The Artists to Be Celebrated in Major Museum Surveys in 2025

Ocula's editors have scoured the globe—from Los Angeles to London, Hong Kong to Sydney—to map out the artists with career-spanning surveys opening through 2025.

2025 is shaping up to be a mammoth year for the art world. The celebration of women artists continues—both contemporary and historic. Ruth Asawa's retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, an exhibition of some 300 objects spanning six decades of her career; Tate Modern's presentation of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, and the powerful works that reflect the Australian artist's extraordinary life as a senior Anmatyerre woman; and a celebration of the strength and range of Kaari Upson's distinctive world at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. Supersized sculptures are having a moment, too, as Do Ho Suh takes on Tate Modern in London, Lee Bul at Leeum Museum in Seoul, and Yukinori Yanagi at Pirelli Hangarbicocca in Milan.

Consider this your one-stop guide to the artists whose work is being deservedly celebrated in significant institutions this year, and to the exhibitions of the year we consider to be amongst the unmissable. Check back often—we'll be updating this list as more roll in throughout the year.

U.K. and Europe

Ithell Colquhoun at Tate St Ives, Cornwall, then Tate Britain, London

One of the most radical artists of her generation, Ithell Colquhoun was an important figure in British Surrealism in the 1930s and 1940s. This landmark exhibition of over 200 artworks and archival materials traces Colquhoun's evolution, from her early student work and engagement with the Surrealist movement, to her fascination with the intertwining realms of art, sexual identity, ecology, and occultism. In this travelling Tate show, Colquhoun's enthralling, multi-layered universe is explored through writings, drawings, paintings, early theatre projects and mural designs, many of which have never been shown before. The exhibition will debut at Tate St Ives in February, and later travel to Tate Britain where it will be on view from June through October 2025.

^{Ithell Colquhoun at Tate St Ives, Cornwall (1 February–5 May), and Tate Britain, London (13 June–19 October 2025)}

Paulo Nazareth at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels

Patuá/Patois marks the first large-scale survey of Nazareth's work in Belgium, showcasing a series of new and existing works that represent over two decades of his artistic practice. The exhibition explores two powerful symbols of survival and resilience: patois, a nonstandard dialect spoken by marginalised communities, and patuá, an Afro-Brazilian amulet symbolising protection and remembrance. Through these symbols, Nazareth investigates how language and objects can serve as tools for survival, particularly for those displaced by colonial histories and global migration.

^{Paulo Nazareth, Patuá/Patois at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (1 February–27 April 2025)}

Willem Oorebeek at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels

The survey exhibition of Dutch artist Willem Oorebeek features around 40 work groups, dating from the 1980s and 1990s to new productions that engage with architecture. OBSTAKLES highlights Oorebeek's in-depth exploration of authorship and aura through mass-produced images and reproduction techniques. Using a quasi-painterly approach, his work thematises media forms of representation and the viewer's possibilities of perception. At the core of his work stands the human figure, serving as a vehicle to investigate the politics of the image, the allure of icons, and the humour and derision that arise from their overexposure in public consciousness.

^{Willem Oorebeek, OBSTAKLES at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (1 February–24 April 2025)}

Ayoung Kim at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

Ayoung Kim's first solo exhibition in a German museum spans a decade of her artistic practice. Using Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, video, game simulations, sculpture, and sonic fiction, Ayoung Kim creates expansive fictional universes with their own temporal and spatial laws. Her works are often linked together by speculative narratives that are still connected to the actual world that we live in and the viewers themselves are transformed into spectators as well as first person players, controlling the narrative from their own point of view.

^{Ayoung Kim at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (28 February–20 July 2025)}

Arpita Singh at Serpentine North, London

In March 2025, the Serpentine will present the first solo exhibition of Arpita Singh outside of India, featuring key works selected in close collaboration with the artist from her prolific career spanning more than six decades. Singh's paintings draw from Indian miniatures and narratives, interwoven with immediate experiences of social upheaval and international humanitarian crises. Remembering will explore the full breadth of her practice, from large-scale oil paintings to more intimate watercolours and ink drawings.

