2026 culture lookahead: Art exhibitions to check out across the country

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The Glenbow Museum in Calgary has pushed its 2026 reopening to 2027, but Quebec City is holding firm: The Espace Riopelle at the Musée national des beaux arts will open on Oct. 7, which would have been Jean-Paul Riopelle’s 103rd birthday. The three-storey glass-and-wood pavilion designed by Les Architectes FABG will feature more than 400 works by the famed Quebec painter, a reinstallation of the restored 40-metre fresco Tribute to Rosa Luxemburg, and views of the St. Lawrence river.

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In the meantime, the Beaux Arts is also unveiling an international show of hyper-realist sculpture, those uncanny three-dimensional reproductions of the human body that began as a sideline to Pop Art in the 1970s and continue into the age of AI. The show includes U.S. artists such Duane Hanson and George Segal as well as Canadian artist Evan Penny. Hyperrealism: This Is Not a Body runs from Feb. 26 to Oct. 12.

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The art world’s latest immersive sensation comes to Montreal next fall: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts will be hosting The Soul Trembles, a travelling show devoted to Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. The Berlin-based installation and performance artist creates room-sized webs of dense threads in black, white or red, inviting audiences into altered spaces intended to evoke profound emotions. On its ninth stop in an international tour that began in Tokyo in 2019, the exhibition will feature more than 100 works, including three large thread installations, and covers 25 years of Shiota’s career. From Sept. 26 to Feb. 14, 2027.

In Toronto, the Royal Ontario Museum is betting on hallucinogens this summer, with a show about psychedelics. Hallucinogenic drugs have long interested artists, drawn by the notion that sensory experience is highly subjective and susceptible to manipulation. The ROM show, entitled simply Psychedelics, will trace their history and their introduction into contemporary Western culture. But it will also delve into the science behind altered states using medical and scientific scholarship to question the notion that psychedelics are extremely dangerous. The examination of this sometimes taboo topic will include art, costumes, cultural objects and botanical specimens. Intriguingly, the show promises to be “immersive.” From June 6 to Dec. 6.

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The Art Gallery of Ontario takes a more conventional approach to the summer blockbuster and welcomes the Impressionists back to Toronto. The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse from the Dallas Museum of Art is a large survey examining how Impressionism lies at the root of modern art, informing subsequent generations of avant-garde artists. Dallas’s impressive collection includes works by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Berthe Morisot that then point the way to art by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian and Edvard Munch. From June 24 to Oct. 18.

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The Vancouver Art Gallery boasts that it has the first major exhibition in Canada to examine the intersection of art and climate change. Future Geographies: Art in the Century of Climate Change will feature works by international and B.C. artists from the past 25 years that address the environment and sustainability. “Artists are not scientists nor journalists, but they can make us see differently,” says Eva Respini, the VAG interim director who is curating an exhibition that investigates how we can view the climate crisis with something other than despair. From May 17, 2026, to Jan. 10, 2027, and moving to the AGO in Toronto in March, 2027.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article included incorrect credits for the first two photos. This version has been updated to credit Musée national des beaux-arts.