectivity.” Amira Gad, curator, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam

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

“One of the crucial transferring issues I noticed this yr. It depicts excessive and low life with distinctive inventive expression that makes for an unparalleled intimate and human expertise.” Taco Dibbits, basic director, Rijksmuseum

Matt Copson: Coming of Age. Age of Coming. Of Coming Age, KW Institute for Up to date Artwork, Berlin

“Matt Copson’s laser-projected drawings are intimate but epic, drawing from myths, historic philosophy and medieval folklore, whereas subtly riffing on modern popular culture.” Edward Gillman, director, Chisenhale Gallery, London

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

“In charting the profession of Isaac Díaz Pardo, this present’s rigorous construction and emotional resonance, plus the sheer surprising creativity of Díaz Pardo’s works, made it, for me, the standout exhibition of 2025.” Jonathan Fantastic, director basic, KHM Museums Affiliation, Vienna

Tolia Astakhishvili: To Love and Devour, Nicoletta Fiorucci Basis, Venice

“This new basis is about to fee artists in a radical and really open and progressive manner. What makes the undertaking particular is the osmosis between the structure, which was given to the artist earlier than renovation, and the works [by eight invited artists] infiltrating into this very wealthy ‘canvas’.” Francesco Manacorda, director, Castello di Rivoli

Picasso for Asia: A Dialog, M+, Hong Kong

“This dynamic and thought-provoking present introduced surprising views on Picasso and the Cubist affect on Asian artwork (and vice versa).” Tone Hansen, director, Munch Museum, Oslo