As the first half of 2026 establishes the year’s artistic temperature, its latter chapters promise depth, ambition, and global dialogue. From Venice to Tokyo, Paris to New York, museums and biennials are embracing exhibitions that question how we live now—socially, politically, technologically, and spiritually. Part two of Whitewall’s most anticipated exhibitions of 2026 looks toward projects that expand the scale of exhibition-making while remaining grounded in material, memory, and imagination. Together, these shows suggest a year defined by thoughtful reappraisal and creative courage.
The Venice Biennale 2026: “In Minor Keys”
La Biennale di Venezia
Giardini and Arsenale, Venice
Portrait of Koyo Kouoh, Courtesy of The Venice Biennale.
The 61st International Art Exhibition unfolds as a deeply considered response to the complexities of the present. Curated by the late Koyo Kouoh and realized in her original vision, “In Minor Keys” privileges nuance and attentiveness over grand declarations. The exhibition gathers artists from across geographies who work through subtle gestures, layered histories, and resonant forms, offering an alternative rhythm for global exhibition-making. Rather than proposing a single dominant narrative, the Biennale emphasizes listening—foregrounding practices that register emotional, political, and social frequencies often overlooked. Across the Giardini, Arsenale, and sites throughout Venice, works engage with sound, time, memory, and lived experience, creating moments of quiet intensity amid the city’s architectural grandeur. The result is a Biennale attuned to fragility and persistence alike, shaping a reflective counterpoint to spectacle-driven culture.
What we love: A tremendous Curatorial Text by Koyo Kouoh begins, “The minor key, in music, alludes both to the structure of a song and to its emotional effects. It is a rich idea, so rich that it quickly overflows its technical definition and spills with metaphor. It summons moods, the blues, the call-and-response, the morna, the second line, the lament, the allegory, the whisper.”
The Venice Biennale 2026: “In Minor Keys”
May 9–November 22, 2026
Pierre Huyghe
Fondation Beyeler
Riehen, Basel
Pierre Huyghe,
“Liminal,” 2024-on-going; Courtesy the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Marian Goodman Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Esther Schipper, TARO NASU and Anna Lena Films.
Pierre Huyghe’s long-standing interest in unstable systems reaches a new threshold in this exhibition conceived specifically for the Fondation Beyeler. Bringing together newly realized projects with key recent works, the presentation transforms the museum into an evolving environment where human and nonhuman forces intersect. Huyghe’s practice resists fixed interpretation, instead proposing scenarios shaped by biological processes, algorithmic logic, and chance occurrences. Visitors encounter spaces that appear to think, respond, and shift over time, blurring distinctions between artwork, organism, and exhibition architecture. The show invites viewers into a state of uncertainty—one where authorship, agency, and control are continually renegotiated. The exhibition underscores Huyghe’s ability to turn the museum into a living proposition, open-ended and alive to change.
What we love: The way unpredictability becomes a central aesthetic principle in one of the most anticipated exhibitions of 2026.
Pierre Huyghe at Fondation Beyeler
May 24–September 13, 2026
Mariko Mori
Mori Art Museum
Roppongi, Tokyo
Mariko Mori, “Wave UFO,”
1999-2002,
Brainwave interface, vision dome, projector, computer system, fiberglass, Technogel®, acrylic, carbon fiber, aluminum, and magnesium;
528 x 1134 x 493 cm;
Installation view: Mariko Mori: Wave UFO, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria, 2003
Photo: Richard Learoyd. Courtesy of Mori Art Museum.
Mariko Mori returns to Tokyo with an exhibition that spans decades of her boundary-crossing practice while introducing new works shaped by ecological and cosmic inquiry. Known for merging futuristic imagery with ancient spiritual traditions, Mori creates environments that invite contemplation as opposed to consumption. Sculptures, videos, and immersive installations reflect her ongoing interest in interconnectedness—between technology and nature, science and belief, the individual and the universe. At the Mori Art Museum, these ideas unfold against Tokyo’s skyline, reinforcing the tension between urban acceleration and meditative stillness. The exhibition positions Mori as a visionary of the future as well as an artist concerned with continuity, balance, and responsibility across time.
What we love: Curators Kataoka Mami (Director, Mori Art Museum) and Alexandra Munroe (Senior Curator at Large, Global Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation) illuminate Mariko Mori’s ability to frame transcendence as a shared, earthly concern.
Mariko Mori at Mori Art Museum
October 31, 2026 – March 28, 2027
Ibrahim Mahama: “The Harvest Season”
Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
1st arrondissement, Paris
“Le Temps des Recoltes,” Ibrahim Mahama, 2025, © Ibrahim Mahama. Courtesy of the artist and Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.
At the Fondation Cartier, Ibrahim Mahama conceives the exhibition as a thriving force—one that mirrors the evolving ecosystems of the art centers he has established since 2019 in Tamale, in northern Ghana. The exhibition is skillfully imagined as an organism shaped by circulation, collaboration, and collective energy. Large-scale installations built from repurposed materials are joined by new architectural and spatial interventions that activate the Fondation Cartier’s glass structure, emphasizing permeability and exchange. Central to the project is Mahama’s invitation to nine artists and artist collectives to participate, deepening his long-standing commitment to shared authorship and community-based production. Their contributions play out in conversation with Mahama’s own works, reinforcing the exhibition’s sense of continual growth and transformation. Together, the presentation reflects Mahama’s belief in art as an infrastructural force—one that accumulates meaning through use, movement, and human presence.
