We’re nearly halfway into 2025 but the global art calendar never stops. If you’re bored of simply sightseeing or food-hunting and want a new perspective on a city’s culture, check out these art travel destinations that present the perfect time to experience works by the best artists and galleries they have to offer.
In this article:
Gallery Weekend Beijing (23 May to 1 June)
The ninth edition of Gallery Weekend Beijing (GWBJ) marks the start of the new Beijing Art Season, this year homing in on the intersection between art, science and technology in China’s capital, and the role of women artists and collectives in the creative sector.
Bluechip international and local galleries will present special exhibitions, including Galleria Continua (Beijing)’s 20th anniversary show, a group exhibition of 20 artists under 40 exploring abstraction at X Museum and a major survey of Chinese contemporary art (1980s-1990s) at Taikang Space.
The program this year also extends beyond the 798·751 art district hub – a sprawling cultural precinct and the site of previously state-owned factories – to the Aranya Art Centre.
Qu Kejie, founder of Magician Space and one of five GWBJ committee members, tells ArtsHub, “Inspired by Gallery Weekend Berlin, Gallery Weekend Beijing was initiated in 2017 through discussions among several galleries in Beijing and was ultimately launched with the support of the 798 Art District. Magician Space was one of the founding galleries.
“I believe Gallery Weekend Beijing has been a driving force behind the development of the art ecosystem in Beijing and across China… As home to the largest number of artists in China, Beijing is a uniquely important city for art and culture, and this new initiative [Beijing Art Season] will further expand the original context of Gallery Weekend Beijing.“
Read: Travel destinations: two new museums setting the scene in Asia
This iteration includes a curated selection of over 30 local galleries and 10 non-profits, including UCCA Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing Commune, WHITE SPACE, Asia Art Centre and Espace Louis Vuitton Beijing.
798CUBE will host the inaugural 798 Art, Science and Technology Biennale with the theme ‘SYMPTOMATICA | HORIZON’, while visitors can also check out the inaugural Art Store, featuring artist-designed industrial containers that combine exhibition, retail and social functions.
If you want to tick off another popular Chinese destination later in the year, November is the best time to visit Shanghai, with the annual Art021 and West Bund Art and Design art fairs prompting a wave of exhibitions and art events throughout the month – plus you can link it up with art week activities in a neighbouring country… read on to find out.
Ulaanbaatar Biennale (6-20 June)
Sydney-based independent curator Tian Zhang will be helming the first Ulaanbaatar Biennale in 2025 in Mongolia’s capital. She says the event will “bring Mongolian and international artists together around some of the pressing issues of our time, and to engage audiences in a global conversation through contemporary art”.
’On the horizon, under the moon/Сарны дор тэнгэрийн хаяанд’, the theme is inspired by a Mongolian poem, which evokes the sense of being united under one moon despite differentiating perspectives.
Zhang continues, “The exhibition makes space for ancestral and intimate connections to place, platforms land rights struggles and indigenous movements, and speaks to cultural displacement and diasporic loss. It also makes visible the forces that act upon the land – destructive, generative and regenerative.”
Visitors will be able to check out works at the Mongolian National Modern Art Gallery, Chinggis Khan Museum, Red Ger Gallery and more.
Participating artists include Almagul Menlibayeva (Kazakhstan/Germany), Jazz Money (Wiradjuri, Australia), Cian Dayrit (Philippines), Liu Chuang (China), Luke Willis Thompson (Aotearoa New Zealand), Serwah Attafuah (Australia), Subas Tamang (Nepal) and Harvest School (India).
FOTO Bali Festival (26 July to 17 August)
Nuanu Creative City in Bali will host a new international festival dedicated to photography across its 44-hectare site.
FOTO Bali Festival features artists from Indonesia and around the world, presenting exhibitions, artists talks and hands-on workshops around the theme ‘LIFE’. Through both still and moving images, the Festival will explore how life reveals itself across cultures and generations, through light, shadow, ritual, and everyday moments.
The 2025 curatorial team comprises Ng Swan Ti (Managing Director of PannaFoto Institute and co-Founder of Jakarta International Photo Festival) and researcher and curator, Gatari Surya Kusuma. Both their practices engage with local ecosystems and community narratives, ensuring a curatorial framework rooted in Indonesia’s diverse cultural landscape.
The curators say, “At FOTO Bali Festival, we offer a platform where photography is presented as an invitation to engage more deeply with the stories we inherit and the futures we imagine… We envision the festival not as a showcase, but as a site of exchange – a place where the acts of photographing and witnessing are equally honoured.”
For those who want to get involved, there is the opportunity to submit work to be shown at FOTO Bali Festival until 31 May.
Read: The fall of drawing and the rise of photography
Nuanu will also be hosting Bali’s first international art fair, Art & Bali, from 12-14 September.
Bukhara Biennial (5 September to 20 November)
Presented in the central Asian city Bukhara, a UNESCO Creative City of Craft & Folk Art, the Bukhara Biennial 2025 is inspired by an Uzbek legend, Recipes for Broken Hearts.
The biennial will explore the healing power of art and culture through Bukhara’s rich history of being an intellectual and economic centre for production on the Silk Roads.
Curated by Artistic Director Diana Campbell with Wael Al Awar as Creative Director of Architecture, Bukhara Biennial is a free open-for-all forum, with all commissioned works, including those by international artists, made on-site in Uzbekistan.
Participating artists include Ighshaan Adams (South Africa), Majid Al-Remaihi (Qatar), Louis Barthélemy (France), Aziza Azim (Uzbekistan), Antony Gormley (UK) and Marina Perez Simão (Brazil).
Art Week Tokyo (5-9 November)
For those wanting the ultimate autumn experience in Japan’s capital city, Tokyo Art Week brings the best of sightseeing and art viewing together. More than 50 museums, galleries and art spaces will take part this year, including the Mori Art Museum, National Museum of Modern Art and Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum.
Exhibition highlights include a redefining show of Japanese contemporary art at National Art Centre, in partnership with M+ Hong Kong and the first mid-career survey of New York-based multimedia artist Aki Sasamoto at Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.
See works at galleries that laid the foundation of contemporary art in Japan, such as SCAI The Bathhouse, Taka Ishii Gallery, Taro Nash, Tomio Koyama and Tokyo Gallery + BTAP, the country’s first contemporary art gallery, which marks its 75th anniversary this year.
Check out the role that corporate art spaces have played in shaping a city’s arts scene, from the Shiseido Gallery founded in 1919 to Chanel Nexus Hall, which opened in 2004.
Other programs include curated sales platform, AWT Focus, free screening program, AWT Video and a pop-up bar by Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Kazuyo Sejima.
Atsuko Ninagawa (Take Ninagawa Gallery), Art Week Tokyo Founder and Director, says, “Conceived as a community-driven initiative to support the local art ecosystem, Art Week Tokyo continues to grow organically with each edition. Last year we saw the strongest line-up of exhibitions yet, while new initiatives – from meet-ups to music performances – helped broader communities access the event.”
Art Week Tokyo is organised in collaboration with Art Basel, and entry to all galleries is free of charge, while participating museums will offer discounted admission during the event.
