Switzerland’s best art exhibitions to see in 2025

In partnership with Switzerland Tourism

Whether you’re more into boreal forest-inspired paintings or tantalising textiles, plot some surefire cultural highlights into your itinerary with our pick of Switzerland’s best art exhibitions to see in 2025, at 11 of the most important Swiss art museums.

Fondation Beyeler, Riehen near Basel

‘Northern Lights’, 26 January – 25 May 2025

The northern hemisphere’s vast boreal forest is the inspiration shared by 74 landscape masterpieces, painted by artists from Scandinavia and Canada between 1888 and 1937, brought together for Fondation Beyeler’s new exhibition.

Stretching south and north of the polar circle, forming one of Earth’s largest primeval woodlands, the snowy boreal (meaning northern) forest has a magical appeal; cold, darkness and the heavenly pyrotechnics of the Northern Lights have long provided elemental drama and atmospheric mis en scène.

Focusing on a specifically Nordic way of painting, the ‘Northern Lights’ exhibition traces the development of boreal forest landscapes in modern art through selected works by Helmi Biese, Anna Boberg, Emily Carr, Prince Eugen, Gustaf Fjæstad, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Lawren S Harris, Hilma af Klint, JEH MacDonald, Edvard Munch, Ivan Shishkin, Harald Sohlberg and Tom Thomson.

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Kunstmuseum Basel

‘Medardo Rosso – Inventing Modern Sculpture’, 29 March – 10 August 2025

Little known but highly influential, Medardo Rosso was a 1900s revolutionary. A sculptor, photographer, and master of artful staging, Rosso was both rival and role model to his contemporaries and countless artists across subsequent generations. To trace the artist’s radical, formal, material, and technical explorations, this comprehensive retrospective showcases bronze, plaster and wax sculptures, and hundreds of his photographs and drawings, alongside work by more than 50 artists from the last hundred years – among them Francis Bacon, Edgar Degas, Yayoi Kusama, Auguste Rodin, and Andy Warhol – whose concerns and technical approaches resonate with Rosso’s.

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Museum Tinguely, Basel

‘Fresh Window. The Art of Display & Display of Art’, until 11 May 2025

For decades, in storefronts and boutiques all over the world, there have been close links between art and shop window display. Marcel Duchamp designed his first shop window in 1945 for the launch of a book by André Breton in New York; Swiss artist Jean Tinguely worked as a professional window dresser in Basel; and Andy Warhol effectively launched his pop art aesthetic via a window dressing commission for the Gunther Jaeckel department store back in 1961. Flipping the medium, window displays have also featured frequently as a motif in artworks, or served as a stage for performances and installations.

This new exhibition, ‘Fresh Window. The Art of Display & Display of Art’, explores the eventful relationship between art and retail commerce, artists and shop windows, from its beginnings to the present day. Artistic interventions across stores in Basel will extend the show into public spaces.

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Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern

‘Le Corbusier. The Order of Things’, 8 February – 22 June 2025

To coincide with its 20-year anniversary, the Zentrum Paul Klee is devoting a major exhibition to the Swiss-French artist-architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965). One of the most influential protagonists of modern architecture and art, Le Corbusier tried to harness his unbridled creativity and enormous energy to reshape the world according to his ideas, to ‘order’ it and create a new living environment through functional and aesthetic architecture. Today, some of his buildings are Unesco World Heritage Sites. The exhibition is based around Le Corbusier’s three-dimensional thought and design. The prelude to the architecture is at the centre: the artistic experiment in the ‘workshop of patient research’, as Le Corbusier described his artistic work.

The permanent exhibition ‘Kosmos Klee. The Collection’ rounds up the visit with a chronological overview of Klee's artistic oeuvre through 70 works, as well as biographical material and archive items.

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Plateforme 10, Lausanne

Permanent exhibition

A 25,000 sq m art project sited on a former Lausanne locomotive repair shed, Plateforme 10 brings together the significant resources of three institutions: the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-arts de Lausanne, the Musée de Design et d'Arts Appliqués Contemporains (Mudac) and the Musée de l'Élysée, as well as the collections of the Fondation Toms Pauli and the Fondation Felix Vallotton.

