designboom radar: exhibitions to see around the world this november

november exhibitions from DESIGNBOOM RADAR

November’s designboom exhibition radar begins with an unlikely reunion in Paris, where two Alexander Calder mobiles return to public view after decades. In Zurich, 125 familiar lamps become a walk-through tunnel, while a new gallery in Hong Kong transfers the grain of wood into cast aluminum. Elsewhere, a house lost to Mexico City’s architectural history returns through an imagined botanical setting, and a new museum in Western Sydney opens with exhibitions on flight and water. 

Some of the exhibitions highlighted in earlier radars and listings on our dedicated events guide remain on view, giving designboom readers more time to encounter them around the globe.

hella jongerius: whispering things

More than 400 objects trace the experimental practice of Dutch designer Hella Jongerius at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg. Whispering Things, organized by the Vitra Design Museum, brings together furniture, textiles, ceramics, and early prototypes to examine how she has approached the making of objects over three decades.

The exhibition moves from commercially produced designs for companies such as Vitra and IKEA to more sculptural investigations of material and color. Sketches, collages, and films reveal the processes behind the finished work, including experiments that resist the predictability of industrial production. Throughout her career, Jongerius has returned to the relationship between craftsmanship and manufacturing, considering how objects can retain the irregularities and physical traces of their making.

name: Hella Jongerius: Whispering Things
designer: Hella Jongerius
museum: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
location: Hamburg, Germany
dates: October 23rd, 2026 — June 13th, 2027

charlotte perriand: free to rethink the world

A reconstruction of Charlotte Perriand‘s 1929 domestic prototype, Équipement intérieur d’une habitation, appears at Barcelona’s Fundació Joan Miró in Free to Rethink the World. Produced by Cassina in collaboration with Perriand’s daughter, architect Pernette Perriand-Barsac, the installation revisits a project developed with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret during Perriand’s early career.

The exhibition follows four decades of work through ten sections, extending from her Parisian interiors to her encounters with Japanese craftsmanship. Photographs and archival documents reveal her interest in creating spaces around the changing needs of their occupants. The presentation also revisits her friendship with architect Josep Lluís Sert, whose building for the Fundació Joan Miró opened in 1975, with Perriand attending its inauguration the following year.

name: Charlotte Perriand: Free to Rethink the World
designer, architect: Charlotte Perriand
museum: Fundació Joan Miró
location: Barcelona, Spain
dates: October 9th, 2026 — February 28th, 2027

no ordinary light: akari at 75

A monumental paper lantern measuring roughly two meters across takes its place at the Noguchi Museum in New York for No Ordinary Light: Akari at 75. The exhibition traces the development of Isamu Noguchi‘s Akari light sculptures, first conceived in Gifu, Japan, in 1951. Over the following decades, Noguchi developed more than 200 variations of the familiar illuminated forms.

Among the works identified for the presentation is the large-scale 200D, created around 1985, alongside archival sketchbooks and examples of Noguchi’s sculpture in other materials. The exhibition revisits Akari’s appearance at the home of Charles and Ray Eames in 1951 and its later presentation at the 1986 Venice Biennale, following the movement of these paper forms between sculpture and the domestic interior.

name: No Ordinary Light: Akari at 75
artist, designer: Isamu Noguchi
museum: The Noguchi Museum
location: New York, USA
dates: November 4th, 2026 — September 5th, 2027

sabine marcelis: light and color

At the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, 125 circular IKEA lamps form an eleven-meter-long tunnel in Sabine Marcelis: Light and Color. A mirrored wall with a color gradient extends the installation visually, turning a familiar household object into an illuminated passage. The Dutch designer’s first museum exhibition brings together recent projects and new works conceived for the museum’s Toni-Areal location.

