Must-Visit Art Exhibitions of 2024
The art world is buzzing with anticipation for an extraordinary lineup of exhibitions in 2024. From groundbreaking retrospectives of established masters to platforms showcasing emerging voices, this year promises a diverse array of visual experiences across the globe. Our team has curated this guide to the most compelling exhibitions that deserve a place on your cultural calendar. Whether you're planning your travels or seeking inspiration closer to home, these shows represent the pinnacle of artistic expression and curatorial innovation.
Retrospectives & Major Surveys
"Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective"
This comprehensive survey spans seven decades of Kusama's revolutionary practice, from her early paintings and performances to her immersive infinity rooms. The exhibition includes several previously unseen works and newly commissioned installations, offering the most complete picture to date of this visionary artist's contribution to contemporary art.
What makes this retrospective particularly significant is the inclusion of rarely exhibited works from her time in New York during the 1960s, alongside newly discovered archival materials that shed light on her collaborative relationships with artists like Donald Judd and Joseph Cornell. The show contextualizes Kusama's practice within the broader movements of minimalism, pop art, and feminist art while emphasizing her singular vision.
Visit Exhibition Website"Kerry James Marshall: The Visible Man"
Following his groundbreaking "Mastry" exhibition, Marshall returns with a new body of work exploring representations of Black figures in Western art history. The show includes more than 80 paintings, drawings, and installations, including his monumental new series reimagining canonical European paintings with Black subjects.
Marshall's masterful technique and conceptual depth continue to challenge and expand the Western canon. This exhibition represents the most significant presentation of his work since 2016 and includes several pieces being exhibited for the first time. A highlight is the debut of his ambitious 30-foot canvas "A History of Painting," which synthesizes five centuries of artistic tradition through Marshall's distinctive lens.
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Installation view from "The Future of Memory" exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Emerging Voices & Contemporary Perspectives
"New Frequencies: Digital Art in the Global South"
This groundbreaking exhibition brings together 40 artists from Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean who are exploring digital technologies as tools for decolonial expression. Moving beyond Western-centric narratives of digital art, the exhibition highlights how these artists engage with issues of technological access, digital sovereignty, and indigenous futurisms.
Curator Maria Santos has assembled a diverse range of works from immersive VR environments to blockchain-based participatory projects. Highlights include Lagos-based collective Iwaya Community Tech Hub's mixed reality installation examining Nigeria's digital infrastructure and Chilean artist Constanza Piña Pardo's electronic textiles that blend Mapuche weaving traditions with open-source technology.
Visit Exhibition Website"Bodies in Flux"
This timely group exhibition examines how contemporary artists are reimagining bodily experience in an era of technological augmentation, environmental crisis, and shifting gender paradigms. Featuring 25 international artists working across sculpture, performance, video, and bioart, the exhibition probes the increasingly porous boundaries between human, machine, and natural worlds.
The show introduces several emerging artists alongside established figures like Anicka Yi and Heather Dewey-Hagborg. Particularly noteworthy are new commissions from Danish-Palestinian sculptor Larissa Sansour, whose silicon landscapes merge human anatomy with geological formations, and Japanese bioartist Kota Nezu, whose living sculptures incorporate genetically modified organisms that respond to viewer proximity.
Visit Exhibition Website"The most exciting exhibitions of 2024 reflect a profound shift in curatorial practice—moving beyond traditional geographical and disciplinary boundaries to embrace more fluid, interconnected approaches to art history."
— Luisa Fernández, Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona
Biennials & International Exhibitions
"60th Venice Biennale: Foreigners Everywhere"
Under the direction of curator Adriano Pedrosa, the first Latin American to helm the world's most prestigious biennial, the 60th edition takes its title from a series of neon works by the Paris-based collective Claire Fontaine. The exhibition explores notions of foreignness, displacement, and belonging through the work of 331 artists from 88 countries.
Pedrosa has structured the exhibition around themes of migration, indigeneity, and colonial legacies, with particular emphasis on artists from the Global South. The central pavilion features a landmark exhibition of self-taught and indigenous artists placed in dialogue with modernist and contemporary works. National pavilions to watch include Ghana's presentation of Ibrahim Mahama's architectural interventions and Australia's ambitious project by Nyapanyapa Yunupingu.
Visit Exhibition Website"São Paulo Biennial: Subterranean Frequencies"
The 36th edition of the world's second-oldest biennial takes subterranean knowledge systems as its conceptual framework. Curated by a team led by Diane Lima and Grada Kilomba, the exhibition explores forms of knowledge and artistic practice that have historically been suppressed, operating beneath dominant cultural narratives.
The biennial will transform the Oscar Niemeyer-designed pavilion into a series of interconnected environments that move visitors through different "strata" of artistic exploration. Special emphasis is placed on Afro-Brazilian and indigenous artistic traditions alongside international perspectives. A significant feature is the "Deep Listening" program, which presents sound works, oral histories, and performances throughout the exhibition's duration.
