october exhibitions from DESIGNBOOM RADAR
October brings a new set of exhibitions that open conversations across art, design, and architecture, with museums and galleries presenting projects that look back through history and forward into the future. Among them are Virgil Abloh: The Codes at the Grand Palais in Paris, and Dream Rooms at M+ in Hong Kong. The aptly-timed show, Ghosts: On the Trail of the Supernatural opens in Switzerland, and the Museum of Wisconsin Art debuts a survey of Frank Lloyd Wright’s furniture practice. Meanwhile in Kyoto, teamLab unveils its first permanent Biovortex installation.
Some of the exhibitions highlighted in earlier radars and our dedicated event guide remain on view, giving designboom readers more time to encounter them in their travels. On the whole, the broad list of exhibitions shows the range of themes taken by both designers and galleries across the world.
virgil Abloh: The Codes
The Virgil Abloh Archive, in partnership with Nike, announces Virgil Abloh: The Codes, the first major European exhibition dedicated to the late designer’s work. Opening on September 30, 2025 — Abloh’s birthday — and running through October 9th at the Grand Palais in Paris, the show draws from the 20,000-object Virgil Abloh Archive to chart nearly two decades of his multidisciplinary practice.
Curated by Chloe Sultan and Mahfuz Sultan, the exhibition expands on the 2022 edition of The Codes, presenting hundreds of objects, prototypes, sketches, and images alongside pieces from Abloh’s personal collections and library. The installation traces the ‘codes’ that defined his approach to apparel, footwear, architecture, music, and beyond, while spotlighting the collaborations and collective spirit that shaped his influential career.
name: The Codes
artist: Virgil Abloh
gallery: Grand Palais
location: Paris, France
dates: September 30th – October 9th, 2025
image courtesy of Grand Palais
Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design
Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design highlights the architect’s overlooked contributions to furniture, presenting forty chairs alongside drawings and photographs that chart his evolution from Prairie School to Taliesin West. The show emphasizes how Wright used his homes and studios as laboratories, experimenting with form, materials, and the role of furniture in 20th century domestic life.
In addition to historic pieces, the show debuts newly fabricated works based on Wright’s unrealized designs, created from archival sources and exhibited for the first time. Produced in partnership with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and Taliesin Institute, these reconstructions are framed as explorations of Wright’s process and philosophy, offering a deeper view of his design legacy.
name: Frank Lloyd Wright: Modern Chair Design
designer: Frank Lloyd Wright
gallery: Museum of Wisconsin Art
location: Wisconsin, USA
dates: October 4th, 2025 – January 5th, 2026
image courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ
teamlab: Biovortex
teamLab will debut Biovortex Kyoto on October 7th, 2025, establishing its first permanent museum in the city and the collective’s largest venue in Japan. Set just east of Kyoto Station, the 10,000-square-meter space is designed as a fully immersive environment where the art responds to the presence of each visitor.
More than fifty works will unfold across multiple floors, combining new commissions with well-known installations such as the Forest of Resonating Lamps and the soap bubble-formed Massless Amorphous Sculpture. Each work reacts to movement and sound to generate an experience that is never the same twice. The exhibition emphasizes the idea that the artwork exists in the interaction between people and space, and with shifting light, color, and form to shape a fluid landscape.
name: teamLab: Biovortex
artist: teamLab
location: Kyoto, Japan
dates: October 7th, 2025 (permanent)
image © teamLab
leandro erlich
Amos Rex in Helsinki presents the first Finnish exhibition of Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich, known for immersive works that subvert everyday experience. Born in Buenos Aires in 1973, Erlich has built an international reputation for creating large-scale installations that invite audiences to question the reliability of perception and the stability of familiar environments.
The exhibition includes signature pieces that transform ordinary settings into disorienting encounters: a climbable Helsinki facade, a classroom which seems to be abandoned to ghosts, and an elevator lobby without a destination. Erlich overturns physical logic and visual certainty, and stages situations that are playful and unsettling.
name: Leandro Erlich
artist: Leandro Erlich
gallery: Amos Rex
location: Helsinki, Finland
dates: October 8th, 2025 – April 6th, 2026
Leandro Erlich, Bâtiment, 2004, courtesy of Leandro Erlich Studio 2004, France, Nuit Blanche, Paris
Ronan Bouroullec – Inchiostri
Ronan Bouroullec — Inchiostri presents a new series of Murano glass vases created in collaboration with Maestro Simone Cenedese. Each piece is composed of four distinct elements — blocks of cast glass, a blown glass tube, and a shallow dish — arranged in shifting combinations of size, thickness, height, and color. From a near-infinite range of possibilities, Bouroullec has selected twenty compositions that continue his long-standing interest in modularity, balance, and the reversibility of assemblage.
