2025’s must-visit museums: the world’s top openings and reopenings

A few hours spent in a museum can linger long in the memory – providing a chance to get inspired by beautiful art, cultures and soaring architecture somewhere far from home. 

In recent decades, museums have become undeniable magnets for visitors. Cities around the world have looked to the example of the Guggenheim Bilbao, which opened in the Basque city in 1997, to see how such projects can become iconic landmarks and transforming a destination’s reputation.

As you consider your travel plans for 2025, check out this list of museums around the world that will be unveiling new (or freshly renovated) spaces throughout the year.  

1. Museum of Modern Art Warsaw (MSN Warsaw), Poland

One of Poland’s youngest and most vibrant institutions has a permanent home at last. Founded only in 2005, MSN Warsaw focuses on works by Polish artists produced in the 20th and 21st centuries, and especially since the end of the Cold War – and in its two decades of nomadic exhibitions has been unafraid to plunge into the heated political debates of the day.

Directly facing the Stalin-era Palace of Culture & Science in central Warsaw, its massive yet minimalist new building, designed by American architect Thomas Phifer, first opened last fall, and drew criticism for what some considered its architectural timidity, even blandness. Yet the light-flooded central atrium features double staircases that draw visitors up to the galleries – which will make the art the main event when the permanent collection, reinstalled and presented in four sections, opens to the public on February 21.

2. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

There’s no need for US travelers to catch a flight to Heathrow to see one of the world’s most superb collections of art from the UK. In New Haven, Connecticut, the Yale Center for British Art will reopen its galleries on March 29, following a two-year closure. During this period, major infrastructural improvements – crucial yet invisible to the public – have ensured that the museum building, a modernist gem by Louis Kahn, who could create poetry from poured concrete, will stand for generations.

What visitors will see is a completely rethought narrative of British art from the 16th century to the present, including fresh perspectives on colonialism, global trade and the contributions of women artists. JMW Turner: Romance and Reality, a new presentation of masterpieces from the permanent collection by this peerless painter, is sure to be a crowd pleaser. 

Planning tip: Make a weekend of it to explore New Haven – and most of all, sample the city’s sensational pizza (or “apizza,” as it’s called here).  

3. The Frick Collection, New York City, USA

How do you refresh one of the most timeless institutions in New York City? With great, great care. To visit the Frick Collection – with its astonishing masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Holbein, amassed by industrialist Henry Clay Frick and presented in his former beaux-arts mansion of Fifth Ave – is to step back into the Gilded Age. (The vibe is only enhanced by a ban on cameras and phones in the galleries.) So when the museum embarked on a long-conceived expansion, continuity and subtlety were the orders of the day.

You won’t find any glass atrium or white cubes in the refreshed Frick: instead, the new spaces – including areas for temporary exhibitions, visitor services and concerts – are carefully nested above, beneath and within the museum’s existing footprint. Deliciously, visitors will also have the chance for the first time to explore the second floor, once the Frick family’s private quarters and later museum offices, which will become galleries for some of the Frick’s most intimate works.

4. Naoshima New Museum of Art, Japan

The Benesse Art Site Naoshima has turned a series of islands off the southern tip of Honshū into an essential stop on the global art circuit. Even if you’ve visited the museums and photogenic installations on Naoshima before, the opening this spring of the latest museum on the island – the tenth – is cause to plan another trip to Japan.

Designed by minimalist Japanese master Tadao Ando, the Naoshima New Museum of Art continues the Naoshima tradition of merging art with nature, its wide structure nestling into the hillside, its spacious galleries offering views of the Seto Inland Sea. Complementing its sister institutions, which favor permanent holdings and site-specific works, the New Museum of Art will host a program of temporary exhibitions of contemporary art – meaning repeat visits will always reveal something new. 

5. V&A East Storehouse, London, UK

An exciting new addition to the ever-evolving East London district that played host to the 2012 Olympics arrives in late May. In some 170,000 sq ft (15,795 sq m) that once housed the Olympic Media Center, the Victoria & Albert Museum will open an innovative new branch that will let visitors get close to – and even handle – its amazing collection of 2.8 million textiles, fashion items, sculptures, pieces of furniture and much more. 