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Preview installation for the 60th Venice Biennale, 2024
Historical Reassessments & Thematic Exhibitions
"The Harlem Renaissance: Global Reverberations"
This ambitious exhibition expands our understanding of the Harlem Renaissance by tracing its influence beyond the United States to Europe, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. While centering the achievements of artists like Aaron Douglas, Augusta Savage, and Jacob Lawrence, the show reveals how their work catalyzed artistic movements worldwide through networks of exchange and solidarity.
With over 200 works including paintings, sculptures, photographs, and rare archival materials, the exhibition illuminates the Renaissance's role in shaping global modernism. A revelation is the inclusion of previously overlooked connections between Harlem artists and the Négritude movement in Paris, the Nigerian modernists of the Zaria Art Society, and the pan-Africanist publications that circulated these artistic ideas internationally.
Visit Exhibition Website"The Future of Memory"
This timely exhibition examines how contemporary artists are responding to what some scholars have termed a "memory crisis"—a moment when digital technologies, political polarization, and information overload are transforming how societies remember and forget. The show brings together 35 international artists whose work reimagines monuments, archives, and commemorative practices.
Highlights include Doris Salcedo's monumental installation addressing Colombia's armed conflict, Forensic Architecture's evidence-based investigations of state violence, and Kara Walker's shadow installations examining historical trauma in the American South. The exhibition is particularly notable for its inclusion of several site-specific commissions that respond to the Basque region's complex history of political conflict and reconciliation.
Visit Exhibition WebsiteArchitectural & Design Exhibitions
"Radical Domesticities: Reimagining How We Live"
This forward-looking exhibition explores how designers, architects, and artists are reimagining domestic space in response to changing social patterns, environmental concerns, and technological developments. Moving beyond conventional notions of the home, the exhibition presents innovative approaches to living from around the globe.
The show is organized around five themes: Collective Living, Adaptive Reuse, Technological Integration, Climate Resilience, and Care Infrastructures. Standout projects include Assemble's community-based housing initiatives, Neri Oxman's biodesign experiments, and Tatiana Bilbao's flexible modular homes for Mexico's social housing program. The exhibition also features a full-scale prototype of a carbon-negative dwelling developed through a collaboration between indigenous builders and environmental engineers.
Visit Exhibition WebsitePhotography & Media Arts
"World Press Photo 2024"
The touring exhibition of the 67th annual World Press Photo Contest showcases the most powerful and thought-provoking photojournalism from the past year. In a time of increasing media manipulation and contested narratives, the exhibition underscores the vital importance of ethical visual journalism in helping us understand complex global events.
This year's selection reflects ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, environmental crises from flooding in Libya to wildfires in Canada, and social movements worldwide. The judging process has been revamped to ensure more diverse regional representation, with entries judged by regional juries before advancing to global consideration. The result is a more nuanced presentation of global events that challenges Western-centric media narratives.
Visit Exhibition Website"Moving Images: Video Art Beyond the Screen"
This ambitious survey explores how contemporary artists are pushing video art beyond conventional screens into immersive environments, architectural projections, and mixed-reality experiences. The exhibition traces the evolution of moving image art from early single-channel works to today's complex installations that blur boundaries between physical and virtual space.
Featuring works by 45 artists from 23 countries, the exhibition gives particular attention to pioneering Asian video artists whose contributions have often been overlooked in Western-focused histories of the medium. A highlight is the reconstruction of Nam June Paik's seminal "TV Garden" (1974-77) alongside contemporary responses by artists including Cao Fei, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Hito Steyerl that engage with our current media-saturated moment.
Visit Exhibition WebsitePlanning Your Art Year
With such a rich array of exhibitions, strategic planning can help you make the most of your art experiences in 2024. Many major museums offer membership programs that provide unlimited access to special exhibitions—an excellent investment if you plan to visit multiple shows at the same institution. For international exhibitions like the Venice Biennale, consider visiting during off-peak periods (September-October) when crowds are thinner but the weather remains pleasant.
Digital engagement has also become increasingly sophisticated, with many institutions offering virtual tours, curator talks, and online programming that can complement in-person visits or provide access when travel isn't possible. The São Paulo Biennial, for example, will feature an extensive digital platform that documents not just the exhibited works but the research and community engagements that inform them.
Whether you're a seasoned art enthusiast or newly exploring the contemporary art world, 2024 offers extraordinary opportunities to engage with art that challenges, inspires, and illuminates our complex times. We'll be covering many of these exhibitions in depth throughout the year, so stay tuned for more detailed reviews and insights.
Comments
James Wilson
February 13, 2024I've already planned my trip to Venice for the Biennale in October based on your previous coverage, so this comprehensive guide is perfectly timed! I'm particularly intrigued by the "Foreigners Everywhere" theme and how it might address the current global migration discourse. Any recommendations for smaller, easy-to-miss pavilions that are worth seeking out?
Leila Mahmoud
February 15, 2024Thank you for highlighting exhibitions beyond the usual European and North American centers. The "New Frequencies" show at Centre Pompidou sounds groundbreaking. As someone who works in digital art in Cairo, it's encouraging to see major institutions finally giving proper attention to digital practices from the Global South. Will you be publishing more detailed previews of specific exhibitions as they open?
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