TOP 10 ART EXHIBITIONS THAT DEFINED 2025

2025 has been a busy and exciting year for art, with exhibitions ranging from immersive installations to large-scale retrospectives. At designboom, we experienced many of these shows, some in person and others virtually, and took note of the ones that stayed with us. As the year comes to a close, we look back at the top exhibitions that made the strongest impression and are likely to be remembered for years to come. In Melbourne, Yayoi Kusama unveiled a dazzling new infinity room at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). At Tate Modern, Do Ho Suh presented intricate fabric architectures and during Milan Design Week 2025, A.A. Murakami filled Museo della Permanente with floating, mist-filled bubbles , together offering a glimpse into the creativity that shaped art this year.

Throughout 2025, designboom’s monthly radar series spotlighted exhibitions worth visiting, providing a guide to some of the most compelling shows around the world. In this feature, we revisit some of those highlights and celebrate the exhibitions that defined the art landscape of 2025. Read on to see the full list!

DO HO SUH’S ‘WALK THE HOUSE’ SOLO EXHIBITION AT TATE MODERN

Do Ho Suh, Nest/s, 2024, polyester, stainless steel, 410.1 x 375.4 x 2148.7 cm | courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin New York, Seoul and London, image by Jeon Taeg Su © Do Ho Suh

Tate Modern’s The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh: Walk the House marked a major moment for the Korean artist, presenting his first solo show in London in more than two decades. Known for his translucent fabric installations that explore home, memory, and identity, Suh transforms architectural details into delicate, almost dreamlike reflections on belonging. The exhibition brought together sculpture, video, drawing, and large-scale installations, showcasing key works from the past three decades alongside new site-specific pieces created for Tate Modern. ‘The space I’m interested in is not only a physical one but also an intangible, metaphorical, and psychological one,’ Suh shares. ‘For me, ‘space’ is that which encompasses everything.’

FIFTY YEARS OF LAND ART BY ANDY GOLDSWORTHY IN EDINBURGH

Andy Goldsworthy, Edges made by finding leaves the same size. Tearing one in two. Spitting underneath and pressing flat on to another. Brough, Cumbria. Cherry patch. 4 November 1984, 1984 Cibachrome photograph | image courtesy of the artist

At Tate Modern, Do Ho Suh transformed architectural details into delicate reflections on home, memory, and identity, inviting viewers to reconsider the spaces they inhabit. In Edinburgh, Andy Goldsworthy took a similarly immersive approach, but on a grand, natural scale. Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years transformed the Royal Scottish Academy into a sweeping landscape, his largest indoor exhibition to date. Spanning five decades of land art and over 200 works, the show turned the historic galleries into a continuous, site-specific installation of cracked clay walls, windfallen oak branches, suspended reeds, and stones collected from more than 100 graveyards in Dumfriesshire. Responding directly to the RSA’s architecture, Goldsworthy’s work used space, light, and materials as active elements, extending his long-term exploration of the ties and tensions between people, buildings, and the land.

STEVE MCQUEEN’S BASS AT SCHAULAGER BASEL

Steve McQueen, Bass, 2024, LED Light and Sound, courtesy the artist, co-commissioned work by Laurenz Foundation, Schaulager Basel, and Dia Art Foundation, Schaulager® Münchenstein/Basel (Installation view) | all images courtesy of Schaulager Basel, photos by Pati Grabowicz, © Steve McQueen

While Andy Goldsworthy shapes space with natural materials, Steve McQueen transforms it through light and sound. At Schaulager Basel, the artist’s immersive color and sound installation Bass filled the museum with over a thousand LED light tubes spanning its five levels, including the soaring atrium, paired with deep, resonant bass frequencies that move through a suspended array of speakers. The colored lights shifted slowly from deep red to ultraviolet, enveloping the interior in a continuously changing spectrum, while the sound flowed alongside, creating a tangible sense of presence within the architecture.

One of McQueen’s most abstract works to date, Bass can be considered an exploration of how sound and light can occupy, define, and transform a space. ‘What I love about light and sound is that they are both created through movement and fluidity. They can be molded into any shape, like vapor or a scent; they can sneak into every nook and cranny,’ the British artist and filmmaker explains.

A.A. MURAKAMI’S BUBBLES AT MILAN DESIGN WEEK

Beyond the Horizon (2024) at Museo della Permanente | exhibition photos by DSL Studio, unless stated otherwise

As McQueen orchestrates light and sound to make space itself tangible, likewise, Murakami manipulates perception, using robotics and physics to conjure nature in unexpected forms. During Milan Design Week 2025, the collective presented two installations at Museo della Permanente for Opposites United: Eclipse of Perceptions. In The Cave, red backlighting illuminates replicated ancient bones rising from a pool of oil, lifted by robotic limbs that cast shifting shadows and haunting silhouettes. Beyond the Horizon offered a cool, contrasting space where giant bubbles drift overhead, releasing mist to form ephemeral clouds. Together, the works transformed the museum into a space where technology and nature meet in poetic dialogue.

YAYOI KUSAMA’S NEW INFINITY MIRROR AT NGV MELBOURNE

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Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room–My Heart is Filled to the Brim with Sparkling Light, 2024, on display at the NGV International, Melbourne for the National Gallery of Victoria’s Yayoi Kusama exhibition from 15 December 2024 – 21 April 2025 © YAYOI KUSAMA | image by Sean Fennessy

From Murakami’s playful interplay of mist, motion, and robotics, the next highlight on our top exhibitions of 2025 is Yayoi Kusama’s mirrored cosmos. The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne presented the world premiere of Kusama’s new infinity room, My Heart is Filled to the Brim with Sparkling Light. Transforming the gallery into a seemingly endless celestial realm, the installation placed visitors at the center of the artist’s expansive universe. Through mirrored surfaces and choreographed points of light, the work created a shifting constellation of brightness and shadow, prompting viewers to consider their own presence within an infinite space.

