All the exhibitions not to be missed this summer

The summer at Galleria 10 Corso Como is dedicated to the photographs of Guido Guidi (Cesena, 1941), an internationally renowned photographer known for his lyrical and analytical view of landscape and architecture. His research, which began in the 1960s, focuses on the most marginal and everyday aspects of reality, promoting a “poetics of attention.” The exhibition Da un'altra parte (Elsewhere), curated by Alessandro Rabottini, brings together works from 1970 to 2023, selected outside the original series to create formal and poetic dialogues. Recurring themes such as shadows, reflections, and voids testify to the link between time, space, memory, and perception.

The MACC – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea del Carmine, a new center dedicated to contemporary art, has opened its doors in Scicli, inaugurated with the exhibition L’opera delle formiche (The Work of Ants) by Emilio Isgrò. The anthology, curated by Marco Bazzini and Bruno Corà, traces the career of the Sicilian master, from his first erasures in the 1960s to his most recent works. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a large installation that animates the central corridor of the museum and invades the square with ants and golden carob beans, symbols of industriousness and regeneration. Also on display is the installation Non uccidere (Thou shalt not kill) created by Isgrò with Mario Botta and part of the MAXXI Collection: a four-handed project celebrating the founding values that inspired the Italian Constitution.

The Maramotti Collection is currently hosting This Body Made of Stardust, Viviane Sassen's largest solo exhibition in Italy, featuring over fifty photographs, videos, and previously unseen works created between 2005 and 2025. Part of the Fotografia Europea festival, the exhibition is curated by the artist and revolves around the theme of memento mori, exploring the fragility and beauty of existence. In a non-narrative visual journey, Sassen intertwines bodies, landscapes, organic materials, and shadows in a dreamlike and surreal universe. The works, in dialogue with sculptures from the collection, challenge perceptions and reveal hidden layers of meaning, transforming the concept of death into a hymn to life.

Maria Sole, Giubileo – Archivio is the second act of the exhibition dedicated to Maria Sole (Genoa, 1937), a multifaceted artist and self-proclaimed high priestess of the Italian avant-garde. Through costumes, photographs, vinyl records, and unpublished materials, the exhibition explores the fluid identity of a performer who has traversed art, politics, and entertainment, playing with the myth of the self and desecrating the icons of power. The exhibition, open from June 19 to 29 at Galera San Soda, showcases the richness of a situationist and punk archive, where art and body merge in a radical practice. Between irony, feminism, and provocation, Maria Sole tells her story without labels.

de bello. notes on war and peace is the first collective exhibition by gres art 671: over thirty international artists reflect on war and peace through works that span different eras, languages, and media—from painting to video games. The exhibition, set up in over two thousand square meters with concrete scenography, explores the traumas of conflict but also the possibility of reconstruction, and is divided into five thematic sections (apparent peace, alarm, war, rubble, resistance). From Burri to Marina Abramović, from Beuys to Claire Fontaine, from ancient Persian carpets to videos in Battlefield, each work is an emotional and political testimony that invokes a single urgency: peace.

This summer, the Fondation Beyeler is dedicating one of the most extensive European retrospectives to American artist Vija Celmins (1938, Riga). Known for her hypnotic paintings and drawings of starry skies, lunar surfaces, deserts, and oceans, Celmins invites the viewer to engage in slow and profound contemplation. On display are approximately ninety works, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints, created over a period of sixty years. From her depictions of everyday objects in the 1960s to cosmic landscapes, the artist explores the boundary between surface and space, time and silence. A unique and meditative journey, enriched by the film “Vija” by directors Bêka & Lemoine, an intimate portrait of her artistic practice.

“Language is a powerful force and defines us. It speaks to us of hierarchies, adoration, and contempt. And it contains a very specific element, because every place has its own native language and stories.” Barbara Kruger arrives at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao with her solo exhibition Another day. Another light. until November 9. Languages are at the heart of her artistic practice: drawn from politics, advertising, religion, and the Internet, Kruger uses them to construct incisive compositions that, rather than quoting, deconstruct and recompose familiar messages, revealing contradictions and mechanisms of power. In addition to famous works, videos, and recent digital works, the American artist has created a site-specific installation—Untitled (Camino) (2025)—in Spanish and Basque, which visually connects the rooms, evoking the Basque linguistic landscape.

