10 International Exhibitions Worth Traveling to See

Showcasing the top art exhibitions in some of the world’s leading destinations, Galerie has curated a list of exceptional shows in popular locations. From William Kentridge’s sculptures on the rolling hills of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Cindy Sherman’s photographs exploring women’s roles at Hauser & Wirth on the island of Menorca to Chiharu Shiota’s red thread installation with suitcases reminding visitors of past journeys at Istanbul Modern and Anthony Gormley’s sculptural takeover of South Korea’s Museum SAN, these are cultural escapes to enjoy this summer and beyond.

1. William Kentridge |  Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, England

The first museum exhibit outside South Africa to focus on William Kentridge’s sculpture, “The Pull of Gravity,” features more than 40 sculptural works created between 2007 and 2024, along with a selection of drawings, tapestries, and films. Renowned internationally for his drawings, films, theater productions, and operas, which are rooted in politics, science, literature, and history, the artist has spent his entire life in Johannesburg, with his work deeply tied to South Africa’s social and political narrative.

The museum is presenting a notable and representative collection of his sculptural works, including small bronze sculptures that feature animals, people, and objects from daily life, as well as a new series of large painted aluminum and steel sculptures, complemented by towering bronzes set against the stunning Yorkshire landscape. The highlights include six monumental “Paper Procession” sculptures, created by enlarging tabletop maquettes of torn-paper assemblages for the exhibition. Additionally, four of the artist’s largest bronzes to date from his “Glyph” series are included. This series of sculptures, which appears throughout the exhibition in various scales, forms a vocabulary of symbols from everyday objects.

Through April 19

2. Cindy Sherman | Hauser & Wirth, Menorca, Spain

Celebrated for exploring identity and gender through performances of carefully crafted personas for the camera, Cindy Sherman earned widespread recognition as one of the Pictures Generation artists who gained prominence in the 1970s and ‘80s, responding to the age of mass media and celebrity. Her solo show, “The Women,” features a selection of her most iconic photographic works, spanning from the 1970s to the 2010s.

The exhibition begins with her black-and-white photos, which feature her as a bus rider, a murder mystery character, and a person in a lineup—where she first used costumes and makeup to alter her identity—and includes her well-known “Untitled Films Stills” series, portraying Sherman as B-movie and film noir actresses. It also features color photographs of her dressed as elegant society women in carefully arranged settings. In these images, she photographed herself in dramatic costumes against a green screen, then added backgrounds with landscapes and city scenes, and digitally manipulated the images to create rich, painterly effects—once again exploring women’s roles creatively while elevating photography to a more conceptual art form.

Through October 26

3. Barbara Kruger | Guggenheim Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain

Barbara Kruger is widely recognized for engaging viewers directly through a distinctive visual language that combines images, text, and technology as an effective means of communication. She often merges her writings with found images to challenge and expose systems of capitalism, politics, and gender. Her first major retrospective in Spain, “Another ‘Day. Another Night,” transforms the museum’s galleries into an immersive space of sound, image, and text—a vibrant environment where Kruger’s conceptual ideas come to life.

Featuring early black-and-white text collages, the exhibition highlights key works like Untitled (I shop therefore I am) and Untitled (your body is a battleground). It also includes multi-channel video installations such as Untitled (No Comment)—a nonstop stream of social media posts, ads, and memes that reveal the contradictions and manipulations of modern culture. A tour de force, the show revisits iconic pieces while introducing new installations that expand her reach into the digital world.

Through November 9

4. Jean-Michel Othoniel | Avignon, France

Transforming the ancient craft of glassmaking into a form of conceptual art, French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel was initially inspired to create beaded glass works as a commentary on the loss of life during the AIDS crisis. Since then, he has produced artworks and installations that engage with history, sites, and other issues in equally compelling ways. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Avignon being named the European Capital of Culture and the 30th anniversary of its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site, the “OTHONIEL COSMOS or the Ghosts of Love” exhibition features 240 artworks, including 160 that have never been displayed in France, showcased across 10 unique locations.

