Building on the momentum of recent years, several important Old Master exhibitions in the year ahead will echo contemporary social, political, and spiritual concerns. In addition to the ongoing work of spotlighting understudied artists, institutions around the world are looking to re-energize the category by embracing new technology, reactivating centuries-old heritage sites, and wielding curating as a tool of cultural diplomacy.

Here are 5 exhibitions opening in the U.S. and Europe in 2025 that affirm the perennial relevance of Old Masters.

“From Odesa to Berlin: European Painting of the 16th to 19th Century”
Gemäldegalerie Berlin
January 24—June 22, 2025

Francesco Granacci, Madonna Enthroned with Child and the Infant Saint John (1519). Courtesy of the Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art/Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Property of the Museum of Western and Eastern Art, Odesa. Photo by Christoph Schmidt.

The Gemäldegalerie in Berlin will begin the year by showcasing 60 paintings rescued from the Museum of Western and Eastern Art in the port city of Odesa in the south of Ukraine before the country’s invasion in 2022. The works range from the 16th to the 19th centuries, including paintings by Francesco Granacci, Frans Hals, and Bernardo Strozzi. A preview of the show took place in the spring of 2024, and this year’s edition will deepen the dialogue between the two collections by adding 25 related works from the Gemäldegalerie.

The conservators Anja Lindner-Michael and Thuja Seidel unpacking the works in Berlin, September 2023. Photo by Sabine Lata.

The exhibition joins several other international efforts to safeguard the artistic heritage of Ukraine amid ongoing turmoil. The Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative has been working with the nation’s institutions since 2022, and in 2023 the Louvre Museum staged a show on icons rescued from the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts in Kyiv. The Berlin exhibition will continue in a long lineage of art exhibitions as a type of cultural diplomacy, as the press release underscores that the show is “a gesture of solidarity with Ukraine—one that will hopefully contribute to increasing public awareness regarding the ongoing conflict situation in the country.”

“Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature”  
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
February 8–May 11, 2025

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (ca. 1817). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Elke Walford.

One of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first major shows of the new year will be the first comprehensive U.S. exhibition on Caspar David Friedrich, a leading figure of German Romanticism. In 2024, Germany marked the 250th anniversary of Friedrich’s birth with a series of shows organized in cooperation between the Alte Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Hamburger Kunsthalle. The Met, the fourth and final stop in this celebration, will feature a unique checklist, installation, and publication.

Friedrich’s continued appeal lies in his sublime portrayals of the natural world as a site of spiritual encounters and emotional deliberations. Alison Hokanson and Joanna Sheers Seidenstein, the exhibition’s curators, told Artnet News that the 19th century witnessed “a new articulation of the connection between nature and the inner self,” adding: “Friedrich’s art is so compelling precisely because it visualizes this intimacy, emotion, and open-endedness we have come to expect from nature and from images of it.” The exhibition will not only situate Friedrich against the backdrop of 19th-century society but also explore the communal aspect of his practice and offer a rare opportunity to spotlight the breadth and depth of the Met’s broader collection of German Romantic art.

“Michelangelo”
National Museum of Art (Statens Museum for Kunst), Copenhagen
March 29–August 31, 2025

Plaster cast after Michelangelo Buonarroti, Original ca. 1524-26, cast 1897. The Royal Cast Collection, SMK–National Gallery of Denmark Photo: SMK

This spring, the Copenhagen National Museum of Art (SMK) will open the largest Michelangelo show in Denmark to date. Alongside plaster casts, bronze sculptures, clay models, and drawings, the exhibition will feature ten 3D-printed works after Michelangelo. Fabricated in collaboration with Factum Foundation in Madrid, these new editions will include copies of works such as Cupid (on loan to the Met from France until 2029), four saints from the Piccolomini Altarpiece in the Duomo in Siena, and the Genius of Victory at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.

This approach may turn some heads, but even the Plaster Cast Workshop of the GrandPalaisRmn in France has recently turned to 3D printing for fragile works. The curator Matthias Wivel said the exhibition “raises questions of authenticity and curatorial ethics, of course, requiring sometimes difficult judgement of what role the facsimiles play, and clarity of communication around one’s choices.” At the same time, one of the arguments of the show underscores how 3D reproduction ultimately follows the lineage of earlier forms of copying, such as plaster casts. “You can include and juxtapose objects in facsimile that would never be possible in the original, you can get closer to them, and you can (try to) recreate things that are damaged or lost,” Wivel adds. Such an approach will certainly expand the possibilities of exhibition-making in its effort to provide a holistic view of Michelangelo’s achievements.

“Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art”
Toledo Museum of Art
April 13–July 27, 2025

Rachel Ruysch, Flower Still Life (about 1716–20). Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio.

The pioneering yet historically understudied Dutch painter Rachel Ruysch will finally have her first monographic show in the U.S. this spring. Organized in conjunction with the Toledo Museum of Art (which in 1956 became the first American institution to acquire a Ruysch painting), the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the exhibition explores Ruysch’s groundbreaking innovations in the seemingly staid genre of still life paintings. “When you look at earlier 17th-century flower still lives, every plant, every flower has a space on its own, and they are often arranged in one plane,” explains Robert Schindler, the curator of the exhibition’s Toledo iteration. “Ruysch finds a way to build that into a three-dimensional composition, playing in wonderful ways with light and shadow.”

Rachel Ruysch and Michiel van Musscher, Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750) (1692). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Among the many revelations in the show is the discovery of the only surviving work on paper attributed to Ruysch: a drawing of a Surinamese Toad that Schindler located at the Royal Society of London. “We are finding that she really is at the forefront of some of these new discoveries that are coming into Europe…There are paintings where she combines species from Asia, South Africa, and the Americas all in one picture,” said Schindler, who consulted with specialists in zoological history and botany for the exhibition. “We pay close attention to making sure that the broader context is clear, that she was only becoming aware of some of these specimens because the Dutch were out exploring, colonizing, and exploiting other territories and people.” The exhibition promises to be a resplendent contribution to Netherlandish Art, natural history art, women artists, and histories of the art market at large.

“Angelico”
Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and Museo di San Marco (Convent), Florence
September 26, 2025–January 25, 2026

Beato Angelico, Last Judgement (detail), (ca, 1431). Courtesy of Museo di San Marco, Florence and Ministero della Cultura.

Fra Angelico, the Dominican friar and early Italian Renaissance artist, will be the subject of a major two-part exhibition debuting in Florence this autumn. The show will explore his artistic process alongside works by contemporaries such as Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, and Lorenzo Ghiberti. This will be the first show in Italy dedicated to the artist in more than 70 years and will reunite paintings that have been separated for more than two centuries.

One of the biggest draws is that the two venues hosting “Angelico” will be a mere 15-minute walk apart: the Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo di San Marco. The latter hosts Fra Angelico’s celebrated frescoes that demonstrate the artist’s mastery of space, perspective, and the emerging principles of Renaissance art. By collaborating with the historic site, the dual exhibition aims to offer viewers a more comprehensive look at an artist once described by the Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari as “an excellent painter and illuminator, and…a perfect monk.”