Dreamlike and futuristic, the work of designer Iris van Herpen is set to show at the Brooklyn Museum in New York in May 2026. The opening will mark the North American debut of the traveling exhibition, dubbed Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses, which brings more than 140 couture works into dialogue with design and scientific artifacts.

The museum has a long history of fashion exhibitions, and this one situates Iris van Herpen’s practice within a broader design conversation. Exhibits showcase how her garments operate as constructed environments for the body, shaped by material research, digital fabrication methods like laser-cutting and 3D printing, and a sustained engagement with natural systems.

Iris Van Herpen, Morphogenesis Dress, from the Sensory Seas collection, 2020. laser-cut and screenprinted mesh, duchesse satin, and laser-cut Plexiglas. collaborator: Philip Beesley. model: Yue Han. photo © David Uzochukwu

digital fabrication for dreamlike creations

Throughout the galleries of the Brooklyn Museum, Iris van Herpen’s garments appear as sculptural forms in motion and unaffected by gravity. Laser-cut meshes, layered polymers, and translucent synthetics register subtle shifts in posture and movement. This way, the designer gives each piece a sense of responsiveness as rippling designs often hover between rigidity and flexibility.

Many works foreground the mechanics of making. Three-dimensional printing, hand pleating, and experimental bonding techniques remain visible, so that the visual language is defined by its fabrication processes. This emphasis on construction aligns the exhibition closely with industrial design and architecture, where form is guided by material behavior rather than just decoration.

Iris van Herpen, Labyrinthine Kimono Dress, from the Sensory Seas collection, 2020. glass organza, crepe, tulle, and Mylar. model: Cynthia Arrebola. photo © David Uzochukwu

iris van herpen’s scientific references

Scientific reference points shape the exhibition design of Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses, as marine biology, anatomy, physics, and astronomy inform the sequencing of the Brooklyn Museum galleries. As such, the progression of spaces moves from themes of aquatic environments toward cosmic scales. But these disciplines are more than just backdrops. They influence how garments occupy space and how viewers circulate among them.

Scientific artifacts and contemporary artworks appear alongside the couture pieces to reinforce this approach. Fossils, skeletal structures, and even optical experiments echo the garments’ geometries. The effect remains measured and deliberate, encouraging close observation rather than quick a walkthrough.

Iris van Herpen. Sensory Seas Dress, from the Sensory Seas collection, 2020. PETG and glass organza. collaborator: Shelee Carruthers. models: Cynthia Arrebola and Yue Han. photo © David Uzochukwu

Iris Van Herpen, Morphogenesis Dress, from the Sensory Seas collection, 2020. laser-cut and screenprinted mesh, duchesse satin, and laser-cut Plexiglas. collaborator: Philip Beesley. model: Yue Han. photo © David Uzochukwu

project info:

name: Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses

artist: Iris van Herpen | @irisvanherpen

museum: Brooklyn Museum | @brooklynmuseum

location: 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY

opening: May 16th, 2026

photography: © David Uzochukwu | @daviduzochukwu

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Dead oak tree returns to life as sound sculptures, musical instruments, and playable records by artist Steve Parker. On display in an exhibition named Funeral for a Tree, the project began when a 65-year-old live oak tree in the artist’s yard died from oak wilt, a disease that slowly kills trees. Instead of removing the tree and moving on, Steve Parker chose to listen to it by transforming the oak tree into sound sculptures, allowing the tree to perform its own memorial. At the heart of the exhibition are the wood cookies, which are round slices cut from the oak’s trunk. 

The artist carefully turned them into playable records, similar to vinyl records, and each wooden record is engraved with recordings of migratory birdsong. These are sounds from bird species that once rested in the oak during different seasons of its life. When placed on a custom-made wooden turntable, the records spin and play, letting the tree remember the life it once supported.

all images courtesy of Ivester Contemporary and Steve Parker

Other instruments include medical breathing bags and brass

The records shown in the exhibition are made directly from the tree itself, and as the wood continues to dry over time, it naturally cracks and changes shape. This affects the sound quality, causing the music to fade, distort, or fill with static. The artist allows this to happen instead of fixing it, so in this way, the sound slowly disappears, just like memories change over time. Sound in the exhibition is also shaped by the sheng, a traditional Chinese mouth organ linked to ideas of rebirth and the phoenix. Sheng musician Jipo Yang performs the birdsongs, and throughout the gallery, sheng instruments appear in many forms. Some are played live, while others are connected to machines like ventilators and CPAP devices. These machines gently push air through the instruments, giving them breath. 

Other sound sculptures fill the space as well, still made of recycled oak tree. One includes a live oak branch connected to a camshaft that slowly moves and brushes against a wind chime. Another features a large bass drum covered in wood shavings. When birdsong plays, the shavings gently shake, making the sound visible as well as audible. There are also abstract turntables fitted with horn speakers, turning sound into something you can feel in the room. There’s even a plant-like instrument made from salvaged brass, medical breathing bags, and sheng reeds. It looks part machine, part organism, and each performance rearranges and activates the sculptures in new ways. The exhibition Funeral for a Tree by artist Steve Parker was shown at the art gallery Ivester Contemporary between November 29th, 2025 and January 10th, 2026.

at the heart of the exhibition are the wood cookies, which are round slices cut from the oak’s trunk

detailed view of the playable records

view of the turntable made from oak tree

exhibition view

there’s even a plant-like instrument made from salvaged brass, medical breathing bags, and sheng reeds

detailed view of the musical instruments

other sound sculptures fill the space as well, still made of recycled oak tree

the sound sculptures shown in the exhibition are made directly from the tree itself

exhibition view at Ivester Contemporary

project info:

name: Funeral for a Tree

artist: Steve Parker | @steveparker

gallery: Ivester Contemporary | @ivester_contemporary

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Desert X AlUla 2026 returns to northwest Saudi Arabia with a fourth edition that scatters contemporary art across within the valleys, canyons, and oases of AlUla. Presented by Arts AlUla in collaboration with Desert X, the exhibition runs from January 16th to February 28th, 2026 as part of the AlUla Arts Festival. It brings new site-responsive sculptural commissions into conversation with the scenic desert.

The curatorial theme, Space Without Measure, shapes an edition that attends closely to scale, distance, and perception across a vast landscape. Works are positioned across Wadi AlFann and the surrounding oasis zones, where shifts in light and wind are a part of the experience. Desert X AlUla 2026 approaches the site as an active participant, asking visitors to move slowly and read materials in relation to desert and sky.

Agnes Denes, The Living Pyramid, Desert X AlUla 2026, image courtesy Lance Gerber

site-responsive artworks scatter across the desert

Sustainable production methods inform Desert X AlUla 2026 at every level. Rammed earth, carved stone, and locally sourced wood appear across multiple projects, produced in Saudi Arabia through collaborations with regional artisans and cultural centers.

Partnerships with the locally-based arts and design center Madrasat Addeera and the AlUla Music Hub extend this emphasis on local knowledge, while consultation with the AlUla Native Plant Nursery guides the integration of plantlife into the ‘oasis’ environment.

The exhibition is co-curated by Wejdan Reda and Zoé Whitley, with artistic direction led by Neville Wakefield and Raneem Farsi. Their approach favors works that respond to specific conditions of AlUla, from ancient water routes to cultivated palm groves.

Bahraini-Danish, Desert X AlUla 2026, image courtesy Lance Gerber

eleven participating artists for 2026

Among the Saudi artists participating in Desert X AlUla 2026, Budapest-born artist Agnes Denes contributes The Living Pyramid, a planted structure situated within the oasis. Continuing a project developed across multiple geographies, the work emphasizes cycles of growth and regeneration through its changing surface. 

