The major exhibitions of 2026

BarcelonaThis year's art calendar is packed with major exhibitions, including a large-scale Marcel Duchamp retrospective at MoMA in New York, and two shows featuring Zurbarán and portraits by Jan van Eyck at the National Gallery in London. The list of big names, both Catalan and international, continues with Aurèlia Muñoz, Richard Avedon, and Matisse. Meanwhile, Barcelona, as UNESCO's World Capital of Architecture, will host around fifty exhibitions.

French Masters in Barcelona: The Nabis and Matisse

Two exhibitions in Barcelona will offer a glimpse into some of the most brilliant episodes in French painting. La Pedrera will host a major exhibition of the Nabis group (from March 6 to June 28), who sought to create a total art, often with a mystical character, in which there were no hierarchies between the decorative arts and painting. And CaixaForum Barcelona has programmed a group exhibition to reveal the influence of Henri Matisse on contemporary art (from March 27 to August 16). Chez MatisseThe exhibition, which includes more than 40 works by Matisse and nearly 50 by other artists, will arrive in Barcelona following its enthusiastic reception at CaixaForum in Madrid. Internationally, the Musée d'Orsay will present the exhibition from March 17 to July 19. Renoir and loveA major exhibition of this Impressionist master focusing on human relationships and affection.

The Apotheosis of Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp is one of the most important artists of the 20th century and a pioneer in proposing that art is the idea, not the finished work. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the first museum to acquire Duchamp's work, will dedicate the first major exhibition of his work in the United States since 1973 to him, running from April 12 to August 22. Duchamp's influence remains as relevant as ever, as will be evident in the exhibition of some 300 works, including ready-madesPaintings, drawings, film installations, and archival documents. One of the central focuses of the exhibition will be the portable museum of his work, created by himself. The Box--valise, of which the most ambitious presentation will be made with examples from different periods.

Weaving the sculpture: Aurèlia Muñoz and Ruth Asawa

Aurèlia Muñoz (1926-2011) is a central figure for understanding textile art in Catalonia. In recent years, she has been more widely known because MoMA acquired some of her work and because her heirs made a donation. However, no major exhibition of her legacy had been on display until the one organized by the Reina Sofía Museum and the MACBA, which will run from November 5, 2026, to March 29, 2027. Curated by the Einaidea team (Eina Foundation) in collaboration with the Aurè Archive, the exhibition is titled UsA key concept in Muñoz's work, and among the highlights will be a previously unseen selection of large macramé structures from institutional collections in Spain, Europe, and the United States, some of his iconic star sculptures, and his latest installations made with handmade paper.

Meanwhile, the first exhibition of the year at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao will be a retrospective of the Japanese-American sculptor Ruth Asawa (March 18 to September 13), also known for her innovative hanging sculptures of organic forms. Of these works, Asawa said that she understood the effort and repetitive work of weaving wire as if she were transferring a peasant's labor to the world of art, and that art could make people better. Raised on a farm in Southern California, Asawa and her family were imprisoned in Japanese-American internment camps, and she was able to enroll at the experimental Black Mountain School, where teachers like Josef Albers encouraged her to work with everyday materials such as stamps, leaves, and paper, and later with wire.

History and Relevance of the Statue of Liberty

Freedom illuminating the worldThe Statue of Liberty, or the Statue of Liberty, remains a promise of equality in increasingly dark times in the United States. Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence, the Musée d'Orsay will present, from September 15, 2026, to January 21, 2027, an exhibition and immersive experience about the sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the visionary creator of the monument to immigrants in New York. The statue, which was the largest of its time, was a gift from France to the United States to mark the centennial of American independence in 1876, although it was not completed until 1886. The aim of the exhibition, as stated by the museum, is for the public to understand "the artistic, ideological, economic, and technological decisions."

The great masters of the Old World and the samurai

The programming of many London museums is mouthwatering, and the National Gallery's goes even further, scheduling within a few months the first major retrospective of Francisco de Zurbarán in the United Kingdom (from May 2 to August 23) and an exhibition of the nine surviving portraits of Jan van Eyck, of whom the museum The Arnolfini Marriage (from November 21, 2026 to April 11, 2027). These nine portraits constitute half of his surviving work and reflect how, instead of kings and nobles, he immortalized, in the most intimate details, a series of men and women from his circle. The Zurbarán exhibition will include some 50 paintings from museums around the world, and the tour will be divided into seven sections, dedicated to themes such as the works he made for the religious orders of Seville, how he represented saints, the iconography of the Immaculate Conception, and still lifes.