The works sit between sculpture and vessel, their layered transparencies and unpolished surfaces emphasizing color, light, and depth. With Inchiostri, Bouroullec extends a career-long exploration of form and function, highlighting how simple elements can be joined, reconfigured, and reimagined to probe questions of utility, fragility, and transformation.
name: Ronan Bouroullec — Inchiostri
artist: Ronan Bouroullec
gallery: Giorgio Mastinu Fine Art Gallery
location: Venice, Italy
dates: September 13th – October 30th, 2025
Ronan Bouroullec x Giorgio mastinu, image © Giorgio Mastinu
Robert Rauschenberg Guggenheim
This exhibition marks the centenary of Robert Rauschenberg with a focused presentation of key works from the Guggenheim’s collection, alongside significant loans from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Together, they trace the artist’s experimental approach to materials and media, underscoring his role as a pivotal figure in shaping the trajectory of contemporary art. The selection situates Rauschenberg’s work within a broader global tribute, celebrating a practice defined by risk, invention, and cross-disciplinary exchange.
At the center of the exhibition is Barge (1962–63), a 32-foot-long silkscreen painting executed largely in a single day. The largest in a series of roughly 80 works created between 1962 and 1964, Barge exemplifies Rauschenberg’s embrace of scale, immediacy, and image-based experimentation. The work returns to New York for the first time in nearly twenty-five years.
name: Robert Rauschenberg: Life Can’t Be Stopped
artist: Robert Rauschenberg
gallery: Guggenheim New York
location: New York, USA
dates: October 10th, 2025 – May 3rd, 2026
Robert Rauschenberg, Yellow Body (1968) © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/licensed by VAGA, New York, NY/ARS, New York
Diagrams by AMO/OMA
Diagrams: An Exhibition by AMO/OMA at the Fondazione Prada in Venice brings together more than 300 works, ranging from medieval manuscripts to contemporary digital media. Installed across the ground and first floors of the Palazzo Ca’ Corner della Regina, the exhibition assembles documents, publications, images, and videos that trace the diagram as both a historical tool and a contemporary mode of communication.
Organized thematically, the display situates diagrams within pressing global contexts while also highlighting their long and varied lineage. By presenting material that spans centuries and cultures, the show demonstrates the capacity of the diagram to bridge disciplines and eras, showing how visual systems continue to shape design and collective understanding.
name: Diagrams: An Exhibition by AMO/OMA
architect: AMO/OMA
gallery: Fondazione Prada
location: Venice, Italy
dates: until November 24th, 2025
image by Marco Cappelletti, courtesy of Fondazione Prada
Precious Okoyomon – it’s important to have ur fangs out at the end of the world
Precious Okoyomon creates large-scale sculptural environments that confront the ways racial histories are inscribed in the natural world. Working with organic materials, their practice foregrounds cycles of rot, decay, and rebirth as both subject and process, challenging cultural denials of decomposition while emphasizing nature’s resilience in the face of human-made crises. The installations serve as a reminder of violence and a celebration of survival, urging audiences to recognize the stakes of neglecting ecological and social entanglements.
Born in London in 1993 and based in Brooklyn, Okoyomon approaches their work as an ongoing experiment in ‘unthinking’ invisibility, using living matter to generate forms that adapt and resist permanence. Through this perspective, their practice asks viewers to listen closely to the natural world while considering the consequences of failing to act.
name: Precious Okoyomon – it’s important to have ur fangs out at the end of the world
artist: Precious Okoyomon
gallery: Mendes Wood DM
location: Paris, France
dates: October 20th, 2025 – December 6th, 2025
image courtesy of Mendes Wood DM
Lucas Samaras – Master of the Uncanny
Pace Gallery and The Intermission present a survey of Lucas Samaras in Piraeus, marking the artist’s first solo exhibition in Greece in two decades. Bringing together works from the 1960s through the 2010s, the exhibition highlights the breadth of Samaras’s practice, spanning sculpture, painting, photography, digital media, and wearable art, while also celebrating his nearly sixty-year relationship with Pace, which has represented him exclusively since 1965.
Born in Kastoria in 1936 and immigrating to the United States in 1948, Samaras became a central figure in New York’s postwar avant-garde, shaped by his early involvement in the Happenings. The exhibition features Auto Polaroids, Photo-Transformations, Mosaic Paintings, Reconstructions, pastels, and jewelry, alongside sculptures from the Box series and other transformed objects. Together, these works illustrate his lifelong exploration of selfhood and transformation.
name: Lucas Samaras – Master of the Uncanny
artist: Lucas Samaras
gallery: Pace Gallery and The Intermission
location: Piraeus, Greece
dates: until December 20th, 2025
image courtesy of Pace Gallery
dream rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s–Now
Dream Rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s–Now traces the overlooked history of immersive environments through the work of pioneering women artists across multiple generations and continents. Featuring full-scale reconstructions developed with experts and the artists themselves, the exhibition restores works that were often destroyed after their initial presentation, foregrounding women’s contributions to a form central to contemporary art.