Sound plays a central role in several commissions. The collective practice Bahraini-Danish introduces Bloom, a kinetic sculpture animated by sunlight and shadow. Its rotating elements register the passage of time across the day, producing a shifting visual rhythm that aligns with the desert’s cycles. Participation remains gentle and open-ended, inviting viewers to linger rather than perform.

Basmah Felemban’s Murmur of Pebbles enlarges geological fragments into carved limestone forms. Installed along pathways shaped by ancient rivers, the work draws attention to sediment, erosion, and time embedded within stone. Originally commissioned for a previous edition, the installation returns with renewed emphasis on scale and spacing under the current curatorial framework.

Basmah Felemban, Desert X AlUla 2026, image courtesy Lance Gerber

In a nearby valley, Héctor Zamora’s Tar HyPar introduces percussion-inspired forms that respond to collective movement. Visitors activate the installation through sound, producing a low, resonant energy that travels across open ground.

Ibrahim El-Salahi’s Haraza Tree responds to acacia species found across the region, translating their resilience into sculptural forms that gather individually while standing as a unified artwork.

Mohammad Alfaraj contributes What was the Question Again?, a living installation centered on a palm structure assembled from grafted trunks. Referencing the agricultural landscapes of Al Ahsa, the piece reflects long-standing relationships between cultivation, storytelling, and renewal.

Héctor Zamora, Tar HyPar, Desert X AlUla 2026, image courtesy Lance Gerber

Sara Abdu presents A Kingdom Where No One Dies: Contours of Resonance, a sculptural installation formed through layered rammed earth walls. Poetry and geology intersect within its surfaces, drawing attention to construction techniques shared across cultures and eras. The work reads through touch and proximity, its mass tempered by subtle shifts in tone and texture.

Future Fables by Vibha Galhotra encloses fragments of demolished buildings within a steel framework. The structure shelters traces of recent change, transforming debris into a place for reflection and shared narratives.

Several works in Desert X AlUla 2026 engage directly with ecological systems. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons shows Imole Red, an installation inspired by AlUla’s sunsets and Yoruba spiritual traditions. Color and planting combine within a garden-like structure that acknowledges water as a sustaining presence within the valley. The work carries a sense of continuity between land, ritual, and care.

Ibrahim El-Salahi, Desert X AlUla 2026, image courtesy Lance Gerber

Lebanese artist and composer Tarek Atoui presents The Water Song, continuing his research into listening practices initiated during the AlUla Arts Festival 2025. Instruments emerge partially from the ground, encouraging visitors to attune to subtle vibrations carried through soil and air. The landscape becomes an acoustic field shaped by movement and attention.

Nearby, rare sculptural works by the late Mohammed AlSaleem appear for the first time, including The Thorn and AlShuruf Unit. Created during the 1980s, these geometric forms extend upward with a measured sense of aspiration, shaped by desert horizons and celestial reference points.

Mohammad AlFaraj, Desert X AlUla 2026, image courtesy Lance Gerber

Sara Abdu, Desert X AlUla 2026, image courtesy Lance Gerber

Vibha Galhotra, Desert X AlUla 2026, image courtesy Lance Gerber

María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Desert X AlUla 2026, image courtesy Lance Gerber

Tarek Atoui, Desert X AlUla 2026, image courtesy Lance Gerber

works by Mohammed Al Saleem throughout the exhibition are on loan courtesy of Riyadh Art collection, The Royal Commission for Riyadh City

project info:

event: Desert X | @_desertx

location: AlUla, Saudi Arabia

on view: January 16th to February 28th, 2026

photography: © Lance Gerber | @lance.gerber

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From the Upper Valley in the Foothills is a group exhibition at Marta in Los Angeles, on view through January 31st, 2026. Co-curated and co-organized by Vince Skelly, with material support from Angel City Lumber, the exhibition brings together 22 artists and designers working in and around greater Los Angeles, using reclaimed wood sourced from Altadena, the foothill region most profoundly impacted by the 2025 Eaton Fire. Marking one year since the devastating wildfires that reshaped vast portions of Los Angeles County, the show positions material as a carrier of memory, loss, and regeneration.

At the center of the exhibition is wood, framed as a specific, sourced, and transformed substance. Each participating artist selected a section of lumber milled by Angel City Lumber, a Los Angeles–based operation that salvages fallen and removed trees for reuse in community projects. The wood originates from Altadena and includes species such as Aleppo pine, cedar, coastal live oak, and Shamel ash, a mix of native and naturalized trees that reflect the biome of the region. These materials are shaped into functional forms: chairs, stools, benches, bowls, and containers. In this context, function becomes a way of imagining how devastated spaces might once again support everyday life.

Vince Skelly

the material embraces traces of its previous life

On January 7th, 2025, the Eaton Fire broke out in the San Gabriel Mountains, burning for twenty-five days before being contained on January 31st, 2025. It claimed nineteen lives and destroyed over nine thousand structures, becoming the second most destructive wildfire in California’s history. At the same time, the Palisades Fire raged across the county, ultimately taking twelve lives and destroying nearly seven thousand structures, making it the most destructive wildfire in the history of the City of Los Angeles.

The works are installed throughout Marta’s Silver Lake gallery in a loose, forest-like arrangement. The objects are positioned so that visitors must walk through them, navigating the space as one might move through a wooded landscape. This curatorial decision reinforces the central premise of the exhibition: trees are not passive scenery but active participants in lived environments. They offer shade, structure, boundaries, and orientation. In their transformed state, now furniture or vessels, they continue to hold and support bodies, possessions, and gestures of rest.

Across the exhibition, the material retains traces of its previous life. Some works incorporate charring, visible grain, knots, or irregularities, resisting the idea of total refinement. The artists approach wood as a collaborator, shaped by time, climate, and fire. This shared material origin creates continuity between the works, even as they diverge in form, scale, and intention. On the anniversary of the fires, the exhibition becomes both a monument and a proposition, a collective act of attention toward what remains and what can be reused.

Ryan Belli

the exhibition brings together 22 artists and designers

Asher Gillman Left Over Chair, 2025 Cast Aluminum, Aleppo Pine

Dan John Anderson Circle the Square Chair, 2025

Sam Klemick Dressed Stool, 2025

Vincent Pocsik Five Ears in Cedar, 2025

the show positions material as a carrier of memory, loss, and regeneration

Tristan Louis Marsh Floral Stool, 2025

Mark Morones Everybody Gets a Guitar, 2025

Vince Skelly Assembled Foothills Side Table, 2025

Max Hertz Petal Stool, 2025

Noah Cohen Small Chest (Forever Changes), 2025

Nik Gelormino Hitchhiker (No. 03), 2025

Brian Guido of Barni Goudi McNally Stool #1, 2025

Brian Guido of Barni Goudi McNally Stool #2, 2025

Jonathan Synder & Alejandro DePass of Snyder DePass Santa Rosa Chair, 2025

project info:

name: From the Upper Valley in the Foothills

designers: Dan John Anderson, Ryan Belli, Noah Cohen, Nik Gelormino, Asher Gillman, Brian Guido (Barni Goudi), Max Hertz, Sam Klemick, Tristan Louis Marsh, Doug McCollough, Mark Morones, Lindsey Muscato & Joshua Friedman (Base 10), Christopher Norman, Dave O’Brien, Shin Okuda, Vincent Pocsik, Ellie Richards, Josué da Silva, Vince Skelly, Rachel Shillander, Jonathan Snyder & Alejandro DePass (Snyder DePass), Marley White

venue: Marta | @marta.losangeles

location: 3021 Rowena Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90039

dates: January 10th – 31st, 2026

curation: Vince Skelly (co-curated and co-organized)

material partner: Angel City Lumber

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The Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) emerges on the banks of Jinji Lake. Designed in collaboration with ARTS Group and Front Inc., and commissioned by Suzhou Harmony Development Group, the 60,000-square-meter complex (find designboom’s previous coverage here) is envisioned as a contemporary reinterpretation of Suzhou’s historic gardens.