^{Arpita Singh at Serpentine North, London (13 March–27 July 2025)}

Yukinori Yanagi at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan

Yukinori Yanagi is one of Ja­pan's most influential contemporary artists, known for exploring issues of sov­ereignty, globalisation, and borders through large-scale, site-specific installations. The exhibition at Pirelli HangarBicocca will be the first major survey of the art­ist's practice in Europe, and will include a wide selection of iconic works from the 1980s and 1990s such as The World Flag Ant Farm Project, that gained international recognition at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993, as well as more recent works. Yanagi will recontextualise some of his most important monumental installations, re­sponding specifically to the post-industrial space of Pirelli HangarBicocca.

^{Yukinori Yanagi, navate at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (27 March–27 July 2025)}

Ed Atkins at Tate Britain, London

For over a decade, Ed Atkins has been making videos and animations that trace the dwindling gap between representation and embodied experience. Using his desires, experiences, and body as a model, Atkins' works misuse contemporary technologies of representation to critically reflect what they have done to images and our sense of self. This career-spanning exhibition will assemble paintings, writing, embroideries and drawings alongside Atkins' moving-image works in a succession of large-scale installations. Troubled by melancholy, undermined by bathos, and tempered with humour, Atkins' works pit a weightless digital life against a corporal world of heft, craft, and touch. Overwhelmingly, Atkins' works allegorise loss, intimacy, and love.

^{Ed Atkins at Tate Britain, London (2 April–25 August 2025)}

Giuseppe Penone at Serpentine Gallery, London

Serpentine South's solo exhibition dedicated to the Italian artist Giuseppe Penone will be the most comprehensive survey of his practice in a major London institution, featuring sculptures and works on paper from 1977 to today. A leading figure in Arte Povera, Penone experimented with a wide range of materials including wood, iron, wax, bronze, terracotta, and plaster, bringing their physical qualities to the fore. Situated in the Kensington Gardens, the exhibition will showcase the artist's continued interest in the relationship between humans and the natural world.

^{Guiseppe Penone at Serpentine Gallery, London (3 April–September 2025)}

Liliane Lijn at Tate St Ives, Cornwall

In the early 1960s, Liliane Lijn's kinetic sculptures placed her at the forefront of artists exploring new ways of using technology to 'see the world in terms of light and energy'. Over a six-decade career, her work has continued to blaze a trail while defying categorisation. Fascinated by the idea of visualising the invisible, Lijn draws from Surrealist ideas, ancient mythologies, and feminist, scientific, and linguistic thought. Equally important to her experimentation are the materials she uses, such as plastics, prisms, feather dusters, and copper wire. Arise Alive surveys Lijn's career from the late 1950s to today, spanning installation, sculpture, painting and moving image, and including her ongoing exploration and creation of new feminine forms.

^{Liliane Lijn, Arise Alive at Tate St Ives, Cornwall (25 May–5 October 2025)}

Do Ho Suh at Tate Modern, London

Korean-born, London-based artist Do Ho Suh invites visitors to explore his large-scale installations, sculptures, videos, and drawings. Is home a place, a feeling, or an idea? Suh asks timely questions about the enigma of home, identity, and how we move through and inhabit the world around us. With immersive artworks exploring belonging, collectivity and individuality, connection and disconnection, Suh examines the intricate relationship between architecture, space, the body, and the memories and the moments that make us who we are.

^{The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House at Tate Modern, London (1 May–26 October 2025)}

Kaari Upson at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark

In Kaari Upson's distinctive world, beauty meets horror and sensitivity resonates with despair. The first retrospective museum exhibition featuring Upson after her untimely death shows the strength and range of an artist already well on her way to becoming a modern classic. At her death from cancer in 2021, aged 51, Upson was widely regarded as one of the most significant and versatile American artists of her generation with a practice spanning sculpture, drawing, performance, film, and painting. She has left behind a rich, intense, and strongly personal body of work that revolves around identity, body, relationships, emotions, illness, and loss.

