Summer is here and our calendars are packed with exciting trips – these are the exhibitions to see in June 2025, wherever you find yourself in the world.
From a rare chance to tour Cézanne’s well-loved family home in Provence where a few of his earliest works were recently discovered, to Jenny Saville’s much-anticipated exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery, these are 26 of the best global exhibitions to see in June 2025.
Jenny Saville: The Anatomy Of Painting, National Portrait Gallery
Pop art colours, subjects distorted to incur the emotional response of a viewer, and bold brushstrokes: figurative art dominated the styles of leading artists of the early to mid-20th century, including the prestigious canvases of Pablo Picasso and David Hockney. Leading contemporary artist Jenny Saville is revitalising the enigmatic style with her striking portraiture, set to decorate the National Portrait Gallery’s walls this summer, opening this month, with 50 works spanning Saville’s 30-year career to date. Moving between charcoal drawings to large-scale oil paintings, each piece is packed with intrigue and explores the shift in conventional beauty through history, including the controversy of female nudity and the constant interrogation of female subjects, artists, and viewers. Jenny Saville’s work breaks down this intrigue, and incites new conversations around female form and the energy of this pioneering style of art.
Cézanne, Musée Granet, Provence, France
Cascading bowls of apples and oranges, female painters gathered around a blue lake, water jugs, vases of tulips, ordinary people during different throngs of life – each found themselves the muse of French impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, who helped changed contemporary perceptions of art, life, and transience. Among its lavender rows, and singing cicadas, Provence is home to the globally celebrated and loved French painter, Paul Cézanne, who was born in Aix-en-Provence, and the region’s beautiful museum is housing many of his iconic paintings this year with an extensive exhibition. Over 100 works will be on display ranging from drawings to watercolours and oils on canvas, with Cézanne’s well-loved Jas de Bouffan’s estate at the heart. Some of the painter’s earliest works were produced in this house, some of which were recently found in the estate’s Grand Salon during recent renovations in the hopes of reopening the estate to the public. This summer, tours of the property are available to book.
Richard Avedon: Italian Days, Gagosian, Rome
“You may have the universe if I may have Italy” Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi was quoted to say. This seems to ring true for enigmatic photographer Richard Avedon, at least for his latest exhibition at Gagosian Rome, Italian Days. Shot on the streets of Rome, Sicily, and Venice these black and white portraits are more than just street photographs. As the exhibition eloquently outlines, these seemingly incidental snapshots and quotidian moments have gradually established Avedon’s distinctive and heavily crafted style. Many of the angles, poses, and styles are mirrored in Avedon’s later-famous portraits of the likes of Marilyn Monroe.
Loewe Craft Prize, Loewe Foundation, Madrid
Loewe and the brand’s host of especially-selected craft artists are proving that crafts have the prestige and technique more often associated with fine art. Craft means anything that is handmade, and so Loewe’s exhibition spans ceramics to sculpture to woven art. The exhibition is a display of Loewe’s annual Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, where Kunimasa Aoki took home the winning prize for their anamorphic terracotta sculpture that explores how building materials (in this instance, clay) distorts with time and pressure. You can see Aoki’s work alongside another 29 participating artists on display in Madrid this summer.
Marlene Dumas: Cycladic Blues, The Museum of Cycladic Art, Greece
South African artist Marlene Dumas might have presented in the most prestigious galleries and institutions around the world – from Paris to Amsterdam to New York – but this exhibition at The Museum of Cycladic Art marks her debut solo exhibition in Greece. Aptly titled Cycladic Blues (for its alluring setting) the exhibition amalgamates 40 of Dumas’ works – each hand-selected by Dumas herself – alongside a selection of artefacts that Dumas also selected from the museum’s archives that thematically resonate with Dumas’ characteristically fluid portraiture work.
InSight: Photos And Stories From The Archives, National Museum Of The American Indian, Washington D.C.
Selected from more than half a million photographs in the National Museum of the American Indian’s archives (part of the Smithsonian Institution group of museums), Insight: Photos and Stories from the Archives offers a rare and personal view of Indigenous people in America throughout time. Each photograph represents a personal story from the community, and most have been donated by families over the past few decades. Curated by three of the museum’s archivists (Emily Moazami, Rachel Menyuk, Nathan Sowry) this exhibition represents an incredibly important part of American history, and is a celebration, commemoration, and appreciation of the people who made it.
