The Museum of Modern Art will present around 300 works tracing six decades of Marcel Duchamp’s radical experimentation across painting, readymades and conceptual pieces when the exhibition opens in April. Curators described the show as reflecting the French artist’s growing importance in the current century with no tie to a specific anniversary. The Art Newspaper reported that the exhibition marks the first major US survey of Duchamp since a 1973 presentation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Duchamp’s Fountain from 1917 and The Large Glass will feature prominently alongside early paintings such as Nude Descending a Staircase that caused a sensation at the 1913 Armory Show. The exhibition is a joint project with the Philadelphia Museum of Art where it travels in October 2026 for a run through January 2027 before a Paris presentation in 2027. A concurrent Gagosian gallery exhibition in New York will display Duchamp’s iconic readymades in the same Madison Avenue building where they first appeared in the United States in 1965.
In China the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art will host the first institutional solo exhibition of John Baldessari opening on September 19 and running through January 3 2027. The survey will examine five decades of the American conceptual artist’s output from text and image experiments and video works of the 1970s to cinematic montages and late explorations of color absence and perception. UCCA curator Luan Shixuan who spent several years developing the project told The Art Newspaper that the exhibition introduces Baldessari’s wry interrogation of authorship and meaning to Chinese audiences for the first time.
Baldessari who taught generations of artists at the California Institute of the Arts through his Post-Studio Art course produced work that questioned systems by which art acquires significance according to exhibition materials. The Beijing presentation incorporates archival documents maquettes and artist books to contextualize the paintings and videos on view. Ocula reported that the show underscores Baldessari’s lifelong drive to reshape possibilities in contemporary art.
Additional highlights include the first full reconstruction of Raphael’s Colonna Altarpiece from around 1504-05 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art reuniting panels held in the UK Boston and New York. The Art Newspaper noted that this assembly allows visitors to experience the Renaissance work as originally conceived for the first time in modern history. A separate exhibition on sculptor Edmonia Lewis opens at the Peabody Essex Museum in February before traveling to the Georgia Museum of Art in August.
The year’s calendar also encompasses a Betty Parsons retrospective at the Hessel Museum of Art exploring her dual roles as artist and pioneering gallerist as well as a Krasner and Pollock presentation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sotheby’s Institute of Art faculty identified these shows as central to anticipated museum attendance and scholarly discussion throughout 2026. The Art Newspaper preview positioned the lineup as reflecting renewed focus on both foundational modern figures and underrepresented voices in art history.
