11 most anticipated museum openings of 2025
The year 2025 is a particularly promising one when it comes to new museum openings, and reopenings. Many of them are from the world's greatest architects who have come up with spectacular buildings. Among them are Frank Gehry’s long-anticipated Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Jean Nouvel’s Fondation Cartier in Paris, MAD Architects’ Fenix in Rotterdam (the same firm also designed the Lucas Museum in Los Angeles, opening in 2026), Foster + Partners’ Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi, and Tadao Ando’s New Museum of Art on the Japanese island of Naoshima. Here are the 11 soon-to-open museums that we are most excited to visit.
1/11Fondation Cartier Pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris
Late 2025
In 2025, the Fondation Cartier will leave its home on boulevard Raspail and move to a new location facing the Louvre on rue de Rivoli. The creation of the foundation’s new home was a major challenge, brilliantly met by Jean Nouvel, who redesigned the former Louvre des Antiquaires to serve as contemporary museum. Its vast exhibition spaces are bathed in natural light pouring in through an impressive glass ceiling.
© Chatillon Architectes / palais-decouverte.fr2/11Palais de la Découverte, Paris
June 2025
After being used for the Olympic Games (specifically fencing and tae kwan do) in 2024, Paris’s Grand Palais will be reborn this year as the home of the Palais de la Découverte, a science museum. For its reopening, the institution will host a number of new exhibits, and its interiors have been entirely redesigned by François Chatillon, chief architect of the Monuments Historiques. The museum’s new features will include an observatory where images from astronomical telescopes will be broadcast in real time and an equatorial garden that will provide an introduction to tropical ecosystems.
3/11Fenix, Rotterdam, Netherlands
May 2025
“Fenix is the first museum in the world that tells stories of migration through art,” the museum’s website explains. “Stories of love and goodbyes, coming home and feeling at home, navigating identity or seeking happiness.” In true Rotterdam style, this new museum will be housed in a large warehouse on the banks of a canal in Katendrecht, which was one of Europe’s first Chinatowns. The design is by the Chinese firm MAD Architects, who have created a spectacular double-helix form that is a dramatic addition to the Rotterdam waterfront.
Instagram : @studiomuseum4/11Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City
Autumn 2025
After long making do with a cramped home, the Studio Museum will soon have a new, larger space at their longtime location in the heart of Harlem. Seven years in the making, the building is scheduled to open in autumn 2025. Designed by David Adjaye and his New York studio in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, this bold building will have a grey concrete façade consisting of volumes in different sizes and shapes while a number of windows fill the museum with light. (Note that since allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct were made against Adjaye, he and the museum have largely parted ways.)
5/11New Museum, New York City
The New Museum made history in 2007 with its futuristic building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects SANAA / Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa. In 2025, a sculptural extension designed by OMA / Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas, in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, will be unveiled, expanding the exhibition spaces and giving contemporary art an even more prominent home in lower Manhattan.
6/11Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles
2026
Still under construction, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is expected to open its doors in 2026. Located on an 11-acre campus in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park, it will focus on narrative art, bringing audiences together through stories told in works ranging from cinema to comic books. It’s another project from MAD Architects, this time a futuristic building that is perhaps fitting for the museum’s namesake and benefactor, filmmaker George Lucas who was responsible for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series of movies.
Just_Super/Getty Images7/11Dataland, Los Angeles
Dataland describes itself as “the world’s first museum of AI arts and digital ecosystem dedicated to data visualization and AI-based creativity.” It’s a promising description for an institution that will be housed in a complex designed by Frank Gehry to be unveiled shortly.
8/11Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
After its Venice, New York, and Bilbao, Spain, locations the celebrated modern art museum is now adding Abu Dhabi to its roster. The museum will be on Saadiyat Island, which has also been home to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by Jean Nouvel, since 2017. The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi was designed by another of contemporary architecture’s most celebrated names, Frank Gehry. Plans for the museum were first announced in 2006 but it faced a number of setbacks and delays, making this one of the most anticipated cultural openings of the year.
9/11Zayed National Museum, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island has two big openings this year. It will also be home to the Zayed National Museum. The museum’s focus is the epic story of the history of the UAE, beginning with a stone tool from some 300,000 years ago. The spectacular home for the museum was conceived by Foster + Partners as a series of soaring lightweight steel towers. With its dramatic and graceful profile, the building evokes Jørn Utzon’s celebrated Sydney Opera House.
10/11Almaty Museum of Arts, Kazakhstan
Spring 2025
Opening this spring, the Almaty Museum of Arts will have almost 9,000 square metres of exhibition space, located in the heart of Kazakhstan’s largest city. It will be the first private museum of contemporary art in Central Asia, exhibiting international works by artists including Yayoi Kusama, Fernand Léger, and Anselm Kiefer, as well as local artists such as the painter Aisha Galimbaeva. British architect Chapman Taylor designed the building which is a bold composition of angular geometric shapes.
11/11Naoshima New Museum of Art, Japan
Spring 2025
The small island of Naoshima, in western Japan, is a must-visit destination for culturally minded travellers with its collection of museums and galleries in an idyllic natural setting. This spring the long list of existing institutions will be joined by the New Museum of Art designed by Tadao Ando. It will be the famous Japanese architect’s 10th building on the island. Designed in his usual minimalist style, it will be devoted to Asian art.
