The events described in this roundup have taken place.

With the great spring fairs behind it, July settled into the rhythm of the museum season, the months when blockbuster exhibitions, rather than auctions and fairs, define where the art world is looking.

Around the World

Europe offered a summer of destination shows. At Tate Modern in London, “Frida: The Making of an Icon”, which opened on 25 June, drew crowds to reconsider the life and image of Frida Kahlo, on view through early 2027. In the north of England, the Hepworth Wakefield presented a major retrospective of the Indian sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee, celebrating four decades of her monumental fiber works. And in Asia, Beijing’s UCCA opened Carsten Höller: “Two” on July 14, a sensory playground of interactive installations that turned the museum into an experiment in perception.

In the United States

Across American museums, the summer’s ambitious programming stayed open and busy. New York remained a hub, with the Queens Museum’s Sonia Boyce installation and MoMA’s Pierre Huyghe show continuing to anchor the city’s contemporary offerings, joined by summer exhibitions in institutions from coast to coast. July is traditionally when families and travelers fill galleries, and museums met the moment with programming built for wide, cross-generational audiences.

In New Jersey

In the Garden State, July belonged to the outdoors. Grounds For Sculpture was at its lush midsummer peak, pairing its permanent collection with seasonal horticulture, while communities across New Jersey filled the month with arts festivals, waterfront art fairs, craft markets, and free public programming. The state’s museums, Newark, Montclair, the Zimmerli, and Princeton, offered air-conditioned refuge and serious art in equal measure, keeping New Jersey’s cultural life humming straight through the height of summer.

If May and June were about the big global moments, July was about depth: the long, rewarding season when the year’s most talked-about exhibitions are finally there to be seen, at leisure.

Corrected on 2 October 2026. An earlier version of this article said UCCA opened Carsten Höller’s “Two” on July 4 and called Tate Modern’s Frida Kahlo exhibition the highest pre-selling exhibition in the museum’s history. The UCCA exhibition opened on 14 July 2026, and the pre-selling claim has been removed because Tate does not state it.

Sources consulted

UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Carsten Höller: Two
Tate Modern, Frida Kahlo: The Making of an Icon