Whitney Museum Announces Three Major Fall 2025 Exhibitions

New York, NY — The Whitney Museum of American Art has announced three significant exhibitions opening this fall, highlighting both celebrated historical works and groundbreaking contemporary practices.

Opening October 18, High Wire: Calder’s Circus at 100 marks the centennial of Alexander Calder’s beloved Circus(1926–31), one of the most iconic works in the Museum’s collection. That same day, the Whitney will debut Grace Rosario Perkins: Circles, Spokes, Zigzags, Rivers, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in New York City. Preceding both on October 10, the Museum will present Ken Ohara: CONTACTS, the first U.S. institutional solo exhibition of the Japanese-born, Los Angeles–based photographer.

In addition, two new online commissions by Robert Nideffer and Frank WANG Yefeng will launch on whitney.org. These presentations join the previously announced Sixties Surreal, opening September 24, 2025, a sweeping reexamination of American art from 1958 to 1972 through the lens of surrealism.

High Wire: Calder’s Circus at 100

October 18, 2025 – March 2026

A cornerstone of 20th-century art, Calder’s Circus is brought to life in this major exhibition featuring more than 100 original wire sculptures, objects, and over twenty related works, including drawings, archival materials, and film. Created from everyday materials while Calder lived in Paris, the Circus was an intimate, traveling performance for friends and fellow artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, and Isamu Noguchi.

The exhibition situates Calder’s Circus as a pivotal work that foreshadowed the artist’s later invention of the mobile, exploring themes of movement, balance, and ephemerality. This is the Whitney’s first exhibition dedicated solely to the Circus since relocating to 99 Gansevoort Street.

Organized by Jennie Goldstein, Curator of the Collection, and Roxanne Smith, Jennifer Rubio Assistant Curator of the Collection.

Ken Ohara: CONTACTS

October 10, 2025 – February 8, 2026

This exhibition spotlights Ken Ohara’s radical photographic experiment from 1974–76, in which he mailed preloaded cameras to strangers across the United States, inviting them to document their lives before passing the camera to another participant. The resulting contact sheets—now in the Whitney’s collection—present a decentralized, democratic portrait of American life during a period of economic and political upheaval.

Featuring 22 photographs and four accompanying documents, CONTACTS is shown in chronological order, revealing intimate, everyday moments from across 36 states.

Organized by Eli Harrison, Curatorial Fellow.

Grace Rosario Perkins: Circles, Spokes, Zigzags, Rivers

October 18, 2025 – February 8, 2026

In her first New York museum solo exhibition, Grace Rosario Perkins (Akimel O’odham/Diné) presents approximately ten recent works, including large-scale paintings and a newly commissioned sculpture. Drawing on personal history, Indigenous identity, and the landscapes of the southwestern United States, Perkins creates densely layered works using acrylic, spray paint, collage, and found materials.

Her abstractions resist reductive narratives, offering expansive, multifaceted storytelling that bridges ancestral knowledge with contemporary urgency.

Organized by Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Programs, with Rose Pallone, Curatorial Assistant.

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