Originally conceived by Haus der Kunst München in 2023, the exhibition arrives at M+ Hong Kong with an expanded focus that includes environments by Asian women artists. By revisiting these landmark works and situating them within a global perspective, Dream Rooms both recovers a vital history and demonstrates how immersive practice continues to shape the future of visual art.
name: Dream Rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s–Now
museum: M+
location: M+ Hong Kong
dates: until January 18th, 2026
Aleksandra Kasuba: Spectral Passage, 1975, image by Agostino Osio, courtesy of M+
Yayoi Kusama
Fondation Beyeler is set to present the first major retrospective of Yayoi Kusama in Switzerland, tracing more than seventy years of her practice. Organized in collaboration with Kusama’s studio, the exhibition spans early drawings and lesser-known works through to her best-known installations and mirror rooms. New productions will stand alongside works that have never before been displayed in Europe, and one of her celebrated Infinity Mirror Rooms will feature in the presentation.
The show will emphasize the multiplicity of her media — painting, sculpture, installation, collage, fashion, performance, and literature — and the persistence of her signature visual vocabulary, including polka dots, repetition, and infinite environments.
Following its run in Switzerland, the show will continue on to Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
name: Yayoi Kusama
artist: Yayoi Kusama
gallery: Beyeler Foundation
location: Riehen, Switzerland
dates: October 12th, 2025 – January 25th, 2026
image courtesy of Fondation Beyeler
Nan Goldin: This Will Not End Well
Pirelli HangarBicocca presents This Will Not End Well, the first exhibition devoted to Nan Goldin’s work as a filmmaker, uniting her most extensive body of slideshows ever shown together with new works and a specially commissioned sound installation. Installed in a series of architecturally distinct structures designed by Hala Wardé, the exhibition unfolds as a symbolic village, each building conceived in dialogue with a specific piece. While the title carries a note of foreboding, it also captures Goldin’s characteristic blend of candor, humor, and resilience, affirming the life force that animates her art.
The retrospective offers an immersive journey through Goldin’s four decades of practice, from intimate portraits of friends and communities to explorations of trauma and ecstasy. Her use of the slideshow format remains at the heart of her work and combines photography, film, and performance. In Milan, these installations come together on an unprecedented scale.
name: Nan Goldin: This Will Not End Well
artist: Nan Goldin
gallery: Pirelli HangarBicocca
location: Milan, Italy
dates: October 11th, 2025 – February 15th, 2026
Nan Goldin, The Other Side (1994-2019). image courtesy of Pirelli HangarBicocca
Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show
Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show at the Vitra Design Museum traces the evolution of the fashion show from exclusive Parisian salons of the early 1900s to today’s global multimedia spectacles. Bringing together original garments, films, photographs, stage sets, and archival invitations, the exhibition examines how the catwalk became a site where fashion, architecture, choreography, sound, and scenography merge into a cultural performance.
Organized in four chapters, the exhibition emphasizes the role of models, designers, and collaborators in shaping new narratives — whether through the rise of the supermodel, the deconstruction of fashion’s formats, or performances engaging directly with politics and identity. The exhibition positions the fashion show as a Gesamtkunstwerk, or ‘total work of art,’ and demonstrates how this short-lived format continues to serve as a stage for storytelling.
name: Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show
gallery: Vitra Design Museum
location: Weil am Rhein, Germany
dates: October 8th, 2025 – February 15th, 2026
image courtesy of Vitra Design Museum
yoko ono: Music of the mind
Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind at the MCA offers one of the most extensive surveys of the artist’s career ever presented in the United States, tracing over seven decades of work across performance, film, music, installation, and participatory art. Featuring more than 200 pieces, the exhibition highlights Ono’s pioneering role in conceptual art and her lasting influence on contemporary practice, from her 1960s involvement with Fluxus and landmark works such as Cut Piece (1964) to ongoing projects like Wish Tree (1996–present).
