What's On in 2025

What will be the exhibition highlights of 2025 around Britain and Europe? At the end of the year, Tate Britain will be marking 250 years since the birth of JMW Turner and John Constable with a potential blockbuster. Meanwhile, the Swiss are making a big thing of the 100th anniversary of the death of Félix Vallotton (a real favourite of ours). Among women artists in the spotlight will be Anna Ancher, Ithell Colquhoun, Artemisia Gentileschi and Suzanne Valadon.

Here's a selection of what's coming up, in more or less chronological order; as ever, we make no claim to comprehensiveness, and our choice very much reflects our personal taste. And in our search for the most interesting shows, we're visiting Ascona, Baden-Baden, Chemnitz and Winterthur, among other places. 

January 

We start off in Paris, at the Pompidou Centre; the 1970s inside-out building is showing its age and it'll be shut in the summer for a renovation programme scheduled to last until 2030. Before it closes, they'll be showing more than 200 works by Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938), perhaps best known for her candid nudes, from January 15 to May 26. There are no Valadon paintings in British public collections, by the way.  

From January 24, there's an exhibition at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin that owes its arrival in Germany to Vladimir Putin. From Odessa to Berlin: European Painting of the 16th to 19th Century features artworks that were evacuated from the Ukrainian city's Museum of Western and Eastern Art before the outbreak of the war. Among the 60 major works from Odessa, Frans Hals is perhaps the most famous name. On till June 22.  

February

Samuel van Hoogstraten was one of Rembrandt's best pupils, and he had his greatest success as a creator of remarkably convincing trompe l'oeil paintings. We've just seen his work in a joint exhibition with Rembrandt at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; from February 1 to May 4 he's on show at the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam as The Illusionist.

A solo exhibition of a female British Surrealist? No, it's not Leonora Carrington: It's Ithell Colquhoun: Between Worlds, and it's on at Tate St Ives from February 1 to May 5, featuring more than 200 exhibits. The show will be moving on to Tate Britain in London in the summer, as part of a double bill with Edward Burra.

And following on from last year's 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto, the overarching review of Surrealism we recently saw at the Pompidou Centre in Paris travels to the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid from February 6 to May 11. 1924: Other Surrealisms will have a focus on Spanish and Latin American artists as well as women in the movement. The Surrealism bandwagon moves on to Hamburg and Philadelphia later in the year. 

Paris is the focus of an exhibition at the Kunstmuseum in The Hague that looks at the development of the city in the late 19th century, when the French capital was being rebuilt just as the world of art was being transformed by the Impressionists. New Paris: From Monet to Morisot also features Manet, Degas, Renoir and Caillebotte, and it's on from February 15 to June 8.

Many of the same names will appear at London's Courtauld Institute, where there's a chance to admire for the first time in Britain a selection of paintings from one of Switzerland's leading collections. Goya to Impressionism: Masters from the Oskar Reinhart Collection in Winterthur will be on from February 14 to May 26. 

March

Arriving at London's National Gallery from the Met in New York on March 8 is Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350. On until June 22, this show features over 100 exhibits including some of the most significant early European artworks by the likes of Duccio and Simone Martini. 

At the National Portrait Gallery, you can see Edvard Munch Portraits from March 13 to June 15. It's the first show in the UK to focus on the Norwegian's portraiture, and it will feature more than 40 works, many on loan from museums across Scandinavia.

 

Over in Paris, the Musée Jacquemart-André will be devoting a show to Artemisia Gentileschi, probably the star woman painter of the 17th century. Around 40 works, familiar and not-so-familiar, often very dramatic, will be on display in Artemisia: Heroine of Art from March 19 to August 3.

April

Due to start on April 9 at the H'ART Museum in Amsterdam (formerly the Hermitage) is Rembrandt to Vermeer, Masterpieces from the Leiden Collection, one of the largest assemblies of Dutch 17th-century art in private hands. There will be 17 Rembrandts, together with paintings by Vermeer, Hals and others -- 75 in all -- with which the curators will aim to illustrate the story of Amsterdam and its residents in the Golden Age. The show -- part of the events to mark the city's 750th anniversary -- runs until August 24.

And so to Switzerland, where the Kunstmuseum in Winterthur is staging the first big show of the Vallotton anniversary year. On from April 12 to September 7, Félix Vallotton: Lost Illusions explores the artist's trenchant observation of society, taking its subtitle from Honoré de Balzac's novel. More than 150 works will be on display. 

Chemnitz in eastern Germany is one of the European capitals of culture in 2025, and one of the big exhibitions they have planned is European Realities, looking at the realist movements across Europe of the 1920s and 30s, including New Objectivity in Germany. They promise 300 works from 20 countries at the Museum Gunzenhauser from April 27 to August 10. That sounds like several hours worth; there had better be some refreshment possibility. 

May

The Swiss are spreading their Vallotton year all around the country, and on May 11 an exhibition opens at the Castello San Materno in Ascona, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino. Félix Vallotton: A Monument to Beauty will focus on his landscapes, still lifes and nudes, and it's on until September 7. 

