The\u00a0American Federation of Arts<\/a>\u00a0(AFA), the leader in traveling exhibitions worldwide since its founding in 1909, announces the new season for the fall of 2025 through 2027. So far, museums in over 11 cities will headline several art exhibitions created by the AFA and its partners, with more cities to come. Throughout its celebrated 116-year history, the nonprofit institution has helped to spearhead the course of art for generations by enriching the public\u2019s experience and understanding of the visual arts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe AFA\u2019s expansive panorama of new exhibitions demonstrates the importance of listening to the input of visual arts leaders nationwide, focusing on what audiences want to see, and continuing our legacy of shining a light on new artists and trends,\u201d says Pauline Forlenza, the Director and CEO of the American Federation of Arts. \u201cOur longstanding commitment to touring art exhibitions, publishing exhibition catalogues with scholarly research, and developing educational programs is vital \u2013 now more than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n These traveling museum shows will open doors to creativity for the next sixteen months tomuseum goers. Some of the shows include:<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Abstract Expressionists: The Women\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Alex Katz: Theater and Dance Civic Virtue in Rembrandt\u2019s Amsterdam: 17th-Century Group Portraits from the Amsterdam Museum\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776\u20131976\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Experimental Ground: Modernist Printmaking in Paris & New York at Atelier 17<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection,\u00a0and more.<\/p>\n Links to all of the AFA\u2019s 2025 through 2027 exhibition tours may be viewed at:\u00a0current shows<\/a>\u00a0and upcoming tours<\/a>.<\/p>\n Some of the museums across the country include: National Museum of Women in the Arts, Wichita Art Museum, Muscarelle Museum of Art, Southampton Arts Center, The Gibbes Museum of Art, Taubman Museum of Art, Peabody Essex Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, Mobile Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, among others.<\/p>\n From\u00a0the Smithsonian\u00a0\u2013 \u201cA vital part of American art history, the AFA was one of the first organizations to develop successfully the concept of traveling art exhibitions on a national and international level. Many arts organizations and museums have followed the AFA\u2019s precedent. This national nonprofit museum service organization is recognized for striving to unite American art institutions, collectors, artists, and museums.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThrough the years, the AFA has also had an impact on patronage in the arts. During its 116-year history, the Federation\u2019s exhibitions of contemporary art provided collectors with knowledge of new artists and avant-garde art forms, creating a broader demand and market for this type of work. Museums and collectors began purchasing work by new or obscure American artists whom they learned about through AFA exhibitions and programs. The AFA also recognizes the importance of the exchange of cultural ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout its history, the organization has concentrated on its founding principle of broadening the audiences for contemporary American art, breaking down barriers of distance and language to expand the knowledge and appreciation of art. The touring exhibitions have brought before the public contemporary American artists and craftspeople, genres, and artistic forms of experimentation \u2013 exposing viewers to new ways of thinking and expression.\u201d<\/p>\n Highlights from the New Season<\/strong><\/p>\n View the full list of tours at:\u00a0amfedarts.org\/exhibitions\/current<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0amfedarts.org\/exhibitions\/upcoming-exhibitions\/<\/a>. The complete lists of current and upcoming touring museum shows are updated regularly, as new exhibitions and new museum dates are added. Following are highlights of eight of the AFA exhibitions that will be touring during the fall of 2025 through 2027.<\/p>\n Abstract Expressionists: The Women<\/strong><\/p>\n Explores the vital, under-acknowledged innovation of women artists in the Abstract Expressionist movement, the first internationally renowned artistic movement to originate in the U.S.\u00a0\u2022\u00a0Featuring 47 works from The Levett Collection, by more than 30 women artists who worked in New York, California, and Paris from the early 1940s through the 1970s.<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Features a never-before-seen grouping of works by Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Emiko Nakano, Pat Passloff, Mercedes Matter, Sonja Sekula, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2022 The paintings of the Abstract Expressionist movement have historically been associated with male creativity. <\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Until recently, the historical and critical reception of Abstract Expressionism has almost uniformly marginalized its women practitioners\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2022 This exhibition upends this gendered narrative, demonstrating that these women were not merely acolytes or interpreters, they were ambitious innovators all their own.