^{Kaari Upson at Louisiana Museum of Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (27 May–26 October 2025)}

Jenny Saville at National Portrait Gallery, London

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting will be the first major museum exhibition in the U.K. dedicated to the work of one of the world's foremost contemporary artists. Bringing together 50 works made throughout the artist's career, the exhibition will trace the development of Saville's practice from the 1990s to today, spotlighting key artworks while exploring her lasting connection to art history. From charcoal drawings to large-scale oil paintings of the human form, this broadly chronological display will include works that question the conventional and historical notions of female beauty, as well as the monumental nudes that launched Saville to acclaim in 1992 and new 'portraits' made for the 21st century.

^{Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting at National Portrait Gallery, London (20 June–7 September 2025)}

Emily Kame Kngwarreye at Tate Modern, London

Renowned Australian artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye created compelling, powerful works that reflected her extraordinary life as a senior Anmatyerre woman from the Utopia region of Australia. One of the world's most significant painters to emerge in the late 20th century, her lived experience and spiritual engagement with her homelands was translated into vibrant batiks and later into monumental paintings on canvas. Created in collaboration with the National Gallery of Australia, this exhibition will be the first large-scale presentation of Kngwarreye's work in Europe and a celebration of her astonishing career as one of Australia's greatest artists.

^{Emily Kame Kngwarreye at Tate Modern, London (10 July 2025–13 January 2026)}

Kerry James Marshall at Royal Academy of Arts, London

Kerry James Marshall: The Histories will be the biggest U.K. dedicated to American painter Kerry James Marshall to date. Internationally acclaimed, Marshall enhances the presence of Black figures in paintings built on principles codified in the tradition of Western picture-making he encountered in books and museums in his childhood. Organised thematically, this exhibition features 70 works including a new series of paintings and his commemorative sculpture, Wake, which evolves each time it is exhibited.

^{Kerry James Marshall: The Histories at Royal Academy of Arts, London (20 September 2025–18 January 2026)}

Lee Miller at Tate Britain, London

With the most extensive retrospective of her photography staged in the U.K., Tate Britain celebrates Lee Miller as one of the 20th century's urgent artistic voices. The exhibition will showcase Miller's extraordinary career, from her participation in Surrealism to her fashion and war photography. The exhibition will explore Miller's artistic collaborations and shed light on lesser-known sides of her practice, such as her remarkable images of the Egyptian landscape from the 1930s. With around 250 vintage and modern prints, including those never previously displayed, the exhibition reveals Miller's poetic vision and fearless spirit.

Antony Penrose described his mother Lee Miller to Ocula: 'Lee was beautiful and charming, which helped her secure the scoop. She always had a store of booze or saucisson to share with you. They found it helpful to drop a few bottles of cognac at the feet of the opposition.'

^{Lee Miller at Tate Britain, London (2 October 2025–15 February 2026)}

Yayoi Kusama at Fondation Beyeler, Basel

Fondation Beyeler will be the first museum in Switzerland to devote a retrospective to renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, offering a complete overview of her more than seven-decade career. Alongside some of her most iconic artworks, the exhibition will feature early works never before seen in Europe, as well as new productions and one of the artist's celebrated Infinity Mirror Rooms. The exhibition will highlight the wealth of media Kusama has worked with over the years, among them painting, sculpture, installation, drawing, collage, happenings, performance, fashion, and literature.

^{Yayoi Kusama at Fondation Beyeler, Basel (12 October 2025–25 January 2026)}

Everlyn Nicodemus at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels

Everlyn Nicodemus spent the 1990s and early 2000s living in Antwerp and Brussels, where her influential work on the postcolonial condition was significant in raising awareness about racism in Europe, as well as outlining the need for research and writing on the history of Modern African art. Throughout her career, Nicodemus nurtured a distinctive and polymorphous practice anchored in postcolonial theory, feminism, and trauma studies. This retrospective at WIELS delves into the breadth of a practice that always refused conformity and the "othering" frames of expectation shaped by the Western ethnographic gaze. Instead, Nicodemus approaches colour, texture and the form of the human body through a profound involvement with community organising, communion, and relationality.

