designboom radar: exhibitions to see around the world this august

August exhibitions from DESIGNBOOM RADAR

This month’s exhibition roundup is full of projects that ask visitors to look again at the spaces and objects around them. A garden becomes a climate experiment, bomb-scarred architecture returns as a climbing wall, birds turn electric guitars into instruments, and familiar designs — from Pierre Paulin chairs to BMW Art Cars — are brought into new focus. Across museums and public sites, the most compelling shows make their ideas physical by working through light, sound, movement, and materials which already carry their own histories.

Some of the exhibitions highlighted in earlier radars and listings on our dedicated events guide remain on view, giving designboom readers more time to encounter them around the globe.

Precious Okoyomon: Among the flowers I learned to love, A Garden of decreation

Precious Okoyomon has turned MoMA PS1’s courtyard into a living forest where plants, sculpture, and sound shift with the seasons. Titled Among the Flowers I Learned to Love: A Garden of Decreation, the installation brings cultivated and wild species into the same evolving landscape, alongside a giant teddy bear that visitors can enter and climb through. Conceived as a garden of continual making and unmaking, the work considers how public space might adapt to an increasingly unpredictable climate.

name: Precious Okoyomon, Among the flowers I learned to love, A Garden of decreation
artist: Precious Okoyomon
museum: MoMA PS1
location: New York, USA
dates: July 31st, 2026 — 2028

Among the Flowers I Learned to Love: A Garden of Decreation is Okoyomon, Precious Okoyomon, MoMA PS1 | image © John Kim

A Structure of Feeling: On a New Generation of Architects in China

A Structure of Feeling brings together twelve projects by nine independent Chinese architecture practices to examine how design is changing after decades of rapid urban expansion. At Aedes Architecture Forum, a selection of physical models, films, photographs, and graphic works trace a generation working across existing city fabric, rural development, and smaller-scale forms of construction. Meanwhile, the shipping crates that carried the exhibition from China to Berlin become part of the display itself.

name: A Structure of Feeling: On a New Generation of Architects in China
architects: Atelier Alter Architects, Atelier XÜK, genarchitects, line+ studio, DL Atelier, People’s Architecture Office, Yanfei Architects, Studio QI Architects, BUZZ / Büro Ziyu Zhuang
museum: Aedes Architecture Forum
location: Berlin, Germany
dates: July 4th — October 14th, 2026

exhibition radar august
Annoso · Hill, Tengchong, Yunnan, CN, 2019. © Jin Weiqi

Ana Mendieta

Tate Modern brings together more than 120 works by Ana Mendieta, tracing how she used the body as a temporary mark within the landscape. Newly remastered films, early paintings, and late sculptures sit alongside the celebrated Silueta works, where earth, fire, water, and flowers carry the outline of the artist’s form. Arranged through symbolic environments rather than a simple chronology, the exhibition gives spatial structure to a practice shaped by presence, disappearance, and the charged meeting of body and ground.

name: Ana Mendieta
artist: Ana Mendieta
museum: Tate Modern
location: London, UK
dates: July 15th, 2026 — January 17th, 2027

exhibition radar august
Ana Mendieta Imágen de Yágul 1973 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. licensed by Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, 2026 / courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery and Alison Jacques, London

Dan Flavin: Simple Fluorescent Tubes

At the Venet Foundation in Le Muy, fluorescent tubes become architectural material in a focused survey of Dan Flavin’s work from 1963 to 1990. Curated by Erik Verhagen, the exhibition traces how the American artist used commercially available light fixtures to draw across walls, occupy corners, and alter the color and scale of a room, turning an ordinary industrial object into a precise study of space and perception.

name: Dan Flavin: Simple Fluorescent Tubes
artist: Dan Flavin
museum: Venet Foundation
location: Le Muy, France
dates: May 8th — October 3rd, 2026

Dan Flavin, untitled (to Lucie Rie, master potter), 1990, Pink blue, yellow and green fluorescent light, 183 x 41 x 62 cm © Archives Bernar Venet

