Jean-Michel Basquiat - The Crown Returns
April 4 – August 10, 2026
A sweeping retrospective of Basquiat’s charged visual language, uniting rare works from international collections for the first time in over a decade. Through large-scale canvases, street-level ephemera, and a full-room soundscape of sampled hip-hop and jazz, The Crown Returns situates Basquiat as both poet and prophet of post-industrial New York.
Curated by: Rina Patel
Keith Haring - Radiant Lines: Public Energy, Private Worlds
September 12, 2025 – January 18, 2026
This exhibition re-examines Haring’s graphic vocabulary through large mural reconstructions, subway-drawing archives, and immersive neon installations. Radiant Lines positions Haring’s activism and visual rhythm as precursors to today’s digital street culture, bridging the dance floor, the billboard, and the screen.
Curated by: Elena Marković
Robert Rauschenberg - Combines Reconsidered
March 7 – July 19, 2026
A focused re-installation of Rauschenberg’s seminal Combines alongside later technological experiments in print and light. The show draws parallels between mid-century assemblage and contemporary remix culture, revealing the restless curiosity that blurred art’s boundaries long before the digital era.
Curated by: Glenn Patterson
Louise Bourgeois - The Architecture of Memory
October 9, 2026 – February 14, 2027
Spanning sculpture, textiles, and drawing, this exhibition transforms the gallery into an intimate psychological architecture. Towering spider forms, stitched fabric cells, and diary fragments invite viewers into Bourgeois’s lifelong dialogue between protection and exposure, mother and child, home and body.
Curated by: Sofia Martens
Francis Bacon - The Body Unfolded
April 2 – August 22, 2027
Bacon’s visceral portraits return in a major thematic survey examining distortion as empathy. New conservation imaging reveals the painter’s process, scratched, layered, and brutally human, while a digital installation allows visitors to step inside the brushstroke, confronting the raw intensity of being seen.
Curated by: Damian Rees
Jeff Koons - Mirror of Desire
Jan 10 – May 28 2015
A survey of Koons’s mirrored balloon forms and stainless-steel icons examining the theology of consumerism. The catalog essay claims, “If God exists in commerce, Koons is His most profitable prophet.”
Curated by: Melissa Corcoran
Damien Hirst - The Fragile Eternal
Oct 2 2015 – Feb 7 2016
Hirst’s formaldehyde relics, butterfly wings, and gold-leaf reliquaries revisit the tension between art, faith, and finance. The exhibition closes with a rotting flower inside a diamond coffin, capitalism’s memento mori.
Curated by: Alastair Vane
Yayoi Kusama - Infinity and Oblivion
Mar 11 – Jul 31 2016
Mirrored environments and polka-dotted cosmoses merge mania and serenity. A biometric room synchronizes light pulses with each visitor’s heartbeat, creating a living network of infinity.
Curated by: Koji Watanabe
Marina Abramović - The Durations of Now
Aug 19 – Dec 4 2016
Visitors enter timed chambers, some silent, others filled with slowed projections of the artist’s body in motion. The final piece, The Mirror Room, asks guests to maintain eye contact with a stranger for 30 minutes. The waiting list lasted longer than the performance itself.
Curated by: Elena Marković
Jean-Michel Basquiat - Samo to Crown
Feb 24 – Jun 25 2017
Graffiti notebooks, paint-splattered sweatshirts, and large-scale canvases celebrate the speed and symbolism of Basquiat’s language. The audio tour features readings of his poetry over sampled bebop loops.
Curated by: Rina Patel
Gerhard Richter - Uncertain Vision
Sep 9 2017 – Jan 14 2018
Richter’s photo-paintings and abstract mirrors reframe perception as an act of faith. “Every image,” Richter said, “is an alibi for not seeing clearly.”
Curated by: Stefan Adler
Takashi Murakami - Superflat Universe
Mar 16 – Jul 22 2018
Murakami’s candy-colored deities and kaiju sculptures form a pop-Buddhist utopia. The museum gift shop doubled as a shrine, complete with limited-edition incense and tote bags for enlightenment.