Creating a landmark route that guides visitors through the city’s free museums and historic sites, the Paris and Sète-based artist’s works highlight each stage of the journey. Rooted in Avignon’s history and arranged like a series of sonnets, the captivating show combines sculpture with paint, bricks and beads, astrolabes and fountains, gold and glass, and totems with endless knots, creating a love story brought to life and transforming Avignon into a constellation of desire. While every stop on the route is engaging, the highlight of the exhibition is the Palais des Papes, which features 106 new sculptures the artist specially created for its rooms, along with 60 of his herbarium paintings. These haven’t been seen in France since his roses on white gold leaf-covered canvases were exhibited and acquired by the Louvre in 2019.

Through January 4

5. Berlinde De Bruyckere | Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium

A Belgian artist celebrated for her raw figurative sculptures, abstract drawings, and installations inspired by mythology, religious imagery, folklore, and the Golden Age of Dutch and Flemish painting, Berlinde De Bruyckere is the daughter of a butcher. This background prepared the Ghent-based sculptor to confront corpses and mortality in her dark, poetic artworks. Made from wax, animal skins, paper, textiles, metal, and wood to create hybrid forms featuring human, animal, and plant traits, her works go beyond theological meanings, shifting into the universal and profane.

The first major exhibition of her work in Brussels, “Khorós,” features selections from the past 25 years, engaging with both historical and contemporary artists, including Lucas Cranach, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Patti Smith. Hindu ceremonial objects such as the Lingam and Yoni also interact with De Bruyckere’s pieces, emphasizing the explicitly erotic and sexually charged themes in some of her work. In Greek, Khorós refers to a group of singers and dancers in Greek tragedies who comment on the events unfolding onstage. The exhibition is thus conceived as a dialogue of voices, shared themes, and conversations. Designed as a poetic display within the museum’s historic Art Deco halls by architect Victor Horta, “Khorós” features large sculptures and installations alongside smaller works on paper, including both older and new pieces.

Through August 31

6. Maurizio Cattelan | GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy

Internationally recognized for his humorous and ironic works that challenge and push the boundaries of modern value systems, Maurizio Cattelan is one of the most popular and controversial artists in the contemporary art scene. Drawing freely from real-life people and objects, the New York and Milan-based artist uses a variety of materials, objects, and gestures in his sculptures, installations, curated exhibitions, and publishing projects. As part of the fourth cycle of the Orobie Biennial, “Thinking Like a Mountain,” which involves local communities through the participation of international artists, Cattelan’s “Seasons” exhibition features five works displayed along a route connecting four different venues.

Unfolding as a visual journey through Bergamo, the works inspire reflection on the cyclical nature of life and history, the rise and fall of values, and the transformations of individuals and society. Standouts include a reworking of Him, Cattelan’s infamous model of a boy-sized Hitler kneeling in apparent penitence. The related sculpture, No, depicts that figure with a paper bag over its head, a response to the censorship of Him from a Chinese exhibition. Displayed in a burgundy gallery, the figure is praying toward a piece created specifically for this exhibition: a mysterious glass bottle holding a brick engraved with the word EMPIRE and placed on a burgundy plinth. For another new work, titled One, Cattelan placed a sculpture of a child with fingers mimicking a gun on the shoulders of the city’s celebrated statue of Garibaldi, which can be interpreted as simple childish play or—more likely—an act of rebellion.

Through October 26

7. Andra Ursuța | DESTE Foundation, Hydra, Greece

Presented in the Foundation’s Project Space, a former slaughterhouse on Hydra island, the exhibition “Apocalypse Now and Then” showcases Andra Ursuţa’s new series of lost-wax cast bronze sculptures, which the New York and London-based Romanian artist calls Desolation Ware. Known for creating representational sculptures and installations that surrealistically hint at the body, she employs the visual language and display techniques of archaeological museums to craft fake-historic artifacts. These artifacts seem to come from a vanished civilization and appear to express the anxieties of our modern era.

