Art Exhibitions to Look Forward to in 2025
Hyperspace:-100km + ∞,2024. Adobe, steel mesh, rebar, and basalt.Courtesy of the artist.
In 2025, we have already witnessed massive cuts to federal spending on the arts, making the state of tomorrow dismally uncertain. Efforts toward diversity, equity, and inclusion are under threat, while white supremacist ideology quickly becomes hegemonic. It is important now, more than ever, to pay attention to artists who are destabilizing and exposing the crumbling foundations of the institutions and principles we think are solid. Many of the exhibitions on this list grapple with these tensions, while somehow still imagining a new, yet radically different future.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of art exhibitions opening in 2025. Reach out to Intervenxions (Latinxproject@nyu.edu) with recommendations for potential future coverage.
Ana VazAmérika, Bay of Arrows, 2016. Single-channel video, color,sound. 8:46 min. Courtesy of the artist and Light Cone, Brussels.
The Blinding Light
Curated by: Diego Villalobos
When: January 11–April 19, 2025
Where: / (Slash), San Francisco, CA
Artists: Raven Chacon, Ishan Clemenco, Manon de Boer, Claire Fontaine, Isabel Nuño de Buen, Carlos Reyes, Ana Vaz
Featuring seven artists working with diverse media, The Blinding Light is a group exhibition in an artist-led nonprofit that encourages the unknown––underscoring the “out of focus and less defined” aspects of contemporary culture and established historical narratives. Inspired by quantum physics, works on view grapple with radical ecologies, shifting perceptions, and the elusive boundaries between fiction and reality.
Visit / (Slash) at 1150 25th St., Building B, San Francisco, CA, 94107.
2. X Factor: Latinx Artists and the Reconquest of the Everyday
Eddy A. López, In-Dependencia, 2021-2022. silkscreen, acrylic on fabric. dimensions variable: each of 16 flags is 3 x 5 feet. Courtesy of the artist.
Curated by: Christian Viveros-Fauné
When: January 17–March 8, 2025
Where: Contemporary Art Museum (CAM), University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
Artists: Gabino A. Castelán, Gisela Colón, Danielle De Jesus, Lucia Hierro, Karlo Andrei Ibarra, Laura Perez Insua, José Lerma, Eddy A. López, Miguel Luciano, Narsiso Martinez, Angel Otero, Edison Peñafiel, Shizu Saldamando, Yiyo Tirado-Rivera and Rodrigo Valenzuela
This heavy-hitting exhibition featuring exclusively Latinx artists thematically considers how artists negotiate their intersecting identities––sometimes two, three, or more at a time––to propose a more encompassing vision. By juxtaposing diverse works from artists of varied backgrounds, the exhibition honors the salience of the everyday and probes the limits of representation and empowerment.
Visit Contemporary Art Museum (CAM), University of South Florida at 3821 USF Holly Drive, Tampa, FL, 33620.
3. Bajitas y Suavecitas
Amanda Lopez, Homegirls, 2008. Photographic archival pigment print, 26.5 x 40 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
Curated by: Denise M. Sandoval
When: January 21–March 15, 2025
Where: California State University Northridge (CSUN) Art Galleries, Northridge, CA
Artists: Madeline Alvizo Ramirez, Gabriela Campos, Jessica Estrada Silva, Ashley Garcia, Elizabeth Loya, Veronica de Jesus, Amanda Lopez, Valentina Mauro, Stefanie L. Murga, Onni, Cecelia Perez, Ayerim Sandoval, Irene Shiori, Vanessa Torrez, Jacqueline Valenzuela, Valerie Vargas, and El Pachuco Zoot Suit Shop
Featuring over 15 artists and designers––all women––Bajitas y Suavecitas celebrates their unshakeable influence in the sphere of Chicana lowrider culture. Including works of varied media including painting, photography, and fashion, the university professor and curator Denise M. Sandoval imbued the exhibition with her personal experiences and academic knowledge of contemporary lowrider communities, highlighting their fortitude and love for each other.
Visit CSUN Art Galleries at 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge, CA, 91330.
4. Beatriz Cortez x rafa esparza: Earth and Cosmos
rafa esparza (assisted by Karla Ekaterine Canseco and Yomahra Gonzalez). Corpo RanfLA: Terra Cruiser 4everz, 2023. Live performance, San Francisco. Courtesy of the artist and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Photo by Myleen Hollero.
Organized by: Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza, with coordination by Sarah Lopez
When: January 29–May 17, 2025
Where: Americas Society, New York, NY
Earth and Cosmos is a glimpse into the friendship and collaboration of two Los Angeles–based artists, Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza. The exhibition’s main premise imagines ancient Indigenous objects traveling across space and features steel and adobe sculptures. In the age of neofascism, the exhibition considers how objects (and people) move, whether through displacement, travel, and, in some cases, a return home.
Visit Americas Society at 680 Park Ave., New York, NY, 10065.
5. Tonalli, Teyolia, Ihiyotl: The Spirits In Us
Mauricio Zúñiga, Búsqueda de la verdad. Photo courtesy of Carter Art Center.
