Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective 
New York
October 29, 2025–February 7, 2026
The first major national and international museum retrospective of the groundbreaking work of Ruth Asawa (1926–2013)—which debuted at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art in April of this year—is now on view at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Featuring some 300 artworks, this retrospective charts the artist’s lifelong explorations of materials and forms in a variety of mediums, including wire sculpture, bronze casts, drawings, paintings, prints, and public works. The exhibition offers numerous points of entry into her art, encouraging close looking. It also reveals the model of integrated art practice cultivated by Asawa, for whom all acts held a creative potential and for whom there was no separation between living and making art. See moma.org.

1925–2025. One Hundred Years of Art Deco
Paris
October 22, 2025–April 26, 2026
The Musée des Arts Décoratifs celebrates the centenary of Art Deco with an exhibition of contemporary representations. The presentation showcases iconic pieces including André Groult’s shagreen chest of drawers; the refined creations of Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann; and the spectacular desk-library designed by Pierre Chareau for the French Embassy and reinstalled for this exhibition. It also highlights three leading figures—Ruhlmann, Eileen Gray, and Jean-Michel Frank—who embodied distinctive facets of Art Deco. See madparis.fr.

Countryside: A Place to Live Not to Leave. Photo courtesy Qatar Museums

Countryside: A Place to Live, Not to Leave
Doha, Qatar
October 29, 2025–June 30, 2026
Taking place at both Qatar Preparatory School and the National Museum of Qatar, this exhibition, which follows Countryside, The Future, staged at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2021, examines rural regions worldwide, with a particular focus on “the arc”—a band that runs contiguously through Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Through immersive installations, critical research, and storytelling, Countryside challenges the dominant urban narrative and invites visitors to explore how rural life can offer more humane and ecological answers to today’s global crises. The show is cocurated by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, cofounder of OMA, and Samir Bantal, director of the firm’s research studio, AMO. See qm.org.qa.

Living With/Vivre Avec
Chicago
November 8, 2025–January 31, 2026
Partnering with the sixth Chicago Architecture Biennial, Villa Albertine presents Living With/Vivre Avec, an exhibition originally commissioned for the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale that explores architecture’s capacity to respond to contemporary crises: climate change, social upheaval, and urban transformation. Organized around six thematic clusters—Living with the Existing, the Immediate, the Broken, Vulnerabilities, Nature, and Combined Intelligences—the exhibit, curated by Dominique Jakob and Brendan MacFarlane in association with Eric Daniel-Lacombe and Martin Duplantier, leads visitors through an immersive landscape of totems presenting projects and reflections from around the world. Each explores inventive ways to renew existing environments, adapt to fragility, and foster coexistence among humans, technology, and the natural world. The exhibition design was developed by the curators in collaboration with Civic Projects Architecture. See villa-albertine.org.

BREAKTHROUGH: Housing Futures 
Chicago
November 19, 2025–April 19, 2026
This immersive exhibition by the National Public Housing Museum creates an experimental living room and learning space for conversations, past and present, about affordable-housing futures. BREAKTHROUGH blends historical documentation of ambitious HUD demonstration projects from the 1970s with new prototypes from the Housing Futures Initiative, led by architect and theorist Alexander Eisenschmidt. This work aims to challenge the social, cultural, and economic conventions of housing by rethinking the design, material, and construction of urban living. See nphm.org.

Lawrence Lek: NOX Pavilion 
Miami Beach, Florida
November 19, 2025–April 26, 2026
Since 2023, London-based artist Lawrence Lek has developed a fictional universe centered on NOX (short for Nonhuman Excellence), a therapy center for sentient self-driving cars, run by a powerful tech company called Farsight Corporation. At NOX, they undergo psychological treatment for problems often rooted in their self-awareness—mental breakdowns, distractions, and malfunctions—that interfere with the jobs they were designed to perform. Showing at the Bass Museum of Art and coinciding with Miami Art Week, NOX Pavilion expands on this world through an installation of existing and newly commissioned works, turning two connected galleries into a setting that envelops the viewer. See thebass.org.

Installation view of NOX Pavilion. Photo courtesy Lawrence Lek and Sadie Coles

Framed Views
Chicago
November 22, 2025–February 22, 2026
Back for its second year, Framed Views showcases 60 curated photographs from the Open House Chicago (OHC) competition at the Chicago Architecture Center, revealing diverse perspectives on the city’s architecture, culture, and character. Also featured in the exhibition will be the best in each of the four categories of the 2024 OHC photography competition. See architecture.org.

Upcoming Exhibitions

Ursula von Rydingsvard: States of Becoming 
Greenwich, Connecticut
December 4, 2025–May 10, 2026
On view at the Bruce Museum, this exhibition will survey the last 20 years of sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard’s five-decade career, revealing themes of vulnerability and open-endedness in a solo exhibition. It will showcase approximately 15 freestanding sculptures and wall reliefs, along with a selection of works on paper that illustrate the tensions between intuition and methodology in von Rydingsvard’s practice. See brucemuseum.org.

Art of Noise 
New York
February 13–July 19, 2026
On view at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, this exhibition celebrates groundbreaking design that enhances and envisages our musical experiences. From concert posters to record albums, phonographs to digital music players, handheld radios to sound systems, Art of Noise takes visitors on an exploration of how design has transformed people’s relationship to music over the past 100 years. The exhibition features more than 300 artworks, as well as unique sound environments designed by Stockholm-based studio Teenage Engineering and multidisciplinary artist Devon Turnbull. Art of Noise debuted at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the summer of 2024. See cooperhewitt.org.

Future Schools: Toward a 21st Century Academy 
New York
February 12–May 9, 2026
Showing at the National Academy of Design, this show seeks to challenge and transform our understanding of arts education, exhibition practices, and the frameworks that facilitate them. Future Schools brings together the work of artist and architect Academy members whose practices embody public-facing and community-engaged long-term projects that model new forms of museological, organizational, and curatorial practices. The selection of artworks and projects will spotlight practitioners whose work transcends conventional boundaries and modes of pedagogical engagement, prompting renewed examination of their contributions to and influence on the cultural landscape. See nationalacademy.org.

Upcoming Events

Soak it Up
Los Angeles
December 4–6, 2025
Held at the University of Southern California’s Bovard Auditorium, Soak it Up will address provocative solutions to urban flooding through talks, a conference, and workshops. The conference, on December 5, will include presentations by leading landscape architects, academics, and critics from Los Angeles and beyond. An international panel, which originally included the late Oberlander Prize laureate Kongjian Yu—global champion of the “sponge cities” concept—will dedicate their talks to his memory for his significant contributions to the field. There will be a reception on Thursday, December 4, featuring an opening keynote speech at SWA’s L.A. studio by environmental artist and activist Lauren Bon, followed on Saturday, December 6, by mobile workshops. This event is organized by The Cultural Landscape Foundation in partnership with USC and SWA. For more, see tclf.org.

Modernism Week
Palm Springs, California
February 12–22, 2026
This annual 11-day festival will feature more than 400 tours, programs, and events highlighting Midcentury Modern architecture, art, interior design, landscape design, and vintage culture in the Palm Springs area of Southern California. Activities include home and neighborhood architecture tours, bus excursions, art shows, shopping, and film premieres, as well as talks and presentations by architects such as Susan T Rodriguez, Barbara Bestor, Leo Marmol, and others. Special this year is the 2026 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize ceremony—the first time the event has been held outside of New York. A portion of ticket proceeds benefit Modernism Week (a non-profit organization) and other local preservation, neighborhood, and community groups. See modernismweek.com.