Travel | January 14, 2025 10:49 a.m.

Ten Must-See Museums Opening Around the World in 2025

New institutions dedicated to artificial intelligence, West African art, barbeque and more are expected to welcome visitors this year

Around the world, a wealth of new museums are also bringing art and culture, science and technology, and education and storytelling to the forefront. Almaty Museum of Arts

Laura Kiniry

Travel Correspondent

The Smithsonian Institution has several eagerly awaited exhibition and gallery openings planned for 2025. This spring will see the return of two reimagined galleries—“Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight” and “Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall”—to the National Air and Space Museum, which has been undergoing a monumental multiyear renovation. The museum’s Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater is scheduled to reopen soon too.

Art abounds on the National Mall. Thirty-five quilts by Black women artists who represent their history and culture “as told with needle and thread” will be on display next month at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Beginning in April, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will showcase the visually stimulating abstract paintings of American conceptual artist Adam Pendleton. Come October, the National Portrait Gallery’s “Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today” will feature a juried selection of 35 portraits selected from more than 3,300 entries.

Around the world, a wealth of new museums are also bringing art and culture, science and technology, and education and storytelling to the forefront. If all goes accordingly, New Jersey’s Edelman Fossil Park & Museum, highlighted in our 2023 list of most anticipated museum openings, will finally open its doors this spring. Whether it’s immersing yourself in art at a Guggenheim that’s been nearly 20 years in the making, marveling at the cultural impact of hip-hop in the place where it all began, or seeing Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kaufmann Office tucked away in one of the most impressive public storehouses on earth, these ten museums will offer you entirely new insight into and appreciation for our universe at large, and the people in it.

National Medal of Honor Museum; Arlington, Texas

Ten Must-See Museums Opening Around the World in 2025 — A rendering of the National Medal of Honor Museum National Medal of Honor Museum

With a grand opening set for America’s National Medal of Honor Day (March 25) along the Arlington waterfront, the National Medal of Honor Museum is a state-of-the-art facility showcasing Medal of Honor recipients and their inspiring stories.

The Medal of Honor is the United States military’s highest award for valor. Created during the American Civil War to recognize members of the armed forces who’ve risked their own lives to fight for the U.S. beyond the traditional call of duty, it’s been awarded to only 3,519 people so far—less than 0.01 percent of the total number of Americans who have served.

More than a military or history museum, this new 100,000-square-foot space will take visitors on a narrative journey through the life stories of these ordinary people who did extraordinary things. Over 31,000 square feet of gallery space is available to tell their stories, highlight the various impacts they’ve made and showcase their legacies, aiming to inspire fellow Americans in the process. Other areas are set aside for meetings, memorials and ceremonies.

The AT&T Virtual Recipient Theater is an augmented reality experience where visitors can interact with Medal of Honor recipients living and past through conversational artificial intelligence technology. The museum’s largest artifact is a Bell UH-1H Iroquois Helicopter flown by U.S. Army Major General Patrick Brady during the Vietnam War. The Medal of Honor recipient used it to rescue 51 seriously wounded soldiers in one day.

In addition, the museum serves as headquarters of the National Medal of Honor Griffin Institute, an organization that aims to inspire and connect people to live the values of the Medal of Honor.

Almaty Museum of Arts; Almaty, Kazakhstan

When it opens this summer, Kazakhstan’s Almaty Museum of Arts will become Central Asia’s first private museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art from the region. Nurlan Smagulov—an automotive magnate, avid art collector and Almaty native—is the founder of this 101,000-square-foot space, which will house his own collection of over 700 artworks, along with international pieces collected over the past 30 years.

The museum’s inaugural exhibition is dedicated to Almaty-born Almagul Menlibayeva, a multimedia artist who works in everything from printmaking to textile and often addresses the role of women and identity in her pieces. Visitors will also get to explore the museum’s permanent collection, which includes a walkthrough sculpture by American artist Richard Serra, pieces by Kazakh pioneers Aisha Galimbayeva and Rustam Khalfin, and an audiovisual installation by American video artist Bill Viola.

Along with an on-site café and shop, the museum features its own restoration workshop, as well as experimental internal spaces such as a 39-foot-high gallery for temporary exhibitions.