Another room contains eight Mathmos lava lamps, each nearly three meters tall, multiplied through surrounding mirrors. In Sunbeam Captured, developed with Boris Acket, mechanical waves move across a thin layer of water as a shifting light source follows the path of the sun. Material studies accompany the installations, revealing how Sabine Marcelis works with transparency and reflection.

name: Sabine Marcelis—Light and Color
designer: Sabine Marcelis
museum: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich
location: Zurich, Switzerland
dates: October 30th, 2026 — April 4th, 2027

misha kahn: all intensive purposes

A sprawling cast-metal dining table, complete with a sculpted torn napkin and scraps of food, appears among the new works in Misha Kahn‘s All Intensive Purposes at Friedman Benda in New York. Its glass-and-stone surface introduces a surprising degree of order to an object assembled from seemingly accidental gestures. Elsewhere, an onyx table adopts the appearance of a far more roughly constructed piece.

The exhibition marks ten years of collaboration between Kahn and the gallery, following his interest in the unpredictable paths of making. New upholstered furniture incorporates exaggerated forms and graphic surfaces, while multilayered plywood becomes the basis for sculptural objects. The title deliberately alters the familiar phrase ‘all intents and purposes,’ placing the emphasis on experimentation itself.

name: Misha Kahn: All Intensive Purposes
designer: Misha Kahn
gallery: Friedman Benda
location: New York, USA
dates: October 29th, 2026 — December 12th, 2026

calder: françois premier

Two major Alexander Calder mobiles return to public view at Hauser & Wirth Paris in Calder: François Premier, an exhibition devoted to the artist’s years in France during the early 1950s. The presentation brings together Les Granettes (1953), a large standing mobile exhibited for the first time in 72 years, and The Putney Mobile (1954), making its public European debut.

The show takes its name from a seventeenth-century stone house in Saché, where Calder lived and worked after returning to France in 1953. Ink and gouache paintings from this period accompany the sculptures, tracing a particularly productive chapter in his career. There is a geographical coincidence, too: the Paris gallery occupies a historic building on rue François Premier.

name: Calder: François Premier
artist: Alexander Calder
gallery: Hauser & Wirth
location: Paris, France

dates: October 19th, 2026 — December 19th, 2026

dan flavin: some light

Green fluorescent tubes stretch across several meters in Dan Flavin‘s greens crossing greens (to Piet Mondrian who lacked green), one of the works presented in Some Light at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Made in 1966, the installation arranges ordinary industrial fixtures into two illuminated sections, bringing color directly into the surrounding architecture.

The exhibition draws on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum‘s holdings, with works dating from the 1960s through the 1980s and particular attention to Flavin’s early experiments. Beginning in 1963, the American artist used commercially available fluorescent lights to construct corners, barriers, and corridors. Their arrangement changes the appearance of the gallery itself, allowing visitors to experience color through the spaces the light occupies.

name: Dan Flavin: Some Light
artist: Dan Flavin
museum: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
location: Bilbao, Spain
dates: November 11th, 2026 — April 4th, 2027

powerhouse parramatta

With architecture by Moreau Kusunoki, Powerhouse Parramatta opens in Western Sydney on November 7th with five inaugural exhibitions devoted to art, design, science, and technology. Among them is Task Eternal, an ambitious exploration of aviation and space designed by OPEN Architecture. Its more than 850 objects include drawings of flying machines by Leonardo da Vinci and a NASA Moon rock, alongside a new light installation by James Turrell.

Elsewhere, Overflow brings together seven Aboriginal organizations to examine the living systems of Water Country. The Mall, developed with OMA/AMO, investigates the shopping mall as an architectural and cultural form, while Es Devlin presents five immersive installations in The Turning. A fifth exhibition, The Dark, creates an imaginative environment for children. Together, they introduce the museum’s extensive new program.

museum: Powerhouse Parramatta

participants: multiple artists, designers, architects, and First Nations organizations
location: Parramatta, Australia
dates: from November 7th, 2026

tai shani: m.i.a.s.m.a.

British artist Tai Shani brings M.I.A.S.M.A. to Jupiter Artland outside Edinburgh, transforming the gallery through sculpture and sound. The exhibition revisits the ancient Greek tragedy Antigone, asking how mourning becomes a form of resistance and whose lives are allowed to be remembered. Its expanded title, Moral Injury in the Apocalyptic Sunsets of Modernity disAssociation, gives some indication of the political and emotional territory Shani is exploring.

