1st half of 2025 Exhibitions
The first half of 2025 promises an array of must-see exhibitions, highlighting groundbreaking works and celebrated artists across the globe. From contemporary innovations to historical retrospectives, these events offer unique cultural experiences for art enthusiasts.
Anselm Kiefer: Where Have All the Flowers GoneVan Gogh Museum & Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsMarch 7 - June 9, 2025
Vincent van Gogh and Anselm Kiefer — two artistic titans separated by time but deeply connected through practice — are being brought together in an ambitious, two-venue show that’s opening in Amsterdam in March. A collaboration between the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which has long championed Anselm Kiefer’s work, and the Royal Academy in London hints that this is going to be an exciting prospect.
Kiefer traveled in Van Gogh’s footsteps as a 17-year-old and has remained fascinated by the Post-Impressionist throughout his career. At the Van Gogh Museum, exhibits will include drawings Kiefer made on a trip from the Netherlands to Belgium and France as a teenager, retracing Van Gogh’s footsteps. The Stedelijk, meanwhile, is bringing out every Kiefer work in its collection for the first time.
Ruth Asawa: A RetrospectiveSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA5 April - 2 September, 2025
A major retrospective of the American sculptor Ruth Asawa will be travelling across the US this year, starting in San Francisco. When US president Joe Biden posthumously awarded Ruth Asawa a National Medal of the Arts in October, the White House cited the fabled artist and educator’s “groundbreaking Modernism” as well as her “championing art for everyone”.
Throughout 2025, audiences on both the East and West coasts of the US will get to immerse themselves in Asawa’s exultant, filigree work in the first national and international museum survey dedicated to this quietly extraordinary artist. Spanning six decades of her career and showcasing more than 300 pieces, the exhibition delves into the full spectrum of Asawa’s practice. It highlights her mastery of materials and techniques, with a particular focus on her longtime San Francisco home and garden as the heart of her creative universe.
Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers
Guggenheim New York, USA
April 18, 2025 - January 18, 2026
This year, the Guggenheim’s iconic rotunda will be transformed by African American artist Rashid Johnson in an ambitious mid-career survey showcasing the breadth of his three-decade-long career. Featuring 90 works, the exhibition spans Johnson’s diverse practice, from black-soap paintings and spray-painted text pieces to monumental sculptures, film and video.
It celebrates Johnson’s pivotal role in championing Black culture and aesthetics while seamlessly weaving together popular expressions and art history. At its core, the show probes the intricate relationship between the individual human psyche and the sweeping historical events that shape collective experience.
From Odesa to Berlin: European Painting of the 16th to 19th Century
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Germany
January 24 - June 22, 2025
60 Ukrainian refugee pictures, evacuated from their home in Odesa at the start of the war will be shown alongside works from Berlin collections, that includes religious art, still life, portraiture, and landscape organized into a series of nine themes. The paintings in question are by European artists from the 16th to 19th century and include works by figures as Andreas Achenbach, Francesco Granacci, Frans Hals, Cornelis de Heem, Roelant Savery, Bernardo Strozzi, Alessandro Magnasco and Frits Thaulow.
Although many of the artists are not household names, the curators Sabine Lata, research associate at the Gemäldegalerie, and Dagmar Hirschfelder, director of the Gemäldegalerie, with conservational supervision by restorer-conservers Anja Lindner-Michael and Thuja Seidel, have deliberately chosen works that emphasize the cultural and stylistic links between the two collections. The idea is to emphasize the historic ties between Ukraine and Western Europe.
Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
February 8, 2025 through May 11, 2025
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is kicking off the year with a landmark exhibition — the first comprehensive U.S. showcase dedicated to German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich and his poetic celebration of the “sublime in nature”.
Organized in collaboration with the Alte Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and Hamburger Kunsthalle, “Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature” marks the 250th anniversary of Friedrich’s birth. It brings together a selection of seventy-five works, including unprecedented loans from more than thirty lenders across Europe and North America.
Siena 1300-1350: The Rise of PaintingNational Gallery, London, UKMarch 8 - June 22, 2025
Siena 1300-1350 is arguably the biggest show in London next year. It also acts as a grand finale to the National Gallery’s 200th birthday celebrations and a curtain-raiser for the reopening of their Renaissance galleries in the Sainsbury Wing. This exhibition delves into the golden age of Sienese painting, a pivotal period in European art history. Siena, a thriving city-state in medieval Italy, became a hub of artistic innovation during the early 14th century.
The exhibition focuses on the transformative works of the Sienese School, characterized by their luminous colours, intricate detailing, and deeply spiritual narratives. The collection will include Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Pietro Lorenzetti among others.
Rarely loaned masterpieces from the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena, Italy's premier collection of Sienese art will be present; early Renaissance altarpieces, many of which retain their original gilded frames will be included; a digital reconstruction of Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s lost works, offering insights into his creative process will also complete the set.