^{Everlyn Nicodemus at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels (24 October 2025–1 February 2026)}

Annika Kahrs at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

Berlin-based artist Annika Kahrs is showing her works at Hamburger Bahnhof in the most comprehensive survey to date. In her videos, sound installations, and performances, Kahrs explores the border regions of music. She examines not only its cultural and social roles, but also its communicative dimensions and formal structures. The exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof is divided into three components: live performance, film/video, and sound/music. Working with music as material and collaborating with people from different fields and disciplines are integral to her art.

^{Annika Kahrs at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (14 November 2025–3 May 2026)}

Asia Pacific

Lubaina Himid at UCCA Beijing

As the first solo exhibition of British artist Lubaina Himid in China, this presentation will reflect on the key stages of her artistic career over the past four decades. A prominent figure in the British Black Arts Movement of the 1980s, Himid is renowned for her paintings and installations that challenge dominant historical narratives. This exhibition will feature a selection of significant works from the 1980s to the present, including A Fashionable Marriage, Naming the Money, and the 'Feast Wagon' and 'Plan B' series, among others. Highlighted will be the diversity of Himid's artistic approach, including works on canvas, cut-outs, found objects, and sound installations.

Himid told Ocula earlier this year: 'I'm always concerned with what audiences do for themselves after they leave the paintings. I want the viewer to feel the agency to go out there and do whatever it is they do in a different way or in a way that's better for them. I know that by looking at paintings and being with visual art for 60 years, those experiences have helped me try to find who I am, find peace or pleasure, or find out something about life I didn't know before.'

^{Lubaina Himid: Four Decades of Art at UCCA Beijing (18 January–27 April 2025)}

Sou Fujimoto at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

This will be the first major retrospective of Fujimoto's work. Introducing many of his main works, from early-career to projects currently in progress, the exhibition will offer an overview of his architectural journey over the past quarter-century, the features of his architecture, and the philosophy behind it. Scale models, plans and documentary photographs will be joined by full-size models and installations in an architectural exhibition promising a first-hand visual and spatial experience of the essence of Fujimoto's oeuvre, delivered in a manner unique to the contemporary art museum setting. With offices in Tokyo, Paris, and Shenzhen, Sou Fujimoto has engaged in projects all over the world ranging from private homes to universities, retail premises, hotels, and multi-purpose complexes.

^{Sou Fujimoto at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2 July–9 November 2025)}

Lee Bul at Leeum Museum, Seoul and M+, Hong Kong

Co-curated by M+ and Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, Lee Bul: My Grand Narrative (working title) will debut at Leeum Museum of Art in September 2025, followed by a presentation at M+ in spring 2026, before touring to other international venues. Lee Bul is one of the most prominent contemporary artists to have emerged from Asia in the last few decades. The exhibition will be the most comprehensive survey of the artist's career to date, spanning over four decades from the 1980s to the present day.

^{Lee Bul: My Grand Narrative (working title) at Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul (September 2025–), and M+, Hong Kong (Spring 2026–)}

The Americas

Gabriel Orozco at Museo Jumex, Mexico City

Museo Jumex presents Gabriel Orozco's first museum exhibition in Mexico since 2006. Orozco is one of Mexico's leading contemporary artists who has also been a definitive figure in international art for more than three decades, constantly challenging the concept of what art can be, how it is created, and what it can do. Gabriel Orozco: Politécnico Nacional intertwines techniques that the artist has developed over the years, such as rotation, symmetry and the possibility of giving materiality to time. The show includes some 300 career-spanning works, from small sculptures to complex installations, photography and drawing, and by painting, assemblages, and games.

^{Gabriel Orozco: Politécnico Nacional at Museo Jumex (1 February–3 August 2024)}

Christine Sun Kim at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Christine Sun Kim's first major museum survey foregrounds how the artist utilises sound and language—including musical notation, infographics, and words in her native American Sign Language (ASL) and written English—to inquire into the complexities of communication.

The presentation brings together works spanning 2011 to the present, including drawings, site-specific murals, paintings, video installations, and sculptures. The resulting body of work is at once perceptive, poetic, humorous, and political.