Curated by: Mauricio Zúñiga in collaboration with Bernadette Torres
When: February 6–March 7, 2025
Where: Carter Art Center, Metropolitan Community College, Kansas City, MO
Artists: Mauricio Zúñiga, Robert Castillo, Vincent Medellin
Inspired by the Nahua belief that the human spirit exists across three parts of the human body––tonallí at the front of the skull, teyolía at the center of the heart, and ihíyotl in the liver––this exhibition gathers works by three Mexican-American contemporary artists: Mauricio Zúñiga, Robert Castillo, and Vincent Medellin.
Visit The Carter Art Center at 3201 S.W. Trafficway, Kansas City, MO, 64111.
6. Pedro Gómez Egaña: The Great Learning
Pedro Gómez-Egaña,Virgo,2022 (detail). Performative installation, dimensions variable. Photo byBlaiseAdilon
Curated by: Natalie Bell
When: February 21–July 27, 2025
Where: MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA
Oslo-based artist Pedro Gómez-Egaña trained as a musician and composer and later turned to sculpture and installation. In his first museum exhibition in the U.S., the artist will show architectural spaces in various states of rupture, repetition, or dissolution, surprising viewers with shifts in perception. Interested in the poetic capacity of spatial dramaturgy, gallery attendants––or orchestrators––will shift the installation’s elements and soundscapes, leaning into chance and collaborative improvisation.
Visit MIT List Visual Arts Center at 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA, 02142.
7. José Villalobos: Rough Rider
José Villalobos (United States, b.1988), Steer the Queer, 2024. Chromogenic print, 60x40in.(152.4x101.6cm). Courtesy of the artist and Liliana Bloch Gallery.
Curated by: Alana Hernandez with Sade Moore
When: February 22–July 20, 2025
Where: Arizona State University (ASU) Art Museum, Tempe, AZ
For his first solo exhibition in the U.S., El Paso–born and raised multidisciplinary artist José Villalobos will present works that highlight the entanglements between his Evangelical upbringing, rodeo culture, and the politics of the U.S.-Mexico border, with an emphasis on masculinity and its rigid impositions. In previous sculptures and installations, Villalobos explores the formal and spiritual ties between themes like queer desire, bondage, fashion, and play using diverse materials like leather, soil, and barbed wire.
Visit the Arizona State University Art Museum at 51 E. 10th St., Tempe, AZ 85281.
8. Jackie Castillo
Curated by: Amanda Sroka with Emilia Shaffer Del-Valle
When: April 5–August 31, 2025
Where: Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
Raised in Santa Ana, CA, Jackie Castillo makes artworks that blend photography, sculpture, and installation, paying homage to changing neighborhoods, architectural neglect, and the fuzzy memories that gentrification erases and displaces. For her installation at ICA LA, the artist will assemble discarded roof shingles in collaboration with her father, acknowledging the frequently undocumented, dangerous labor of roofing and the luxury of new housing development.
Visit ICA LA at 1717 E. 7th St., Los Angeles, CA, 90021.
9. Candida Alvarez: Circle, Point, Hoop
Candida Alvarez, She Wore Red to the Senior Prom, 1983-1984. Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 36 in. Courtesy the artist. Photograph by Tom Van Eynde.
Curated by: Rodrigo Moura and Zuna Maza with Alexia Arrizurieta
When: April 24–August 3, 2025
Where: El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY
Renowned abstract artist Candida Alvarez’s solo exhibition at El Museo del Barrio will survey the artist’s multivalent practice spanning the last 50 years. Despite beginning her artistic career in the 1970s with figurative painting, Alvarez is best known for her formal experimentations with abstract forms and color. The exhibition’s title alludes to a 1996 work of the same name, while also alluding to Alvarez’s long-standing engagement with games, language, and other systems.
Visit El Museo del Barrio at 1230 5th Ave. at 104th St., New York, NY, 10029.
10. Black Earth Rising
Curated by: Ekow Eshun with support from Katie Cooke
When: May 18–September 21, 2025
Where: Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
Artists: Firelei Báez, Alejandro Piñero Bello, Teresita Fernández, Sky Hopinka, Tyler Mitchell, Wangechi Mutu, Otobong Nkanga, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Yinka Shonibare
This group exhibition unites multidisciplinary artists of varied backgrounds under a common theme: an examination of our planet’s rich, bountiful resources and the precarity of its current circumstances under climate catastrophe. Inspired by the Portuguese term for the fertile soil of the Americas pre-conquest (terra preta), Black Earth Rising forms part of the museum’s environmental initiative Turn Again to the Earth, which also includes the development of a sustainability plan and a city-wide eco-challenge led by the BMA.
Visit the Baltimore Museum of Art at 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore, MD, 21218.
11. Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream...
Vincent Valdez, Just A Dream, 2020- 2021. Oil on canvas. Audio component, two bricks. Williams College Museum of Art, Museum purchase, Kathryn Hurd Fund, M.2021.5.
Audio component, Just A Dream, 1959, by Jimmy Clanton.
Curated by: Denise Markonish and Patricia Restrepo
When: May 24, 2025–April 5, 2026
Where: MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA
In Vincent Valdez’s first major museum survey including work from the past 20 years, the artist’s multimedia works—including previously unexhibited and new bodies of work—shine a light on the understudied, repressed, and censored violences of history. Underscoring the pride, politics, and failures of the nation-state, Valdez “creates images as instruments to probe the past in order to reveal an immediacy to what is occurring today.”
Visit MASS MoCA at 1040 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247.