Feature

The Must-See Exhibitions of 2025 in the UK and Europe – From Turner and Constable to Wes Anderson and Tracey Emin

15 Jan 2025

by ArtRabbit

ArtRabbit's top picks for blockbuster exhibitions across the UK and Europe in 2025: from groundbreaking retrospectives to immersive installations, celebrating history, identity, and innovation at the continent’s leading art institutions—these are the must-see events you won’t want to miss.

As we look ahead to 2025, Europe’s art institutions are gearing up to dazzle audiences with an extraordinary array of exhibitions. From groundbreaking retrospectives and overdue tributes to immersive, boundary-pushing installations, museums are set to explore themes of history, identity, and innovation like never before. We’ve put together our most anticipated shows of the year, spotlighting exhibitions that promise to inspire, challenge, and delight. Whether you’re an art history enthusiast, a cinephile, or simply seeking beauty and meaning, read on to find the major exhibitions that will define 2025’s art calendar - and why they’re worth planning a trip for!

Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism at The Royal Academy of Arts, London

28 Jan 2025 – 21 Apr 2025

This landmark exhibition at the Royal Academy, London, showcases over 130 works by ten key Brazilian artists, offering audiences a fresh lens on 20th-century Brazilian Modernism. Featuring rarely seen masterpieces from Brazilian collections, it celebrates cultural diversity, Indigenous identity, and Afro-Brazilian influences, spotlighting underexposed figures like Anita Malfatti and Rubem Valentim.

The Face Magazine: Culture Shift the National Portrait Gallery, London

20 Feb – 18 May 2025

The Face Magazine: Culture Shift celebrates iconic fashion images and portraits from The Face, a trail-blazing youth culture and style magazine that has shaped the creative and cultural landscape in Britain and beyond. Musicians featured on its covers achieved global success and the models it championed – including a young Kate Moss – became the most recognisable faces of their time. Bringing together the work of over 80 photographers, including Sheila Rock, Stéphane Sednaoui, Corinne Day, David Sims, Elaine Constantine and Sølve Sundsbø, the exhibition will feature over 200 photographs from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s onwards, and explore how The Face played a vital role in creating contemporary culture.

Goya to Impressionism - Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection at The Courtauld, London

14 Feb 2025 – 26 Mar 2025

This unprecedented exhibition at The Courtauld features masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, including works by Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, and Picasso. Highlighting Impressionist and Post-Impressionist gems, many are shown in the UK for the first time, offering a rare glimpse into this extraordinary Swiss collection. Oskar Reinhart was a contemporary of Samuel Courtauld, the founder of The Courtauld Institute of Art, with whom he shared a similar appreciation for artists. The two met in 1932, the year The Courtauld was founded. Strong parallels between the Reinhart Collection and The Courtauld Gallery’s permanent collection create the perfect context for this exhibition.

in situ: Refik Anadol at Guggenheim Bilbao, Bilbao

7 Mar - 9 Oct 2025

You might remember him from his Twitter spat with Jerry Saltz, when New York Magazine’s senior art critic likened his 2022 MoMA installation, Unsupervised, to a screensaver. Make of it what you will, but Refik Anadol is a pioneer in his field. His immersive, architectural, and multisensory debut in situ exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao might make you a fan too. Using digitised data as material and AI as a collaborator, Anadol reimagines memory, creativity, and our engagement with the world in the age of machine intelligence.

Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ‒1350 at The National Gallery, London

8 Mar 2025 – 22 Jun 2025

Step into 14th-century Siena at the National Gallery’s dazzling exhibition, reuniting masterpieces like Duccio’s Maestà panels and Simone Martini’s Orsini polyptych for the first time in centuries. Expect gilded glass, illuminated manuscripts, ivory Madonnas, rugs, silks, and more. With over 100 exquisite works, Siena: The Rise of Painting captures Siena’s golden age, where emotion, collaboration, and artistic innovation flourished, influencing Europe’s creative energy.

Edvard Munch Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, London

13 Mar 2025 – 15 Jun 2025

The National Portrait Gallery is on a roll this year, with another of their shows making our cut. Edvard Munch Portraits, the UK’s first exhibition exploring Munch’s mastery of portraiture, reveals how this intimate yet powerful genre was central to his art. Featuring family, friends, and self-portraits, his bold colours and energetic brushwork transformed sitters into icons, shaping modern portraiture and delving into universal human emotions.

