From old masters to pop artists, contemporary greats and even a major Mexican film-maker, art museums and galleries across the US have some dazzling shows coming up in 2026.
Roy Lichtenstein
Announced all the way back in 2023, and currently just a mostly empty page on The Whitney’s website, this major retrospective of one of the central creators of the pop art movement carries some pretty heavy expectations. The Whitney will be drawing on its decades-old collection of nearly 500 pieces from Lichtenstein, as well as, one would imagine, dozens of loans from institutions around the world. TBD 2026
Drawn to Venice and Monet and Venice
San Francisco sister institutions the Legion of Honor and deYoung museums will be centering Venice, with two interconnected exhibitions: the former museum will offer a celebration of the city as an engine of high art throughout the centuries, and the latter will focus on what impressionist Claude Monet made of the romantic city of canals. Monet himself was daunted by the challenge of Venice – a subject that had captivated the world’s most esteemed artists for hundreds of years – but he eventually rose to the task, making some 37 paintings, including masterpiece The Grand Canal. 6 January-2 August and 21 March-26 July
Sueño Perro: a film installation by Alejandro G Iñárritu
Celebrating the 25th anniversary of his massive debut film, Amores Perros, director Alejandro G Iñárritu revisits over 1m ft of film that never made it into the final cut, creating an art installation that doubles as a love letter to celluloid. Reportedly, Iñárritu dug deep into the archives to create what he called “not a tribute, but a resurrection” of one of his most beloved films. Perhaps the exhibit will instil some of the hope that pervades Iñárritu’s film in spite of the pain that he also chronicles in his story of difficult love. 22 February-26 July
Carol Bove
The Guggenheim will give the mixed media sculpture and installation creator a major career survey, starting with her early works and moving all the way up to a new collection of pieces made from scrap metal and steel tubing. Inspired by “the 60s” and minimalism, Bove often takes her materials directly from the urban landscape, creating fascinating and strange sculptures that have appeared in some of the country’s most notable art spots, including the High Line and Gagosian, Beverly Hills. With major shows in the MoMA and the Palais de Tokyo, as well as work at the 57th Venice Biennale, among others, Bove’s three decades of creation are ripe for a thorough survey that shows audiences all she’s got. 5 March–2 August
Matisse’s Jazz: Rhythms in Color
Anyone who has read The Body Keeps the Score will be familiar with French master Henri Matisse’s papercut Icarus (it’s right there on the cover) – it’s actually one of 20 cut-paper works that he combined with text and bound into a book titled Jazz that he published in 1947, at 77 years old. This spring, Chicago’s Art Institute exhibits all 20 of Matisse’s cut-paper maquettes – the first such showing since the museum acquired the works in 1948 – as well as some 50 of Matisse’s other works. The cut paper works were part of a late stage flowering for Matisse that saw the artist use the medium for everything from helping design a stained glass window to an enormous dining room decoration. 7 March-1 June
Raphael: Sublime Poetry
Italian master painter and architect Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino stood alongside Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo as the renowned masters of Renaissance Italy – yet he has seldom received a major show on US soil – New York’s Metropolitan Museum aims to rectify that with this massive exhibition. Raphael is well-known for masterpieces like his Sistine Madonna (you’ve all seen the cherubs) and The School of Athens (with the famous portrayal of Plato and Aristotle). With loans from all across Europe and over 200 works total, this promises to be a blockbuster show, a rare chance to see one of Western art’s most incandescent geniuses in all his glory. 29 March–28 June
Shu Lea Cheang: Lover Love
NYC’s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art presents a major, large-scale video installation by Taiwanese-American artist and film-maker Shu Lea Cheang, a major figure in new media art and a fascinating film director. As with much of her work, Cheang here explores the daily struggles of trans life, and the increasing threats to the health, safety and autonomy of trans and gender non-conforming individuals under the current US administration. Lover Love promises to be a very engaging piece, as it will be interactive, with visitors encouraged to play around with the four moveable screens that display the central film in this complex installation. 2 April–January 2027
Leilah Babirye
The Institute of Contemporary Art Boston showcases new work from this artist, who was forced to flee her native Uganda after being outed as a lesbian in 2015. Babirye is known for deconstructing unconventional materials in order to make elaborate, queer-themed sculptures, and here she showcases new work based out of the theme of queer weddings. This continues her ongoing project of using reclaimed materials as a symbolic act of defiance against the stigmatization that the LGBTQ+ community has suffered in Uganda, and many other nations worldwide – including Babirye’s adopted home, the United States. 27 August–18 January 2027
Taking Back Our Space
Building on the pioneering work of west German feminist photographer Marianne Wex, who studied how men and women are socialized to inhabit space differently, this show at the MoMA investigates how body language shapes how men and women unconsciously communicate with the world. Wex’s studies spanned art as old as sculptures believed to have been produced around 2000 BC and is considered a major work of gender studies. Here, Wex’s explorations are both exhibited and put into conversation with the work of contemporary Black, queer, and feminist artists, including Nona Faustine, K8 Hardy, Yuki Kihara, and Wendy Red Star. 20 September–Spring 2027
And more …
In February, the Seattle Art Museum celebrates the haunting silhouette art of Samantha Yun Wall as she explores the “personal narratives of people born to Asian women and US service members during times of military occupation in Asia”. Starting 5 March, Marianne Boesky Gallery is highlighting the work of up and coming Black artist Kwamé Azure Gomez, exhibiting a new collection of work inspired by queer nightlife, ballroom culture and gospel music, situated somewhere between figuration and abstraction. During the summer, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art revisits 80s graffiti artist Keith Haring with a show of all his “3D” works – sculptures, masks, skateboards, boomboxes and much more. In September, the Detroit Institute of Arts will show a collection of around 35 of Georgia O’Keefe’s architecture paintings, showing how her trademark flow-y abstraction worked with the straight, clean lines of architecture. And also in September, the Phoenix Art Museum exhibits the work of South Korean painter Kim Chong Hak, letting audiences see the bright and colorful paintings that he has worked on since the 1970s.