What we love: Collaboration becomes the exhibition’s driving principle, with visionaries such as Ghanaian photographer James Barnor, Painter Gideon Appah, Architect Courage Dzidula Kpodo, and more.
Ibrahim Mahama: “The Harvest Season” at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
Dates forthcoming, October 2026
“The 90s”
Tate Britain
Millbank, London
“The 90s” (Tate Britain).
Juergen Teller, “Young Pink Kate,” London 1998,
© Juergen Teller, All rights Reserved. Courtesy of Tate Britain.
Masterfully curated by Edward Enninful OBE, “The 90s” voyages through a decade that fundamentally reshaped British culture through the dynamic convergence of art, fashion, photography, music, and design. Set against the backdrop of post–Cold War positivity and social shifts, one of the most anticipated exhibitions of 2026 delves into how a fresh generation of visionaries challenged established norms and embraced experimentation, hybridity, and self-expression. Works by bold artists such as Damien Hirst, Gillian Wearing, and Yinka Shonibare appear alongside renowned photography by Juergen Teller, Nick Knight, Corinne Day, and David Sims, as well as influential fashion by designers like Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, and Hussein Chalayan. The must-see exhibition captures the decade’s restless energy and cultural collisions, revealing how the 1990s forged new visual languages that continue to mold contemporary practice.
What we love: The show’s panoramic view of a vivacious decade defined by creative cross-pollination.
“The 90s” at Tate Britain
October 8, 2026–February 14, 2027
Melvin Edwards
Palais de Tokyo
16th Arrondissement, Paris
Solo exhibition view, Melvin Edwards, Palais de Tokyo (Paris), 10.22.2025 – 02.15.2026
© Melvin Edwards / ADAGP, Paris, 2025
Photo credit : Aurélien Mole.
Presented as part of the Palais de Tokyo’s season-long program curated by Naomi Beckwith, this major retrospective honors more than sixty years of Melvin Edwards’s awe-inspiring, sculptural practice. Working primarily with welded metal, chains, and industrial materials, Edwards has developed a profound body of work strongly influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and by transatlantic histories linking the United States, the Caribbean, and West Africa. The exhibition brings together large-scale sculptures, wall-mounted assemblages from his ongoing Lynch Fragments series, and works that reflect his perpetual engagement with poetry, music, and language. Moving between monumentality and intimacy, the presentation situates Edwards as a central creator in a counter-history of American abstraction—one grounded in memory, resistance, and material experimentation.
What we love: Observe the exhibition’s ability to hold vital political history within formally restrained works.
Melvin Edwards at Palais de Tokyo
Currently on view through February 15, 2026
“New Humans: Memories of the Future”
New Museum
Lower East Side, New York
Daria Martin, “Soft Materials,” 2004 (still). 16mm film, color, sound; 10:30 min. Courtesy the artist. © Daria Martin
“New Humans: Memories of the Future” connects over 150 visionaries exploring how emerging technologies alter the body, identity, and social structures. Through sculpture, digital media, installation, and beyond, the exhibition examines posthuman narratives without surrendering to dystopia. Instead, artists probe adaptation, hybridity, and ethical tension, asking how humanity evolves alongside artificial systems. The exhibition also marks a pivotal moment for the New Museum, serving as the first major presentation to activate its newly enlarged home—an architectural expansion developed through a close partnership between Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas’s OMA studio and the firm Cooper Robertson. The project unfolds as an interdisciplinary constellation, uniting contributors from across the globe including artists, writers, scientists, architects, and filmmakers. Look forward to creations by Wangechi Mutu, Hito Steyerl, Francis Bacon, Tatsuo Ikeda, Germaine Richier, and many more.
What we love: The alignment between speculative art and a freshly reimagined institutional framework, making it one the most anticipated exhibitions of 2026.
“New Humans: Memories of the Future” at New Museum
March 21, 2026 – TBA
Whitney Biennial 2026
Whitney Museum of American Art
Meatpacking District, New York
Mao Ishikawa, “Untitled,” from the series Akabanaa (Red
Flowers), 1975-77. Gelatin silver print, 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8
cm). © Mao Ishikawa. Image courtesy of POETIC SCAPE.
Photography by Mao Ishikawa.
The 2026 Whitney Biennial raises the curtain on a focused survey of contemporary artistic practice in the United States and beyond, merging over 50 artists and collectives working in the realms of painting, sculpture, installation, film, performance, and sound. Participating artists include Mao Ishikawa, Sung Tieu, Raven Halfmoon, Akira Ikezoe, and Oswaldo Maciá, among others, with many works newly commissioned for the Biennial. Parading through the Whitney’s galleries overlooking the Hudson River, one of the most anticipated exhibitions of 2026 emphasizes an inquiry into materials and socially embedded research, while resisting a single thematic throughline. It offers a beautifully collaged portrait of artistic production brought to life by place, community, and lived experience.
What we love: As Drew Sawyer, the Whitney Museum’s Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography stated, “In addition to artists from across 25 states, we also invited artists from Afghanistan, Chile, Iraq, Okinawa, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, and elsewhere— places marked by the reach of U.S. power. Together, these artists’ work make space for forms of relation that are intimate, improvised, and contested.”
Whitney Biennial 2026 at Whitney Museum of American Art
Mar 8, 2026 –
