Delivery Dancer's Sphere, 2022
Ayoung Kim
Gallery Hyundai
Last January, curators widely agreed that 2025 would be shaped by political instability and mounting pressure on cultural institutions. Over the course of the year, those conditions materialized across the art world, particularly through experimental exhibitions such as Ayoung Kim’s solo show at MoMA PS1 and Rashid Johnson’s “A Poem for Deep Thinkers” at the Guggenheim New York.
When asked to look ahead to 2026, curators today suggested that this shift is deepening rather than dissipating. Across their responses, a set of shared priorities emerged: slower, more deliberate forms of art and exhibition-making; a renewed emphasis on hand-made, material, and craft-based practices; and a growing commitment to collaboration and artist-led formats.
Technology—particularly AI—remains a central topic of discussion, but is increasingly approached with restraint and ethical scrutiny. More often, these technological advancements are positioned alongside, rather than in opposition to, physical materials and personal experience.
Museums, meanwhile, are now playing multiple roles at once: as civic spaces and sites of sanctuary. This is largely due to mounting political and social pressures. Similarly, several biennials, from Venice to Gwangju in South Korea, are pushing forward conversations on care and community.
Here, we spoke to 16 leading curators to share what they see shaping the art world in 2026.
Larry Ossei-Mensah
Curator and co-founder, ARTNOIR
The Bronx, New York
Monument, 2023
Carrie Mae Weems
The End Gallery
“Moving into 2026, I believe more artists and curators will resist fixed categories and linear narratives,” said Larry Ossei-Mensah. “Diasporic thinking will deepen—not as a matter of origin or identity alone, but as a way of understanding movement, memory, material (both tangible and intangible), and entanglement.”
This year, Ossei-Mensah is “paying closer attention to how artists work across sound, performance, and visual culture to create experiences that are felt as much as they are seen.” He points to a term coined by Arthur Jafa, “besideness,” referring to “relationships between objects, ideas, and points of view…over resolution, leaving space for complexity and contradiction, where the tension sparks new ways of thinking, feeling, and encountering perspectives you hadn’t considered before.”
The curator is looking forward to the 2026 Venice Biennale, which will celebrate the vision of the late curator Koyo Kouoh. In New York, he’ll be watching for MoMA’s exhibition of Samora Pinderhughes, titled “Call and Response,” and Carrie Mae Weems’s “Contested Sites of Memory” at Lincoln Center.
Rodrigo Moura
Artistic director, MALBA
Buenos Aires
Belly Button, 2022
Marina Rheingantz
Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel
“I believe we will continue to see a growing mainstream interest in practices that have traditionally been categorized as craft or applied arts, such as ceramics and fiber art.” Rodrigo Moura, artistic director of Buenos Aires’s MALBA, told Artsy. The curator noted that long-overlooked artists like Shoko Suzuki, Mestre Didi, Olga de Amaral, and Lee ShinJa are now being championed in the art world, sparking a broader reassessment of craft media.
“This shift is creating new historical reference points for a younger generation of artists, for whom the boundaries between fine art and craft are increasingly blurred—and, in many cases, no longer relevant,” he said.
Moura is looking forward to several exhibitions in 2026, most notably the Venice Biennale. Speaking on the passing of Kouoh, he said, “while it is sad that she is not here to witness the exhibition, there is something profoundly meaningful in seeing her project carried forward.” Additionally, he is looking forward to Marina Rheingantz’s solo exhibition at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo next year—her first major survey in the country.
Stephanie Rosenthal
Project director, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi
Moving Gods Black Thangka, 2014
LuYang
Gether Contemporary
Stephanie Rosenthal, the project director of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, points to the rise of AI as “a true artistic language” and to a renewed commitment to materiality and craft. “Art in 2025, for me, was defined by a productive tension rather than a divide.” What mattered most, she noted, was that these approaches were no longer oppositional. “Technology, the hand, the body—even questions of care for our planet—they sit together now.” Artists such as Ayoung Kim and LuYang, whose use of gaming engines demonstrates conceptual precision rather than spectacle, are typical of this convergence—one Rosenthal expects to gain wider recognition in 2026.
Rosenthal also observed an institutional shift she expects to continue in 2026. “I also felt a growing presence of First Nations and Indigenous artists in major institutions—not as isolated gestures, but as part of a deeper shift,” she said.