Dennis Morris: Music + Life: The Photographer's Gallery, London
What do Bob Marley, Marianne Faithfull, and The Sex Pistols have in common? Other than representing some of the most era-defining music artists to have performed in the 20th century, each has been photographed by Dennis Morris and are on display this month in London. The Photographer’s Gallery is back with another epic exhibition spotlighting the photographers to know about. This June, it’s British-Jamaican photographer Dennis Morris at the forefront, who through intimate portraits captures a whole generation of music artists and performers off-stage, during their day-to-day lives. You see another side to these icons, who changed the music industry from reggae to punk – and society through it. And Dennis Morris captured it.
Still Showing …
New Opening: V&A East Storehouse, London
Art shouldn’t always be contained to gallery walls, and especially not inside archives that lay preserved but unseen. At least that’s what the V&A believes. In a world first (in terms of size and scale) the V&A opened the V&A East Storehouse in May, housing over half a million works spanning painting, sculpture, photography, print, fashion, decorative arts … the list goes on (and on) across four expansive levels. This is where you’ll now find much of the V&A’s archives, except they’re open to the public. You’ll see Sir Elton John’s stage costumes, stage set designs by Pablo Picasso, and recordings of live David Bowie performances (almost) at your fingertips. General admission is free and does not require booking, however you will need to book the “Order an Object” service which allows you to examine the archival pieces you wish to look at up close.
Cecil Beaton's Garden Party, The Garden Museum, London
In 1979, Cecil Beaton proclaimed “My garden is the greatest joy of my life, after my friends. Both are worth living for.” Clearly, his six-decade-long career of photographing the Queen and models for Vogue come after Beaton’s horticultural pride. So you can bet his florals were something to uphold. Flowers carry through to every aspect of Beaton’s work and Cecil Beaton’s Garden Party at The Garden Museum will show everything from the floral costumes worn by Audrey Hepburn in the 1964 film My Fair Lady as well as a Surrealist rose-applique coat, among others. The latter, Cecil Beaton himself debuted from his well-pruned garden in Ashcombe for his themed 1937 Fête Champêtre garden extravaganza. Flamboyant might just be an understatement here.
Flowers - Flora In Contemporary Art & Culture, Saatchi Gallery
Gestures of romance, markers of the seasons and muses for art – dating from antiquity to the contemporary – flowers have always played an important, but varying, role in culture. Saatchi Gallery is tributing an entire exhibition to the role of flora in contemporary creative work, spanning fashion, photography, body painting, archival objects, sketches, paintings, and more. The gallery has acquired over 500 works to pull the exhibition together: six hyperrealist floral brooches by Buccellati, including the bejewelled 1929 Orchid; images by Nick Knight; tattoo work by Daniel The Gardener; and designs by Finnish lifestyle brand Marimekko, plus British designers Mary Quant and Vivienne Westwood. A highlight of the exhibition is the installation of 100,000 dried flowers by artist Rebecca Louise Law that takes over an entire room for a very photographic moment, proving the mystical allure flowers continue to have today.
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, Met Museum, New York
As soon as May rolls around – specifically the first Monday in May – there is one thing on art and fashion lovers’ minds: the Met Gala, and the consequent Met Museum exhibition. Forget anything else you’ve heard, 2025 is the year of the dandy. Superfine: Tailoring Black Style is a historical and cultural exploration of Black style over three hundred years. Sartorial trends are closely interwoven with culture, and how Black people have used dress for identity and politics through time. Photographs, films, literary texts, decorative artists, clothes and more, starting from the 18th century and moving us all the way up to the present day, narrate these stories and voices and talent, as a multitude of artists have contributed their own take on Dandyism via lots of different mediums.
Michaela Yearwood-Dan: No Time For Despair, Hauser and Wirth, London
No Time For Despair is carving out hope and joy in abundance – something we definitely need more of. The pleasure of art for happiness – both the act of creating it as well as enjoying it – honestly feels quite radical, and special, and admirable in a time where art is always asked to do “more”. However, Michaela Yearwood-Dan’s work still says a lot. Michaela Yearwood-Dan’s paintings, sculptures, and ceramics, are known for their joyful use of colour, mediums and scales, through which they carve out attention to and spaces for “quieter tones of femininity and queer community”. Through art, Michaela Yearwood-Dan has carved out a space for Blackness, queerness and femininity to exist in peace in a busy and often narrow-minded industry. Coming from the perspective of a Black working class woman, this says a lot about her craft.
In the Mood for Love: Hockney in London, Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, London
David Hockney is no stranger to any of us. His paintings span museums, galleries, and private collections around the world (including the current exhibition at Paris’ Fondation Louis Vuitton), and it’s hard to mention pop art without his work springing straight to mind. However, little is known about his early life and career, and breakthrough success. This is the subject of Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert gallery’s new exhibition, In the Mood for Love. It’s the first exhibition focusing only on Hockney’s formative years including his early recognition at the Royal College of Art, with 15 paintings ranging between 1959 to 1962 (when Hockney was in his early twenties) and rare works on paper.
