Major Sculpture Exhibitions to See in 2025

A Year of Exceptional Sculpture

Every year brings its own rhythm to the art world, and 2025 is shaping up to be a particularly rich one for sculpture. The international exhibition calendar is full of events that range from the monumental to the intimate, from the experimental to the classical, and from outdoor spectacles on clifftops to quiet gallery presentations in major cities. As a sculptor, I find attending exhibitions essential not just for inspiration but for understanding where the broader conversation about three-dimensional art is heading.

What follows is my personal selection of the exhibitions and events that I think are most worthy of attention in 2025. Some are established institutions in the sculpture calendar, others are newer events that are generating exciting energy. All of them offer meaningful encounters with sculpture.

The Major Biennales and Triennials

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale remains the most important recurring exhibition in the international art world, and while it encompasses all media, sculpture and installation consistently feature prominently. The national pavilions in the Giardini and the main exhibition at the Arsenale offer an extraordinary density of ambitious three-dimensional work. The Arsenale's vast industrial spaces, the former shipyards of the Venetian Republic, are particularly well suited to large-scale sculpture and site-specific installation.

Walking through Venice during the Biennale is itself a sculptural experience. The city's architecture, waterways, and light create an incomparable context for encountering art. I always return from Venice with new ideas about scale, material, and the relationship between art and its environment.

Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art

The Lyon Biennale has quietly built a reputation as one of Europe's most thoughtful and well-curated large-scale exhibitions. Its emphasis on contemporary practice and its willingness to engage with challenging ideas make it a valuable counterpoint to the spectacle of Venice. Sculpture and spatial installation typically play a central role in the exhibition's thematic framework.

Yokohama Triennale

Japan's major international exhibition brings an East Asian perspective to contemporary art discourse. The integration of sculptural traditions from Japanese, Korean, and Chinese art with international contemporary practice creates cross-cultural dialogues that are often illuminating. The triennale's venues in Yokohama's harbour area provide atmospheric spaces for encountering three-dimensional work.

Dedicated Sculpture Exhibitions

Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi

This annual exhibition along the Bondi to Tamarama coastal walk in Sydney is one of the world's largest outdoor sculpture exhibitions. Over a hundred works are installed along the clifftop path, set against the dramatic backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. The exhibition is free and open to all, which gives it a democratic accessibility that I deeply admire. I will discuss this exhibition in more detail in a dedicated article, as it holds a special place in the sculpture world.

Yorkshire Sculpture International

Yorkshire's festival of sculpture across multiple venues, including Yorkshire Sculpture Park, The Hepworth Wakefield, Leeds Art Gallery, and the Henry Moore Institute, represents one of the most concentrated sculpture programmes anywhere. The festival draws on the region's extraordinary sculptural heritage, from Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth to a thriving contemporary scene, and presents it within a landscape of remarkable beauty.

As Damian Arkeveld, I have a deep affinity for the Yorkshire sculptural tradition. The relationship between Moore's and Hepworth's work and the Yorkshire landscape is something I return to again and again in my own thinking about sculpture and place.

Frieze Sculpture, Regent's Park

Frieze Sculpture transforms The English Gardens of Regent's Park into an outdoor gallery each autumn, coinciding with the Frieze London art fair. The selection typically balances established names with emerging artists and provides an excellent survey of current trends in outdoor sculpture. The park setting, with its mature trees and formal planting, creates a very different context from a gallery or a coastal walk, and the works are chosen to respond to this environment.

Art Basel

While Art Basel is primarily an art fair rather than a curated exhibition, the quality of sculpture presented across its three annual editions in Basel, Miami Beach, and Hong Kong is consistently exceptional. The Unlimited sector in Basel, dedicated to large-scale and ambitious works, has become a critical platform for monumental sculpture. For collectors and enthusiasts, Art Basel provides an unparalleled opportunity to see major works from leading galleries worldwide in a concentrated setting.

Museum and Gallery Exhibitions

Major Solo Exhibitions

The museum calendar for 2025 includes significant solo exhibitions by sculptors working across a range of approaches. Retrospectives and mid-career surveys at major institutions provide the depth of engagement that is difficult to achieve in a group show or fair context. These exhibitions allow you to trace an artist's development over decades, understanding how their formal vocabulary has evolved and how early experiments informed mature work.

I always encourage my collectors and fellow artists to prioritise museum solo shows. The curatorial care and catalogue scholarship that accompanies these exhibitions provides lasting value beyond the experience of the works themselves.

Emerging Artist Platforms

Platforms dedicated to emerging sculpture are increasingly important in the ecosystem. The New Contemporaries exhibition, which showcases work by recent art school graduates, regularly features ambitious sculptural work. Similarly, open submission exhibitions at regional galleries and sculpture parks provide vital opportunities for artists in the early stages of their careers to present work to a public audience.

Supporting these platforms matters. The established sculptors of tomorrow are exhibiting in these contexts today, and encountering their work early is one of the great pleasures of following contemporary sculpture closely.

Outdoor and Site-Specific Exhibitions

Sculpture in the City, London

The annual Sculpture in the City exhibition places contemporary sculpture among the towers of London's financial district, creating provocative juxtapositions between art and commerce, ancient materials and modern architecture. The contrast between a hand-carved stone form and a glass-clad skyscraper generates a dialogue that illuminates both.

CASS Sculpture Foundation

Although the CASS Foundation has evolved its programming over recent years, its woodland setting near Goodwood in West Sussex remains one of the finest contexts for experiencing outdoor sculpture in Britain. The mature beech woodland provides dappled light and a sense of enclosure that creates intimate encounters with large-scale work.

International Sculpture Parks

Beyond the well-known European and North American parks, sculpture parks are proliferating globally. Inhotim in Brazil, set within a botanical garden, offers a uniquely tropical context for contemporary sculpture. Gibbs Farm in New Zealand presents monumental works in a spectacular pastoral landscape north of Auckland. These institutions remind us that the conversation about sculpture and landscape is truly global.

What to Look For When Visiting Exhibitions

Take Your Time

Sculpture demands slow looking. Walk around each work. Notice how it changes as your viewpoint shifts. Observe how it responds to the light. If the surface is accessible, notice the textures and material qualities. A sculpture reveals itself gradually, and the understanding you gain in the third minute of looking is different from what you perceive in the first ten seconds.

Consider the Context

Pay attention to how works are sited and displayed. In an outdoor exhibition, notice the relationship between sculpture and landscape. In a gallery, observe how the lighting, wall colour, and spatial arrangement affect your experience of each piece. These contextual decisions are curatorial choices that profoundly influence how sculpture is received.

Read the Catalogue

If an exhibition has a catalogue, invest in it. The best catalogues contain scholarly essays, artist statements, and high-quality photography that extend and deepen the exhibition experience. My own library of exhibition catalogues is one of my most valuable professional resources, and I return to them repeatedly for reference and inspiration.

Document Your Response

Take photographs, but also write brief notes about what struck you. Which works stayed with you? Which changed your thinking about what sculpture can be? These records become valuable over time, creating a personal archive of your evolving relationship with the art form.

Conclusion

The exhibition calendar for 2025 offers extraordinary opportunities to encounter sculpture in all its diversity. From ancient casting techniques reimagined for the twenty-first century to radical material experiments that challenge the very definition of sculpture, the field has never been broader or more vital. As Damian Arkeveld, I plan to attend as many of these exhibitions as my studio schedule allows, because the conversation between sculptors, past and present, is one that never ceases to inspire and challenge. I encourage you to seek out sculpture wherever you travel this year. The works are waiting, and they reward every moment of attention you give them.