Looking ahead, Rosenthal sees biennials across West Asia and the Arab world—including the Diriyah Biennale and the return of the Alexandria Biennale—as crucial counterpoints to Euro American narratives. In a fragile moment, she added, art remains “a place for rescue, kinship, and conversation”—a role she believes will feel even more urgent in 2026.
Stefanie Hessler
Director, Swiss Institute
New York
Swiss Institute director Stefanie Hessler predicted that in 2026 “we are going to see more emphasis on collaboration and collectivity in response to precarity and censorship,” shaped in part by U.S. administration policies.
“I am reminded of the importance of friendship, of reconsidering the ways we think, live, and dream together,” Hessler said. “I believe questions of humanity and conviviality will continue to be pressing, and I am exploring these topics in my curation of Art Basel Parcours 2026. I believe we will see more international collaborations in defiance of narrowing nationalisms and separationism.”
Looking ahead, Hessler is particularly focused on the 2026 Venice Biennale and the Gwangju Biennale, the latter of which is curated by Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen. She also noted several large-scale exhibitions in the United States, including the Whitney Biennial, the Carnegie International, and Counterpublic in St. Louis, which she is co-curating.
Ashley James
Curator, Guggenheim New York
New York
Portrait of Giovanni(?) Arnolfini and his Wife (The Arnolfini Portrait), 1434
Jan van Eyck
The National Gallery, London
“As the possibilities and perils of AI increasingly dominate the discourse of contemporary art, I think 2025 showed us the ways in which there’s great potential in thinking through ‘technology’ in an expanded sense,” New York–based Guggenheim curator Ashley James told Artsy.
“Going into 2026, I’m also thinking about intersections of technology and art but in a different vein,” she said. After years of cultivating visibility through social media, James predicts both retreats and conceptual re-engagements, as artists confront platforms that no longer function as transparent social mirrors. The digital becomes material to critique, rather than a neutral tool. “As tech companies increasingly merge and modes of revenue generation shift, gone are the days of social feeds being reliable, real-time reflections of the social happenings, including in the art space,” James said.
James expressed her excitement about the upcoming programming at the Guggenheim, but also noted she felt “giddy” about Jan van Eyck’s “The Portraits” at the National Gallery, London, which opens November 21st.
Liz Park
Curator, Carnegie Museum of Art
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Looking back at 2025, Liz Park, curator at the Carnegie Museum of Art, “felt most energized and impacted by the exhibition ‘Monuments’ at MOCA Los Angeles and The Brick.” She noted that the exhibition was “a sobering and empowering reminder that in our work as creative practitioners and arts workers, we can represent, remember, and carry forward many difficult and complex truths and histories.”
Park predicts that the year ahead will be shaped by the same political and social turbulence that defined the year before, with these pressures informing exhibitions across institutions. “My hope is that these large-scale survey exhibitions serve as generative meeting grounds where we can be daring with artistic expressions and ideas, and where we honor relationships and the spirit of many artistic communities across continents.”
Rand Suffolk
Director, High Museum of Art
Atlanta
Rand Suffolk, director of Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, believes that amid global turmoil, museums should be thought of as like a “sanctuary.” As the museum approaches its centennial this year, one question he returns to is: “How can we address the issues of our time while offering spaces for reflection and connection?” He pointed out that many museums, including the Brooklyn Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem, started taking a closer look at their own processes in the last year.
“Institutions embraced the collections they have, while reinterpreting them through frameworks that reflect a more complex, interconnected understanding of art history,” he said. “This balance feels especially important, and how museums hold both roles will influence curatorial decision-making across the field.”
In 2026, Suffolk noted that he is most excited for “The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans” at the Whitney Museum of American Art this spring, “candidly, because it’s an exhibition The High organized,” he admitted, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Man Ray: When Objects Dream.”
Melanie Pocock
Artistic director, Ikon Gallery
Birmingham, United Kingdom
The street (c.1968). Black and white photographic print. Courtesy Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham., ca. 1968
Janet Mendelsohn
Ikon Gallery
“We’ll continue to see the art world responding to the world’s intractable geopolitical and environmental crises through the work of artists that have consistently sought to highlight, critique, and counter these,” said Melanie Pocock, artistic director of Ikon Gallery.
Pocock also highlighted the growing visibility of Indigenous artists in 2025, a shift she expects to deepen in 2026. “Rich in ground-up, collective practices inspired by Indigenous cultures, it’s a region of increasing interest to institutions committed to expanding their purview beyond Euramerica,” she said. “Indigenous practices sensitive to non-humancentric ecosystems will be significant, as will collectively curated and artist-led formats.”