The Hainan Science Museum; Haikou City, China

At China’s upcoming Hainan Science Museum, visitors can expect exhibitions highlighting a range of scientific disciplines—everything from marine ecosystems to aerospace technology. The 500,000-square-foot museum (slated to open sometime in 2025) will be home to both a planetarium and a giant-screen theater, as well as a spiraling ramp resembling a twisting DNA strand that also acts as exhibition space. Museumgoers can use it to work their way down from the top of the building, stopping off at galleries on each of its five above-ground stories (the museum also features a below-ground floor), where they’ll find displays dedicated to technology, life sciences and the sea.

The museum’s exterior is equally as intriguing. MAD Architects constructed the building out of fiber-reinforced plastic, and it’s shaped similarly to a current of air that balloons as it rises above Hainan’s free trade port. Its cloud-like, curved facade is set among the port’s public plazas, wetlands and rainforest, making it appear almost otherworldly.

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Nearly 20 years in the making, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is finally getting ready to open its doors. Slated to start welcoming the public later this year, the 450,000-square-foot satellite art museum will be the largest of the four Guggenheims around the world (the others are in Spain, Italy and New York City), approximately 12 times the size of its Manhattan counterpart. Visitors will be treated to a collection of global modern and contemporary art from circa 1960 onward, assembled from scratch and in a range of artistic media, with a focus on works from West Asia, North Africa and South Asia. The space will be home to both permanent and special exhibition galleries, along with a conservation laboratory; a center for contemporary Arab, Islamic and Middle Eastern culture; and even a children’s education facility.

Canadian American architect Frank Gehry—known for his distinctive unconventional forms and Deconstructivist style—designed the asymmetrical structure, made up of various-sized clusters of horizontal and vertical galleries surrounding a Middle East-inspired central, covered courtyard. Located on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island, the museum is part of a larger complex of arts and cultural institutions, such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi art museum, which opened in 2017.

Museum of BBQ; Kansas City, Missouri

Woman walking in front of building with signs that say Museum of BBQ — Kansas City has more than 100 barbecue restaurants, plus the World Series of Barbecue competition and the Barbecue Hall of Fame. Museum of BBQ

Barbecue, a beloved American culinary tradition with a fascinating history, is finally getting its own dedicated museum. The first of its kind, the Museum of BBQ is set to open this spring in Kansas City, which—along with the Carolinas, Texas and Memphis—is considered one of the cuisine’s main regional hubs. The immersive 4,223-square-foot space will introduce visitors to barbecue through two “storytelling trails,” one focusing on the elements of barbecue, such as meat, spices, wood and smoke, and how they’re used to create this culinary masterpiece, and another exploring America’s four main barbecue regions and the cuts of meat, flavors and cooking styles that make each of them unique. For example, Kansas City-style barbecue is a slow-roasted meat utilizing a thick, sweet sauce made from brown sugar, molasses and tomatoes.

The museum is the brainchild of Kansas City-based journalist Jonathan Bender, a judge at the American Royal World Series of Barbecue (the largest barbecue competition on the planet), and Alex Pope, owner and chef at Kansas City’s Local Pig, a locally sourced meat market. Along with rooms devoted to American barbecue and its history, the space will also offer charcuterie and sausage-making classes; a gift shop stocked with rubs, sauces, aprons and other barbecue-themed goods; and a barbecue bean-inspired ball pit for kids.

Fenix Museum of Migration; Rotterdam, Netherlands

Scheduled to open on May 16, 2025, Rotterdam’s Fenix Museum of Migration will tell the stories of global migration through many lenses, including art, photography and history. This 172,000-square-foot space dedicated to stories of love, goodbyes, happiness and homecoming is set to be the first museum of its kind anywhere. Visitors will encounter “The Suitcase Labyrinth,” an enormous installation made up of 2,000 donated suitcases, each one representing its own unique story that can be listened to via a scannable label. Luggage ranges from modern Samsonites to a late-19th-century bag that arrived to the Netherlands via the Trans-Siberian Express. There’s also “All Directions,” an exhibition of contemporary works by over 100 artists, including filmmaker Steve McQueen and multimedia artist Shilpa Gupta, and “The Family of Migrants,” featuring pieces by 136 photographers.

The museum occupies space along Rotterdam’s city harbor—a place where millions of people began their trans-Atlantic journey for a new life—in what was once one of the largest warehouses in the world. It’s equipped with a new spiral staircase at the heart of the building. Dubbed the “Tornado,” the circular stairs rise in a double helix from the warehouse’s ground floor to an above-roof observation platform, one that offers a 360-degree view of the Rotterdam skyline. Its design represents the unpredictable journeys of migrants around the globe.