Developed as an international co-commission, the project was first presented at Kunsthalle Bern earlier this year. Jupiter Artland’s presentation combines imagery with architectural elements to construct an environment shaped by feminist mythology. Visitors can also encounter Shani’s separate installation The Spell or The Dream in the sculpture park’s orchard, where its setting changes with the approaching winter.

name: Tai Shani: M.I.A.S.M.A.
artist: Tai Shani
gallery: Jupiter Artland
location: Edinburgh, UK
dates: October 30th, 2026 — April 11th, 2027

paul r. williams: architect for living

Previously unexhibited drawings and photographs offer a closer look at the career of Paul R. Williams in Architect for Living at LACMA in Los Angeles. Working from the 1920s through the early 1970s, Williams designed buildings across Southern California during a period of extraordinary urban expansion. His commissions ranged from private residences to major civic projects.

The exhibition explores this breadth through archival material, tracing a practice that moved between different architectural languages and types of clients. Williams became particularly well known for his houses for Hollywood figures, while his larger body of work included public housing and hotels. Presented alongside related exhibitions at the Getty Research Institute and USC Fisher Museum of Art, the LACMA survey places his architecture within the wider development of Los Angeles.

name: Paul R. Williams: Architect for Living
architect: Paul R. Williams
museum: Los Angeles County Museum of Art
location: Los Angeles, USA
dates: November 15th, 2026 — May 31st, 2027

sophie calle: matrimoni, rotture e funerali inclusi

An attempt to capture her mother’s final breath is among the personal investigations revisited in Sophie Calle’s Matrimoni, Rotture e Funerali inclusi at MAXXI in Rome. Bringing together eight projects made between 1978 and 2026, the exhibition follows the French artist’s longstanding interest in the rituals people invent around intimacy and loss.

Photographs and written accounts guide visitors through experiences shaped by separation, absence, and the passage of time. Calle’s projects often begin with a self-imposed rule, whether documenting the end of a relationship or recording encounters with people seeing the sea for the first time. The presentation extends beyond the museum with a new permanent installation at Rome’s Non-Catholic Cemetery for Foreigners, adding another setting to her exploration of how personal histories are remembered.

name: Sophie Calle: Matrimoni, Rotture e Funerali inclusi
artist: Sophie Calle
museum: MAXXI
location: Rome, Italy
dates: October 16th, 2026 — February 7th, 2027

álvaro urbano: helen

A vanished house in Mexico City becomes the starting point for Álvaro Urbano’s Helen at Museo Jumex. The exhibition revisits Casa Cueva, the home and garden created by architect Juan O’Gorman and inhabited with his wife, artist and botanically minded writer Helen Fowler O’Gorman. Built in the rocky landscape of Pedregal de San Ángel, the house brought architecture into close contact with its surroundings.

Urbano draws on Fowler O’Gorman’s 1961 book Mexican Flowering Trees and Plants, imagining the botanical world that once occupied the property. References to Juan O’Gorman’s stone murals and later interventions by artist Helen Escobedo add further layers to the presentation. Through an atmospheric architectural reconstruction, Urbano considers how a building’s history can survive through fragments, images, and the people who lived there.

name: Álvaro Urbano: Helen
artist: Álvaro Urbano
museum: Museo Jumex
location: Mexico City, Mexico
dates: October 16th, 2026 — February 7th, 2027

jeonghwa seo: precise play

Wood grain appears on the surface of cast aluminum in Precise Play, an exhibition by South Korean designer Jeonghwa Seo at Carwan Gallery‘s new Hong Kong space. Seo uses sand casting to transfer the texture of wood into metal, producing objects that retain traces of the organic material used in their making. The exhibition inaugurates the gallery’s new location.