Pocock is particularly excited about two major biennials in Asia: the Gwangju Biennale, which she said “promises to be as imaginative and epic as [curator Ho Tzu Nyen]’s own films and installations,” and the Bangkok Art Biennale, which will look “at the coexistence of opposites such as compassion and cruelty, and truth and distortion.”
Folakunle Oshun
Director, Lagos Biennial
Lagos
“Without wanting to sound pessimistic, I expect much of the same,” Folakunle Oshun, director of the Lagos Biennial, told Artsy. “Large capital continues to absorb everything, and it is increasingly urgent to interrogate who and what actually influence[s] artistic production. We will see more large-scale installations, largely because art fairs can now afford to commission them without caring whether the work sells. Yet the sense of inauthenticity persists.”
“More than anything, we may need to focus on simply staying alive in 2026,” Oshun continued. “Art will either sort itself out or, at best, serve as a narrative device for this reality.”
“I will be visiting the Venice Biennale primarily to see the American Pavilion,” said Oshun. “This will likely be a year in which national pavilions, unfortunately, overshadow everything else, driven by political posturing and global tension. That said, I am genuinely curious to see how far art can go. If there were ever a moment to test the potency of art, this is it.”
Meanwhile, Oshun is looking forward to John Lalor’s immersive film installation, EASTER WEEKEND, at the Irish Museum of Modern Art this month. “And in October, inevitably, all roads will lead to the Lagos Biennial,” he concluded.
Roxana Marcoci
Senior curator of photography, The Museum of Modern Art
New York
Roxana Marcoci, senior curator of photography, The Museum of Modern Art, expects 2026’s art world to be deeply engaged in dialogue with its own past. “Art will maintain a dialectical relationship with its own history,” she told Artsy. As artists draw from archives, craft and performance emerge not as revivals but as “relational and ethically charged” forms. Process-oriented practices that combine human imagination, AI, data, and material will continue to expand, while decolonial approaches critically reassess modernist strategies, probing questions of authorship, medium, and institutional authority.
“Simultaneously, the continued rise of immersive, AI-augmented practices will not displace traditional mediums such as painting and sculpture but instead reframe them within a boundary-crossing ‘phygital’ continuum, where new conceptions of humanity, embodiment, and material agency become central theoretical concerns,” she explained.
The curator expects these ideas to surface at major exhibitions throughout the year, particularly in New York at the Whitney Biennial, “Greater New York” at MoMA PS1, and the New Museum’s Triennial. She highlighted several monographic exhibitions, including Marcel Duchamp at MoMA, Carol Bove at the Guggenheim, Raphael at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Pierre Huyghe at the Fondation Beyeler.
Sara Raza
Artistic director and chief curator, Centre for Contemporary Arts Tashkent
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Cartesian Sculpture, 2014
Carol Bove
Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens
“Collaborations that are more horizontal or unexpected and decentralized will become more pronounced,” Sara Raza, the new chief curator of Centre for Contemporary Arts Tashkent in Uzbekistan, told Artsy. “Artists, I believe, will also take a curatorial lead in making explicit their role in art historical movements that are less tacit, and not necessarily curatorially or theoretically driven.”
Raza noted that she is looking forward to several major exhibitions in the new year, including the Diriyah Biennale, Whitney Biennial, and Venice Biennale. She also noted that she is excited for the inaugural Art Basel Qatar and the “compelling and dense” work of sculptor Carol Bove in her upcoming solo show at the Guggenheim New York.
Juana Williams
Curator, Detroit Salon
Detroit
“I’m looking forward to encountering more world-building through art in 2026,” Juana Williams, curator for Detroit Salon, told Artsy. “In the past few years, artists and curators have been responding to the moment we’re in, questioning what’s true and exploring how repair might be possible. With so much fragility and tension in this current cultural moment, a lot of artists have constructed imaginative worlds that feel believable but intentionally unstable, inviting audiences to interpret and imagine together.”
“Through this work, artists are expanding, and in some cases repairing, reality,” Williams said, underscoring how new technology is increasingly relevant in contemporary art. “As technology, especially AI, becomes more common in art-making, I’m seeing artists return to materiality as resistance against hyper-digitization. In 2026, I anticipate we’ll see even more tension and dialogue between the digital and the analog.”
