Ongoing Exhibitions

Jean Nouvel: Without the Artist, Architecture Disappears
Shanghai
Through August 31, 2026
On view at the Museum of Art Pudong (MAP), in celebration of its fifth anniversary, is a comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the work of Jean Nouvel. Notably, this is the first time the French Pritzker Prize laureate has staged a solo exhibition within a building of his own design. Conceived by Nouvel as a cultural landmark for Shanghai, the museum building itself serves as an integral part of the exhibition, demonstrating how the architect’s design philosophy takes root and extends within the city. Through a comprehensive array of mediums—films, architectural models, archival documents, installations, and a reconstructed scenography of his Paris studio—the show offers a panoramic account of an extraordinary career spanning over half a century. See museumofartpd.org.cn.

Alternative Palm Springs: Other Desert Architectures
Palm Springs, California
Through January 4, 2027
Alongside Palm Springs’ famed modernist legacy exists a lesser-known history of design experimentation. Now showing at the Palm Springs Art Museum, this exhibition assembles unbuilt visions of prominent architects, off-grid designs of the counterculture, and private and public worlds by the LGBTQ+ community in the 20th century, offering an expanded view of the desert’s architectural landscape. Drawn from the museum’s holdings and other local collections, the models, drawings, photography, and objects on view show how this California city’s design identity, far from being settled, has always been in a state of evolution and experimentation. See psmuseum.org.

Verner Panton: Form, Colour, Space
Weil am Rhein, Germany
Through May 9, 2027
To mark the 100th anniversary of the Danish designer and architect Verner Panton's birth, the Vitra Design Museum is presenting a comprehensive exhibition of his work at the Vitra Schaudepot. Verner Panton: Form, Colour, Space illuminates his’s work from different design periods: From iconic designs such as the Panton Chair, the Cone Chair, and the Flowerpot lamp to visionary living landscapes as well as rarely shown furniture and architectural projects. A walk-in reconstruction (edition 1/8) of the legendary Fantasy Landscape from 1970 invites visitors to immerse themselves in Panton’s sculptural, color-saturated worlds.See design-museum.de

Upcoming Exhibitions

Paul R Williams, American Architect
Memphis, Tennessee
August 29, 2026—
The Art Museum of the University of Memphis (AMUM) opens a new exhibition reprising the first major museum presentation devoted to the achievements of the Black architect Paul R. Williams (1894-1980), which was launched by AMUM in 2010. A newly designed website will launch in tandem with the opening. The upcoming exhibition presents over 200 photographs arranged by decade, from the 1920s through the 1960s, depicting interiors and exteriors of buildings. The images are by the photographer David Horan who, accompanied by Leslie Luebbers, AMUM director and exhibition curator, traveled over the course of two years to photograph as many homes and buildings in the Los Angeles area as possible. Together, his photographs convey Williams’s mastery of detail and choreography of space and natural light. Paul R Williams, American Architect draws upon the holdings of the Paul Revere Williams Project (University of Memphis) and also features a section that brings together a career spanning selection of Horan’s work. See memphis.edu/amum

Georgia O’ Keeffe: Architecture 
Detroit
September 11, 2026–January 3, 2027
This exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Art features nearly 40 works highlighting American artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s engagements with modern architecture. Billed as a first-of-its-kind presentation focused solely on her vision for the built environment, the show invites visitors to experience O’Keeffe’s works across three distinct viewpoints and several decades: the landscapes of New York City, rural farm buildings, and the adobe of her New Mexico homes. The show is built around a painting from the museum’s permanent collection, Stables (1932), complemented by a specially curated group of works representing her explorations of geometry, lines, and color, all created between the 1920s and 1960. See dia.org.

Humanist modernity
New York
October 1, 2026–March 27, 2027
This fall, the Center for Architecture presents Humanist modernity, curated by Kacper Kępiński, deputy director of the National Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning in Warsaw, Poland. Named for a concept developed in the 1940s by architects Maciej (Matthew) Nowicki and Stanisława Sandecka-Nowicka, Humanist modernity explores their vision of modernism as a human-centered approach to design—one concerned with understanding who a building is really for, and how it binds a human being to the space around them. The first exhibition to present the Nowickis as equal partners in a shared body of work, it explores a practice that bridges drawing, building, graphics, and structure, across Europe, America, and India. While Nowicki died tragically at age 40, several years later Sandecka-Nowicka went on to become the first woman in the United States to be appointed as a full professor of architecture in 1963 while teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. The layout of the exhibition, which includes newly commissioned works and contemporary interpretations of the Nowickis’ legacy, is designed by New York–based 2022 Design Vanguard recipient Only If, with Polish-American architect Karolina Częczek serving as principal in charge. See centerforarchitecture.org.

Events

London Creates
London
July 17–26, 2026
London Creates 2026, a free-to-visit exhibition showcasing pioneering architects, engineers, and designers shaping the future of design, will take place at The Truman Brewery cultural center in East London. Hosted by Archisource in collaboration with HP, Intel®, D5, and Affinity, the show explores how human creativity and technologies are transforming the creative process, from concept, ideation and experimentation, to fabrication, making, and construction. Curated in collaboration with ZHA, London Creates brings together leading studios, engineers, designers, and academic institutions from across the built environment. Featured exhibits include ZHA exploring how the practice designs, AKT II and their collaborators, Mamou-Mani Architects and Fab.Pub, alongside leading universities. London Creates will also host a program of talks, workshops, and activations in addition to the core exhibition. See archisource.org.

Cersaie
Bologna, Italy
September 21–25, 2026
Cersaie, the foremost international event for designers of ceramic and other surface coverings and bathroom furnishings, returns this year to Italy’s BolognaFiere exhibition center for its 43rd-annual gathering. The 2025 edition attracted more than 94,500 visitors and nearly 630 global exhibitors spread across 1.7 million square feet of exhibit space. Key events set to take place during the course of the fair include the “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” series of cultural programming along with a full slate of educational seminars and practical demonstrations in the Tiling Town technical zone. See cersaie.it