Bringing together established pieces and newly commissioned works, the presentation moves between sculptural furniture and lighting. Seo also works with resin and natural rush, combining materials with different physical qualities in precisely constructed forms. His objects invite a second look at the relationship between surface and structure, particularly when a metallic piece appears to preserve the grain of timber or a functional object adopts an unexpected sculptural form.

name: Jeonghwa Seo: Precise Play
designer: Jeonghwa Seo
gallery: Carwan Gallery
location: Hong Kong, China
dates: November 20th, 2026 – February 20th, 2027

yu nishimura: towards a sea

A sea glimpsed through a train window or partially hidden behind trees runs through Yu Nishimura’s Towards a Sea at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris. The Japanese painter’s first institutional solo exhibition in France brings together approximately 50 works from the past decade, including new pieces made for the presentation.

Working in oil and tempera, Nishimura moves between landscape and portraiture, allowing familiar subjects to become blurred or partially obscured. A bicycle wheel might appear alongside a human face, while the boundary between water and sky remains difficult to locate. The exhibition follows the artist’s interest in how places are recalled through imperfect images. His compositions borrow from the language of photography and cinema, and give ordinary scenes the elusive quality of something remembered.

name: Yu Nishimura: Towards a Sea
artist: Yu Nishimura
museum: Lafayette Anticipations
location: Paris, France
dates: October 21st, 2026 — January 3rd, 2027

giuseppe penone: the inner flow of life

Trees and other natural forms enter the architecture of the National Museum of Qatar in Giuseppe Penone: The Inner Flow of Life. Installed across the museum’s Baraha and Old Palace, the exhibition brings together sculptures and architectural interventions by the Italian artist, whose practice has explored the physical relationship between human bodies and the natural world for more than five decades.

The presentation moves between early works and recent pieces, including Rovesciare i propri occhi from 1970 and Vene di bronzo from 2026. Penone uses materials such as wood and bronze to investigate the forces that shape living matter, often bringing the traces of touch or growth into sculpture. A newly installed public artwork, Idee di Pietra, extends the project to Doha Old Port.

name: Giuseppe Penone: The Inner Flow of Life
artist: Giuseppe Penone
museum: National Museum of Qatar
location: Doha, Qatar
dates: October 26th, 2026 — February 13th, 2027

Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers

More than 70 works spanning nearly three decades of Rashid Johnson’s practice come together at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in A Poem for Deep Thinkers. The survey brings together photographs, large-scale installations, and films, including his black-soap Cosmic Slops paintings and the expressive faces of the Anxious Men and Broken Men series.

Throughout his career, Johnson has drawn on Black intellectual culture and art history to explore questions of identity, anxiety, and freedom. His 2024 film Sanguine turns toward his own family, examining relationships with his father, brother, and son, and incorporating a poem by writer and activist Amiri Baraka.

name: Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers
artist: Rashid Johnson
museum: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
location: Chicago, USA
dates: November 7th, 2026 — April 25th, 2027

global antiquity

An ancient Indian ivory statuette discovered in Pompeii offers a glimpse into the far-reaching connections explored in Global Antiquity at Fondazione Prada in Milan. Bringing together more than 150 artworks and artifacts, the exhibition examines cultural exchange across Afro-Eurasia between approximately 600 BCE and 1000 CE. The presentation occupies the foundation’s Podium building, with exhibition design by Rem Koolhaas and AMO/OMA.

Curated by Salvatore Settis, Anna Anguissola, and Chiara Ballestrazzi, the exhibition considers how objects traveled through systems of trade and political contact long before the modern idea of globalization. Their places of discovery become as revealing as their origins. Together, the artifacts trace connections between distant societies across 1,700 years.

name: Global Antiquity: Cultural Interactions in Afroeurasian Space, 600 BCE–1000 CE
curators: Salvatore Settis, Anna Anguissola, Chiara Ballestrazzi
exhibition design: Rem Koolhaas and AMO/OMA
museum: Fondazione Prada
location: Milan, Italy
dates: November 5th, 2026 — March 1st, 2027