The structure unfolds as a village of twelve interconnected pavilions unified beneath a flowing, ribbon-like roof whose gentle undulations echo tiled eaves. Materialism, a material-led inaugural exhibition curated by the studio, is on view through March 8th, 2026, before the museum temporarily closes and reopens this summer for its grand inauguration. 

all images by Ye Jianyuan, unless stated otherwise

fluid network of pavilions evokes garden heritage

Rooted in the cultural identity of Suzhou, BIG’s design draws from the traditional lang (廊), a long, covered corridor that guides visitors through Chinese gardens, transforming it into a fluid network of exhibition spaces, courtyards, and walkways. ‘Suzhou is the cradle of the Chinese garden,’ notes Bjarke Ingels, describing the museum as ‘a garden of pavilions and courtyards’ where architecture and landscape intertwine. Glazed galleries and porticoes link the structures together in what Ingels calls ‘a Chinese knot of interconnected sculpture courtyards and exhibition spaces.’ Seen from above, the stainless steel roofs ripple across the site like a living organism, their gentle curves tracing a silhouette that connects the city to the lake.

The architects mirror the changing colors of the sky and waters on warm-toned stainless steel and curved glass facades. Inside the museum, daylight filters through clerestories and skylights, creating reflections and shadows across the galleries. Four of the twelve pavilions contain the main exhibition halls, while the remaining spaces host a multifunction hall, theater, restaurant, and grand entrance area. Bridges and tunnels weave between the buildings above and below ground, giving the museum flexible circulation and climatic adaptability. Outside, a sequence of gardens extends the visitor journey toward the lake, where sculpture installations and public paths remain open beyond museum hours.

a sequence of gardens extends the visitor journey toward the lake

materialism: a prelude to the museum’s opening

For BIG partner Catherine Huang, the project is a tribute to Suzhou’s enduring relationship between architecture and landscape. ‘We envision the lang, a traditional element of Suzhou gardens, gracefully winding through the landscapes and transforming into pavilions,’ she explains. The museum follows China’s GBEL Green Star 2 sustainability certification, addressing technical and social dimensions of environmental design. In 2024, Suzhou MoCA was recognized as a national landmark when it appeared on an official China Post stamp celebrating the city’s urban development around Jinji Lake.

Materialism reframes architecture through the substances that give it form. Rather than organizing projects by typology or geography, the exhibition groups twenty of BIG’s works according to the materials they are made from, including stone, earth, concrete, metal, glass, wood, fabric, plastic, plants, and recyclate. Seating elements throughout the galleries are fabricated from the very materials on display, turning the exhibition into a tactile, sensory journey through texture, weight, and surface. Visitors encounter architecture not as an image or model alone, but as something to be physically experienced through matter. ‘Due to the nature of the architectural profession, the fate of the project is always decided in the early stages: the concept design or the competition,’ explains Bjarke Ingels. ‘But 90% of our work is what follows, the translation of the idea into reality, the materialization of the fiction into fact. This exhibition is dedicated to the material aspect of our profession.’ Ingels continues: ‘The ideas and concepts are still there, but here the architectural story is told through the materials and the collaborations that made them possible.’

the Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art by BIG emerges on the banks of Jinji Lake

the structure unfolds as a village of twelve interconnected pavilions

a flowing roof whose gentle undulations echo tiled eaves tops the museum | image by Studio SZ Photo

a tribute to Suzhou’s enduring relationship between architecture and landscape | image by Studio SZ Photo

in 2024, Suzhou MoCA was recognized as a national landmark 

BIG’s design draws from the traditional lang (廊)

a fluid network of exhibition spaces, courtyards, and walkways

glazed galleries and porticoes link the structures together

a landscape of light, reflection, and interwoven paths

four of the twelve pavilions contain the main exhibition halls

Materialism invites visitors on a ‘material odyssey’ | image by Studio SZ Photo

cubic stools made from various materials | Materialism at BIG’s HQ in Copenhagen, image by Yongwon Jo  

material samples | Materialism at BIG’s HQ in Copenhagen, image by Yongwon Jo  

luminous ‘BIG’ sign anchors the entrance to the exhibition | image by Studio SZ Photo & Suzhou MoCA

a 1:1 prototype of the Gelephu International Airport’s diagrid structure | Materialism at BIG’s HQ in Copenhagen, image by Yongwon Jo  

project models and photographs | image by Studio SZ Photo & Suzhou MoCA

architecture and landscape intertwine

a contemporary reinterpretation of Suzhou’s historic gardens

the museum follows China’s GBEL Green Star 2 sustainability certification | image by Studio SZ Photo

sculpture installations and public paths remain open beyond museum hours | image by Studio SZ Photo

project info:

name: Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art

architect: Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) | @big_builds

location: Suzhou, China

area: 60,000 sqm (646,000 sqft)

client: Suzhou Harmony Development Group Co. Ltd

collaborators: ARTS Group Co. Ltd, Front Inc., Shanghai Shuishi Landscape Design Co. Ltd, Rdesign International Lighting

photographers: Ye Jianyuan, Studio SZ Photo | @studiosz_photo, Yongwon Jo | @yong1jo

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Dan Flavin: Grids is on view at David Zwirner Gallery in New York, bringing renewed focus to a body of work by Dan Flavin that engages space through light with confidence and openness.

The exhibition gathers several grid installations first developed in 1976, presented here through careful re-creations of historic works. Installed directly into corners, the luminous sculptures become a fixed part of the gallery as walls, ceilings, and floors receive light as an active condition. The atmosphere of each room shifts, all while remaining unified by the straightforward presence of the simple fluorescent fixtures.

Dan Flavin’s fluorescent light shapes corners as active architectural elements | image © designboom

re-created works illuminate david zwirner gallery

From Dan Flavin’s earliest experiments with fluorescent lamps in the early 1960s, light served as a practical tool for shaping space. Over time, this approach grew more assured, and the grids reflect that maturity. Their geometry feels steady and deliberate, while color introduces warmth and variation that responds to the proportions of each room.

As curator Michael Govan notes, the grids stand among the most concentrated works the artist produced. Each piece balances vertical lamps facing inward with horizontal lamps facing outward. Color travels across surfaces through reflection, a condition which softens the edges of the gallery and invites exploration between its rooms.

the Grids establish clear geometry and flood each room with a wash of color | image © designboom

colorful grids in dialogue with one another

The first of Dan Flavin’s grids on view, ‘untitled (for Mary Ann and Hal with fondest regards) 1 and 2’ (1976), offer a clear entry point. Each eight-foot square combines pink and green lamps arranged in opposing directions. Installed diagonally across from one another, the works establish an easy rhythm between corners, encouraging visitors to notice how light behaves differently as distance and angle shift.

Grids dedicated to Leo Castelli continue this dialogue. In ‘untitled (for you, Leo, in long respect and affection) 1 and 2’ from 1977, Flavin introduces yellow and blue alongside green and pink, allowing color interactions to feel more relaxed and expansive. Smaller four-foot versions, intended to be suspended across corners, suggest an architectural element that floats within the room, extending light into shared space.