'In my experience as a person with disabilities, what I've experienced is that I don't really have the ability or the privilege to be misunderstood, because if I am misunderstood, that affects my access or my rights, or any other aspect of my life, so I have to be as clear as possible,' Kim told Ocula in 2021.

^{Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night at Whitney Museum of American Art (8 February–July 2025), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (27 March–6 September 2026).}

Amy Sherald at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Amy Sherald: American Sublime presents work from 2007 to the present, from her poetic early portraits to incisive and moving figure paintings for which she is best known. Featuring recent portraits of former First Lady Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor, a Black medical worker who was shot and killed by police officers in Louisville in 2020, alongside new work created for the exhibition, the presentation considers the impact of her paintings on contemporary art and culture while positioning her squarely within the art historical tradition of American realism and figuration.

^{Amy Sherald: American Sublime at Whitney Museum of American Art (9 April–August 2025)}

Rashid Johnson at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

For nearly 30 years, Rashid Johnson has cultivated a diverse body of work that draws upon an array of disciplines such as history, philosophy, literature, and music. Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers features almost 90 works that highlight Johnson's role as a scholar of art history, a mediator of Black popular culture, and a creative force in contemporary art. Filling the museum's rotunda are works spanning the artist's career, from black-soap paintings and spray-painted text works to large-scale sculptures, film, and video. Johnson's new film Sanguine (2024) will be screened inside a site-specific installation on the building's top ramp with an embedded piano for musical performances.

^{Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (18 April 2025–18 January 2026)}

Kandis Williams at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Kandis Williams' versatile practice spans collage, sculpture, film, performance, writing, pedagogy, and publishing. A Surface is Williams' first museum survey, offering visitors an in-depth experience of her vision and practice. The exhibition features both important and lesser-known works from the past decade of her career. Williams' multidisciplinary practice leverages the experience of the body alongside personal and communal histories to explore notions of race, nationalism, authority, and eroticism, among other subjects.

^{Kandis Williams: A Surface at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (24 April–24 August 2025)}

Lorna Simpson at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will open a major presentation of work by New York-based artist Lorna Simpson. Lorna Simpson: Source Notes is the first exhibition to consider the entirety of her painting practice to date. It will focus on a significant new development in her work from the past ten years: paintings that advance her incisive explorations of gender, race, identity, representation, and history. Through more than 30 works, this focused exhibition presents a selection of Simpson's major paintings, including examples from her acclaimed Venice Biennale debut in 2015 and her celebrated series 'Special Characters' (2019–ongoing), along with recent sculptures and related collages.

^{Lorna Simpson: Source Notes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (19 May–2 November 2025)}

Dyani White Hawk at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Dyani White Hawk's art centres on connection—between people, past and present, earth and sky. By foregrounding Lakota forms and motifs, she challenges prevailing histories and practices surrounding abstract art. Featuring multimedia paintings, sculpture, and video, Love Language gathers 15 years of the artist's work in this major presentation at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. The exhibition unfolds across four sections named by the artist to speak to Indigenous value systems: See; Honor, Nurture; and Celebrate. See introduces visitors to White Hawk's worldview. In Honor, Nurture, White Hawk uplifts family, ancestors, and community. The exhibition's final section, Celebrate, marries traditional techniques with outsize scale, paying homage to small gestures that hold great meaning.

^{Dyani White Hawk: Love Language at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (18 October 2025–15 February 2026)}

Ruth Asawa at Museum of Modern Art, New York

Coinciding with the centennial of the artist's birth, Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective is the first major museum exhibition to fully consider every aspect of the artist's expansive, groundbreaking practice. The retrospective spans the six decades of Asawa's career, featuring some 300 objects across mediums, including wire sculptures, bronze casts, paper folds, paintings, and a comprehensive body of works on paper. This first posthumous survey celebrates the ways in which Asawa continuously transformed materials and objects into subjects of contemplation, unsettling distinctions between abstraction and figuration, figure and ground, and negative and positive space.

^{Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective at Museum of Modern Art, New York (19 October 2025–7 February 2026)}