The exhibition underscores Ono’s ability to merge poetic instruction, humor, and activism into art that demands audience engagement. Early films like Fly (1970–71) and Film No.4 (Bottoms) (1966–67) will show alongside collaborative projects with John Cage, Ornette Coleman, and John Lennon. Meanwhile, interactive installations such as My Mommy is Beautiful (2004) and public works like Imagine Peace (2003) and Peace is Power (2017) reflect her dreams of peace and collective imagination.
name: Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind
artist: Yoko Ono
gallery: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
location: Chicago, USA
dates: October 18th, 2025 – February 22nd, 2026
image © Yoko Ono. photo © Oliver Cowling, courtesy of Tate
Erwin Olaf – Freedom
Erwin Olaf – Freedom is the first museum retrospective since the Dutch artist’s passing two years ago, offering a comprehensive view of his multifaceted career. The exhibition traces his evolution from candid black-and-white reportages of the early 1980s, centered on social movements and LGBTQ+ rights, to his staged studio photography, where themes of diversity, identity, and freedom remained central. Alongside iconic series, visitors encounter Olaf’s lesser-known works, including videos, sculptures, commercial campaigns, and archival material that illuminate the scope of his creative process.
The presentation culminates with his most recent series, each addressing pressing social and cultural themes through Olaf’s precise lens. The exhibition concludes with his final, unfinished video For Life, a meditation on mortality symbolized through recurring motifs of flowers in bloom and decay.
name: Erwin Olaf – Freedom
artist: Erwin Olaf
museum: Stedelijk Museum
location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
dates: October 11th, 2025 – March 1st, 2026
Erwin Olaf, Ice Cream Parlour from Rain, 2004. image courtesy of Stedelijk Museum
Ghosts: On the trail of the supernatural
The Kunstmuseum Basel’s Ghosts: On the Trail of the Supernatural explores the enduring presence of ghosts in Western visual culture. With over 160 works spanning 250 years, the exhibition focuses on the 19th century as a pivotal moment when spiritualism, psychology, and new technologies like Pepper’s Ghost converged to fuel fascination with apparitions despite the era’s emphasis on science and rationality.
Positioning ghosts as mediators between life and death, visibility and invisibility, the exhibition highlights their persistent role across art, literature, theater, and film. By tracing how these figures have shaped imagination and belief from Romanticism to the present, Ghosts reveals why spirits remain powerful symbols in both cultural history and contemporary consciousness.
name: Ghosts: On the trail of the supernatural
gallery: Kunstmuseum Basel
location: Basel, Switzerland
dates: until March 8th, 2026
image courtesy of Kunstmuseum Basel
Marie Antoinette Style
London’s V&A South Kensington presents Marie Antoinette Style, an exhibition that examines of one of history’s most recognizable figures. Bringing together over 250 years of design, fashion, film, and art, the show explores how the queen’s image has been continually reinterpreted, from 18th-century court dress to contemporary cultural references.
Framed by her youth, elegance, and demise, Marie Antoinette emerges as a style icon as well as a complex symbol of power and excess. The exhibition traces her lasting influence across centuries and shows how her persona continues to shape visual culture today.
name: Marie Antoinette Style
museum: V&A South Kensington
location: London, UK
dates: until March 22nd, 2026
image © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
exposition générale
The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain is entering a new chapter with its move to a landmark building designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. Rising on the historic Place du Palais-Royal in Paris, this new home marks a decisive moment in the foundation’s history, reinforcing its commitment to artistic creation and public dialogue. To inaugurate the space, the Fondation presents Exposition Générale, running from October 20th, 2025, to August 23rd, 2026.
Gathering nearly six hundred works by more than one hundred artists, Exposition Générale retraces the foundation’s identity from its beginnings in 1984 to today. Shaped by four decades of exhibitions, the show spans art, architecture, technology, and science, offering a portrait of a collection built through curatorial dialogue. Its title, drawn from the historic Expositions Générales once held at the Grands Magasins du Louvre, connects the foundation’s mission to a broader lineage of cultural exchange and experimentation in the heart of Paris.
name: Exposition Générale
gallery: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
location: Paris, France
dates: October 25th, 2025 – August 23rd, 2026
photo © Luc Boegly
From the Functional to the Fabulous: 600 Years of Decorative Design
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts presents a newly reimagined installation of its renowned decorative arts and design collection, one of the largest in North America. Spanning two levels of the pavilion designed by Fred David Lebensold, the display brings together collection highlights, recent acquisitions, and objects shown for the first time in a space that emphasizes history and innovation together.
Occupying nearly 2,000 square meters, the installation features over 800 works by more than 400 designers, artists, and artisans. Silverware, ceramics, furniture, jewelry, textiles, glass, and industrial design objects reflect the scope of the collection. In Montreal, visitors will witness a near-complete overview of craft and design practices across cultures and centuries.
name: From the Functional to the Fabulous: 600 Years of Decorative Design
gallery: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
location: Montreal, Canada
dates: September 13th – ongoing
installation view, image courtesy of MMFA
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