The exhibition is featuring works from across Ono’s groundbreaking career. The show will be presented on the occasion of her touring retrospective exhibition YOKO ONO: MUSIC OF THE MIND, on display at Berlin’s Gropius Bau from 11 April to 31 August 2025. At the same time, the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) will be presenting the work TOUCH by Yoko Ono in their billboard series. The exhibition invites viewers to move beyond passive observation and engage in active participation – both physically and mentally. Often beginning on an individual level, these actions evolve into broader collective efforts, demonstrating the transformative power of communal actions in working toward peace and imagining a different world. The works invite collective actions of repair, healing, cleaning, mending, wishing, imagining, and dreaming.

On Wednesday February 12, 2025, William Kentridge was officially installed as a foreign associate member of the Académie des beaux-arts by fellow member Erik Desmazières, member of the engraving and drawing section, under the Dome of the Palais de l'Institut de France. He was elected on Wednesday, September 15, 2021, to the seat previously occupied by Greek goldsmith and jeweler Ilias Lalaounis (1920-2013). At the end of the ceremony, which concluded with "La Couleur Oui", a film created by William Kentridge for his installation, Catherine Meurisse presented him with his academician's sword.

Istanbul Modern is hosting a solo exhibition by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota as part of the 100th anniversary celebrations of diplomatic relations between Japan and Turkey. Undoubtedly, the most striking feature of the exhibition is the large-scale installation the artist created specifically for Istanbul Modern. Curated by Öykü Özsoy Sağnak and Yazın Öztürk, the exhibition focuses on themes such as memory, existence, migration, journeys, and the human experience—subjects Shiota frequently explores through various mediums, including performance, video, installation, and painting.

Organized by six groupings — Infinite Possibilities, Systems of Value, Becoming a Commodity, The Private and The Public Body, The Notion of the Facade, and In Front of the Camera/Behind the Scenes — the exhibition is curated by Manetti Shrem Museum Associate Curator and Exhibition Department Head Susie Kantor. Spanning 45 years, this exhibition (including works of Shirin Neshat and Rosemarie Trockel) points to the long and ongoing conversation around these topics. “We are excited that Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo has chosen our university museum as the venue for the U.S. premiere of her collection,” said Founding Director Rachel Teagle. “It’s an extraordinary opportunity to showcase diverse, groundbreaking work and build upon the museum’s track record of featuring women artists at significant moments in their careers.”

This summer, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston ( ICA) opens the 2025 Watershed season with "Chiharu Shiota: Home Less Home", on view May 22 through Sept.1, 2025. The exhibition features two large-scale installations by the Berlin-based, Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota (born 1972 in Osaka, Japan), including the debut of a new commission made for the ICA Watershed. Shiota foregrounds universal stories of migration, home, connection, memory, and survival. Her signature approach combines intricate, immense, and web-like installations built of thread and rope with quotidian objects—such as shoes, suitcases, beds, chairs, dresses, and keys—that serve as symbols for human presence and memory.

There are everyday chamber operas, and then there are the works conceived and directed by South African artist William Kentridge. Kentridge’s "The Great Yes, The Great No", which is being presented Feb. 5–8 at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills and March 14–16 at Cal Performances in Berkeley, is an opera that is also part play, with a Greek chorus thrown in for good measure. Based on actual events, the work involves a who’s who of mid-20th-century thinkers, including French surrealist André Breton, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, depicting their historic escape from Vichy France on a cargo ship sailing from Marseille to Martinique.

The group exhibition Modeling the World (15 March—7 September 2025, Aranya Art Center, Beidaihe, China) presents four parallel projects, inspired by and constructed from architecture and models, including Ilya and Emilia Kabakov's works. Here, models become metaphors for a range of concepts, social phenomena, emotions, memories, and imaginations. From spiritual architecture to public space, Aranya has long used architecture to shape its unique social life, culture, and aesthetic, which is itself a starting point for this exhibition.