Plateforme 10’s impressive, permanent exhibition, laid out chronologically over two floors, displays treasures from the local canton of Vaud’s art collections, with some 300 works dating from the 18th century to the present day. The museum’s historical collection explores major trends in post-Second World War creativity, geometric abstraction, neo-Fauvism, new media’s video and installation pieces, alongside drawings, paintings and ‘art autre’ of the second Paris School.

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MASI Lugano

‘Louisa Gagliardi’, 16 February – 20 July 2025

MASI’s 2025 exhibition programme focuses on rediscoveries, creative synergies and compelling narratives, offering a fresh exploration of Switzerland’s visual arts history and its dynamic, international trajectory.

The programme opens with an exhibition by Louisa Gagliardi, one of the most intriguing figures in Swiss contemporary art. Gagliardi’s work merges digital technology with traditional painting techniques, creating compositions rich in unexpected details that blend the familiar with the unknown. Drawing inspiration from artistic movements such as Surrealism, Metaphysics and Magical Realism, she crafts an imaginative world that reflects the transformative shifts of the post-internet era.

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Fotomuseum Winterthur

‘Poulomi Basu Phantasmagoria’, 25 October 2025 – 15 February 2026

Following an extensive renovation and redevelopment programme, Fotomuseum Winterthur will reopen in May 2025. From October 2025 the museum will present an exhibition by Indian artist Poulomi Basu. Interweaving documentary photographs and staged scenes enacted in front of fantastical backdrops, Basu creates multimedia, often large-scale installations. Here, the exhibition’s title references the 18th-century phantasmagorias that captivated audiences with projections and optical illusions. The artist also employs virtual reality, film and performance in her practice, using the activist potential of different media to champion the rights of marginalised groups.

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Museum Für Gestaltung Zürich

‘Textile Manifestos – From Bauhaus to Soft Sculpture’, 14 February – 13 July 2025

Fanciful fringes and embroideries, geometrically ordered weavings and spatial free forms; ‘Textile Manifestos – From Bauhaus to Soft Sculpture’ celebrates a graphic and colourful variety of crafted materials. Expect anonymous, provocative pieces next to well-known abstract works by the likes of America’s Sheila Hicks, and New Tapestry movement figurehead Elsi Giauque.

Surprising adjacencies of comparable perspectives from different periods emerge – a powerful commonality that includes the creative hand and a touch of magic. Quiet statements as well as the occasional activist message enhance the pulling power of these textile creations.

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Kunsthaus Zürich

‘Marina Abramović Retrospective’, until 16 February 2025

Including works from every phase of Marina Abramović’s extraordinary career, alongside iconic performances and a new, interactive piece, the Kunsthaus Zürich presents the artist’s first comprehensive retrospective in Switzerland. Abramović is known for her durational performances that explore physical and mental limits, inviting visitors to experience mindfulness and self-perception; this retrospective spans video, photography, sculpture and drawing, along with live restagings of iconic works including Imponderabilia and Luminosity. A new, interactive piece, Decompression Chamber, was designed by Abramović especially for Kunsthaus Zürich.

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Museum Rietberg, Zürich

‘Hallyu! The Korean Wave’, 4 April – 17 August 2025

‘Hallyu! The Korean Wave’ showcases South Korea’s vibrant and diverse popular culture. Since the late 1990s, this cultural phenomenon has made waves around the world. This exhibition explores the genesis of Hallyu and its ties to traditional Korean fine arts as well as examines global influences in pop culture, cinema, fashion, and media. Embracing K-Pop costumes, dance routines famed worldwide, unforgettable film props, and clips from music videos, beauty trends, and Korean fashion, ‘Hallyu! The Korean Wave’ is a dazzling kaleidoscope of South Korean art and cultural history. Some of the highlights that will captivate the public include works by media art pioneer Nam June Paik, a set design from the Oscar-winning film Parasite, a dance-along rendition of ‘Gangnam Style’, and the intriguing revival by South Korean pop stars of traditional hanbok garb.

Following a successful tour through London, Boston, and San Francisco, Museum Rietberg presents this spectacular exhibition in cooperation with the Victoria & Albert Museum on its only stop in Europe.

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