Georg Baselitz

Sehwa Museum of Art surveys six decades of Georg Baselitz through 46 paintings, sculptures, and drawings, moving from the recurring figures of his early work to portraits of Elke, the self-referential Remix series, and his late Gold Paintings. Fractured bodies, eagles, and inverted figures run through the exhibition, tracing how Baselitz repeatedly dismantled and revisited his own imagery to keep painting physically and psychologically unsettled.

name: Georg Baselitz
artist: Georg Baselitz
museum: Sehwa Museum of Art
location: Seoul, South Korea
dates: August 13th — December 27th, 2026

1965, 2024, Bronze patinated, 342.6 x 92.5 x 90 cm © Georg Baselitz 2026

Speaking Stones

At Tallinn’s Adamson-Eric Museum, Speaking Stones examines stone as material, artifact, and carrier of memory, placing medieval fragments and historic carving alongside contemporary art. Pavel Rotts’ Climbing a Memory (read more here) sharpens this premise through colorful resin holds cast from the city’s war-damaged architecture, turning craters and broken ornaments into a surface the body can read through touch and movement. Set among centuries of stonework, the installation brings overlooked urban wounds back into view while asking what fragments can preserve after the structures around them disappear.

name: Speaking Stones
museum: Adamson-Eric Museum
location: Tallinn, Estonia
dates: June 19th — November 22nd, 2026

Speaking stones, Pavel Rotts, Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn, 2026 | image © Liis Saarepere

the peanut butter floor

In a tribute to the late Dutch artist and comedian Wim T. Schippers, who passed away on June 10, 2026, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam recreates one of the artist’s iconic works – a delightful peanut butter hexagon fashioned on the floor of its Depot.

First introduced in 1962, the Peanut Butter Floor (Pindakaasvloer) is a conceptual artwork covered with a thick layer of peanut butter. The humorous, absurd nature of the work raises questions like ‘is this art?’ and ‘am I allowed to find this beautiful?’, reflecting Schippers’ belief that art does not necessarily have to be logical or useful, it may as well ‘be absurd – just like life itself – and that is precisely what makes it worthwhile.’ Rather than exhibiting the preserved floor from 1962, the installation is recreated each time according to the artist’s precise instructions. The concept and its execution constitute the work.

name: The Peanut Butter Floor (Pindakaasvloer)
artist: Wim T. Schippers
museum: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
dates: July 9th — September 30th, 2026

Wim T. Schippers, Peanut Butter Floor, 1962, at the Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen | image by Raaf Blanker, 2026

ELLSWORTH KELLY: AT THE EDGE OF WATER

Ellsworth Kelly’s crisp abstractions return to the landscapes that first shaped them in At the Edge of Water, an exhibition tracing the artist’s lifelong attention to aquatic light, color, and movement. Drawings, collages, paintings, and sculptures reveal how observations made from Belle-Île and the Côte d’Azur to New York and the Caribbean were distilled into pared-back forms, offering a closer look at the visual research behind Kelly’s precise geometry.

name: Ellsworth Kelly: At the Edge of Water
artist: Ellsworth Kelly
museum: Fondation Maeght
location: Saint-Paul de Vence, France
dates: June 27 — November 15, 2026

exhibition radar august
Ellsworth Kelly, Long Bay Beach (study for White and Dark Gray Panels I), 1977, postcard collage, 9.8 × 14.9 cm, © Ellsworth Kelly Studio

Carsten Holler: Two

Carsten Höller splits UCCA’s Great Hall into two parallel exhibitions, assigning visitors one of two entrances before sending them through matching environments in color or black and white. New carousels, moving beds, mirrored doors, light installations, and interactive games turn the museum into what the artist calls a “Laboratory of Doubt,” where familiar systems of time, movement, and choice begin to slip. Developed partly in response to the Beijing space, Two treats participation as both play and experiment, placing each visitor inside the work’s shifting logic.

