Eight artists having major museum moments this fall

Willem de Kooning’s work rarely fails to astonish. Famous for his striking paintings made on a grand scale, the artist preferred not to be categorised but is known primarily as an Abstract Expressionist.

The last major European retrospective of de Kooning’s work was Willem de Kooning and Italy at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in 2024. Two years later, the artist comes to the Rijksmuseum with Willem de Kooning at Work, which marks the 100th anniversary of de Kooning stowing away on a ship from The Netherlands to the United States. Once he arrived in the U.S., de Kooning pursued a career as an artist in what would soon become the epicenter of the art world. Through 120 works made over a 60-year period, the exhibition tracks his involvement in the “New York School” of artists at the time, as well as other highlights from his career.

Open now: Willem de Kooning at Work at the Rijksmuseum, through 17 January 2027

The hotly-anticipated Roy Lichtenstein show Lichtenstein: Like New at the Whitney Museum of American Art is the artist’s first comprehensive survey in about 20 years. Drawing on the museum’s long-standing relationship with Lichtenstein’s foundation, the exhibition includes more than 130 works, made over six decades of the artist’s life.

Lichtenstein: Like New opened at the beginning of October to a positive critical response; critics called it a ‘fresh’ and even ‘tender’ perspective on work and life of an artist whose art is so well-known. You can expect to see his most popular and best-known works (including plenty of Ben-Day dots and comic strip references) alongside lesser-known pieces in mediums like sculpture, print and film.

Open now: Lichtenstein: Like New at the Whitney Museum of American Art through 10 May 2027; Lichtenstein: Sweet Dreams Baby!, at Kunstmuseum Basel through 14 March 2027

Rome’s Palazzo Bonaparte overlooks the Piazza Venezia, situating it in one of the city’s most famous sites and making it the ideal home to the first exhibition of work by Wassily Kandinsky in Italy for a quarter century.

Kandinsky is a collaboration with the Centre Pompidou: thanks to the temporary closure of the Parisian museum, Palazzo Bonaparte was able to borrow 40 works that would have otherwise remained off-view. In all, the exhibition totals over 70 works, taking visitors through Kandinsky’s early stint as a lawyer to his formative time with the Bauhaus and, finally, to his last years in Paris. The exhibition includes not only letters and ephemera connected to the Russian master’s life and work, but it also brings the work of his partner Gabriele Münter, herself a German Expressionist painter, to Italy for the first time.

Open now: Kandinsky at Palazzo Bonaparte, through 14 February 2027

Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock were at the beating heart of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Though Pollock is likely the better-known of the married pair, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous seeks to recentre Krasner while also examining the careers of both artists through the context of their relationship.

The result is a gamechanger: the galleries of Past Continuous feature the work of both artists as they worked side by side until Pollock’s 1956 death, as well as the astounding output that Krasner made after his death. Through over 120 works and ephemera, we gain insight into these groundbreaking artists’ different but equally experimental work.

Open now: Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, through 31 January 2027

2026 marks 120 years since Paul Cezanne’s death, a milestone that the Musée d’Orsay is honoring with a new exhibition staged at Paris’ Grand Palais in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou and the Musée de l’Orangerie. While ultimately an overview of the artist’s oeuvre, Cezanne et nous takes a specific look at Cezanne’s legacy: his inspiration to the Symbolist movement, which emerged after Impressionism, and the early collectors who celebrated his work.

Overall, the show plots a path through the artist’s early anonymity to his global success. Widely praised, this alternative take on the much-loved Post-Impressionist master comes after a series of exhibitions in Cezanne’s hometown of Aix-en-Provence for Cezanne 2025 and the recent refurbishment of his final studio, Atelier des Lauves.

Open now: Cezanne et nous at the Grand Palais, through 17 January 2027

Sculptor Isamu Noguchi’s work is some of the most influential of the 20th century. His practice included furniture, lighting,  gardens, ceramics and set design, and is instantly recognisable for its blend of bold innovation and clean forms. Drawing from a vast range of international influences, he created truly timeless objects that remain both functional and transcendental.

Light and Stone: Revisiting Noguchi’s 1986 Venice Biennale at New York’s Noguchi Museum celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the artist’s exhibition representing the United States in the Venice Biennale; it also looks at other provocative moments in his career. Meanwhile, Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America at The Barnes Foundation examines postwar design in America through the work of Noguchi alongside that of fellow Japanese American artists, including Ruth Asawa and George Nakashima.

Open now: Light and Stone: Revisiting Noguchi’s 1986 Venice Biennale at the Noguchi Museum, through 9 May 2027; Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America at The Barnes Foundation, through 10 January 2027

Following the Impressionist movement, as painting became more radical and photography was on the rise, artists looked for new ways to depict their subjects. The Neo-Impressionist movement explored Pointillism, which utilised a vibrant, prismatic range of colours applied in small dots, or ‘points.’

Paul Signac, one of Pointillism’s most important figures, is the subject of a new exhibition at the Kunsthal Rotterdam: Signac: Symphony of Colours. The exhibition follows Signac’s development as a Pointillist painter; works include his harbour scenes, portraits and landscapes. It also examines his central role in the movement as a writer and organiser, who contributed his knowledge of colour theory and prisms to various writings that would influence artists around the world.

Open now: Signac: Symphony of Colours at Kunsthal Rotterdam, through 28 February 2027