The Human Situation, Lévy Gorvy Dayan, New York
The Human Situation: Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel, Sylvia Sleigh, curated by Saara Pritchard, focuses on how it felt to live during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, from the female lens of these incredible artists. Each woman worked in New York City, working in conversation with one another, and often exhibiting together. Each artist has a characteristic style: bold colours, exaggerated forms, and a focus on people via modes of Abstract Expressionism, Pop, and Minimalism. Importantly, each worked during the civil and women’s rights movements, and incorporated these topics into their paintings. This exhibition comes as part of Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s mission to spotlight more female artists – contemporary as well as those with a strong creative legacy.
A K Dolven: amazon, National Museum of Norway, Oslo
Norwegian artist A. K. Dolven is one of the most prominent modern artists working from Oslo, with work spanning film, sound, sculpture, painting, and public installations. The National Museum of Norway is hosting her first ever retrospective this year – a prestigious spot to host your first, testament to the impact of her work – with 80 pieces spanning four decades of her career. The art will be carefully spaced all across the museum, and in unique ways, to reference the natural environment and how we, as humans, live within it. While the focus is on place in lots of these artworks, human presence glimpses through in subtle ways – whether a shadow, the sound of breath, or the hint of a fingertip.
Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules, Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain
“Inclusive and generous, free-ranging and enthusiastic” poet Frank O’Hara writes about Helen Frankenthaler, which eloquently encapsulates the painter’s “without rules” approach to the art. Aptly, Painting Without Rules is the title for Frankenthaler’s exhibition. Six decades of the artist’s works are hung on the ground floor of northern Spain’s most prestigious art institution, which have to be visited in person to appreciate their scale, which Frankenthaler would paint using the floor rather than an easel. In every painting, you’ll find a clever attention to dimension and reference to movement, ensuring that these Colour Field works of art are never static. Helen Frankenthaler believed that art should “always have another dimension to dream in” the curator, Douglas Dreishpoon, explains. “Ambiguity is key,” he adds.
Helen Frankenthaler was an influential figure in the abstract expressionist art movement that gained traction after the second world war thanks to contemporaries like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell. Each painter was a source of inspiration for Frankenthaler, and so their works are also woven into this exhibition. While working amongst many influential male artists, Helen Frankenthaler never wanted to be known as a ”woman painter”. Though, while a painter first and foremost, Helen was still acutely aware of her femininity, and unavoidably when you look at her art you see qualities that are undoubtedly feminine, with subtle nods to the emotional and personal.
David Hockney 25, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France
“Do remember, they can’t cancel the spring” is a reassuring phrase, one that David Hockney sent to his friends during the pandemic. This hopeful sentiment, as well as Hockney’s continued impact on the communities around him, will carry through this new exhibition in Paris, that is exceptional in scale as well as quality of the art displayed (it is David Hockney after all). Seven decades of work (1955 to 2025), the exhibition takes over an entire building within the fondation and features over 400 of the artist’s works. David Hockney himself commented that “this exhibition means an enormous amount because it is the largest exhibition I’ve ever had – 11 rooms in the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Some of the most recent paintings I’m working on now will be included in it, and I think it’s going to be very good.” No doubt that this will be the exhibition to visit this summer.
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, Photographer's Gallery, London, UK
Established in 1996, the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize awards the most innovative international contemporary photographers working at the moment. The 2025 shortlist has just been announced, featuring four finalists (Cristina de Middel, Rahim Fortune, Tarrah Krajnak, Lindokuhle Sobekwa) who work across documentary photography, styled images, self-portraiture, performance, archives, and more. A selection of works by each photographer will be on display, including Cristina de Middel’s presentation of the Central American migration route across Mexico; Rahim Fortune’s archival examination of the relationship between photographer and his local communities in Southern America; Peruvian-American Tarrah Krajnak’s self-portraits; and South African Lindokhule Sobekwa’s family projects.
Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style, Design Museum, London, UK
Thanks to Pamela Anderson, the words “Baywatch” and “red swimsuit” have practically become synonymous. And you can now see this infamous piece of swimwear on display at the Design Museum. Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style is heroing a whole history of swimwear as curated by guest curator Amber Butchart: the evolution of style, materials, body image, its role in pop culture, Britain’s boom in lido culture… From Tom Daley’s speedos worn during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games (yes, really) to fashion’s viral mermaid core that has rippled through social media over the past few years, you’re in for an aquatic treat with this exhibition.