The retrospective surveyed Kusama’s eight-decade practice with 200 works, including ten immersive installations. Beyond the main galleries, the NGV Great Hall featured Dots Obsession, an arrangement of massive inflated spheres, while more than 60 trees along St Kilda Road were wrapped in pink-and-white polka dots for Ascension of Polka Dots on the Trees.

AI WEIWEI’S FIVE WORKING SPACES AT AEDES ARCHITECTURE FORUM

image courtesy of Aedes Architecture Forum and Ai Weiwei Studio

Where Kusama examines the cosmic and the boundless, Ai Weiwei grounds his exhibition in the spaces that define him, revealing how the studio itself becomes an extension of identity and resistance. At Berlin’s Aedes Architecture Forum, Five Working Spaces offers an intimate look into the artist’s studios across continents, each reflecting the political pressures, personal memories, and creative impulses that have shaped his career. A central focus of the show was Weiwei’s studio in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal, built using traditional Chinese woodworking methods.

‘My studio is an extension of my body and mental state,’ Ai Weiwei tells designboom. ‘Of course it’s political. Anyone who sees the exhibition can understand — it’s not that I want it to be political. It just is political.’

THE MANY LIVES OF THE NAKAGIN CAPSULE TOWER AT MOMA

night time at the Nakagin Capsule Tower, with Mr. Takayuki Sekine seen through the window of capsule B1004, 2016. image © Jeremie Souteyrat

As Ai Weiwei’s studios highlighted the ways environments shape an artist’s identity, the next exhibition turned to a building that itself became a symbol of radical architectural thinking. MoMA in New York brought the Nakagin Capsule Tower back into public view, reframing its half-century story through a fully restored capsule and extensive archival material. The Many Lives of the Nakagin Capsule Tower exhibition revisited the Tokyo landmark designed in 1972 and dismantled in 2022, long regarded as one of the clearest expressions of Metabolism in Japan. At the center of the exhibition was capsule A1305, returned to near-original condition with its modular furniture, audio controls, and Sony color TV that once defined its compact domestic life. More than 40 supplementary materials, models, brochures, film reels, and interviews, traced how the tower’s prefabricated units evolved far beyond their initial purpose.

CELEBRATING RYUICHI SAKAMOTO AT MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART TOKYO

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Nakaya Fujiko, London Fog, Fog Performance #03779, 2017, Installation view from “BMW Tate Live Exhibition: Ten Days Six Nights,” Tate Modern, London, UK Collaboration: Min Tanaka (Dance), Shiro Takatani (Lighting), Ryuichi Sakamoto (Music). Photo by Noriko Koshida

The next exhibition on the list looks beyond architecture to the world of sound, with a major retrospective dedicated to composer and artist Ryuichi Sakamoto. At the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Ryuichi Sakamoto | seeing sound, hearing time offered a comprehensive look at the late artist’s pioneering journey through music, technology, and visual expression. Bringing together celebrated works alongside installations conceived before his passing, the exhibition captured the breadth of a career defined by experimentation and cross-disciplinary curiosity. Tracing Sakamoto’s evolution from electronic innovation to environmental awareness, the show highlights how he expanded the possibilities of composition by integrating spatial, visual, and digital elements. Immersive rooms, archival recordings, and rarely seen materials reveal his deep engagement with the fragility of the natural world and the passage of time. The result was an intimate portrait of an artist whose influence continues to resonate across contemporary art and culture.

TATIANA TROUVÉ STRANGE LIFE OF THINGS BY TAT PALAZZO GRASSI

The Guardian, 2020 | photo by Florian Kleinefenn

Where Sakamoto shaped emotion through sound and space, Tatiana Trouvé builds atmospheres through objects, constellations, and drawn narratives across Palazzo Grassi. In The Strange Life of Things, the Pinault Collection presented a major solo exhibition of Trouvé’s sculptures and drawings, curated by Caroline Bourgeois and James Lingwood. The show traced the artist’s ongoing interest in journeys, both real and imagined, through chair sculptures, installations, and intricate drawings. These pieces form interconnected worlds that shift between past, present, and future, drawing viewers into landscapes where memory, imagination, and lived experience overlap.

PRECIOUS OKOYOMON’S PLUSH COMPANIONS AT KUNSTHAUS BREGENZ

Precious Okoyomon, ONE EITHER LOVES ONESELF OR KNOWS ONESELF, Exhibition view second floor Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2025, in the belly of the sun endless, 2025 | photo: Markus Tretter © Precious Okoyomon, Kunsthaus Bregenz courtesy of the artist and Kunsthaus Bregenz

An even more surreal world than Trouvé’s emerged at Kunsthaus Bregenz with Precious Okoyomon’s dreamlike environments. The artist and poet unveiled ONE EITHER LOVES ONESELF OR KNOWS ONESELF, an exhibition that reimagined the museum as a sequence of psychoanalytic chambers, dream habitats, and intimate interior worlds. Returning to the institution after debuting there as its youngest-ever exhibiting artist, Okoyomon filled the space with plush companions, lush garden enclosures, and installations that blurred the boundary between comfort and unease. Her poetry threaded through the galleries, shaping an experience that felt at once childlike and deeply introspective. Moving through these shifting environments, visitors were invited to confront the tender edges of self-perception, encountering a universe where transformation is constant and the subconscious becomes momentarily tangible.