Old Masters are among the protagonists of one of the major exhibitions at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The metamorphosesWith some 80 masterpieces illustrating the work of Ovid, by artists such as Titian, Correggio, Cellini, Caravaggio, and Rubens (February 6–May 25). The exhibition continues with artists such as Auguste Rodin, Constantin Brancusi, and Louise Bourgeois, culminating in contemporary art. After the Rijksmuseum, the exhibition will travel to the Borghese Gallery in Rome (June 22–September 20).

Another major thematic exhibition will be SamuraiThe exhibition at the British Museum (February 3 to May 4) aims to dismantle the clichés surrounding the figure of the samurai and explain how the myth surrounding them has been constructed and how it has reached pop culture. The exhibition will include some 280 works and objects, among which the armor that Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada sent to King James VI of Scotland and I of England stands out, considered an emblem of the diplomatic contacts between Japan and Europe in the 17th century.

All the faces of Gonçal Sobrer at the Vila Casas Foundation

When the Poblenou Historical Archive dedicated an exhibition to Gonçal Sobrer in 2011, it defined him as a painter who had worked as a pastry chef, actor, painter and counter-painter, hotel manager and founder of theart chava. Furthermore, Sobrer was a chronicler of Poblenou, a pioneer of the performance In Catalonia, he was a paratrooper, patron, and collector. In March, the general public will have a new opportunity to discover him thanks to the exhibition dedicated to him by the Vila Casas Foundation at Espais Volart (from March 9 to May 31). The foundation's program also includes exhibitions by Lua Coderch and Sara Bonache, both recipients of foundation awards, and another by Esther Boix, a leading artist known for her denunciation of Francoist oppression of the working classes and women throughout the 1960s and 70s.

Four great photographs

Although it was shown in Barcelona in 2002, it's worth making a trip to the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid to see Richard Avedon's legendary series again. In the American West (starting June 6), which includes a selection of portraits Avedon made of 752 people from 189 towns in seventeen states of the American West between 1979 and 1984, including a tramp, a snake slaughterer, a former professional boxer, a miner, and a fiction teacher. “I don’t think the West in these portraits is much more conclusive than that of John Wayne,” Avedon said of that work.

In Barcelona, ​​the Kbr center of the same foundation will present a retrospective of the American artist Walker Evans and another exhibition of works from its collection by Carlos Pérez Siquier (both will run from February 25 to May 24). The Pérez Siquier exhibition will serve to make up for the fact that the exhibition of the artist's work, which they presented when they were based at Casa Garriga Nogués, was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic a month after opening.

And the Foto Colectania Foundation's program will include Sergio Larrain. The Vagabond of Valparaíso. Chile (from January 22 to May 24), with 80 photographs about "childhood, the street and urban loneliness", including the famous series ValparaísoThis exhibition is a co-production with the Xavier Miserachs Photography Biennial in Palafrugell, which will host a Larrain retrospective in August.

Barcelona, World Capital of Architecture

The exhibitions will be one of the cornerstones of Barcelona's status as World Capital of Architecture. There will be around fifty, among which Barcelona: intense, diverse and complex, in the former headquarters of the Gustavo Gili publishing house; Nicolau Rubió and Tudurí. Architecture, landscape, controversies (Museum of Ethnography and World Cultures), andSanity and passion. 150 years of Catalan architecture, on the best of Catalan architecture since the founding of the School of Architecture in 1875 (Dhub). Likewise, the Muhba will host a retrospective of the FAD awards; the Picasso Museum, Picasso: The Architectand the Joan Miró Foundation, the first Charlotte Perriand retrospective in Spain (from October to February 2027). And in the area of the confluence of architecture and the visual arts, the MNAC will hostSaint Peter of Rodes and the Master of Cabestany: the construction of a myth(from March 19 to June 29) and Jujol, from Perejaume(from November 26, 2026 to March 28, 2027).

Fashion in the museum: from Elsa Schiaparelli to the Antwerp Six

The legacy of fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli is enormous: during the years of surrealism, she blurred the lines between art and fashion with legendary collaborations, among which is the Skeleton dress which he did with Salvador Dalí. He also introduced humor and irony into the then-solemn world of haute couture, and is credited with inventing the culotte skirt. All his influence will be on full display in the major exhibition dedicated to him at London's Victoria & Albert Museum from March 21 to November 1. It is expected to be quite an event. Another major fashion exhibition will be the first show of the equally innovative Antwerp Six, at the Antwerp Fashion Museum (from March 31, 2026, to January 17, 2027). And for the most devoted fans, the King's Gallery at Buckingham Palace will host, between spring and autumn, the most ambitious exhibition on the style of Queen Elizabeth II, featuring two hundred outfits and accessories. The exhibition will also include fabric samples and letters that reveal the garment creation process.