Polaroids, Helmet Newton Foundation, Berlin, Germany
As part of EMOP (European Month of Photography) in Berlin, the Helmut Newton Foundation has opened a new group exhibition, Polaroids, spotlighting the very best by Helmut Newton as well as an impressive 60 of his contemporaries working with the same formats. Once a pioneering method of photography, something special still remains about polaroids, perhaps because only one version of each polaroid exists, another exactly the same can’t be printed. The polaroids on display have been curated from the Polaroid company’s collection of over 4,400 works by 800 photographers for their captivating use of the format.
Cartier, V&A London, UK
At this point, ‘Cartier’ has practically become synonymous with the word ‘jewellery’ and all things that glitter. Starting from the turn of the 20th century up until the present, the V&A’s new exhibition, simply titled Cartier, traces the heritage of this prestigious brand, from its humble beginnings in 1847 when Louis-François Cartier took over the workshop of Adolphe Picard in Paris to the distinguished brand it is today. Over 350 carefully selected pieces will be on display, divided into three main sections that move between design, craftsmanship, materials, as well as the brand’s signature emblems and references.
Vanessa Bell: A World Of Form And Colour, Charleston House
100 years on from the 1920s, when modernist art grappled with the tumultuous social and economic landscape, painter Vanessa Bell has been at the forefront of many exhibitions in the UK this year, from Charleston House in Lewes to the Courtauld in the capital. The latest to celebrate her pioneering impact on the widely popular period of art is Vanessa Bell: A World of Form and Colour. What makes this exhibition so special? Despite Vanessa Bell’s art hung in most of the UK’s prestigious modernist exhibits, this marks Bell’s largest ever solo show, including drawings, paintings, ceramics, and furniture.
Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur, The Wallace Collection, London, UK
The largest contemporary exhibition to ever hit The Wallace Collection has Grayson Perry’s outlandish commentary of British fashion and culture at the heart of it. Titled Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur, 40 new works from ceramics, tapestries and more, come together to poke at both art and fashion’s incessant search for perfectionism via unusual “outsider art”. Work by Swiss psychiatric artist Aloïse Corbaz and British multimedia artist (ink, tapestry, paint) Madge Gill will also be shown. As a sharp nod to the future, the newer pieces also start to question who an artist is, in our increasingly tech-focussed world.
Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350, The National Gallery, London, UK
While dubbed the Dark Ages elsewhere, the Medieval period in Siena brought a golden age to art (both metaphorically as well as through all the magnificent gold paint and leaf work) as Italian painters forged a new path for art – one that is still some of the most critiqued and visited work today. Rich and decorative, Sienese artists captured religious tableaux as well as immortalised many intimate moments that characterised ways of life and beliefs of this bygone era. Duccio, Simone Martini, as well as brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti – all the big names from this period are on display at The National Gallery, with works reunited after spending centuries split into pieces and displayed in varying cities across Europe.
Arpita Singh: Remembering, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK
Arpita Singh is a leading contemporary artist, whose work emerges from India’s post-independence era of the mid-twentieth century. Born in West Bengal before relocating to New Delhi, Singh’s signature figurative style offers lots of colour and often presents themes of expedition and journeys, both visually as well as emotionally. Singh creatively merges Indian Court painting – a prominent style in Indian art from the 16th to 19th century depicting the grandeur of royal tradition – with surrealist and modernist tropes emerging beyond European artwork across the 1900s. Many of the subjects of the artist’s work are women, presenting tales of femininity in its many forms amongst a turbulent social backdrop, with each piece offering more than can be summarised in a single idea. “I, the woman, stand there as anybody, as everybody” Arpita Singh explains. Remembering is Arpita Singh’s first solo exhibition in London, and spotlights pieces that demonstrate her experimentation with different painting techniques from acrylic reverse painting to oils on canvas, spanning Signh’s six decade career, beginning in the 1960s, as selected by the artist.
Tracey Emin: Sex and Solitude, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy
We all know her name, and for good reason. British artist Dame Tracey Emin has helped define contemporary British art across her impressive career, with autobiographical and confessional works. The beautiful Palazzo in the heart of Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, is hosting a major exhibition dedicated to the award-winning contemporary British artist. The exhibition sees Emin’s autobiographical and confessionary work – including painting, sketches, sculptor, video, installations, photography and more – hung across the beautiful space, from the courtyard to gallery spaces. This is a therapeutic – and visually striking – chance to immerse yourself in the vulnerable and physical work of Tracey Emin, amongst a beautiful setting.
Lead image: David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972, David Hockney “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” 1972, Acrylic on canvas, 213.36 x 304.8 cm (84 x 120 Inches), © David Hockney. Photo Credit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter
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