Dan Flavin: Grids concludes with the re-creation of ‘untitled (in honor of Leo at the 30th anniversary of his gallery),’ first shown in 1987. Spanning twenty-four feet across a corner, the joined editions stretch the room laterally, offering a generous sense of scale.

corners become zones of exchange between inward and outward facing fixtures | image © designboom

walls, ceilings, and floors register light as a spatial condition rather than a surface effect | image © designboom

re-created works reflect how Grids were originally presented during Flavin’s lifetime | image © designboom

color interactions shift with distance, movement, and angle of view | image © designboom

scale varies from intimate eight-foot works to expansive multi section installations | image © designboom

the exhibition frames light as a practical tool for redefining interior space | image © designboom

project info:

name: Dan Flavin: Grids

artist: Dan Flavin 

gallery: David Zwirner Gallery

location: 537 West 20th Street, New York, NY

dates: January 15th — February 21st, 2026

photography: © designboom

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January opens with exhibitions that reflect on perception, memory, and the structures shaping contemporary life. From Paul Cézanne’s late paintings at Fondation Beyeler to Jean-Michel Basquiat’s intimate drawings at Louisiana, the month foregrounds practices grounded in sustained looking and material intensity. Survey presentations of Sol LeWitt in Japan and Lee Miller at Tate Britain revisit figures who reshaped artistic authorship, image-making, and the terms of modern art.

Across institutions, artists probe space and experience in distinct ways. Olafur Eliasson invites heightened awareness at Museum MACAN, while Katharina Grosse expands painting into architecture through saturated fields of colour. Anne Imhof’s first solo exhibition in Portugal unfolds at Serralves, Erwin Wurm occupies the full Pantin space at Thaddaeus Ropac, and Dan Flavin’s light-based grids return at David Zwirner. Elsewhere, Martin Parr’s photography surveys leisure and consumption, and Pierre Huyghe’s new commission at Halle am Berghain translates uncertainty into a sensory environment.

Some of the exhibitions highlighted in earlier radars and listings on our dedicated events guide remain on view, giving designboom readers more time to encounter them around the globe.

Louise Nevelson: Mrs. N’s Palace

Louise Nevelson is widely recognised as a defining sculptor of the 20th century, yet this exhibition situates her work beyond the familiar narratives of Cubism, Constructivism, and Dada. It places dance and performance at the center of her practice, tracing how decades of movement training and her fascination with Martha Graham shaped a spatial language grounded in bodily experience. Travels to Mexico and Guatemala in 1950 further expanded her sense of scale and symbolism, steering her assemblages toward environments that feel monumental and immersive.

From her first large installations in the late 1950s, Nevelson conceived sculpture as a total space assembled from salvaged wood, unified through monochrome surfaces and shaped by light and shadow. The Centre Pompidou-Metz exhibition reconstructs these environments alongside works from across her career, presenting them as interconnected atmospheres rather than isolated objects. Together, they reflect her sustained interest in theatricality, movement, and the viewer’s physical presence within space.

name: Louise Nevelson: Mrs. N’s Palace
artist: Louise Nevelson
museum: Centre Pompidou-Metz
location: Metz, France
dates: January 24th — August 31st, 2026

Louise Nevelson, Rain Forest Wall, 1967, image courtesy Centre Pompidou-Metz

Cézanne

For the first time in its history, the Fondation Beyeler will present an exhibition devoted to Paul Cézanne, focusing on the final and most consequential phase of his career. Drawing from one of the museum’s strongest holdings, the exhibition centers on the subjects that defined Cézanne’s later years, including still-lifes, portraits, landscapes, and bathers.

Bringing together around 80 oil paintings and watercolors, the exhibition traces Cézanne’s sustained investigation of form, light, and color. Seen together, these works articulate the structural rigor and perceptual intensity that positioned Cézanne as a foundational figure of modern art and continue to shape artistic practice today.

name: Cézanne
artist: Cézanne
museum: Fondation Beyeler
location: Riehen, Switzerland 
dates: January 25th — May 26th, 2025

Paul Cezanne, La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue des Lauves, 1902–06, image courtesy Fondation Beyeler

Basquiat – Headstrong

Louisiana presents Basquiat – Headstrong, a major exhibition devoted to Jean-Michel Basquiat’s works on paper, with a focused examination of the human head as a recurring motif. Bringing together drawings in oilstick on paper primarily from 1981 to 1983, the exhibition marks the first comprehensive institutional presentation of this body of work and the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in Scandinavia. Many of the works were kept private during Basquiat’s lifetime, remaining largely unseen and separate from his better-known painted output.

These drawings move between structure and dissolution, ranging from skull-like forms to stylised faces whose eyes and mouths suggest interior spaces charged with emotional intensity. Largely absent of the text and symbols that define much of Basquiat’s practice, the heads stand as autonomous works rather than studies, revealing a quieter, more introspective dimension of his process.

name: Basquiat – Headstrong
artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat
museum: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
location: Humlebaek, Denmark
dates: January 30th — May 17th, 2026

Mosquito Coil, 1982. private collection. artwork © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. licensed by Artestar, New York

MARTIN PARR: GLOBAL WARNING

This exhibition revisits the work of Martin Parr, tracing five decades of photography that observe the contradictions and excesses of contemporary life. From the late 1970s to the present, and across locations worldwide, Parr has assembled a body of work that offers a sharply observed portrait of inequality, consumption, and everyday behavior shaped by modern lifestyles.

Bringing together around 180 works, from early black-and-white photographs to recent color series, the exhibition unfolds through thematic sections that reflect Parr’s recurring concerns. His images examine mass tourism, car culture, technological dependence, consumer excess, and shifting relationships with the natural world, often with an offbeat visual language that blends humor with critique. Over time, the apparent lightness of these scenes gives way to a more pointed reading, situating Parr’s practice within a tradition of British irony. 

name: Martin Parr: Global Warning
artist: Martin Parr
museum: Jeu de Paume
location: Paris, France
dates: January 30th — May 24th, 2026

Japan. Miyazaki. The Artificial beach inside the Ocean Dome. 1996. Japan. Miyazaki. The Artificial beach inside the Ocean Dome. 1996

Katharina Grosse

Katharina Grosse is widely regarded as one of the most influential painters working today, known for a practice that treats color as both material and action. Since the late 1990s, her use of industrial spray techniques has expanded painting beyond the canvas, carrying saturated color across walls, floors, ceilings, and constructed forms. These works position space itself as an active surface, where color operates with physical force and immediacy, shaping perception through scale, speed, and intensity.

Alongside these in-situ interventions, Grosse continues to develop studio paintings that compress this sense of movement onto the canvas. In her recent works, loops of vivid color hover against white ground, creating the impression of suspended motion and layered depth. Balancing chance with control, these paintings explore density, velocity, and the instability of form, remaining resistant to narrative interpretation while sustaining a heightened, immersive visual experience.

name: Katharina Grosse
artist: Katharina Grosse
museum: Galerie Max Hetzler
location: Berlin, Germany
dates: January 15th — February 28th, 2026

Katharina Grosse, psychylustro, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, 2014

Pierre Huyghe at Halle am Berghain

In a new commission at Berlin’s Halle am Berghain, Pierre Huyghe presents a large-scale environment that draws on quantum experiments to examine uncertainty and unstable perception. Composed of film, sound, vibration, dust, and light, the work centers on a mythic film following a faceless human figure that Huyghe describes as a hybrid presence shaped by absence. The environment frames perception as a shifting condition, where multiple states coexist before resolving into a single experience.

