What counts as sculpture? 20th century practitioners consistently pushed the boundaries of what it meant to produce three-dimensional art. Pieces were designed to decay or be dismantled, existing only fleetingly, moving out of traditional gallery spaces to explore how sculpture relates to the natural world. Anish Kapoor’s mirrored and void-like forms explore perception, space and time, whilst Jeff Koon’s highly-polished large-scale forms appropriate kitsch and consumer imagery. These five exhibitions foreground some of the most influential figures who have shaped what it means to create sculpture, and those who continue to question the creation of art, who it is for and who is excluded.
Mona Hatoum: Over, Under and In Between
Fondazione Prada, Milan | 23 January – 9 November
Fondazione Prada welcomes a new, three-part project from world-renowned artist Mona Hatoum this year. The installations bring together the archetypal elements of Hatoum’s artistic vocabulary: the web, the map and the grip. A constellation of delicate, transparent, hand-blown glass spheres form a spider’s web suspended over visitors’ heads, building upon the artist’s use of the web motif to explore entrapment, neglect and connectedness. Elsewhere, a red world map, made up of translucent glass balls, covers the concrete floor, whilst a towering, kinetic installation entitled all of a quiver responds to the monumental height of the building. Each piece reflects on the turmoil of our times and the precariousness of existence.
Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective
MoMA, New York | Until 7 February
The 24th January 2026 marks 100 years since Ruth Asawa was born. The artist was raised in California, becoming unlawfully incarcerated in war relocation camps during WWII, before going on to attend Black Mountain College. Here, she developed a technique for looping wire informed by Mexican basketry, leading her to one of the most consequential contribution to 20th century abstract sculpture. Now, MoMA presents a major retrospective in honour of the centennial of her birth. The show spans six decades of Asawa’s ambitious career, presenting a range of works across mediums, including wire sculptures, bronze casts, paper folds, paintings as well as a comprehensive body of works on paper.
Isamu Noguchi: “I am not a designer”
High Museum of Art, Atlanta | 10 April – 2 August
In 1949, Isamu Noguchi declared “I am not a designer,” but according to High Museum of Art, “the internationally acclaimed artist’s work exemplifies the broadest definition of design, including sculpture, furniture, lighting, playgrounds, landscapes and theatrical sets.” The American gallery is set to host the first retrospective of Noguchi in nearly 25 years, featuring many never exhibited works spanning all facets of his creative output. Throughout his career, he deeply engaged with the role of art in public life, creating plazas, playgrounds, gardens and memorials that harmonize art, architecture and nature. Today, his industrial and commercial pieces continue to stand out among the most celebrated in the field.
William Kentridge: The Pull of Gravity
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield | Until 19 April
William Kentridge has spent more than four decades reshaping how we see art’s relationship to politics, history and memory. The South African artist is acclaimed for an expansive practice that bridges drawing, animation, performance and opera, at once playful and profound. Over the past two decades, sculpture has increasingly come to the fore of this wide-ranging oeuvre. Yorkshire Sculpture Park presents the most expansive display of these works outside of his home nation, bringing together 40 works in bronze, steel, paper and plaster. Outdoors, the newly commissioned Paper Procession unfolds across the landscape, whilst monumental bronzes stride across the rolling hills of the gallery’s sweeping grounds.
Henry Moor Institute, Leeds | Until 19 April
More than two million people are living with sight loss in the UK and every day, 250 people start to lose their vision. Beyond the Visual is the UK’s first major sculpture exhibition where blind and partially blind practitioners are central to the curatorial process and make up the majority of the exhibitors. Works on display include a new iteration of Emilie Louise Gossiaux’s Doggirl (2025), an anthropomorphised ceramic sculpture based on the artist’s guide dog and animal companion, whilst Lenka Clayton’s collaborative installation Sculpture for the Blind, by the Blind (2017) plays on the irony of Constantin Brâncusi’s Sculpture for the Blind (1920), a work now presented in a glass case that can no longer be touched.
Words: Emma Jacob
Image Credits:
1. Louise Dahl – Wolfe (American, 1895 – 1989), Isamu Noguchi , 1955, gelatin silver print. © Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents. © 2025 The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
2. Ruth Asawa at Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective View, San Francisco Museum of Art, 1973. Photograph by Laurence Cuneo. © 2025 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc., Courtesy David Zwirner.
3. Mona Hatoum, all of a quiver (2022). Kesselhaus, KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art. Photo : Jens Ziehe © Mona Hatoum.
4. Isamu Noguchi (American, 1904 – 1988); Edison Price (American, 1918 – 1997), fabricator, Seraphic Dialogue , 1955, brass rods and steel cable, Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 00363. Photo: Kevin Noble. © 2025 The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
5. William Kentridge in his studio working on the preparatory plaster version of the monumental bronze Laocoön, Johannesburg, 2021. Photo: Stella Olivier, © William Kentridge. Courtesy the artist, Goodman Gallery, Galleria Lia Rumma and Hauser & Wirth.
6. Lenka Clayton, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia Sculpture for the Blind, by the Blind 2017. Plaster, linen and wood.
