With summer time kicking off and holiday plans brewing, the art world is laying down its cards to entice museum visitors from all around the world. In Europe, there are major events taking place: most notably the Venice Architecture Biennale, where over 300 exhibitors are exploring climate change in architecture. Opening later in June, biennials in Berlin and Ljubljana, Slovenia, also present cutting-edge contemporary art that’s worth traveling for.
In museums, meanwhile, an overarching theme of the upcoming exhibitions is women artists receiving overdue acclaim, from the 18th-century court painter Rachel Ruysch to the late artist Emily Kam Kngwarray. Takako Yamaguchi, who’s been seeing new success in her seventies, is another big name getting her due this year.
From a Wolfgang Tillmans show that will mark the end of an era of Centre Pompidou, to an exhibition of queer photography at the Getty, here are 11 museum exhibitions worth looking forward to this summer.
Kim Tschang-Yeul
Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Korea, Seoul
Aug. 22, 2025–Jan. 4, 2026
One of the first iterations of “Water Drops” by Kim Tschang-Yeul, now in the collection of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Korea (MMCA), was painted in 1971. This series of abstract canvases defined the artist’s practice until his death in 2021. Raw and monochromatic canvases are adorned with photorealistic depictions of transparent liquid droplets, about to give into gravity and fall, reminding the viewer of clear morning dew.
Marking the first major museum exhibition of his works since his passing, the MMCA will hold a retrospective of his work just before Frieze Seoul 2025 opens. The exhibition will follow the artist’s career trajectory beginning from the 1950s, when he formed part of the Modern Artists’ Association in South Korea and joined the Art Informel movement. Other works, from his New York and Paris periods in the 1960s and ’70s, as well as later periods, will also be on view. The exhibition will also shine light on the tragedies of modern Korean history and interpret Kim’s “Water Drops” as well as his other bodies of work—taking inspiration from mid-century movements like Op Art—in that historical context.
—Monica Jae Yeon Moon