Developed in collaboration with scientist Tommaso Calarco through LAS and the Hartwig Art Foundation, the project treats the logic of quantum systems as raw material rather than metaphor. Data and experimental processes inform sound, moving images, and stills, allowing indeterminacy to guide both form and production. The installation translates quantum principles into sensory terms, creating an experience shaped by fluctuation, overlap, and continual transformation.

name: Pierre Huyghe at Halle am Berghain
artist: Pierre Huyghe
museum: LAS Art Foundation
location: Berlin, Germany
dates: January 23rd — March 8th, 2026

Halle am Berghain. photo: Stefan Lucks

Lee Miller

Tate Britain presents the most extensive UK retrospective to date of Lee Miller, positioning her as one of the 20th century’s most urgent photographic voices. First encountering the medium as a model in the late 1920s, Miller quickly moved behind the camera, establishing herself within avant-garde circles in New York, Paris, London, and Cairo.

Bringing together around 250 vintage and modern prints, including works never previously exhibited, the exhibition traces the full scope of Miller’s career, from her role within French surrealism to fashion and war photography. It also foregrounds lesser-known chapters of her practice, including photographs made in Egypt during the 1930s, revealing a body of work shaped by formal invention, independence, and a sustained refusal of fixed roles.

name: Lee Miller
artist: Lee Miller
museum: Tate Britain
location: London, UK
dates: October 2nd, 2025 — February 15th, 2026

Lee Miller, Model with lightbulb, Vogue Studio, London, England c.1943 © Lee Miller Archives, England 2024

Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey

Museum MACAN presents Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey, an exhibition tracing key themes from the Icelandic-Danish artist’s practice over the past three decades. Marking Eliasson’s first major solo exhibition in Southeast Asia, the presentation brings together installations, paintings, and sculptures that reflect the breadth of his approach across media.

Eliasson’s works draw on light, color, movement, and natural phenomena to heighten awareness of perception and environment, often activated through the presence and movement of visitors. Alongside works from the Museum MACAN collection, the exhibition arrives in Jakarta following presentations at the Singapore Art Museum, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and Taipei Fine Arts Museum, before concluding its Asia-Pacific tour in Manila.

name: Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey
artist: Olafur Eliasson
museum: Museum MACAN
location: Jakarta, Indonesia
dates: November 29th, 2025 — April 12th, 2026

Firefly biosphere (falling magma star), 2023, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland, New Zealand, 2024, photo: David St. George

Design and Disability

Design and Disability presents a wide-ranging survey of the ways Disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent people have shaped contemporary design and culture from the 1940s to the present. Bringing together 170 objects across three sections, Visibility, Tools, and Living, the exhibition traces how design emerges from lived experience and political agency rather than accommodation alone. Spanning design, art, architecture, fashion, and photography, it positions Disabled practitioners as active producers who have shaped everyday life and representation.

The exhibition moves from practices of self-representation and DIY publishing to adaptive technologies and speculative forms of living. Works range from hacked prosthetics and landmark tools such as the Xbox Adaptive Controller to photographs, protest-led design, and environments conceived for rest and sensory regulation. Together, these objects foreground inventiveness, resistance to ableist norms, and collective imagination.

name: Design and Disability
museum: V&A South Kensington
location: London, UK
dates: until February 15th, 2026

‘The best lovers are good with their hands’ by Harry McAuslan, issued by AIDS Ahead part of the British Deaf Association, 1992

Anne Imhof

Fun ist ein Stahlbad (Fun is a steel bath) is Anne Imhof’s first solo exhibition in Portugal, presenting a group of largely new works made for the Museu de Serralves. A large-scale sculpture installed in the Pátio do Ulmeiro engages directly with Álvaro Siza’s architecture and leads into the galleries, where sculptures, paintings, and moving-image works evoke fragility, abandonment, and the unsettled conditions of contemporary life.

The exhibition takes the idea of a ‘steel bath’ as a material and conceptual thread, reflecting Imhof’s sustained interest in bodies, endurance, and exposure. Drawing on the affective charge of queer and youth culture, the works echo the intensity of her performances, attentive to desire, visibility, and vulnerability. The title references Adorno and Horkheimer’s writing on fun as discipline, a tension that quietly runs through the project.

name: Fun ist ein Stahlbad
artist: Anne Imhof
museum: Serralves
location: Porto, Portugal
dates: December 12th, 2025 — April 19th, 2026

courtesy Nvstudio, Serralves Foundation

Erwin Wurm: Tomorrow: Yes

Tomorrow: Yes presents Erwin Wurm’s first solo exhibition to occupy the full Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Pantin space. The exhibition is structured around two monumental installations: a compressed schoolhouse that visitors can enter, first shown in Wurm’s 2024 retrospective at the Albertina in Vienna, and a six-meter-tall bent sailing boat installed at full scale.

Spanning the past fifteen years of the artist’s practice, the exhibition brings together works in materials ranging from marble and bronze to aluminum, including several shown for the first time. Seen collectively, they articulate a sculptural language attuned to the abstract and intangible, reflecting Wurm’s ongoing rethinking of scale, form, and the conventions of sculpture.

name: Tomorrow: Yes
artist: Erwin Wurm
gallery: Thaddaeus Ropac
location: Paris, France
dates: January 17th — April 19th, 2026

Tomorrow: Yes Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris Pantin, France, photo: Markus Gradwohl

Dan Flavin: Grids

David Zwirner presents an exhibition devoted to Dan Flavin’s grid works, a pivotal body of work the artist began in 1976. This focused presentation revisits the grids through re-creations of their original installation formats, alongside loans from major public collections and the Estate of Dan Flavin.

From his early use of a single fluorescent tube in the diagonal of May 25th, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi) to the complex installations developed over the following decades, Flavin pursued a rigorous exploration of light as structure. Working exclusively with commercially available fluorescent lamps, he conceived his installations as spatial situations, using color and illumination to define, measure, and transform architectural space.

name: Dan Flavin: Grids
artist: Dan Flavin
gallery: David Zwirner
location: New York, USA
dates: January 15th — February 21st, 2026

Dan Flavin, untitled (in honor of Leo at the 30th anniversary of his gallery), 1987 © 2025 Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Devon Turnbull: HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 3

New York’s Cooper Hewitt exhibits the experimental sound art of designer Devon Turnbull with its newly opened installation, HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 3. The show sees a gallery within the museum’s historic Carnegie Library transformed into a dedicated space for deep listening. On view through July 19th, 2026, Turnbull’s large-scale, handmade audio system signals the museum’s broader engagement with sound through Art of Noise, an exhibition organized by SFMOMA.

Turnbull, known under the name OJAS, approaches audio engineering as a design practice grounded in craft and long-term experimentation. His systems appear as monolithic objects that express their weight and invite attention even in silence. Here, sound fills the gallery evenly, and encourage stillness and sustained focus among visitors.

name: HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 3
artist: Devon Turnbull
museum: Cooper Hewitt
location: New York, USA
dates: December 12th, 2025 — July 19th, 2026

Devon Turnbull, HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 3, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2025; courtesy Devon Turnbull/Lisson Gallery; photo: Mark Waldhauser

Democratic Design: Space for Cooperation, Collaboration und Compromise

Democratic Design – Space for Cooperation, Collaboration and Compromise is a program presented by Aedes that examines how architecture, planning processes, and public space can support democratic engagement and social cohesion. Developed in response to growing social uncertainty, the initiative brings together an exhibition, a series of Lab Talks, and a publication featuring contributions from practitioners across Berlin, Germany, and Europe.

