NORTH ADAMS, MASSACHUSETTS MASS MoCA Locke may be acting as witness, but he is also an artist. The work’s interpretive moment occurs in the neon words, “a dream,” which hover over the list of the dead. Which dream, and who gets to dream this dream?
Boston Public Art Triennial
BOSTON Various locations Ten years in the making, “The Exchange” (on view through October 31, 2025) offers a case study in impactful temporary public art that thoughtfully serves local communities while also warranting the attention of a broader audience.
Keith Tyson
MÄNTTÄ, FINLAND Serlachius Serlachius provides two very different perspectives on Keith Tyson’s “Universal Symphony.” While the elevated observation point offers a sweeping overview, disclosing what appears to be a grab bag of objects, the proximity afforded on the gallery floor amends and contradicts that original impression.
Michael Rakowitz
ATHENS Acropolis Museum “Allspice: Michael Rakowitz & Ancient Cultures” (on view through October 31, 2025) marks the first time that the Acropolis Museum has shown contemporary work next to historical artifacts. Named for a spice frequently used in the cooking of Rakowitz’s Jewish-Iraqi mother, the show is in many ways a search for the missing ingredient linking lost heritage, diasporic longings, and phantom motherlands.
Gill Gatfield
NEW YORK NARS Foundation Set against the collapsing tides of the Anthropocene, Aotearoa New Zealand artist Gill Gatfield’s current installation (on view through September 20, 2025) brings the urgency of habeas corpus to New York City, a place long mythologized as a refuge, but also pulsing at the crossroads of data, capital, and control.
Do Ho Suh
LONDON Tate Modern Spanning three decades and multiple cities that he has called home—including Seoul, New York, and London—the exhibition coalesces around a Korean phrase that references an old idea of packing up a house and moving it through time and place. Rather than thinking of time as linear, however, Suh thinks of cycles of time and returns, carrying elements of one home to another.
Couzyn van Heuvelen
WATERLOO, ONTARIO, CANADA Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery Though van Heuvelen sticks close to the visual reality of things, and fidelity is paramount, scale is something else altogether.
Umico Niwa
HOUSTON Asia Society Texas Umico Niwa’s current exhibition, “Memory Palace” (on view through October 12, 2025), doubles as an exhilarating scavenger hunt through the Asia Society Center’s two floors, revealing something charming and playful about the capacity of architectural adornment to intimate and structure selfhood.
Olafur Eliasson
LOS ANGELES The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA In “OPEN,” Eliasson encouraged careful looking as a means to “sense our way into” larger systems. That he mostly missed these goals didn’t dampen the possibility for enjoyment of his often spectacular installations, or his commendable ambition.
