Women rule museums this summer, taking over grand halls and big galleries. Pipilotti Rist is set to do a major commission in Beijing, while Vija Celmins will get a retrospective in Switzerland that will feature a large chunk of her oeuvre. Barbara Kruger will bring her off-kilter textual creations to Spain, and Fiona Tan will become the first artist ever to organize a show at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
And it’s not just living women—the dead will rise too. Jadwiga Maziarska, Suzanne Duchamp, Brigitte Kowanz, and Mavis Pusey will get overdue surveys, while a show in Massachusetts will cast its gaze toward British artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who did much to advocate for female liberation.
Perhaps you crave a big biennial? Closely watched shows of the sort will return in Berlin, Liverpool, and Santa Fe. But the summer’s most sizable group shows are ones with rigorous art-historical frameworks: a São Paulo survey will look at Brazil’s strain of Pop art, and a Sydney blockbuster will cast its gaze toward Yirrkala, a small town with a rich tradition of Aboriginal art. Even while many are vacationing, it’s clear that some curators still want their museum-going audiences to think hard.
Below, a look at 38 museum exhibitions and biennials to visit this summer.
The post “38 Museum Shows and Biennials to See This Summer” by Alex Greenberger was published on 05/28/2025 by www.artnews.com