At its core, the program focuses on participatory planning and the spaces that emerge from democratic processes. The projects on view foreground inclusion, amplify marginalised voices, and propose spatial frameworks for dialogue, exchange, and shared decision-making. Presented at Aedes in Berlin, the exhibition reflects on architecture’s capacity to encourage cooperation and compromise at a moment when public trust in civic participation is under strain.

name: Democratic Design: Space for Cooperation, Collaboration und Compromise
museum: Aedes Architecture Forum
location: Berlin, Germany
dates: December 13th, 2025 — January 28th, 2026

Mont Réel, CA, 2017 © Gupta Ashutosh

Sol LeWitt: Open Structure

Sol LeWitt is widely regarded as a defining figure of late twentieth-century American art, known for positioning ideas as the foundation of artistic practice. This exhibition, the first major public museum survey of his work in Japan, presents wall drawings, structures, works on paper, and artist’s books that demonstrate how plans, systems, and instructions shape form.

At the center of the exhibition is LeWitt’s concept of open structure, visible in modular cube works and wall drawings executed by others. By exposing frameworks, allowing variation, and accepting change over time, his work challenges fixed notions of authorship, permanence, and originality. Together, the works reflect a practice grounded in shared ideas and continual reinterpretation.

name: Sol LeWitt: Open Structure
artist: Sol LeWitt
museum: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
location: Tokyo Japan
dates: until April 2nd, 2026

Sol Lewitt, Structure (One, Two, Three, Four, Five as a Square), 1978-80. Collection of Shiga Museum of Art © 2025 The LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery

Shared Ground: Sarita Westrup & Lewis Prosser

Superhouse presents Shared Ground, a two-artist exhibition bringing together the sculptural basketry of Sarita Westrup and Lewis Prosser. The exhibition stages a transatlantic dialogue between South Texas and South Wales, examining how inherited craft traditions are reworked as contemporary practices shaped by place, memory, and environment.

Westrup and Prosser each approach basketry as a living language rather than a fixed form. Westrup’s woven structures draw on the material cultures of the Rio Grande Valley to reflect on border, belonging, and transformation, while Prosser’s practice engages British craft traditions through sculptural form and performance, emphasizing ritual, humour, and social exchange. Seen together, their works frame weaving as a knowledge system that carries history while remaining open to reinvention, positioning craft as a means of connection across geography and time.

name: Shared Ground: Sarita Westrup & Lewis Prosser
artist: Sarita Westrup, Lewis Prosser
museum: Superhouse
location: New York, USA
dates: January 8th, 2025 — February 21st, 2026

Shared Ground: Sarita Westrup & Lewis Prosser, Superhouse, image courtesy Superhouse

Robert Wilson. Mother

Mother is a multidisciplinary project combining theater, art, and music, inspired by Michelangelo’s unfinished Pietà. Conceived as the final work by American director and playwright Robert Wilson before his death in July 2025, the piece offers an immersive experience that moves beyond religious narrative to address the universal theme of maternal grief and mercy.

At its center is a historic plaster cast of the Pietà, commissioned in 1953 from conservator Cesare Gariboldi, staged within a precisely composed environment of light, sound, and space. The sculpture is enveloped by a score of string music and Arvo Pärt’s Stabat Mater, alongside Wilson’s own drawings made in response to the work. Installed within a fully darkened gallery, the project reconstructs the atmosphere of the former Spanish Hospital at Milan’s Castello Sforzesco, framing an experience that sits between performance, installation, and sound, and foregrounds sustained attention and emotional presence.

name: Robert Wilson. Mother
artist: Robert Wilson
museum: Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo
location: Rome, Italy
dates: December 12th, 2025 —  January 18th 2026

Robert Wilson. Mother, image courtesy MAXXI

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Until May 17th, 2026, the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, England, presents Seeds of Hate and Hope, an exhibition that brings together artists’ personal and political responses to some of the most devastating acts of violence of the 20th and 21st centuries. Set within the Centre’s wider investigative season titled Can We Stop Killing Each Other?, the show examines how art has confronted genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity through reflection, memory, and acts of resistance rooted in lived experience.

Seeds of Hate and Hope focuses on how artists process and translate trauma into form. The exhibition features works by Mona Hatoum, William Kentridge, Zoran Mušič, Peter Oloya, Kimberly Fulton Orozco, Indrė Šerpytytė, Gideon Rubin, and Ishiuchi Miyako, among others. Across different geographies and generations, these artists bear witness to conflict through strategies that include abstraction, erasure, material transformation, and symbolic gesture. 

Mona Hatoum, Hot Spot, 2006. Stainless steel, neon tube. Courtesy of the David and Indrė Roberts Collection. © Mona Hatoum. All rights reserved, DACS 2025 | image by Stephen White, courtesy of White Cube

Seeds of Hate and Hope positions art as witness

Key works featured in the exhibition include William Kentridge’s Ubu Tells the Truth (1997), which confronts the violence and injustice of apartheid-era South Africa through his distinctive animated language. Gideon Rubin’s Black Book (2017) systematically redacts every page of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, emptying the text of its ideological force while leaving behind a stark material trace. Ishiuchi Miyako’s photographic series documents everyday objects once owned by victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, using absence and intimacy to register loss. Mona Hatoum’s Hot Spot (2006) presents a glowing, red-lined world map, a vision of a planet that, as Hatoum has described, is ‘continually caught up in conflict and unrest.’ Alongside these are bronze sculptures by Peter Oloya, whose practice is shaped by his experiences of violence and displacement during conflict in northern Uganda, translating personal history into tactile, enduring forms.

Curated by Tafadzwa Makwabarara, Curator of Cultural Empowerment at the Sainsbury Centre, together with independent curator, writer, and EMPIRE LINES podcast producer Jelena Sofronijevic, the exhibition frames art as both a witness to atrocity and a tool for healing. Drawing on individual stories and shared histories, Seeds of Hate and Hope explores how resilience and resistance often emerge under extreme conditions and how creative acts can counter forces of dehumanization, prejudice, and hate speech. 

installation view of Dante Elsner, 1985-1990. Copyright of the artist | image bu Kate Wolstenholme

Sainsbury Centre rethinks the museum as a space for empathy

The exhibition forms part of the Sainsbury Centre’s ongoing rethinking of the museum as a living, relational space following its radical relaunch in 2023. Seeds of Hate and Hope sits alongside four other concurrent exhibitions within the Can We Stop Killing Each Other? season, including Tiaki Ora ∞ Protecting Life: Anton Forde, Eyewitness, Roots of Resilience: Tesfaye Urgessa, and The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour: Reflections on Peace. Together, they ask whether empathy, creativity, and cultural production can meaningfully intervene in cycles of violence, and whether hope can be actively chosen over harm.

Supported by exhibition research funding from the Jonathan Ruffer grant from the Art Fund, Seeds of Hate and Hope underscores the Sainsbury Centre’s long-standing commitment to presenting art from across global histories and contexts on equal terms. Housed within Sir Norman Foster’s first public building, the museum continues to position art as a living force, one capable of helping societies confront their most difficult questions.