The Pallant House Gallery in Chichester regularly puts on superb shows -- among Britain's best outside London -- and though its 2025 programme wasn't on its website at the time of writing, we can tell you that its exhibition starting on May 17 looks at 125 years of how artists in Britain have portrayed their colleagues from 1900 to the present day. Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists features Lucian Freud, Barbara Hepworth, Celia Paul, Walter Sickert and many others, and it's on till November 2. 

June

As the Middle Ages came to an end, the art of manuscript illustration reached its peak in the shape of a book of hours created for the brother of the French King that is known as Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry and which contains 121 exquisite miniatures. At the Château de Chantilly north of Paris, they'll be bringing together all the books of hours in the Duke of Berry's collection for the first time since he died in 1416, with loans from the Met, amongst others. On from June 7 to October 5. 

The Surrealists take over the Kunsthalle in Hamburg on June 13. Rendezvous of Dreams, on till October 12, aims to show how Max Ernst and his contemporaries shared an affinity with the German Romantics of the early 19th century, including Caspar David Friedrich. 

Ithell Colquhoun arrives at Tate Britain on June 13 for a joint show with Edward Burra (1905-1976), creator of strange landscapes and chronicler of the seedier side of life between the wars. Edward Burra -- Ithell Colquhoun runs in London until October 19.

September

As we move into autumn, London's National Gallery will be staging its first ever exhibition focusing on Pointillism, with pictures borrowed to a large extent from the collection established in the early 20th century by Helene Kröller-Müller and housed in the museum she set up in the eastern Netherlands. Seurat, Signac and van Rysselberghe are the stars of Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller's Neo-Impressionists from September 13 to February 8, 2026.

The Finnish painter of lakes and myths, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, has just been the subject of an exhibition at the Belvedere in Vienna; from September 29, Vienna goes to Helsinki, with a show looking back at the exchange of ideas between the Finn and the Vienna Secessionists, including Gustav Klimt. Munch and Ferdinand Hodler are among others to feature in Gallen-Kallela, Klimt & Wien, which is on at the Ateneum Art Museum until February 1, 2026. 

October

Baden-Baden's only a few kilometres across the River Rhine from France, so perhaps there's nowhere more appropriate to document the spread of that most French of art movements, Impressionism, into Germany. From October 3, the Frieder Burda Museum will be showing more than 70 works by Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth and their contemporaries. Impressionism in Germany: The Age of Max Liebermann runs until February 8, 2026 and then transfers to the Barberini Museum in Potsdam. 

Vallotton was a native of Lausanne, and the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in the city holds the largest collection of his output. So that's the location of the main anniversary exhibition, Vallotton Forever: The Retrospective, featuring more than 200 of his works from throughout Europe, possibly including the sole Vallotton painting in a UK public collection. The show runs from October 24 to February 15. 

November

Fans of Surrealism in North America will get their moment when Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100 arrives at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the fall, following its European tour. There'll be around 200 works by more than 60 artists; exact dates to be confirmed. 

Not for the first time, there's a show at London's Dulwich Picture Gallery devoted to a Scandinavian artist you may well be unfamiliar with. Anna Ancher (1859-1935) is regarded as Denmark's leading female painter and she was a key figure in the Skagen artists' colony at the northern tip of Jutland. There are no Anchers in British public collections, but more than 40 of her paintings will be on show in Dulwich from November 4 to March 8, 2026. 

Turner was born in 1775, Constable in 1776. The two absolute giants of British landscape painting come together at Tate Britain on November 27 for an exhibition described as "definitive" and "landmark" that's intended to explore their intertwined lives and legacies. Turner and Constable will run until April 12, 2026. 

The winter exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester is devoted to William Nicholson (1872-1949), known for his landscape and still-life paintings and as a pioneering printmaker. This show runs from November 22 to May 31, 2026. Nicholson lived before World War I in Rottingdean, just outside Brighton, where they staged the first ever retrospective of his wife, Mabel (Prydie), in summer 2024. 

And finally, let's do a strange thing; let's head south in France to see Normandy and the Channel coast. You can experience Etretat at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon from November 29. The fishing village turned resort framed by remarkable cliff formations was an inspiration to Courbet and Monet, among others, and this show traces its discovery by artists and writers. On till March 1, 2026, after which it will move to the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. 

Images

Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938), Marie Coca and her Daughter Gilberte, 1913, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon
Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988), Rivières tièdes (Méditerranée), 1939, Southampton City Art Gallery
Simone Martini (c. 1284-1344), Saint Peter, about 1326-27, Colección Carmen Thyssen. © Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Félix Vallotton (1865-1925), La blanche et la noire, 1913, Kunst Museum Winterthur, Hahnloser/Jaeggli Stiftung
Max Ernst (1891-1976), The Angel of Hearth and Home (The Triumph of Surrealism), 1937, Private collection
Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931), Lake View, 1901. Photo: Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki/Hannu Pakarinen

John Constable (1776-1837), The White Horse, 1819. © The Frick Collection, New York. Photo: Joseph Coscia Jr
Claude Monet (1840-1926), Etretat, The Needle and the Porte d’Aval, 1885, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts