The Best Summer Blockbuster Exhibitions Worldwide

Pierre Huyghe, Liminal at Punta della Dogana, Venice (17 March–24 November)

'I continue [to make art] because I am a believer,' explained Pierre Huyghe to Ocula Magazine. 'The reason I keep doing what I do lies between an accident and being in love with something, and to have, for a glance, a sense of otherness—an escape from the condition of entrapment, banality, constraints; consensual reality.'

Huyghe's mind-bending environments, which blend today's realities, imaginations of the future, and speculative fiction, transformed the Punta Della Dogana into the collateral exhibition everyone ran to see during the Venice Biennale opening last month.

Few museums in the world can pull off this level of production, enabling the multidisciplinary artist to fulfil his vision. Sculpture, moving image, and architectural interventions combine to form a living, breathing organism; the exhibition becomes an immersive artwork in itself.

Monumental in scale, the exhibition runs across two floors of the Tadao Ando re-designed space where visitors find themselves clawing their way through nine pitch black, or lowly lit, cavernous rooms. The exhibition peaks, I would argue, at Untitled (Human Mask) (2011–2012), a drone-shot video in which a mask-wearing monkey roams a dystopian post-apocalyptic Fukushima, the Japanese city hit by a nuclear disaster in 2011.

Other notable works include the exhibition's titular work, Liminal (2024), a video of a nude woman with a black hole for a face; Offspring (2018) an AI-generated light and smoke display synchronised to piano compositions by the 19th-century French composer Erik Satie; and Circadian Dilemma El Día del Ojo featuring an aquarium of blind cave fish swimming around darkened rocky terrains.

Matisse, The Red Studio at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (4 May–9 September 2024)

While many may mourn the closure of Fondation Louis Vuitton's knockout Rothko show, the opening of The Red Studio, an exhibition dedicated to Henri Matisse's 1911 masterpiece, keeps the exhibition bar high at one of Paris' most venerable museums.

Organised in collaboration with Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, and Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, the summer exhibition focuses on the genesis and history of The Red Studio, a gem that first graced MoMA's collection in 1949.

The Red Studio depicts the artist's studio in Issy-les-Moulineaux, Paris, littered with paintings, sculptures, furniture, and decorative objects, a number of which—including six paintings, three sculptures, and one ceramic—will be exhibited in Paris alongside the painting.

A selection of archival materials including letters and photographs narrating the painting's subject and reception will also feature, besides a number of paintings and drawings such as MoMA's The Blue Window (1913) and Pompidou's Large Red Interior (1948).

'Now over 110 years old,' introduces the exhibition's curator Ann Temkin, 'The Red Studio is both a landmark within the centuries-long tradition of studio paintings and a foundational work of modern art.'

Bruce Nauman at Tai Kwun Contemporary (15 May–18 August 2024)

Next week, the Hong Kong non-profit art space Tai Kwun Contemporary opens an exhibition based primarily on Nauman's works from the Pinault Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (15 May–18 August 2024).

Curated in collaboration with the Bruce Nauman Studio, Nauman's first retrospective in Hong Kong foregrounds more than six decades of his multidisciplinary practice.

The exhibition delves into the artist's early neon works such as The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign) (1967), in which he experiments with word games and the depth of language. It also includes Contrapposto Studies, I through VII (2015/2016), a monumental multichannel video showing the artist walking in a straight line, maintaining his body in a contrapposto pose.

Backed by Hong Kong Jockey Club since 2007, Tai Kwun has been able to 'do projects that are less commercial but maybe more important,' as curator Pi Li told the Financial Times earlier this year.

The result has been a run of hard-hitting exhibitions ('we are not afraid of controversy'), spotlighting pioneering global artists alongside burning issues presented by a younger generation of artists from across Asia. The group exhibition Green Snake: women-centred ecologies focusing on art and larger themes of ecology preceded Nauman's, while Tai Kwun's 2024 programme will close with a solo presentation with Alicja Kwade.

Beatriz Milhazes, Maresias at Tate St Ives, Cornwall (25 May–29 September 2024)

'As an artist, as a person actually, I need to be close to nature,' Milhazes told Ocula Magazine. 'I was born in Rio de Janeiro, I grew up there and my studio is still there. We have a real nature—ocean, forests....'