name: Carsten Höller: Two

artist: Carsten Höller

museum: UCCA Center for Contemporary Art

location: Beijing, China

dates: July 14th, 2026 — January 31st, 2027

Carsten Höller: Two, UCCA, Beijing | image courtesy UCCA Center for Contemporary Art

Martin Parr: We Are Martin Parr

We Are Martin Parr surveys five decades of the late British photographer’s sharp, often comic observations of tourism, leisure, consumption, and everyday behavior. More than 500 photographs span his early black-and-white work and saturated color series including The Last Resort, Small World, and Common Sense, while ninety photobooks reveal an equally influential publishing practice. Together, the works trace how Parr turned ordinary social rituals into uneasy reflections of the image culture we now inhabit.

name: Martin Parr: We Are Martin Parr
artist: Martin Parr
museum: Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA)
location: Seoul, South Korea
dates: July 16th — October 18th, 2026

exhibition radar august
Benidorm, Spain, 1997 © Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

Le design selon Pierre Paulin

Le design selon Pierre Paulin traces five decades of work by the French designer, moving from the practical furniture of the 1950s toward the soft, sculptural forms that defined his later career. Alongside familiar pieces including the Mushroom, Ribbon, and Tongue chairs, reconstructed interiors reveal how Paulin expanded from furniture into immersive environments, including the Élysée Palace smoking room and the 1985 Vidéo Barnum. The exhibition presents design as an evolving response to changing bodies, technologies, and ways of living.

name: Le design selon Pierre Paulin (1927–2009)
artist: Pierre Paulin
museum: Musée Fabre
location: Montpellier, France
dates: June 27th — November 1st, 2026

exhibition radar august
Pierre Paulin, Fauteuil Déclive en extérieur, 1966 | image courtesy Archives Paulin © DR

BMW Art Cars: 20 Artists, 50 Years of Innovation. Reunited at BMW Welt

For the first time, all twenty BMW Art Cars come together at BMW Welt, tracing five decades of experiments between contemporary art and automotive design. The exhibition moves backward from Julie Mehretu’s BMW M Hybrid V8 to Alexander Calder’s 1975 racing car, placing works by artists including Esther Mahlangu, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, and Cao Fei within the technological shifts of their respective eras. Olafur Eliasson’s rarely assembled BMW H2R Project extends the survey beyond painted bodywork, enclosing a hydrogen prototype in reflective metal and layers of frozen water.

name: BMW Art Cars: 20 Artists, 50 Years of Innovation. Reunited at BMW Welt

museum: BMW Welt

location: Munich, Germany
dates: July 29th, 2026 — August 31st, 2026

BMW Art Car #1 by Alexander Calder | image by Jean-Marie Bottequin © BMW AG 03/2025

Doug Aitken: Lightscape

Doug Aitken expands Lightscape across seven screens, turning The Shed’s 12,000-square-foot gallery into a shifting field of film, sound, and live performance. Figures move through deserts, automated factories, high-rise interiors, and digital environments as their separate journeys gradually intersect, accompanied by music from Beck, LA LOM, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The installation treats the gallery as an evolving cinematic architecture, with improvisational performances altering its visual and sonic atmosphere throughout the exhibition.

name: Doug Aitken: Lightscape

artist: Doug Aitken
museum: The Shed
location: New York, New York
dates: June 25th — September 13th, 2026

image courtesy Doug Aitken

Fujiko nakaya: Fog Sculpture in the Sculpture Garden

Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya returns to Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie with a site-specific fog sculpture that occupies the museum’s 90-meter-long sculpture garden through October 25th, 2026. Activated throughout the day, the installation sends slowly moving clouds of pure water mist across the garden, where they drift between trees, sculptures, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s landmark architecture before dissipating into the air.

name: Fujiko Nakaya: Fog Sculpture in the Sculpture Garden

artist: Fujiko Nakaya

museum: Neue Nationalgalerie

location: Berlin, Germany

dates: April 30th – October 25th, 2026

Fujiko Nakaya: Fog Sculpture in the Sculpture Garden | image courtesy Neue Nationalgalerie

