Ten Must-See Museums Opening Around the World in 2025

The Smithsonian Institution has several eagerly awaited exhibition and gallery openings planned for 2025. This spring will see the return of two reimagined galleries—“Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight” and “Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall”—to the National Air and Space Museum, which has been undergoing a monumental multiyear renovation. The museum’s Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater is scheduled to reopen soon too.

Art abounds on the National Mall. Thirty-five quilts by Black women artists who represent their history and culture “as told with needle and thread” will be on display next month at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Beginning in April, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will showcase the visually stimulating abstract paintings of American conceptual artist Adam Pendleton. Come October, the National Portrait Gallery’s “Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today” will feature a juried selection of 35 portraits selected from more than 3,300 entries.

Around the world, a wealth of new museums are also bringing art and culture, science and technology, and education and storytelling to the forefront. If all goes accordingly, New Jersey’s Edelman Fossil Park & Museum, highlighted in our 2023 list of most anticipated museum openings, will finally open its doors this spring. Whether it’s immersing yourself in art at a Guggenheim that’s been nearly 20 years in the making, marveling at the cultural impact of hip-hop in the place where it all began, or seeing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kaufmann Office tucked away in one of the most impressive public storehouses on earth, these ten museums will offer you entirely new insight into and appreciation for our universe at large, and the people in it.