Peter Oloya, Politrick, 2023 | © image courtesy of the artist and Pangolin London

installation view of Peter Oloya, 1979-2023. Copyright of the artist and Pangolin London. | image by Kate Wolstenholme

(left and middle) Ishiuchi Miyako, ひろしま/hiroshima#71 donor: Hatamura, T, 2007. ひろしま/Hiroshima, #102, #104, #113, #114, #115 Donor: Hagimoto, T, 2014. Copyright: Ishiuchi Miyako. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery. (right) Jananne Al-Ani, production still from the film Shadow Sites II, 2011. Copyright of the artist

Ishiuchi Miyako, ひろしま/hiroshima#71 donor: Hatamura, T, 2007. Copyright: Ishiuchi Miyako. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery

Gideon Rubin, Black Book, Joseph Goebbels giving a speech, gouache on printed paper, (p.484), 2017. Courtesy of the artist

Installation view of Gideon Rubin, Black Book, 2017. Copyright of the artist | image by Kate Wolstenholme

Gideon Rubin, Black Book, Adolf Hitler covered over, gouache on printed paper (p.16), 2017. Courtesy of the artist

Denzil Forrester, The Rose, 2014. Compressed charcoal, charcoal and graphite on paper. Copyright: Denzil Forrester. Courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London and New York. image by Todd-White Art Photography

Installation view of Dima Srouji, She Still Wears Kohl & Smells Like Roses, 2023. Copyright of the artist | image by Kate Wolstenholme

Zoran Music, We are not the last (Nous ne sommes pas les derniers), 1975, lithograph on paper. Courtesy of the Sainsbury Centre Collection. © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2025

David Cotterrell, Mirror IV: Legacy, 2015, video. © David Cotterrell, 2018.  | image courtesy of the artist

Installation view of Sue Williamson, Truth Games, 1998. Copyright of the artist. Courtesy Goodman Gallery | image by Kate Wolstenholme

Installation view of Rushdi Anwar, We have found in the ashes what we have lost in the fire, 2018. Copyright of the artist | image by Kate Wolstenholme

project info:

name: Seeds of Hate and Hope

venue: Sainsbury Centre | @sainsburycentre, University of East Anglia

location: Norwich, United Kingdom

dates: 28 November 2025 – 17 May 2026

curators: Tafadzwa Makwabarara, Jelena Sofronijevic,

featured artists: Mona Hatoum, William Kentridge, Zoran Mušič, Peter Oloya, Kimberly Fulton Orozco, Indrė Šerpytytė, Gideon Rubin, Ishiuchi Miyako

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2025 has been a busy and exciting year for art, with exhibitions ranging from immersive installations to large-scale retrospectives. At designboom, we experienced many of these shows, some in person and others virtually, and took note of the ones that stayed with us. As the year comes to a close, we look back at the top exhibitions that made the strongest impression and are likely to be remembered for years to come. In Melbourne, Yayoi Kusama unveiled a dazzling new infinity room at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). At Tate Modern, Do Ho Suh presented intricate fabric architectures and during Milan Design Week 2025, A.A. Murakami filled Museo della Permanente with floating, mist-filled bubbles , together offering a glimpse into the creativity that shaped art this year.

Throughout 2025, designboom’s monthly radar series spotlighted exhibitions worth visiting, providing a guide to some of the most compelling shows around the world. In this feature, we revisit some of those highlights and celebrate the exhibitions that defined the art landscape of 2025. Read on to see the full list!

DO HO SUH’S ‘WALK THE HOUSE’ SOLO EXHIBITION AT TATE MODERN

Do Ho Suh, Nest/s, 2024, polyester, stainless steel, 410.1 x 375.4 x 2148.7 cm | courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin New York, Seoul and London, image by Jeon Taeg Su © Do Ho Suh

Tate Modern’s The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House marked a major moment for the Korean artist, presenting his first solo show in London in more than two decades. Known for his translucent fabric installations that explore home, memory, and identity, Suh transforms architectural details into delicate, almost dreamlike reflections on belonging. The exhibition brought together sculpture, video, drawing, and large-scale installations, showcasing key works from the past three decades alongside new site-specific pieces created for Tate Modern. ‘The space I’m interested in is not only a physical one but also an intangible, metaphorical, and psychological one,’ Suh shares. ‘For me, ‘space’ is that which encompasses everything.’

read more here 

FIFTY YEARS OF LAND ART BY ANDY GOLDSWORTHY IN EDINBURGH

Andy Goldsworthy, Edges made by finding leaves the same size. Tearing one in two. Spitting underneath and pressing flat on to another. Brough, Cumbria. Cherry patch. 4 November 1984, 1984 Cibachrome photograph | image courtesy of the artist

At Tate Modern, Do Ho Suh transformed architectural details into delicate reflections on home, memory, and identity, inviting viewers to reconsider the spaces they inhabit. In Edinburgh, Andy Goldsworthy took a similarly immersive approach, but on a grand, natural scale. Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years transformed the Royal Scottish Academy into a sweeping landscape, his largest indoor exhibition to date. Spanning five decades of land art and over 200 works, the show turned the historic galleries into a continuous, site-specific installation of cracked clay walls, windfallen oak branches, suspended reeds, and stones collected from more than 100 graveyards in Dumfriesshire. Responding directly to the RSA’s architecture, Goldsworthy’s work used space, light, and materials as active elements, extending his long-term exploration of the ties and tensions between people, buildings, and the land.

read more here 

STEVE MCQUEEN’S BASS AT SCHAULAGER BASEL

Steve McQueen, Bass, 2024, LED Light and Sound, courtesy the artist, co-commissioned work by Laurenz Foundation, Schaulager Basel, and Dia Art Foundation, Schaulager® Münchenstein/Basel (Installation view) | all images courtesy of Schaulager Basel, photos by Pati Grabowicz, © Steve McQueen

While Andy Goldsworthy shapes space with natural materials, Steve McQueen transforms it through light and sound. At Schaulager Basel, the artist’s immersive color and sound installation Bass filled the museum with over a thousand LED light tubes spanning its five levels, including the soaring atrium, paired with deep, resonant bass frequencies that move through a suspended array of speakers. The colored lights shifted slowly from deep red to ultraviolet, enveloping the interior in a continuously changing spectrum, while the sound flowed alongside, creating a tangible sense of presence within the architecture. 

One of McQueen’s most abstract works to date, Bass can be considered an exploration of how sound and light can occupy, define, and transform a space. ‘What I love about light and sound is that they are both created through movement and fluidity. They can be molded into any shape, like vapor or a scent; they can sneak into every nook and cranny,’ the British artist and filmmaker explains.

read more here

A.A. MURAKAMI’S BUBBLES AT MILAN DESIGN WEEK

Beyond the Horizon (2024) at Museo della Permanente | exhibition photos by DSL Studio, unless stated otherwise

As McQueen orchestrates light and sound to make space itself tangible, likewise, Murakami manipulates perception, using robotics and physics to conjure nature in unexpected forms. During Milan Design Week 2025, the collective presented two installations at Museo della Permanente for Opposites United: Eclipse of Perceptions. In The Cave, red backlighting illuminates replicated ancient bones rising from a pool of oil, lifted by robotic limbs that cast shifting shadows and haunting silhouettes. Beyond the Horizon offered a cool, contrasting space where giant bubbles drift overhead, releasing mist to form ephemeral clouds. Together, the works transformed the museum into a space where technology and nature meet in poetic dialogue.

read more here

YAYOI KUSAMA’S NEW INFINITY MIRROR AT NGV MELBOURNE

Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room–My Heart is Filled to the Brim with Sparkling Light, 2024, on display at the NGV International, Melbourne for the National Gallery of Victoria’s Yayoi Kusama exhibition from 15 December 2024 – 21 April 2025 © YAYOI KUSAMA | image by Sean Fennessy

From Murakami’s playful interplay of mist, motion, and robotics, the next highlight on our top exhibitions of 2025 is Yayoi Kusama’s mirrored cosmos. The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne presented the world premiere of Kusama’s new infinity room, My Heart is Filled to the Brim with Sparkling Light. Transforming the gallery into a seemingly endless celestial realm, the installation placed visitors at the center of the artist’s expansive universe. Through mirrored surfaces and choreographed points of light, the work created a shifting constellation of brightness and shadow, prompting viewers to consider their own presence within an infinite space.