Twenty years after her passing, the exhibition Susan Sontag. Seeing and Being Seen at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn retraces the life and legacy of Susan Sontag (1933–2004), the renowned writer and intellectual who explored the influence of images on contemporary society. A passionate observer of photography and cinema, Sontag delved into their power and perils. Through her writings, she examined the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, between looking and acting. In her seminal work On Photography, she reflected on the role of images in portraying pain, war, and illness. Her life was a constant experiment: a fearless thinker, activist, filmmaker, and cultural icon who challenged the boundaries between high art and popular culture. This exhibition offers a nuanced and timely portrait of Sontag — at the intersection of feminism, politics, art, and identity.

Now in its thirteenth edition, this year's Berlin Biennale, titled Passing the Fugitive On and curated by Zasha Colah and Valentina Viviani, brings together over sixty artists and more than 170 works across four exhibition venues: KW Institute, Sophiensæle, Hamburger Bahnhof, and a former courthouse in Moabit. Taking the figure of the urban fox as a symbol of the fugitive condition, the exhibition explores the power of art to create its own rules in response to systemic violence and injustice, showing how gestures, words, traces, bodies, and inherited stories can become acts of resistance and survival.

The Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian in Lisbon brings together two artists from different generations and continents, who engage in a dramatic and powerful dialogue: Paula Rego (1935–2022) and Adriana Varejão (1964). Around eighty works, in a labyrinthine and theatrical setting, explore the body, violence, memory, and history. The title, Between Your Teeth, comes from a poem by Hilda Hilst and evokes a visceral tension between interior and exterior, between intimacy and public space. Paula Rego's subtle and narrative art intertwines with Adriana Varejão's raw and carnal material. Both subvert myths and legends, drawing on literary, historical, and artistic sources to recount personal and collective wounds.

The Palais Galliera is dedicating its first major Parisian retrospective to Rick Owens, with the designer himself acting as curator. From the Los Angeles underground scene to his latest shows in the French capital, the exhibition spans three decades of activity, with clothes, installations, videos, and personal items, revealing the designer's sources of inspiration: from Huysmans to modern and contemporary art with works by Gustave Moreau, Joseph Beuys, and Steven Parrino, from Hollywood films to the sacred. In response to a world in crisis, his commitment translates into the use of vibrant colors, the recovery of materials, and more sculptural creations that convey political reflections, marking the style of one of the most iconic designers of the 21st century.

At the Vitra Design Museum, the exhibition The Shakers: A World in the Making explores the artistic and cultural legacy of the Shakers, an American religious community founded in the 18th century. More than 150 original objects—furniture, tools, and everyday artifacts—are presented alongside contemporary works, highlighting how spirituality, labor, and equality shaped a visionary and essential style that remains relevant today. Organized into four thematic sections, the exhibition addresses key topics such as sustainability, inclusion, and innovation, moving beyond a purely aesthetic reading of Shaker design to situate it within a broader social and spiritual context. Curated in collaboration with Formafantasma, the project is a joint effort between the Vitra Design Museum and the Shaker Museum in New York.

The London retrospective dedicated to Yoshitomo Nara offers a detailed interpretation of the visual universe of one of the most recognizable artists on the contemporary scene. Expanding on the exhibitions at the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Museum Frieder Burda, the project brings together paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations spanning four decades of activity. At its core are the iconic child portraits with their essential features and cheeky gaze, symbols of both resistance and vulnerability. The thematic layout highlights the deep connection between biography and artistic practice, shedding light on the influences that shape the artist's work: from nature and its mythologies to the pacifist movement, the concept of home, as well as his fascination with punk and rock music and popular culture.

Khajistan, an archive founded by Saad Khan and now based between New York and Southwest Asia, preserves and disseminates media, art, and texts from forgotten or silenced communities between the Indus and the Maghreb. With over 85,000 digital files and a physical archive housing the largest collection of Pakistani cinema memorabilia, Khajistan investigates the gaps in cultural representation generated by Western digital hegemony. At the Sculpture Center in New York, the collective presents Spasial Program: a multimedia exhibition of banned and censored materials, with a bazaar. The project is part of Open Process, a series that transforms the exhibition space into a fluid platform for research and collaboration.

