8 EXHIBITIONS WORTH TRAVELING FOR THIS FALL

PICASSO — BACON: WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE HUMAN
Albertina Museum, Vienna | 18 September 2026–31 January 2027

Pablo Picasso’s art was an early inspiration for Francis Bacon, whose admiration for the older artist developed into a lifelong artistic rivalry. Bringing together some 70 works, the Albertina explores the relationship between two artists who transformed figurative painting. Although separated by a generation, both returned obsessively to the human body, pulling it apart and reconstructing it with startling psychological intensity. Through recurring subjects, including crucifixions, bullfights, nudes, and screaming figures, the exhibition traces Picasso’s profound influence on Bacon — and the distinct visions of modern life that emerged from it.

REMEDIOS VARO
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk | 18 September 2026–10 January 2027

Dreams and scientific inquiry converge in the strange, meticulously rendered worlds of Remedios Varo, where mysterious figures inhabit chimerical settings shaped by her fascination with mysticism, mythology, and the occult. This fall, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art presents the first major European museum exhibition devoted to the Spanish-Mexican Surrealist, bringing together more than 70 works spanning her early years in Barcelona and Paris through her most productive period in Mexico. Rarely seen works from private collections join major museum loans in a long-overdue introduction to one of Surrealism’s most singular imaginations.

MONET, PAINTING TIME
Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris | 30 September 2026–25 January 2027

Few artists were as attuned to the passage of time as Claude Monet. Marking 100 years since his death, the Musée de l’Orangerie examines how the artist’s relationship with time evolved across nearly six decades of painting. Some 40 works trace a path from the immediacy of Impressionism through Monet’s great series of the 1890s, where he returned to the same subjects at different hours to record their continual transformation. The exhibition ends with the artist’s Nymphéas, the project that occupied his final decades and pushed his exploration still further, away from the fleeting instant and toward an enveloping sense of time without beginning or end.

CEZANNE AND US
Grand Palais, Paris | 23 September 2026–17 January 2027

More than a century after his death, Paul Cezanne’s reputation as the “father of modern art” remains a defining part of his legacy — and the subject of a new exhibition at the Grand Palais. Bringing together nearly 180 works, Cezanne and Us follows his influence from the late 19th century to the present. His radical approach to form and composition became a touchstone for generations of artists. From Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso to Joan Mitchell and Peter Doig, the exhibition considers how artists absorbed, challenged, and transformed Cezanne’s ideas, continually remaking his legacy in the process.

PAINTING THE FRENCH RIVIERA
Royal Academy of Arts, London | 2 October 2026–31 January 2027

Claude Monet described painting on the French Riviera as like “swimming in blue air.” He was hardly alone in falling under its spell. From the 1870s onward, the region’s brilliant light, saturated color, and Mediterranean landscape drew generations of artists south, from Paul Cezanne and Pierre-Auguste Renoir to Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, and Yves Klein. Bringing together more than 160 works, the Royal Academy traces how encounters with the Côte d’Azur helped propel 20th-century art in new directions.

MARY CASSATT: BEING INDEPENDENT
Musée d’Orsay, Paris | 6 October 2026–31 January 2027

American artist Mary Cassatt spent six decades in France, becoming one of Impressionism’s defining figures. Remarkably, no French national museum has ever devoted a major exhibition to her — until now. Marking the centenary of Cassatt’s death, the Musée d’Orsay brings together nearly 80 paintings, pastels, and prints to reconsider her career through an idea she fiercely prized: independence. From portraits of women navigating modern life to her radical experiments in printmaking, the exhibition uncovers an artist who forged her own professional autonomy while extending that commitment beyond the studio, ultimately lending her art and influence to the fight for women’s suffrage.

GUSTAVE FAYET: COLLECTOR — DESIGNER
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris | 9 October 2026–8 March 2027

French artist and designer Gustave Fayet was among the most adventurous champions of modern art at the turn of the 20th century. An early collector of Vincent van Gogh and a devoted supporter of Paul Gauguin and Odilon Redon, he acquired more than 740 works while helping advance the avant-garde in France. Now, for the first time in a century, more than 250 masterpieces from his dispersed collection are reunited at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Presented alongside hundreds of Fayet’s own creations, the exhibition underscores both sides of his remarkably expansive artistic vision.

BRANCUSI: THE ARTIST AND HIS STUDIO
Museum of Modern Art, New York | 25 October 2026–27 February 2027

When Constantin Brancusi first encountered the New York skyline in 1926, he reportedly exclaimed, “Why, it is my studio,” seeing in its shifting blocks and forms an echo of his own creative environment in Paris. On the impasse Ronsin, Brancusi spent four decades transforming his studio from a place of work into an evolving artistic environment, continually rearranging sculptures, furniture, and objects. He later bequeathed its contents to France, where they are now preserved as the Atelier Brancusi at the Centre Pompidou. With the museum closed for renovations, rarely lent works will travel to New York alongside the artist’s furniture, tools, and archival materials.