Faisal Al Hassan
Director, 421 Arts Campus
Abu Dhabi
“I suspect 2026 will be less about declaring new positions and more about living with the ones we’ve already articulated,” Faisal Al Hassan, director of Abu Dhabi’s 421 Arts Campus, told Artsy. “In relation to AI, that likely means a move toward more deliberate constraints: artists choosing when and how to use these tools, and institutions being pushed to clarify their positions around authorship, conservation, and legitimacy. The question won’t be whether AI is used, but under what conditions, and to what end.”
“I also expect a deeper commitment to slower, reparative forms of programming—not as language, but as structure,” he said, asserting that institutions will be more likely to fund “multi-year commissions, research-led exhibitions, and educational formats that aren’t treated as secondary.”
Al Hassan also believes the way the international art community views the Middle East will change. “Regionally, the Gulf and wider SWANA [Southwest Asia and North Africa] will continue to function less as a ‘scene’ and more as a connective zone, linking Africa, South Asia, and the Eastern Mediterranean,” he noted. “As market attention intensifies, I imagine there will be a parallel push toward specificity: projects that insist on local histories, languages, and rhythms, even when operating on global platforms.”
Virginia Shore
Curator, Obama Presidential Center
Chicago
Virginia Shore, the curator for the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, distilled her key trends for 2026 into a few themes: “Looking ahead to 2026, I anticipate a continued emphasis on hand-made processes and repurposed or recycled materials,” she said. “Exhibitions are likely to expand beyond traditional venues, with more projects unfolding in alternative and hybrid spaces, as artists and curators seek new modes of access and experimentation. We’ll also see a rise in multimedia practices and cross-disciplinary collaborations. Together, these directions signal a year defined by resourcefulness, collaboration, and expanded formats for making and showing work.”
Looking ahead, she is most eager to see the 2026 Venice Biennale, which she believes will ensure Kouoh’s “profound impact on global contemporary art continues to resonate in Venice.” She also highlights Tate Modern’s major Ana Mendieta exhibition, Nick Cave’s immersive “Mammoth” exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Noah Davis’s traveling retrospective, which kicks off at the Philadelphia Art Museum on January 24th.
Daniel S. Palmer
Chief curator, SCAD Museum of Art
Savannah, Georgia
The transformation of Ogo into a fox (série 'Desktop'), 2014
Camille Henrot
Hauser & Wirth
Daniel S. Palmer, chief curator at the SCAD Museum of Art, shared his optimism for 2026. “I believe that the foundation of art in 2026 will be centered around our hopefulness that art has the true power to improve the world, and the importance of not losing sight of what really matters,” he said. “In the year to come, it will be important that we stay vigilant about advocating for artists and protecting creative expression.”
Palmer is particularly eager for a packed biennial year, with the Venice, Whitney, and Toronto biennials all on his radar, citing the strength of their curatorial teams and artist lineups. He additionally singled out the forthcoming program at Public Art Fund—where he previously worked—as a highlight of the year ahead. The organization’s new commissions will bring contemporary art into public space through solo projects by Genesis Belanger in City Hall Park, Woody De Othello at Brooklyn Bridge Park, and Camille Henrot at Doris C. Freedman Plaza, all in New York City.
Jess Baxter
Assistant Curator, Tate Modern
London
In 2025, Jess Baxter, an assistant curator at London’s Tate Modern, noted that “artists are increasingly exploring trans-temporalities and past wounds (physical, personal, or societal), to look at how memory fractures and how time loops back in on itself.” She framed this turn as a response to contemporary global instability. “I suspect it is a reaction to the horrors we are constantly seeing across the world, boiled down into our phones,” she added.
That sense of destabilized perception carries directly into Baxter’s outlook for 2026. “Like it or loathe it, AI has birthed a seismic shift in how we look and trust in what we see,” said Baxter. “In 2026, we will increasingly be asking ourselves if what I’m seeing is real, so I have no doubt artists will continue to use and/or critique the tools of technological advancement or internet culture as in the work of Hito Steyerl, Aziza Kadyri, or Ebun Sodipo.”
That said, Baxter hopes that amid “the AI slop, museums will remain places for slowing down, rest, and recuperation.” She highlighted Tracey Emin’s major exhibition at Tate Modern and Bugarin + Castle’s presentation at the Venice Biennale, representing Scotland.
from Artsy News https://ift.tt/WIeBD4K
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