75 Museum Exhibitions And Biennials To See This Spring

RunWithRugs · 2026-03-03T22:25:28+00:00

This spring, major art exhibitions converge globally, with highlights including the Venice Biennale, Raphael's retrospective at the Met, Michelangelo's showcase at the Louvre, and various biennials in cities like New York and Sydney, alongside under-recognized artists' shows.

RunWithRugs

2026-03-03 22:25:28

Abstract generation in progress

All roads lead to Italy this season, and not only because the Venice Biennale, the greatest art exhibition of them all, opens there in May. Over in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is staging a Raphael retrospective-the first ever devoted to the Renaissance master in the US, shockingly. In Paris, at the Louvre, another titan of the Renaissance takes center stage: Michelangelo, whose sculptures will be shown alongside Rodin’s. In Vienna, the Kunsthistorisches Museum is giving a big show to Canaletto and his nephew, Bernardo Bellotto.

But back to the Biennale. That exhibition is the most high-profile biennial in the world and the star of a year that marks an astonishing convergence of biennials taking place the world over. New York alone is getting two this spring: the Whitney Biennial and Greater New York, at the Whitney Museum and MoMA PS1, respectively. Then, in Pittsburgh, there’s the Carnegie International, and farther afield, in Australia, there’s the Biennale of Sydney.

Big group shows like these are great, of course, but there’s nothing better than a good, old-fashioned retrospective. The Museum of Modern Art’s momentous Marcel Duchamp retrospective will offer those thrills, and so will a large-scale show for Francisco de Zurburán at London’s National Gallery.

These are admittedly the kind of shows one expects from grand institutions, and thankfully, the spring also brings with it many more surprising offerings geared around under-recognized artists to balance them out. Aurèlia Muñoz, Anna Casparsson, Pascale Martine Tayou, Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, David Lamelas, L. V. Hull, and Kim Yun Shin are all among those receiving some of their biggest shows to date this spring.

Below, a look at 75 museum exhibitions and biennials to see this season.

“Bellezza e Bruttezza” at Bozar, Brussels

Giovanni Francesco di Luteri (Dosso Dossi), Woman and Satyr, ca. 1508–12.

Photo: ©MiC – Gabinetto Fotografico delle Gallerie degli Uffizi/Uffizi Galleries

Renaissance art is sometimes seen as the paragon of beauty: Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus has continued to inform how artists of all stripes today approach the concept. Seeking to muddy the notion that art of this era was all about prettiness, harmony, and grace, this group show shines a light on how Renaissance artists considered beauty’s obverse, ugliness, in works contending with states of inebriation and disability. Sometimes those two states of being combine, as in Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem’s Laughing Jester, from the late 16th century. This jester is missing a few teeth, but his happy face suggests an inner peace that one might say is rather beautiful.

Through June 14

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