V&A East Storehouse; London, England

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum spans “5,000 years of human creativity” and is the largest museum of decorative arts, design and applied arts on the planet. Now, the public will also have access to the museum’s “back of the house,” when the new purpose-built V&A East Storehouse opens its doors on May 31. An enormous four-level storage facility in Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park that’s larger in size than 30 basketball courts, the 172,000-square-foot space will house over half a million works from every creative discipline, from Roman frescos and samurai swords to Elton John’s costumes and midcentury furniture.

Along with giving the public free admission to the V&A’s vast collections, the storehouse does double duty by providing a purpose-built home for the museum’s more than 250,000 objects, 350,000 library books and 1,000 archives. Most items are displayed on pallets and within crates for protection, but the storehouse’s “Order an Object” experience means that visitors can pre-arrange to see any object they like—whether it be an Alexander McQueen dress or the 15th-century gilded wooden ceiling from the now-lost Torrijos Palace in Toledo, Spain—seven days a week.

The storehouse contains over 100 curated mini-displays, like a piece on East London’s rich heritage of making, artistry and activism, in its central Weston Collections Hall. Visitors can also get a firsthand look at how objects get collected by museums, find out how they are cared for, and uncover the stories they tell.

The Museum of West African Art; Benin City, Nigeria

Following a hard-hat opening in November of last year, Nigeria’s Museum of West African Art (MOWAA) will officially be opening its doors to the public in May 2025 with an inaugural exhibition celebrating West African arts and culture and the preservation of West African heritage. Visitors can experience the Institute, a creative hub that serves as the heart of MOWAA’s 15-acre campus and includes an art-filled gallery along with a collection study area, a 180-seater auditorium and a lab featuring digital catalogs of African cultural content. The museum’s atrium, which will house a long-term collection ranging from recent archaeological finds like a piece of over 800-year-old pottery to a Malinese pendant dating back as early as the 13th century, is scheduled to open a few months later.

MOWAA’s campus features everything including a science lab, a rainforest gallery, artist studios, a curated artisan hall, a guesthouse for short-term residencies, and a mix of outdoor gardens and sculpture displays. The overall space will serve as a home for many sacred objects from Benin City, which served as the principal kingdom of southern Nigeria’s Edo people.

Dataland; Los Angeles

With artificial intelligence becoming ubiquitous, it only makes sense that a museum devoted to this rapidly advancing technology should follow suit. When it opens toward the end of 2025, L.A.’s Dataland will be the first museum in the world dedicated solely to A.I. arts. The 20,000-square-foot space is set to be a hub of technology and creativity, one featuring works of science and art generated within a digital A.I. ecosystem.

New media artist Refik Anadol, known for creating colorful abstract works from data-driven machine-learning algorithms, is the museum’s founder. His studio is also the brains behind what will be one of Dataland’s first exhibits, the Large Nature Model. This piece of living artwork gathers images of nature from various institutions—such as the Smithsonian, London’s Natural History Museum and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology—as well as the studio’s own collection from visits to spots around the globe, including Australia’s Daintree Rainforest and Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve, to generate unique A.I. works. The data is both collected with permission and run on Google servers that solely use renewable energy, making it what Anadol calls “ethical A.I.”

Dataland is located within downtown L.A.’s Frank Gehry-designed Grand LA, a multi-use retail and entertainment center and residence.

Fortress House; Gibraltar

Expected to open during autumn 2025, Fortress House will be Gibraltar’s first major art museum. The private contemporary institution breathes new life into what was previously the governor’s residence—an 18th-century Georgian-style building—and centers around a permanent collection of art made predominantly by women artists from 1970 onward. Pieces explore the pressures that shape identity, as well as the individual’s relationship with society.

The many renowned figures whose works will be featured include French artist Louise Bourgeois, who addresses themes such as gender and desire in her paintings, sculptures and installations; Jenny Holzer, an American neo-Conceptual artist known for her text-based projects; and Michael Craig-Martin, an Irish artist who creates vibrantly colored paintings based on everyday objects.

The museum will also be home to two cafés, a rooftop sculpture garden and an immersive arts center for hosting various talks and workshops.

Planning Your Next Trip?

Explore great travel deals

Smithsonian magazine participates in affiliate link advertising programs. If you purchase an item through these links, we receive a commission.