Niagara Falls: Mist and Majesty at the NGA Washington

On view at the National Gallery of Art from May 2 to September 20, 2026, the exhibition “Niagara Falls: Mist and Majesty” probes the layered histories of Niagara Falls from the early 19th century to today.

Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington · Image: Frederic Edwin Church, “Niagara”, 1857, oil on canvas

This exhibition marks the bicentennial of celebrated landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church’s birth in 1826. His iconic panorama Niagara (1857) anchors a presentation of approximately 20 works that reveal evolving perspectives about the falls. “Niagara Falls: Mist and Majesty” includes 19th-century prints, drawings, and photographs by artists such as Régis François Gignoux and Platt D. Babbitt that captured the experience of visiting the site. Some of these pictures, such as an 1880 photograph by George Barker, also played a role in the preservation movement led by Church and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Other works emphasize the waterfall’s importance to enslaved people seeking their freedom.

A video work by Shelley Niro (Mohawk [Six Nations of the Grand River, Brantford, Ontario]) and a recently acquired painting by Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma) highlight the significance of Niagara Falls to Indigenous peoples. Drawing on the longstanding popularity of Niagara Falls as a tourist attraction, a self-portrait taken by Tseng Kwong Chi subtly plays with the conventions of tourist photography to explore national identity and perceptions of cultural difference, while contemporary photographs by Alec Soth reveal the people—both resident and visiting—who now populate a place radically altered from the wild beauty of Church’s painting.

The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The exhibition is curated by Sarah Cash, associate curator, department of American and British paintings, and Diane Waggoner, curator of photographs, department of photographs, both of the National Gallery of Art.

Monet and Venice at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

On view in San Francisco from March 21 to July 26, 2026, the exhibition “Monet and Venice” brings together more than twenty of Monet’s Venetian views from public and private collections around the world

Source: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco · Image: Claude Monet, The Grand Canal, Venice, 1908. Oil on canvas. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of Osgood Hooker, 1960.29

Cocurated by Lisa Small, Senior Curator of European Art at the Brooklyn Museum, and Melissa Buron, former Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and current Director of Collections and Chief Curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity for visitors to experience Monet’s unique vision of the fabled city.

“In 10 weeks in 1908, Monet captured Venice’s ethereal cityscape in shimmering canvases, creating works unlike anything produced by the centuries of artists who painted the city before him,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “Exploring Monet’s alongside other artists’ paintings of Venice deepens our understanding of his innovations in capturing atmospheric effects on canvas and the enduring inspiration of the Venetian lagoon. We are grateful to the Brooklyn Museum for their collaboration in bringing this exhibition to life.”  Monet himself once remarked that Venice was “too beautiful to be painted,” and it is perhaps this very beauty, and the city’s fame, that has obscured the significance and daring nature of the works he produced there. Often overshadowed by his iconic depictions of the French landscape, Monet’s Venetian works are among the most luminous yet underexplored of his career.

Monet himself once remarked that Venice was “too beautiful to be painted,” and it is perhaps this very beauty, and the city’s fame, that has obscured the significance and daring nature of the works he produced there. Often overshadowed by his iconic depictions of the French landscape, Monet’s Venetian works are among the most luminous yet underexplored of his career.

Raphael: Sublime Poetry at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Raphael: Sublime Poetry”, on view March 29 to June 28, 2026, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the first comprehensive, international loan exhibition in the United States on Raphael (Raffaello di Giovanni Santi; 1483–1520), considered one of the greatest artists of all time.

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Image: Raphael: “Alba Madonna”, c.1511 (detail)

This landmark exhibition will explore the full breadth of his life and career, from his origins in Urbino to his prolific years in Florence, where he began to emerge as a peer to Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, to his final decade at the papal court in Rome. Bringing together more than 200 of Raphael’s most important drawings, paintings, tapestries, and decorative arts from public and private collections around the world, the exhibition will offer a fresh perspective on this defining figure of the Italian Renaissance, presenting his renowned masterpieces alongside rarely seen treasures to reveal an extraordinarily creative mind.

“This unprecedented exhibition will offer a groundbreaking look at the brilliance and legacy of Raphael, a true titan of the Italian Renaissance,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “Visitors will have an exceptionally rare opportunity to experience the breathtaking range of his creative genius through some of the artist’s most iconic and seldom loaned works from around the globe—many never before shown together.”

Among the highlights will be The Virgin and Child with Infant Saint John the Baptist in a Landscape (The Alba Madonna) from the National Gallery of Art, one of the most emblematic examples of Raphael’s mastery over High Renaissance ideals of harmony and classical beauty, which will be united with his preparatory drawings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Lille, and Portrait of Baldassarre Castiglione, now in the Louvre, widely regarded as one of the greatest portraits of the High Renaissance.

Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse at the National Gallery

From 12 March to 31 May 2026, the National Gallery presents a new exhibition devoted to George Stubbs (1724–1806). 

Source: National Gallery · Image: George Stubbs, ‘Scrub, a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham’, about 1762. Private Collection

The only life-size horse portrait by Stubbs still in a private collection, and only once before seen on public display, ‘Scrub, a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham’ (about 1762) will be joined in the exhibition by other paintings and works on paper by Stubbs.

Visitors will also be able to draw comparisons with the artist’s masterpiece Whistlejacket (about 1762), in the National Gallery’s collection, which will be on display nearby in Room 34. The two equine portraits were painted in the same year for the Marquess of Rockingham (1730–82), who owned both of these former racehorses. He would subsequently decide not to purchase the painting of Scrub.

These two paintings are two of the first large as life portraits of horses depicted without a human presence in British art and show how in the second half of the 18th-century Stubbs would change equine painting for future generations through his keen observation and anatomical studies. The exhibition will focus on the creation of Scrub, and will contextualise the commission through two significant projects undertaken by the artist where the horse is the subject.

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller: “True to Nature” at the Belvedere

From 27 February to 14 June 2026, the Lower Belvedere presents the exhibition “Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller: True to Nature”

Source: Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller. Image: Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller: “The Ruins of Liechtenstein Castle near Mödling”, 1848

Landscape painting experienced a heyday across Europe during the nineteenth century. Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller was part of this development, capturing people’s yearning for the natural world in his intimate portraits of trees, sweeping landscapes from the Vienna Woods, and iconic views of the Salzkammergut. This exhibition sheds light on Waldmüller’s landscapes in the context of his time. Trailblazing contemporaries, such as John Constable and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, inspire us to explore Waldmüller’s depictions of nature against the backdrop of wider European developments.

The exhibition

In the first half of the nineteenth century, many progressive artists across Europe issued a clarion call that art should be true to life. Artists increasingly turned their attention to their native landscapes because, in the age of industrialization, people wanted to spend more time in the natural world, to learn about it, and to bring nature into their homes in the form of pictures.

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793–1865), a pivotal Austrian painter from the Biedermeier period, made it his goal to paint “nature that surrounds us, our time, our customs.” His true-to-life portraits, genre scenes, and landscapes polarized opinion. Landscape was key in his art—as a background, a subject in its own right, and as an expression of the connection between humanity and nature. It was an interest that endured until the end of his life.

The Courtauld Gallery presents “Seurat and the Sea”

From 13 February to 17 May 2026, the Courtauld Gallery presents the exhibition “Seurat and the Sea”

Source: Courtauld Gallery. Image: Georges Seurat: Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy, 1888.

The Courtauld will present the first ever exhibition dedicated to the seascapes of the French artist Georges Seurat (1859–1891). Opening on 13 February 2026, this major exhibition will be the first devoted to Seurat in the UK in almost 30 years. It will chart the evolution of his radical and distinctive style through the recurring motif of the sea.

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Seurat and the Sea follows major Impressionist exhibitions at The Courtauld, such as Cézanne’s Card Players, Van Gogh. Self-Portraits and, most recently, the acclaimed The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Monet and London. Views of the Thames, which was seen by a record 120,000 visitors and sold out its entire run, including extended opening hours to meet demand.

The Courtauld holds the largest collection of works by Seurat in the UK. The artist is best known as the creator of the Neo-Impressionist technique, in which shapes and light are rendered by juxtaposing small dots of pure colour. Due to his early death at the age of 31, Seurat has a very small pool of works and exhibitions devoted to him are rare.

The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Seurat and the Sea will bring together around 23 paintings, oil sketches and drawings made by Seurat during the five summers he spent on the northern coast of France, between 1885 and 1890. Working in port towns along the English Channel, including Honfleur, Port-en-Bessin and Gravelines, Seurat captured their seascapes, regattas and port activity in his distinctive Neo-Impressionist technique. He sought, in his words, ‘to wash his eyes of the days spent in the studio [in Paris] and to translate in the most faithful manner the bright clarity, in all its nuances’.

Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal at MFA Boston

From 31 January to 31 May 2026, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, presents the exhibition “Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal”

Source: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Image: Madana-Bhasma, published by Calcutta Art Studio, about 1885-95

Vivid prints of divinities are part of daily life for Hindus in India and around the world, used for worship in homes, factories, and offices, as well as for adornment on cars, calendars, computers, and shop counters. The art world has historically overlooked these images, often called “calendar art,” because they are inexpensive and mass produced. But they have a rich and fascinating history in and influence on Indian art, religion, and society.

Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal explores these popular prints’ origins and powerful impacts. When Indian artists encountered the new printmaking technology of lithography in 19th-century Calcutta (today Kolkata), then the capital of British India, they used it to reinvent devotional art. Depictions of Hindu gods became more realistic, colorful, and accessible than ever before. Shrines in homes across the economic spectrum came to host these images, mixed and matched according to a family’s taste. Though the lithographs of Hindu gods created by Bengali artists were not expensive, they were valuable in other senses. Sold in the bustling bazaars of Calcutta where presses competed to attract customers, the prints served an important role in home worship, satisfied the artistic sensibilities of a Bengali society that had absorbed European fine art values, and helped to spread new political ideas. The exhibition considers how lithography gave these artists—who produced thousands of prints that traveled quickly across the nation—a means to change not just devotional but also artistic, political, and social life.

A highlight of the exhibition is the MFA’s collection of 38 vibrant lithographs from 19th-century Calcutta. The MFA is one of only two American museums that collects this material. This exhibition, the first of its kind in the United States, features more than 100 objects, including other prints, paintings, sculpture, and textiles from the Museum’s South Asian collection and select loans.

A View of One’s Own: Landscapes by British Women Artists at the Courtauld

From 28 January to 20 May 2026, the Courtauld Gallery presents the exhibition “A View of One’s Own: Landscapes by British Women Artists, 1760-1860”

Source: The Courtauld. Image: Fanny Blake: “A rainbow over Patterdale Church, Cumbria”, 1849. Photo @ The Courtauld.

A View of One’s Own showcases landscape drawings and watercolours by British women artists working between 1760 and 1860 whose work represents a growing area of The Courtauld’s collection.

These artists range from highly accomplished amateurs to those ambitious for more formal recognition. They have remained mostly unknown, and their works largely unpublished.

When the Royal Academy was founded in 1768, its members included two women, yet there would not be another female academician until Dame Laura Knight was elected in 1936. Despite this institutional exclusion, women artists in Britain continued to train, practice and exhibit during this period, particularly in the field of landscape watercolours.

This exhibition and its accompanying catalogue shed new light on these artists, working within a heavily male dominated era in the arts. Some of the artists achieved recognition during their lifetimes while others’ work remained private, until later discovered.

10 artists are featured in the exhibition. They include Harriet Lister and Lady Mary Lowther, who were among the first to depict the Lake District; Amelia Long, Lady Farnborough, one of the first British artists to travel to France following the Napoleonic Wars, and Elizabeth Batty – whose works appearing in the show were only rediscovered a few years ago.

Turner in January 2026: Turner opens a new year of art exhibitions

As every January, the National Galleries of Ireland and Scotland present “Turner in January,” an annual exhibition of drawings and watercolours by British artist J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851).

Image: Joseph Mallord William Turner, “Sunset over Petworth Park”. National Gallery of Ireland Collection. Image, National Gallery of Ireland.

Every January since 1901, the National Gallery of Ireland and Scotland have staged an exhibition of drawings and watercolours by J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) bequeathed by the collector Henry Vaughan, who stipulated that the works should only be exhibited in winter, to prevent excessive light from damaging them. The National Gallery of Ireland received 31 watercolours, while the National Galleries of Scotland received 38 watercolours. The exhibition is on view from January 1 to January 31.

The National Gallery of Ireland explain that this year’s exhibition “is enriched by the inclusion of watercolours and prints by artists who found inspiration in Turner’s mastery of light, colour, and atmosphere. Works by Hercules Brabazon (1821-1906), William Callow (1812-1908), John Faulkner (1835-1894) and James H. Burgess (1819-1890) highlight Turner’s influence, while Irish artists Jennifer Lane (b.1952) and Niall Naessens (b.1961) pay homage to his enduring legacy. Together, these works underscore how Turner continues to inspire new artistic generations.”

Fascination Paper: Rembrandt to Kiefer at the Albertina

From 11 December 2025 to 22 March 2026, the Albertina presentsthe exhibition “Fascination Paper: Rembrandt to Kiefer”

Source: Albertina · Image: Rembrandt, “Self-portrait with eyes wide open”

The ALBERTINA is home to one of the world’s largest collections of drawings, prints and artistic works on paper. Drawing on these rich holdings, this extraordinary exhibition indeed devotes itself to the diversity and fascination surrounding paper in all of its many aspects.

Covering multiple eras from the 15th century to the present, the presentation brings together works from the Graphic Art Collection, the Architectural Collection, and the Collection of Contemporary Art. Copperplate engravings for playing cards, multi-part three-dimensional objects of monumental proportions, and rarely shown works reveal the entire range of this one-of-a-kind collection and artistic genre. In the process, surprising juxtapositions vividly illustrate paper’s versatility as a medium