The New Vision: Monet and the Contemporary Gaze

The New Vision places nineteen works by Claude Monet in conversation with eighteen contemporary artists, extending his experiments with light, atmosphere, and perception across photography, moving image, sculpture, and installation. Works by figures including Pierre Huyghe, Roni Horn, Fujiko Nakaya, and Wolfgang Tillmans occupy the galleries and outdoor spaces of the Pola Museum, treating Monet’s vision as an active question that continues to shift across media and generations.

name: The New Vision: Monet and the Contemporary Gaze
artist: Claude Monet and 18 contemporary artists
museum: Pola Museum of Art
location: Hakone, Japan
dates: June 17th, 2026 — April 7th, 2027

installation view, The New Vision: Monet and the Contemporary Gaze, Pola Museum of Art, Hakone, 2026 | image © Shu Nakagawa

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot: from here to ear

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot turns MAAT Gallery into a living soundscape where one hundred zebra finches move freely among some twenty amplified electric guitars. As the birds land on strings and activate changing notes, from here to ear v.26 replaces fixed musical composition with an environment shaped by chance, movement, and collective behavior. Visitors enter the same responsive field, adjusting their pace and attention to performers whose smallest gestures continually redraw the work.

name: Céleste Boursier-Mougenot: from here to ear
artist: Céleste Boursier-Mougenot
museum: MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology
location: Lisbon, Portugal
dates: July 8th — August 31st, 2026

Richard Tuttle: Half Light

Richard Tuttle brings two recent bodies of work to Dia Beacon, continuing his long exploration of the space between drawing, sculpture, painting, and language. In 18 × 24, acrylic-painted Styrofoam forms hang over the word drawings that generated them, shifting between abstract shapes and graphic notation. Nearby, the reclaimed materials of Good Idea spread across walls and floors, giving each lightweight construction a different relationship with the surrounding architecture.

name: Richard Tuttle: Half-Light
artist: Richard Tuttle
museum: Dia Beacon
location: Beacon, New York
dates: July 31st, 2026 — ongoing

Richard Tuttle: 18 × 24, installation view, Pace Gallery, New York, 2023. © Richard Tuttle | image by Robyn Caspare, courtesy Pace Gallery

The Way We Live Now

The Way We Live Now brings together works from the George Economou Collection to examine how contemporary life shapes the body, private relationships, and political experience. Paintings and sculptures by Louise Bourgeois, David Hockney, Katharina Fritsch, Jenny Saville, Lorna Simpson, and others move through loosely connected themes, creating a portrait of modern existence built from intimacy, vulnerability, power, and isolation.

name: The Way We Live Now
museum: The George Economou Collection
location: Athens, Greece
dates: June 20th, 2026 — March 2027

Katharina Fritsch, Zwei Manner/Two Men, 2020 © Katharina Fritsch, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / OSDEETE, Athens 2026 | image courtesy the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery

Achille and Bruno, Free to Play

Inside the former studio of Achille Castiglioni, bordering Parco Sempione, Milan’s central park, there are gadgets and gizmos, sunglasses and a curling stone. Looking at the late Italian designer’s treasure trove of trinkets that were squirreled away by the architect, it’s easy to wonder if toys ever made their way into his oeuvre of chairs, shelves, and teapots.

‘No!’ remarks Marco Marzini, co-curator of ‘Achille and Bruno, Free to Play,’ Fondazione Achille Castiglioni’s 2026–2027 exhibition on the works of Castiglioni and Bruno Munari. ‘But he collected and preserved countless toys both in his studio and at home, for personal amusement and as design inspiration, but also to play with his children and friends.’

name: Achille and Bruno, Free to Play (Achille e Bruno, Liberi di Giocare)
designers: Achille Castiglioni and Bruno Munari
museum: Fondazione Achille Castiglioni
location: Milan, Italy
dates: May 29, 2026 — February 16, 2027