<\/p>\n Abstract Expressionists: The Women (continued)<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cToo often, the canon of art history has relegated women artists to supporting roles in major art movements,\u201d says Pauline Forlenza, the Director and CEO of the AFA. \u201cThis exhibition upends that narrative, asserting that women painters were critical contributors to the formulation of Abstract Expressionism from the very beginning. Equally talented and visionary, the female artists featured in this show helped put American art on the map,\u201d adds Forlenza.\u00a0The exhibition is organized by the American Federation of Arts from the Christian Levett Collection and FAMM (Female Artists of the Mougins Museum), France. This exhibition is curated by Ellen G. Landau, PhD, Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emerita of the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University.<\/p>\n Civic Virtue in Rembrandt\u2019s Amsterdam: 17th-Century Group Portraits from the Amsterdam Museum<\/strong><\/p>\n The large group portraits in this exhibition have rarely left Amsterdam since they were commissioned in the 1600s, and have never traveled in the U.S. as a group. <\/p>\n \u2022 The show traces how life in the largest and most important city of Holland was based on the collective responsibility of the burghers, who combined their mercantile wealth with political power. <\/p>\n \u2022 Amsterdam\u2019s economic success, however, was the result of ruthless trade wars within Europe, colonization and enslavement overseas. <\/p>\n \u2022 Artists include Adriaen van Nieulandt, Gerrit Berckheyde, Ludolf Bakhuizen, Frederik Jansz, Dirck Santvoort, Ferdinand Bol, Bartholomeus van der Helst, Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy, Jan Victors, and of course, Rembrandt van Rijn. <\/p>\n \u2022 By governing and guarding the city, by organizing and managing a social safety net for the poor and needy, and by stimulating scientific and industrial developments, the burghers contributed to making Amsterdam the most prosperous city in Europe. Guest Curator: Norbert E. Middelkoop, PhD, Curator of Paintings, Prints, and Drawings at the Amsterdam Museum.<\/p>\n Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder<\/strong><\/p>\n 100 photographs by 70 artists.<\/p>\n \u2022 Explores the concept of presence through the tenderness of portraits, the awe within landscapes, the clarity of reportage, and the spontaneity of cityscapes. <\/p>\n \u2022 Works by Merry Alpern, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Irving Bennett Ellis, Nan Goldin, Dorothea Lange, Danny Lyon, Sally Mann, Susan Meiselas, Helmut Newton, Ruth Orkin, Gordon Parks, Edward Steichen, Joyce Tenneson, James Van Der Zee, Todd Webb, Edward Weston, and more. <\/p>\n \u2022 Photographs can be imprinted with the totality of human experiences, and this exhibition embraces that totality, examining the deeply humanistic history of photography.<\/p>\n Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776\u20131976<\/strong><\/p>\n Presenting more than 100 of the most acclaimed and recognizable works of American art. <\/p>\n \u2022 New narratives of the history of American art, embracing stories about women artists, LGBTQ+ artists, and artists of color, alongside iconic works traditionally associated with PAFA. <\/p>\n \u2022 Women artists participated in PAFA\u2019s exhibitions as early as 1811, and this show includes paintings by Sarah Miriam Peale, Mary Cassatt, Cecilia Beaux, Alice Neel, and May Howard Jackson (the first African American woman to receive a scholarship to attend PAFA, in 1895). <\/p>\n \u2022 By 1900, PAFA acquired its first work by a Black artist, Henry O. Tanner. PAFA educated African American artists and acquired their works throughout the twentieth century, and this show features works by Joshua Johnson (one of the first professional Black artists in America), Dox Thrash, Laura Wheeler Waring, Edward Loper, and Barkley L. Hendricks.<\/p>\n \u2022 Curated by Anna O. Marley, PhD., a scholar of American art and material culture from the colonial era to today.<\/p>\n Alex Katz: Theater and Dance<\/strong><\/p>\n The first comprehensive museum presentation of Katz\u02bcs highly collaborative and playful work with choreographers, dancers, and members of avant-garde theater ensembles over six decades. <\/p>\n \u2022 Showcases Katz\u2019s deep and lasting influence on the history of the American performing arts. <\/p>\n \u2022 Rare archival materials, major sets and paintings, and previously unexhibited sketches from more than two dozen productions. <\/p>\n \u2022 Spotlights fifteen productions that Katz produced with Paul Taylor, exploring their creative partnership that generated some of the most significant postmodern dance and art of the twentieth century. <\/p>\n \u2022 Artworks from the show are drawn from the Alex Katz holdings at the Colby College Museum of Art (home to a collection of nearly 900 works by the artist), from Paul Taylor Dance Archives, and from the artist\u2019s studio. <\/p>\n \u2022 Provides an innovative kind of retrospective: that of an artistic sensibility. <\/p>\n \u2022 Attesting to the intertwined histories of painting and stage design in Katz\u02bcs works.