The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity, 1869–1939 explores the radical change in how society viewed homosexuality after the introduction of the term “homosexual” in 1869. Prior to this moment, same-sex desire was a behavior, not an identity. The exhibition, featuring over 300 works by 125 artists from 40 countries, analyzes how images and art gave voice to gender complexity beyond the limits imposed by language, and how the emergence of the figure of the “homosexual” was a phenomenon parallel to colonialism, intertwining sexuality and gender identity to the point of making the modern origins of gay and trans identities inseparable. The project presents important historical discoveries and includes works by artists, many of which have never been exhibited before.

The first institutional exhibition dedicated to Noah Davis (1983–2015) brings together over fifty works created between 2007 and 2015, revealing the depth of his brief but intense output. The exhibition reflects the breadth of his interests: current events, everyday life, family history, Egyptian cosmologies, racism in the media, art history, and architecture. With a fluid and figurative painting style, but with dreamlike and melancholic tones, Davis tackles complex themes and identity issues, with sources ranging from personal archives to photographs found in flea markets. The exhibition, curated by an international team, is organized by the Barbican in London and DAS MINSK in Potsdam, and is hosted by the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles until August 31. Admission is free.

American artist Faith Ringgold (1930–2024) is famous for her narrative paintings and quilts, but less well known as a children's book author. This summer, the High Museum in Atlanta is dedicating the largest exhibition ever held on her original works for more than twelve children's books: more than 100 works, some never before exhibited. Among them are paintings from Tar Beach (1991), If a Bus Could Talk (1999), and Dinner at Aunt Connie's House (1993), which tell stories of freedom, memory, and hope. Also on display are the complete illustrations from The Invisible Princess (1999) and We Came to America (2016), about the history of immigration. The exhibition highlights the central role of education in Ringgold's work and her way of representing childhood as an active and creative space.

The Photography Seoul Museum of Art (Photo SeMA) is hosting The Radiance: Beginnings Of Korean Art Photography, dedicated to the evolution of photography as an art form in Korea from 1880 to the present day. The result of ten years of research, the exhibition explores the turning points when photography transcended its documentary function to become an aesthetic language and a means of social expression. On display are the works of five pioneers—Jung Haechang, Lim Suk Je, Lee Hyungrok, Cho Hyundu, and Park Youngsook—who, in different political and cultural contexts, redefined the medium.

Liao Fei: Seeing All Forms is the largest institutional exhibition ever dedicated to the Chinese artist, on view at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing until September 7. The exhibition brings together sculptures, installations, and videos that trace nearly twenty years of research, from the comparison of physical materials to the most recent formal experiments. Five key concepts—matter, place, extension, infinity, and deduction—guide a journey between rationality and intuition, logic and perception. The works, often generated by evolving processes, question the limits of human experience and natural laws. The open layout reinforces the dialogue between space, form, and thought, offering the public an immersive experience.

The Mori Art Museum in Tokyo presents the first major retrospective dedicated to Sou Fujimoto, one of Japan's most renowned contemporary architects, who works globally with studios in Tokyo, Paris, and Shenzhen. The exhibition traces his more than 25-year career, from his early projects to the works that have made him one of the most important contemporary architects—such as the 2013 Serpentine Pavilion in London and L'Arbre Blanc in Montpellier—to his urban visions of the future. Through installations, scale models, prototypes, and multimedia materials, the public can enter into Fujimoto's architectural language and philosophy, in a sensory and conceptual journey that reflects on the transformative role of architecture in a changing society, such as the contemporary one.

The Power Station of Art in Shanghai, in collaboration with the Serralves Museum in Porto, presents the most extensive retrospective in Asia dedicated to Álvaro Siza, a key figure in contemporary architecture. Over 800 works, including drawings, models, sculptures, and photographs, trace more than 70 years of his career, spanning nine decades of projects, both realized and remaining on paper. The exhibition is organized according to different themes such as living, the sacred, education, and culture, highlighting the spatial poetics and deep connection with places that characterize Siza's work. The exhibition presents a more multifaceted image of the architect, highlighting his more intimate and creative side through early drawings and plastic works.