Tracey Emin: Sex and Solitude at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

16 Mar 2025 – 20 Jul 2025

Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi will host Tracey Emin’s first Italian institutional exhibition. Known for blending autobiography with experimental techniques, Emin’s raw, emotional works explore vulnerability, love, and sacrifice. Featuring historical and recent pieces across varied media, this landmark show highlights Emin’s profound impact on feminist discourse and contemporary art’s portrayal of the relationship between the female body and existence.

Klára Hosnedlová. embrace at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

1 May 2025 – 26 Oct 2025

Klára Hosnedlová’s largest solo exhibition, embrace, transforms Hamburger Bahnhof’s historic hall into a utopian landscape exploring home, utopia, and everyday life through political systems. Featuring nine-metre tapestries, site-specific sculptures, and large-scale embroideries, this monumental installation intertwines Czech border histories with innovative contemporary sculpture.

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz

7 Jun 2025 – 28 Sep 2025

Kunsthaus Bregenz presents a major exhibition by Małgorzata Mirga-Tas. You might remember her captivating 2022 contribution to the Venice Biennale, where she represented the Polish Pavilion with stunning handsewn textile collages created with her relatives. Combining these textiles with newly developed wax sculptures, her art confronts the marginalisation of Roma and Sinti communities, challenges stereotypes, and celebrates feminist, inclusive narratives. This is a must-see showcase of transcultural creativity and social repair.

Wolfgang Tillmans. Rien ne nous y préparait – Tout nous y préparait at Centre Pompidou, Paris

13 Jun 2025 – 22 Sep 2025

As the Centre Pompidou prepares to close for a five-year renovation, Wolfgang Tillmans has been given carte blanche to transform 6,000 m² of Level 2 at the Bibliothèque publique d’information (Bpi) in a grand finale. The renowned German artist explores the library’s architecture and purpose—knowledge sharing, accessibility, and transformation—through his unique lens. Rooted in 1990s counterculture, Tillmans blends photography with video, music, text, and performance, offering a reflective and inspiring farewell to this iconic space.

Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh

26 Jul 2025 – 2 Nov 2025

This summer, Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years takes over the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh with over 200 works spanning photographs, sculptures, and expansive new installations. Featuring major new onsite creations, this must-see exhibition celebrates Goldsworthy’s extraordinary artistry with natural materials in his home country of Scotland.

Michaelina Wautier. Painter at Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna

30 Sep 2025 – 25 Jan 2026

The Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna’s fall exhibition of 2025 shines a long-overdue spotlight on Michaelina Wautier, a pioneering female artist of the seventeenth century. Often overshadowed by her male contemporaries, Wautier is celebrated for her mastery of portraiture, history painting, and genre scenes - a rarity for women of her time. This remarkable exhibition offers a rare chance to view almost her entire oeuvre, showcasing her technical skill and innovative compositions alongside works by renowned contemporaries Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck. It not only highlights her artistic brilliance but also repositions her within the narrative of Baroque art, giving her the recognition she so richly deserves.

Wes Anderson at Design Museum, London

21 Nov 2025 – 4 May 2026

For the first time, museum visitors can immerse themselves in Wes Anderson’s complete filmography, celebrating the iconic director’s lasting impact on contemporary cinema through his instantly recognisable sets, motifs, and sumptuous style. This retrospective at the Design Museum traces Anderson’s evolution from his 1990s experiments to his Oscar-winning masterpieces. Produced in collaboration with La Cinémathèque Française, the exhibition offers a deep dive into Anderson’s cinematic universe, showcasing original props, costumes, and personal artefacts.

Turner and Constable at Tate Britain, London

27 Nov 2025 – 12 Apr 2026

The definitive exhibition of two pivotal British artists in the 250th year of their births, this landmark show celebrates the intertwined lives and rivalry of Turner and Constable, Britain’s greatest landscape painters. Raised in contrasting worlds, Turner’s dramatic sunsets and sublime vistas clashed with Constable’s intimate, authentic depictions of beloved places. Explore unexpected sides to both artists through sketchbooks, personal items, and must-see works like Turner’s groundbreaking later paintings, which inspired Monet, and Constable’s expressive cloud studies. This unmissable exhibition offers a rare chance to see these towering figures side by side, as they were often compared in their own time.

→ More exhibitions and events in London, Berlin, New York, and Los Angeles

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