This season, many cities offer a variety of exhibitions that explore the world of fashion, art, and design, from the cultural impact of the Marie Antoinette style to Ruth Asawa's lifelong explorations of materials and form, and the radical approach to art through the Minimal movement. Read on for exhibitions you won't want to miss this season, as recommended by the Modem team.
Marie Antoinette Style
Victoria and Albert Museum - London
Until March 22, 2026
This exhibition explores the origins and countless revivals of the style shaped by the most fashionable queen in history, Marie Antoinette. A fashion icon in her own time and an early modern "celebrity", the dress and interiors modelled and adopted by the ill-fated Queen of France in the final decades of the 18th century have had a lasting influence on over 250 years of design, fashion, film, and decorative arts. The exhibition traces the cultural impact of the Marie Antoinette style, and her ongoing inspiration for leading designers and creatives, from Sofia Coppola and Manolo Blahnik to Moschino and Vivienne Westwood. Marie Antoinette shaped not just the fashion, design, interiors, gardens, fine and decorative arts of her own time, but has continued to exert an influence over more than two and a half centuries of graphic and decorative arts, fashion, photography, film, and performance.
Yayoi Kusama
Fondation Beyeler - Basel
Until January 25, 2026
Fondation Beyeler is the first museum in Switzerland to present a retrospective of the renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. Organized in close collaboration with the artist and her studio, the exhibition highlights seven decades of her extraordinary career. In addition to her iconic works, it features early pieces that have never been seen in Europe, as well as her most recent creations. On this occasion, Kusama will create a new Infinity Mirror Room. Kusama, one of the major figures in contemporary art, has achieved cult status through her exploration of repetitive structures and patterns, particularly her famous polka dots and mirror-filled environments that immerse visitors in infinite worlds.
Ruth Asawa - A Retrospective
MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art - New York
Until February 7, 2026
Featuring around 300 works, Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective traces the artist’s lifelong exploration of materials and forms across a wide range of media, including wire sculpture, bronze casts, drawings, paintings, prints, and public commissions. This first posthumous survey celebrates Asawa’s ability to transform materials and objects into contemplative subjects, challenging distinctions between abstraction and figuration, figure and ground, and negative and positive space.
Lee Miller
Tate Britain - London
Until February 15, 2026
Tate Britain presents the most extensive retrospective of Lee Miller’s photography ever staged in the UK, celebrating her as one of the 20th century’s most compelling artistic voices. Initially exposed to photography from the other side of the lens as a sought-after model in the late 1920s, Miller soon moved behind the camera, becoming a leading figure in avant-garde circles across New York, Paris, London, and Cairo. Featuring around 250 vintage and modern prints, the exhibition traces Miller’s extraordinary career, from her involvement in French surrealism to her groundbreaking fashion and war photography. It also highlights lesser-known aspects of her work, including her striking images of the Egyptian landscape in the 1930s, and explores her artistic collaborations throughout her life.
Nan Goldin. This will not end well
Hangar Bicocca - Milan
Until February 15, 2026
This Will Not End Well is the first exhibition devoted to Nan Goldin’s work as a filmmaker. The Italian edition brings together the largest collection of her slideshows ever shown in one place, including two additional works, presented for the first time in a European museum context, alongside a newly commissioned immersive sound installation that amplifies the emotional power of Goldin’s pieces. The retrospective unfolds within a series of unique structures designed by architect Hala Wardé, a long-time collaborator of Goldin. Each building responds to a specific work, and together they form a village-like environment. While the exhibition’s title, This Will Not End Well, might appear somber and ominous, it also conveys irony, warmth, and a sense of resilience. It reflects Goldin’s unmistakable, unyielding joie de vivre.
Gerhard Richter
Fondation Louis Vuitton - Paris
Until March 2, 2026
Continuing its tradition of landmark monographic exhibitions devoted to leading figures of 20th and 21st-century art, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and David Hockney, the Fondation dedicates all its galleries to Gerhard Richter, widely regarded as one of the most important and internationally celebrated artists of his generation. Gerhard Richter was featured in the inaugural presentation of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2014, with a group of works from the Collection. Now, the Fondation is honoring the artist with an exceptional retrospective, unmatched both in scale and in chronological scope, featuring 270 works stretching from 1962 to 2024. The exhibition includes oil paintings, glass and steel sculptures, pencil and ink drawings, watercolors, and overpainted photographs.
Minimal
Bourse de Commerce - Paris
Until January 19, 2026
Bringing together an exceptional group of works from the Pinault Collection in dialogue with those of prestigious collections, “Minimal” traces the diversity of this movement since the 1960s, when a whole generation of artists (Dan Flavin, Robert Ryman, On Kawara, Agnes Martin, François Morellet, among others) initiated a radical approach to art. The exhibition is curated by Jessica Morgan, director of Dia Art Foundation (New York), who has selected over a hundred works by some forty international artists. Organised in seven thematic sections, including Light, Mono-ha, Balance, Surface, Grid, Monochrome, and Materialism, the exhibition “Minimal” explores the global shift in art from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, and the influence of this movement, focusing on the radical rethinking of the art object.
Douriean Fletcher
MAD - Museum of Art and Design - New York
Until March 15, 2026
Crafted from brass, gold, and semi-precious stones, Douriean Fletcher’s boldly sculptural designs articulate Black identity, embody spiritual meaning, and have helped define cinematic characters and imagined worlds. The exhibition documents and explores how ideas of Afrofuturism materialize in Fletcher’s work, highlighting her research into African and African American jewelry design and efforts to build aesthetic and cultural bridges between Black communities, countries, continents, and histories torn apart by colonialism, slavery, and oppression. Presenting 75 works from the artist’s collection, Douriean Fletcher: Jewelry of the Afrofuture tells the inspiring story of Fletcher’s evolution from self-taught metalsmith to an influential designer whose handmade adornments have shaped memorable aesthetics in contemporary cinema, most notably Marvel Studios’ Black Panther film franchise.
Warhol, Pollock and other American spaces
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza - Madrid
Until January 25, 2026
Andy Warhol’s fascination with Jackson Pollock is well documented, from his obsession with owning a Pollock in his extensive art collection to the connection between his famous Death and Disaster series and the tragic car accident that claimed Pollock’s life one night in August 1956. The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza presents an exhibition bringing together the works of these two pivotal figures in 20th-century art, alongside other artists of the period who explored new approaches to space. Though seemingly very different, Pollock and Warhol share, like an entire generation of artists, a concern with shifts in pictorial tradition, spatial experimentation, and a fascination with large-scale formats.
Click here to visit Modemonline's section for more information about the worldwide exhibitions not to be missed.
