Cities of Culture: This Autumn’s Best Art Exhibitions

There was a time when a gallery visit was squeezed between lunch and the airport. Nowadays, the right exhibition can justify an overseas trip. This autumn, major retrospectives, citywide biennales and long-awaited cultural moments around the world are inspiring travellers to not just see a city, but to see what that city is thinking about through its art, reflecting the growing appeal of culture travel.

Venice is a great place to start. The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, titled In Minor Keys, runs until 22 November across the Giardini, the Arsenale and other sites throughout the city. Its theme borrows from music, suggesting lower, stranger and more emotionally charged harmonics – apt for a Biennale designed to be experienced slowly, between national pavilions, old dockyards, church façades and palazzi. Venice has always revelled in the theatrical, and here it presents a sequence of scenes. Look out for Alfredo Jaar’s stacks of rare-earth materials, the violent extractive history of each written on the wall behind it, plus contemporary work from Marina Abramović and the tongue-in-cheek tourist portraits of Hernan Bas.

London brings Anish Kapoor back to the Hayward Gallery for a major autumn exhibition running until 18 October. Few artists have such a feeling of scale. Kapoor, you’ll recall, changed the London skyline with the ArcelorMittal Orbit at the Olympic Park, but his gallery work often begins with more subtle perspective shifts. Colour seems to absorb you. Polished surfaces warp entire rooms. Dark openings appear to go on forever. The Hayward provides just the right brutalist frame for one of this season’s standout autumn exhibitions.

Yayoi Kusama at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, offers a very different vibe. Kusama’s dots, nets, pumpkins and mirrored rooms have become global visual icons, but like any good retrospective this one (11 September – 17 January 2027) exposes the strangeness lurking within the familiar. In the Museum Quarter, where old masters and grand architectural statements set the tone, the show gives the city a youthful autumn pull, further reinforcing Amsterdam’s place among Europe’s leading cultural tourism destinations.

In Madrid, Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Sweet Revenge at Museo Reina Sofía (until 12 October) brings a mischievous and mouthwatering body of work to the party. The Cuban-born American crafted pieces from everyday materials: candy, paper stacks, clocks and strings of light. His 1991 work Untitled (Revenge) is made of blue candies, with an ideal weight of 325lb (147kg), to be replenished as they’re eaten by visitors.

Lyon’s Biennale’s title, To Pass from One Dream to Another, seems to nod to the city’s traboules – hidden passageways threading through old silk-weaving districts. Drawing on notions of work, trade and value, this showcase (19 September – 13 December) speaks thoughtfully to the city and its perennial preoccupations.

Bangkok Art Biennale opens 29 October (and runs until 28 February 2027) under the title Angels and Mara, showing contemporary art across temples, public spaces and art venues, with announced artists ranging from Thai photographer Manit Sriwanichpoom to American conceptual artist Mel Chin, Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura and Chinese duo Sun Yuan & Peng Yu.

In South Korea, the Gwangju Biennale returns from 5 September (until 15 November) with the title You Must Change Your Life. Led by Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen, the Biennale will showcase brand new commissions from artists including Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork and Nam Hwayeon. Plus, with a title like that, they’re almost daring you to book a plane ticket.

Together, these autumn exhibitions reinforce the appeal of some of today’s most compelling cultural tourism destinations.