What does Impressionist art have to do with French cuisine? Why did Van Gogh paint so many portraits of his postman? And what are the Guerrilla Girls up to now? Discover the answers to these questions—plus many more—by visiting ten of the best art exhibitions heading to museums across the United States this year.
1. Farm to Table: Art, Food, and Identity in the Age of Impressionism
31 January–4 May at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, TN
France has long been famous for both its food and its art. This exhibition explores the surprisingly rich relationship between the two. Visit Nashville to see how leading French artists of the Impressionist era—including Claude Monet, Rosa Bonheur, Gustave Courbet, Paul Gauguin, and Camille Pissaro— brought culinary subjects to life.
From fashionable Parisians dining at a bustling café to rural farmers tending to their fields, these gastronomical scenes aren’t just meant to be mouthwatering. They also reveal insights into the changing social order of 19th-century France.
2. Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature
Get the latest articles delivered to your inbox
Sign up to our Free Weekly Newsletter8 February–11 May at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, NY
In honor of the artist’s 250th birthday, the U.S. is finally getting its first-ever comprehensive exhibition dedicated to Caspar David Friedrich. Bringing together an unprecedented array of loans from across Europe and North America, Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature tracks the German Romanticist’s career across 75 works, from oil paintings to working sketches.
Friedrich’s work evocatively explored the relationship between the natural world and the inner self. His sublime landscapes inspired generations of artists and helped shape how we perceive nature today. The Soul of Nature is heading to New York City after touring museums in Germany last year.
3. Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection
15 March May–29 June at the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL
The Torlonia Collection is the most extensive private collection of Roman marble sculptures in Italy and one of the most important in the world. This year, the Torlonia marbles are heading to North America for the first time in their long and storied history. Myth and Marble features 58 rarely-seen sculptures from the 5th century BCE to the early 4th century CE. Among them are larger-than-life gods and goddesses, imposing emperors, and extravagant funerary monuments—each telling a gripping story about life in ancient Rome.
After its Chicago debut, Myth and Marble will travel to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas (September 14, 2025–January 25, 2026) and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Québec (March 10–July 19, 2026).
4. Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits
30 March–7 September at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA
When Vincent van Gogh arrived in Arles, France, he befriended his neighbor and postman Joseph Roulin, along with his wife and three children. Van Gogh went on to paint several vibrant and expressive portraits of the Roulin family. This exhibition showcases about twenty of them, demonstrating his distinctively forward-thinking approach to portraiture.
Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits also reveals the significance of Van Gogh’s close friendship with Joseph Roulin amidst his arrival in a new town and struggles with mental health. The Roulin portraits appear alongside other works—including Japanese prints and Paul Gauguin paintings—that helped shape Van Gogh’s work during this period.
5. Ruth Asawa: Retrospective
5 April–2 September at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, CA
Yet another exciting first for American art lovers is on the agenda for 2025. Ruth Asawa: Retrospective is the first major national and international exhibition of the contemproary artist’s incomparable work. Asawa, who died in 2013, is best known for her billowing wire sculptures, which she envisioned as three-dimensional line drawings in space.
“Ruth Asawa: Retrospective is deeply aligned with SFMOMA’s vision to be both local and global,” said Christopher Bedford, the Helen and Charles Schwab Director of SFMOMA. “This exhibition provides an opportunity to celebrate the legendary Ruth Asawa, who was both a widely acclimated artist and a hometown inspiration whose impact can be very much felt today.”
6. Guerilla Girls: Making Trouble
12 April–28 September at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC
The Guerrilla Girls, the anonymous feminist-activist collective known as “the conscience of the art world,” celebrate their fortieth anniversary this year. Today, the Guerilla Girls still wear their iconic gorilla masks and exhibit bold advertising-style graphics on billboards and in museums. More importantly, much of the inequality their work has combatted for the past four decades stubbornly persists.
Guerrilla Girls: Making Trouble draws from the National Museum of Women in the Arts’s extensive collection, tracking the group’s indelible impact—from their first feminist outcries in the 1980s to the ever-expanding scope and impact of their activism today.
7. Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art
13 April–27 July at the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, OH
Against all odds, Rachel Ruysch, a Dutch still-life painter in the 17th and 18th centuries, became one of the highest-paid artists of her time. Despite women’s limited access to the professional art world, Ruysch’s astonishingly lifelike floral paintings won her international renown and a lifetime of commercial success.
Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art brings together works from public and private collections in Europe and North America—including some that have never been exhibited publicly. The Toledo Museum of Art says, “We invite you to discover Rachel Ruysch’s masterful brushwork, her illusionistic depictions of the natural world, the astonishing botanical diversity and teeming insect and animal life in her paintings, and how her works reflect the intersections between painting, nature, and science.”
8. Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers
11 May–27 September at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, NY
Hilma af Klint once wrote, “I have shown that there is a connection between the plant world and the world of the soul.” An upcoming MoMA exhibition focuses on a newly discovered portfolio of botanical art by the pioneering abstract artist. Af Klint intended this portfolio to function as a scientific and spiritual map of the flora of her native Sweden.
During the spring and summer of 1919 and 1920, af Klint made daily observational watercolor drawings of flowers. This project expanded the scope of traditional botanical art by also exploring “what stands behind the flowers” through her signature language of abstract forms. Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers demonstrates a fascinating interplay between representation and abstraction—and questions the boundaries between physical observation and spiritual vision.
9. The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art
18 October 2025–1 March 2026 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC
Australia comprises over 250 Indigenous nations, each with its own distinct visual iconography. The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art introduces American audiences to a once-in-a-lifetime lineup of modern and contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and design. The exhibition is drawn exclusively from the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia.
“Charting watershed moments in Indigenous art from the late 19th century to the present, this exhibition reveals a rich history of creativity that predates the arrival of the British [in Australia],” says the National Gallery of Art. The Stars We Do Not See explores this history across more than 200 works by over 130 artists, from ochre bark paintings to immersive sound installations.
10. Gabriele Münter: Into Deep Waters
7 November 2025–26 April 2026 at the Guggenheim in New York City, NY
Last but not least, Gabriele Münter is taking over the Guggenheim at the end of 2025. Gabriele Münter: Into Deep Waters will showcase 60 paintings and 18 photographs by the unsung hero of German Expressionism. In the early 20th century, Münter emerged as a leading artist in Munich’s avant-garde art scene. She helped form Der Blaue Reiter, a radical art collective that favored spiritual symbolism over naturalistic representation.
Münter’s work also offered a vital alternative to the status quo of Modern art in Western Europe. In her paintings, she fearlessly pushed the limits of form and color without rejecting representation. Meanwhile, her more famous male contemporaries preached the supremacy of total abstraction.