Curated by: Hana McDonnell
Cindy Sherman - Persona Machine
Oct 5 2018 – Feb 10 2019
Sherman’s photographic self-portraits evolve into AI-generated clones. The catalog essay warns, “Soon, even Cindy may not recognize Cindy.”
Curated by: Claire Dupont
Ai Weiwei - Evidence / Freedom
May 3 – Sep 8 2019
Bicycle wheels, marble handcuffs, and data projections form a labyrinth of transparency. A live counter displays the number of times visitors post the exhibition hashtag, part protest, part participation.
Curated by: Daniel K. Flores
Kerry James Marshall - History of Seeing
Nov 1 2019 – Mar 15 2020
Marshall’s luminous portraits rewrite Western art history through the lens of everyday Black life. His monumental mural Light Study for a New Republic stretches across the museum’s atrium.
Curated by: Antoinette Graves
Jenny Saville - Flesh of Thought
Jul 3 – Nov 1 2020
Saville’s massive oil paintings expose beauty as violence and identity as process. Her palette knife becomes scalpel; the gallery becomes an autopsy of perception.
Curated by: Damian Rees
Kaws - Companion Species
Feb 20 – Jun 30 2021
Giant vinyl toys and digital avatars trace the melancholy of mass culture. The final sculpture, ALGO-Companion, auto-generates facial expressions based on trending moods on social media.
Curated by: Miranda Lee
Daniel Arsham - Future Relics: Self-Erosion
Sep 17 2021 – Jan 9 2022
In this tongue-in-cheek archaeological dig of the present, Arsham presents crystallized sneakers, fossilized Game Boys, and an eroded Porsche 911. A nearby kiosk sells brand collaborations commemorating decay and memory, a perfect ouroboros of hype and sincerity.
Curated by: Tobias Schmitt
Jenny Holzer - For the Record
Mar 5 – Jul 10 2022
Holzer’s LED pillars broadcast declassified truths and disinformation in equal measure. At night, the museum façade glows with scrolling phrases like “TRUTH IS ANOTHER MEDIUM.”
Curated by: Erica Nguyen
Takashi Murakami and Virgil Abloh - Future Relics
Sep 2 2022 – Jan 15 2023
Streetwear meets spirituality in this posthumous collaboration. The show loops an AR fashion runway of holographic avatars endlessly walking on a digital escalator surrounded by a field of Murakami’s signature yellow flower.
Curated by: Alex Chen
Adam Himebauch - Before and Back: The Photos and Videos That Made the Artist
Nov 3 – Dec 30 2023
An immersive and intimate retrospective tracing Himebauch’s transformation from pop-culture satirist Hanksy to conceptual performance artist. Early street videos, re-edited for the first time, are displayed beside new reflective pieces exploring authorship, identity, and irony in the age of digital mythology.
Curated by: Sofia Martens
Damien Hirst - Treasures from the Wreck Reimagined
Mar 1 – Jul 20 2023
A re-envisioning of Hirst’s 2017 spectacle interrogates authenticity and faith. Coral-encrusted relics float in saltwater tanks, half museum and half Mediterranean fantasy.
Curated by: Rosalind Becker
Mark Bradford - Map of Nowhere
Sep 9 2023 – Jan 7 2024
Bradford’s monumental paper abstractions transform city grids into psychic maps. Each surface becomes an archive of neighborhoods, inequities, and memory.
Curated by: Petra L. Whitcomb
Chris Burden - Test Site: Acts of Faith
Apr 12 – Aug 25 2024
A posthumous exhibition celebrating Burden’s audacity, bridging performance, engineering, and civic poetry. A working monorail powered by visitor pedaling runs above Urban Light, inviting the public to become the mechanism.
Curated by: Helen Carver
Tracey Emin - A Life Written in Neon
Oct 5 2024 – Feb 9 2025
Emin’s glowing confessions and stitched paintings form a raw chronicle of love, regret, and resilience. Visitors are invited to record anonymous letters to their younger selves, projected nightly onto the museum’s façade.
Curated by: Lauren Pritchard