With this in mind, it seems fitting that the Brazilian artist's first U.K. solo exhibition in over two decades was at Turner Contemporary (2023) in the coastal town of Margate in Kent, before being adapted for a presentation at Tate St Ives this summer, down in idyllic Cornwall.

Far from the decommissioned Bankside Power station occupied by Tate Modern, but also that of Brazil's warm waters, the seaside exhibition Maresias refers to the salty sea breeze that is part of Milhazes' everyday life in Rio de Janeiro.

A self-professed artist working in geometric abstraction, Milhazes has become one of Brazil's leading women artists. This exhibition traces the four-decade evolution of her practice, which has developed through an ardent commitment to a jungle of intensely coloured, dizzyingly patterned flowered collages and paintings.

Francis Alÿs, Ricochets at Barbican, London (27 June–1 September 2024)

For three decades, Francis Alÿs' work has enabled artistic dialogue in local communities from Latin America to North Africa and the Middle East through the documentation of children at play.

Alÿs' largest institutional solo exhibition in the U.K. in almost 15 years, Ricochets, opens next month in London. The exhibition marks the U.K. premiere of 'Children's Games' (1999–present), his critically acclaimed series that was the focus of Alÿs' Belgian Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale, alongside specifically commissioned works for the Barbican.

Multi-screen films will be installed throughout the brutalist building, showcasing videos of games children play such as 'musical chairs' in Mexico, 'leapfrog' in Iraq, and 'wolf and lamb' in Afghanistan.

In the backdrop of politically charged environments, it's the universality of games, joy, and the autonomous attitudes of children, that belies the beauty of Alÿs' practice.

'Very often when I'm in that situation of discovering a completely different culture, I ask people to take me to a place where there might be kids playing on the street,' explained Alÿs in Ocula Magazine.

'I find it's a way of being able to make contact, both by watching and filming, and seeing how people react to the fact that you're filming. It's a very quick entry into the reality of production in a place whose cultural codes you know little about.'

Zanele Muholi at Tate Modern (6 June 2024–26 January 2025) and SFMOMA (18 January–11 August 2024)

London had a taste of Zanele Muholi's empowering photographs for a split second in 2020, before Covid-19 shut it down.

Now, it's back, but bigger. Over 300 photographs have been brought together to celebrate the stories of the Black, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and intersex lives in South Africa.

While the country's 1996 post-apartheid constitution was the first in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, the community continues to be the target of prejudice and violence. Muholi has devoted their photographic career to capturing the individual stories and strength of this LGBTQIA+ community.

Individual dignity, stories of admiration, and unwavering gazes of defiance are all captured through Muholi's lens. Highlights include moments of fought-for intimacy found in her early series 'Only Half the Picture' (2002–2006), while the black-and-white portraits in 'Faces and Phases' (2006–ongoing), stand as an exquisite monument to the resilience of colleagues and friends both living and dead.

On the other side of the pond, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presents Zanele Muholi: Eye Me (18 January–11 August 2024), which brings together photographs from 2002 to the present, alongside a selection of her paintings and sculptures.

Anicka Yi at Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (5 September–29 December 2024)

As summer wraps up and back-to-school mode kicks in, Seoul is first to get into gear in preparation for the South Korean capital's edition of Frieze (4–7 September 2024).

Leading the charge on the collateral exhibitions is Samsung's Leeum Museum of Art with a solo exhibition of the Korean-American artist Anicka Yi. The exhibition is Yi's first museum solo show in Asia. It is organised in concert with Beijing's UCCA, where it will be presented in spring 2025.

Similar to Punta Della Dogana's presentation of Pierre Huyghe, few museums in the world can pull off the level of production required to house artists such as Yi.

So while this is not Yi's first presentation in Seoul—Gladstone Gallery hosted a modest debut back in 2022—the scale of the impressive steel structure coupled with Samsung's limitless coffers provides an environment where Yi's multisensory, dystopian practice is sure to flourish.

The success with which they have pulled off Philippe Parreno's current synaesthetic presentation—their biggest exhibition yet—means that you should probably book your tickets now.