Partly inspired by decorative art objects and interior design, the cast glass and bronze forms serve as distilled symbols of existential uncertainty. Building on the belief that cast bronze has a bluish-green coloration, Desolation Ware explores misconceptions in art history, including another false notion —that classical sculptures were originally white when, in fact, they were polychrome—and investigates how these mistakes can become influential and creative forces.

Installed both inside and outside the Slaughterhouse, the show transforms the space into a conceptual museum, continuing the DESTE Foundation’s tradition of commissioning daring, site-specific installations that challenge the boundaries of contemporary art.

Through October 31

8. Chiharu Shiota | Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey

Celebrated for her expansive web installations filled with knotted threads that craft fantastical scenes with everyday objects surreally enclosed in the same material, Chiharu Shiota began her career as a painter, studying in Kyoto, and as a performance artist, trained in Berlin. Her “Between Worlds” exhibition at Istanbul Modern features a large-scale installation that explores such themes as memory, existence, migration, journey, and the human experience. The installation by Shiota, who represented Japan at the 2015 Venice Biennale, draws on Istanbul’s position at the crossroads of Asia and Europe.

Having lived and worked in Berlin for nearly 30 years, Shiota considers herself to be in an “in-between place.” The installation “Between Worlds” allows her to explore stories related to her personal and collective memory. The artist created an emotional space by covering the entire gallery with web-like red threads, emphasizing the theme of “presence in the absence” by placing suitcases within this intricate network. Shiota regards suitcases as symbols that carry emotions and memories, linking the past and future. Although the suitcases stay physically in space, their owners are only remembered as faint images in our minds. Connected by red threads, these suitcases form a visual narrative that prompts viewers to reflect on themes such as home, belonging, and identity.

Through January 25

9. Antony Gormley | Museum SAN, Wonju, South Korea

Antony Gormley, who won the Turner Prize in 1994, is highly regarded for his sculptures, installations, and public artworks that examine the connection between the human body and space. By thoughtfully engaging with his own physical presence, Gormley views art as a space where new behaviors, thoughts, and feelings can emerge. His work explores what it’s like to be in the world and expresses the experience of being alive. Since the 1960s, the London-based artist has expanded the possibilities of sculpture, investigating fundamental questions about humanity’s role in nature and the universe.

“Ground,” a dynamic collaboration between architect Tadao Ando and the artist, is an underground installation located beneath the museum’s flower garden, exploring the connection between nature and the human experience. Housing seven of Gormley’s Blockworks sculptures in a large, round chamber and its surrounding landscape, the permanent installation combines natural elements such as sunlight, wind, and distant sounds with architecture and sculpture to create a vibrant, immersive environment. The temporary exhibition “Drawing on Space” showcases 48 sculptures and works on paper, including large aluminum cables that form twisting abstract rings filling a vast gallery, and another expansive space filled with transparent figures made from connected steel bubbles, which explore the fleeting nature of human bodies, along with studies on light, mass, and interiority.

Through November 30

10. Izumi Kato | Iwami Arts Museum, Shimane, Japan

Born in Shimane Prefecture, the coastal region of southwest Japan where the museum is located, Izumi Kato creates surreal figures that he paints by hand, sculpts from wood, stone, vinyl, and plastic, and assembles from painted fabric, chains, strings, and rocks. A colorful mix of sci-fi characters from Japan’s widespread manga and anime cultures, and beings rooted in the country’s folkloric traditions and Shinto beliefs, which hold that mystical spirits inhabit everything, Kato’s otherworldly creatures connect us to the ancient past while prompting us to wonder what incredible life forms the future might bring.

His largest solo exhibition to date, which also feels like a homecoming for Kato, the “Road to Somebody” retrospective explores his artistic journey, showcasing more than 200 artworks, including oil paintings from his high school years alongside his music projects, brand collaborations, and most recent pieces. Faceless figures populate the early canvases, while androgynous characters with bulbous eyes, noses that blend with mouths, and segmented bodies dominate his later multi-paneled and hanging paintings. Most often painted with his hands and a spatula, his eerie canvases relate to his sculptural forms, which are carved from camphor wood using a chainsaw, assembled from cast plastic parts, and built by reverently stacking stone, which he then figuratively paints.

Through September 1