The retrospective surveyed Kusama’s eight-decade practice with 200 works, including ten immersive installations. Beyond the main galleries, the NGV Great Hall featured Dots Obsession, an arrangement of massive inflated spheres, while more than 60 trees along St Kilda Road were wrapped in pink-and-white polka dots for Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees.

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AI WEIWEI’S FIVE WORKING SPACES AT AEDES ARCHITECTURE FORUM

image courtesy of Aedes Architecture Forum and Ai Weiwei Studio

Where Kusama examines the cosmic and the boundless, Ai Weiwei grounds his exhibition in the spaces that define him, revealing how the studio itself becomes an extension of identity and resistance. At Berlin’s Aedes Architecture Forum, Five Working Spaces offers an intimate look into the artist’s studios across continents, each reflecting the political pressures, personal memories, and creative impulses that have shaped his career. A central focus of the show was Weiwei’s studio in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal, built using traditional Chinese woodworking methods. 

‘My studio is an extension of my body and mental state,’ Ai Weiwei tells designboom. ‘Of course it’s political. Anyone who sees the exhibition can understand — it’s not that I want it to be political. It just is political.’

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THE MANY LIVES OF THE NAKAGIN CAPSULE TOWER AT MOMA

night time at the Nakagin Capsule Tower, with Mr. Takayuki Sekine seen through the window of capsule B1004, 2016. image © Jeremie Souteyrat

As Ai Weiwei’s studios highlighted the ways environments shape an artist’s identity, the next exhibition turned to a building that itself became a symbol of radical architectural thinking. MoMA in New York brought the Nakagin Capsule Tower back into public view, reframing its half-century story through a fully restored capsule and extensive archival material. The Many Lives of the Nakagin Capsule Tower exhibition revisited the Tokyo landmark designed in 1972 and dismantled in 2022, long regarded as one of the clearest expressions of Metabolism in Japan. At the center of the exhibition was capsule A1305, returned to near-original condition with its modular furniture, audio controls, and Sony color TV that once defined its compact domestic life. More than 40 supplementary materials, models, brochures, film reels, and interviews, traced how the tower’s prefabricated units evolved far beyond their initial purpose.

read more here

CELEBRATING RYUICHI SAKAMOTO AT MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART TOKYO

Nakaya Fujiko, London Fog, Fog Performance #03779, 2017, Installation view from “BMW Tate Live Exhibition: Ten Days Six Nights,” Tate Modern, London, UK Collaboration: Min Tanaka (Dance), Shiro Takatani (Lighting), Ryuichi Sakamoto (Music). Photo by Noriko Koshida

The next exhibition on the list looks beyond architecture to the world of sound, with a major retrospective dedicated to composer and artist Ryuichi Sakamoto. At the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Ryuichi Sakamoto | seeing sound, hearing time offered a comprehensive look at the late artist’s pioneering journey through music, technology, and visual expression. Bringing together celebrated works alongside installations conceived before his passing, the exhibition captured the breadth of a career defined by experimentation and cross-disciplinary curiosity. Tracing Sakamoto’s evolution from electronic innovation to environmental awareness, the show highlights how he expanded the possibilities of composition by integrating spatial, visual, and digital elements. Immersive rooms, archival recordings, and rarely seen materials reveal his deep engagement with the fragility of the natural world and the passage of time. The result was an intimate portrait of an artist whose influence continues to resonate across contemporary art and culture.

read more here

TATIANA TROUVÉ STRANGE LIFE OF THINGS BY TAT PALAZZO GRASSI

The Guardian, 2020 | photo by Florian Kleinefenn

Where Sakamoto shaped emotion through sound and space, Tatiana Trouvé builds atmospheres through objects, constellations, and drawn narratives across Palazzo Grassi. In The Strange Life of Things, the Pinault Collection presented a major solo exhibition of Trouvé’s sculptures and drawings, curated by Caroline Bourgeois and James Lingwood. The show traced the artist’s ongoing interest in journeys, both real and imagined, through chair sculptures, installations, and intricate drawings. These pieces form interconnected worlds that shift between past, present, and future, drawing viewers into landscapes where memory, imagination, and lived experience overlap. 

read more here

PRECIOUS OKOYOMON’S PLUSH COMPANIONS AT KUNSTHAUS BREGENZ

Precious Okoyomon, ONE EITHER LOVES ONESELF OR KNOWS ONESELF, Exhibition view second floor Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2025, in the belly of the sun endless, 2025 | photo: Markus Tretter © Precious Okoyomon, Kunsthaus Bregenz courtesy of the artist and Kunsthaus Bregenz

An even more surreal world than Trouvé’s emerged at Kunsthaus Bregenz with Precious Okoyomon’s dreamlike environments. The artist and poet unveiled ONE EITHER LOVES ONESELF OR KNOWS ONESELF, an exhibition that reimagined the museum as a sequence of psychoanalytic chambers, dream habitats, and intimate interior worlds. Returning to the institution after debuting there as its youngest-ever exhibiting artist, Okoyomon filled the space with plush companions, lush garden enclosures, and installations that blurred the boundary between comfort and unease. Her poetry threaded through the galleries, shaping an experience that felt at once childlike and deeply introspective. Moving through these shifting environments, visitors were invited to confront the tender edges of self-perception, encountering a universe where transformation is constant and the subconscious becomes momentarily tangible. 

read more here

see designboom’s TOP 10 stories archive:

2024 — 2023 — 2022 — 2021 — 2020 — 2019 —  2018 — 2017 — 2016 — 2015 — 2014 — 2013

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Pierre Augustin Rose introduces its first collection of Aubusson tapestry pieces, bringing historic woven surfaces into conversation with the studio’s contemporary furniture designs. The exhibition, now on view at the gallery’s New York location, frames tapestry as a material presence rather than decoration. It allows textile to operate with the weight and authority of an architectural finish.

Produced in Aubusson, the French town whose weaving tradition dates back to the 15th century, each tapestry carries the density and depth associated with centuries of skilled labor. Recognized by UNESCO for its cultural significance, this craft relies on slow construction, with color and pattern built through successive passes of thread. In this context, tapestry reads as a layered and durable structure, rather than as a soft accessory.

images © Matteo Verzini

a new life for aging tapestry fragments

For this collection, Pierre Augustin Rose integrates genuine 18th-century Aubusson tapestry fragments into new designs, allowing historic textiles to shape the identity of each piece. The tapestries bring visible signs of age, such as subtle fading, softened contours, and irregularities from hand weaving. These elements that contrast with the precision of the studio’s furniture forms. Wood frames and upholstered volumes serve as measured supports and give the tapestry space to assert its own presence.

The dialogue between old and new remains restrained and deliberate. The tapestry functions as a surface with memory, while the contemporary form establishes scale, proportion, and use. Together they produce objects that feel architectural in intent, designed to occupy a room with the same confidence as built elements. Through this approach, Pierre Augustin Rose positions tapestry as a living material that’s capable of shaping interior space while carrying forward the accumulated history of craft.

Pierre Augustin Rose presents its first collection incorporating Aubusson tapestry

the collection treats tapestry as a material surface over a decorative backdrop

Aubusson weaving brings centuries of French craft into contemporary design

each piece integrates authentic eighteenth century tapestry fragments

furniture forms provide structure and proportion for the historic textiles

visible age and patina shape the visual character of the works

the collection positions tapestry as a living element of modern interiors

project info:

name: Aubusson Collection

gallery: Pierre Augustin Rose

location: 224 Centre Street, New York, NY

photography: © Matteo Verzini | @matteoverzini

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