V&A East Storehouse will lift the curtain on how museums collect, conserve and curate objects, by replacing steel doors with glass walls that put the museum’s storage areas themselves on display. Ever-changing arrangements of objects will provide snapshots of the V&A’s massive holdings, and how its objects can shed light both on the past and benefit from contemporary perspectives. A program of “radical access” will even allow visitors to request (in advance) specific objects, which they’ll be able to examine up close in the company of a museum expert. Expect to be surprised, delighted – and amazed.

Planning tip: V&A East Storehouse is not to be confused with V&A East Museum, yet another initiative that will open nearby in 2026.

6. Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City, USA

This jewel of New York’s art scene has been closed to the public since 2018, as its new home has slowly risen on 125th St, Harlem’s bustling heart. Designed by Adjaye Architects, the brand-new building is clad in stylishly dark concrete, with bronze accents – yet allows for plenty of light to flood into its galleries.

And there’s always something worth illuminating here: the Studio Museum has been collecting and displaying the work of artists of African descent for almost 60 years. Its exhibitions have started national conversations, while its artists-in-residence program is known for incubating the talents of tomorrow (alumni include such art-world stars as Julie Mehretu, Mickalene Thomas, Kerry James Marshall and Kahinde Wiley). The museum’s reopening in fall 2025 is cause for celebration. 

Local tip: Raise a glass to the Studio Museum at nearby Red Rooster, chef-restaurateur Marcus Samuelsson’s ode to the culture and spirit of Harlem. And get to know this fabled district even better through Samuelsson’s own guide to his neighborhood.

7. National Museum of Photography, Rotterdam, Netherlands

One of the largest museum collections of photography in the world – with some 6.5 million images – will move into its new home in the second half of 2025. The institution will occupy a historic warehouse in the dock area of Rotterdam, with new gallery spaces, a rooftop restaurant, spaces for public programs and – most excitingly – glass walls that will give the public a view into the museum team’s behind-the-scenes conservation and restoration work. Anyone interested in Dutch culture – or anyone who just loves compelling images – should add a stop here to their next Netherlands itinerary.

8. Zayed National Museum and Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

The leaders of the United Arab Emirates don’t think small. So when Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital, set its sights on becoming an international cultural hub, it reached out to some of the heaviest hitters in the museum and architectural worlds. First came the Louvre Abu Dhabi, a colossus by Pritzker Prize winner Jean Nouvel and a partnership with the Paris mothership. And this year, after decades of planning and construction, two gigantic neighbors will give art lovers yet more reasons to make a journey to this Persian Gulf–side city.

A quarter century after his Guggenheim Bilbao, Frank Gehry has outdone himself. Rising like a deconstructed pile of blocks, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi consists of a series of monumental cubic, conic and cylindrical forms that will contain galleries of varied sizes and configurations. These spaces are ideal for displaying artworks of all dimensions and in all media – and will play host to a permanent collection of modern and contemporary works, plus a rotating program of exhibitions created by the Guggenheim’s global team. 

Completing the trio, the Zayed National Museum will bring the history and culture of the UAE to life through interactive displays and cultural artifacts, some dating back millennia. And the museum’s new home, designed by Foster + Partners, is an ingenious homage to Emirati culture in itself, with five steel structures (designed to naturally cool the building below) evoking falcons’ wings, and looming above the huge lobby and pod-shaped galleries below.

Planning tip: Add a dose of adrenaline to your cultural itinerary by timing your visit to the Abu Dhabi F1 Grand Prix, which takes place in early December.

On the horizon for 2026: LACMA and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

Culture lovers should pencil in a trip to Los Angeles in 2026, when not one but two mammoth museum projects are scheduled for completion. Next year, the encyclopedic Los Angeles County Museum of Art will complete an overhaul of its Wilshire Blvd campus with the David Geffen Galleries, which will display LACMA’s collections in new narrative ways.

No one can dispute that the man who dreamed up Star Wars and Indiana Jones has quite an eye. It turns out that George Lucas also has a world-class collection of art (ranging from Roman mosaics to contemporary photography) and archival cinema materias. The public will be able to get a close-up look at what inspires him when the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art – a $1 billion, 300,000 sq ft (27,870 sq m) megaproject – opens in LA’s Exposition Park next year.