<\/p>\n \u2022 Curated by Levi Prombaum, former Katz Consulting Curator, Colby College Museum of Art.<\/p>\n Willie Birch: Stories to Tell<\/strong><\/p>\n Chronicles Birch\u2019s unique vision of the Black American experience and examines the interconnected nature of global art forms. <\/p>\n \u2022 The first ever career retrospective brings together groundbreaking works from the early 1970s to the present.<\/p>\n \u2022 Throughout his career, the artist has explored how African traditions have been retained in music, art, and culture in America and beyond. <\/p>\n \u2022 Birch was raised in New Orleans and trained in Europe, Baltimore, and New York.<\/p>\n \u2022 His work as an artist, community organizer, and cultural provocateur questions why certain things are retained and not others, unearthing uncomfortable truths about American identity, but also offering possibilities for greater cultural awareness.<\/p>\n Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection<\/strong><\/p>\n Reveals the intergenerational relationships fostered among women artists over the last eight decades, assembling over 70 works made by 60 women artists between 1946 and today.<\/p>\n \u2022 Sculpture, painting, installation, textiles, pottery, and mixed media works all converge. <\/p>\n \u2022 Pioneering examples of post-war abstraction \u2014including early works by Janet Sobel, Judy Chicago, and Mary Corse \u2014 are shown alongside compositions by leading contemporary artists such as Julie Mehretu, Lorna Simpson, and Aria Dean.<\/p>\n \u2022 Paintings and mixed media works by Christina Quarles, Tschabalala Self, and Firelei B\u00e1ez blur the boundaries between abstraction and figuration.<\/p>\n \u2022 Connections between the handmade and digital emerge in the various forms of piecework employed in Faith Ringgold\u2019s quilts, Howardena Pindell\u2019s collages, and the pixelated, hypermediated canvases made by Jacqueline Humphries and Anicka Yi. <\/p>\n \u2022 Works by the Freedom Quilting Bee, Fran\u00e7oise Grossen, and Sheila Hicks explore irregular geometries and eccentric abstractions via fabric and fiber. <\/p>\n \u2022 Curated by Cecilia Alemani of High Line Arts in New York City.<\/p>\n Experimental Ground: Modernist Printmaking in Paris & New York at Atelier 17<\/strong><\/p>\n The\u00a0first large-scale survey of original prints made at Atelier 17 to tour the U.S. in 50 years. <\/p>\n \u2022 This revolutionary printmaking workshop (1927 to 1988) was famous for its impact on the development of modern art.<\/p>\n \u2022 It served as a hub of artistic and intellectual exchange \u2014 first for Surrealists in interwar Paris, and after World War II for the exploration of abstraction and other modernist styles. <\/p>\n \u2022 Commemorates 100 years since the founding of the studio. <\/p>\n \u2022 Presents works by notable artists who gained formative skills at Atelier 17, such as Joan Mir\u00f3, Yves Tanguy, Louise Bourgeois, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Louise Nevelson, and Krishna Reddy, among many other artists who participated in intense collaborations at the studio. <\/p>\n \u2022 Atelier 17 attracted hundreds of international artists, drawn to the radical vision of printmaking as a mode for experimentation rather than reproduction.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/06-Pat-Passlof-Stove.jpeg\")
Stove, by Pat Passlof (1959). Oil on linen. \u00a9 The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation.
\nCourtesy of Eric Firestone Gallery, the Levett Collection, and FAMM. Photo: Fraser Marr.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/03-Elaine-De-Kooning-The-Bull.jpeg\")
The Bull, by Elaine de Kooning (1959). Acrylic and collage on masonite. \u00a9 Elaine de Kooning Trust. Courtesy of the Levett Collection and FAMM. Photo: Fraser Marr. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/05-Joan-Mitchell-When-They-Were-Gone.jpeg\")
When They Were Gone, by Joan Mitchell (1977). Oil on canvas. \u00a9 Estate of Joan Mitchell. Courtesy of the Levett Collection and FAMM. Photo: Fraser Marr.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/08-The-Osteology-Lesson.jpg\")
The Osteology Lesson of Dr. Sebastiaen Egbertsz, artist unknown (1619). Oil.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/11-Seef-Patti-Smith-Robert-Mapplethorpe.jpg\")
Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith, New York, by Norman Seeff (1969). Archival pigment print. Portland Museum of Art, promised gift from the Judy Glickman Lauder Collection.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/17-George-Washington-by-Stuart.jpg\")
George Washington (The Landsdowne Portrait), by Gilbert Stuart (1796). Oil on canvas. Bequest of William Bingham to PAFA.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/18-Georgia-OKeefe.jpg\")
Red Canna, by Georgia
O\u2019Keeffe (1923). Oil on canvas. The Vivian O. and Meyer P. Potemkin Collection. Bequest of Vivian O. Potemkin. \u00a9 2024 Georgia O\u2019Keeffe Museum\/Artists Rights
Society.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/19-Mary-Cassatt.jpg\")
Mary Cassatt, Baby on Mother\u2019s Arm, (ca. 1891), Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Bequest of Peter
Borie. Photograph by Barbara Katus.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/16-Barkley-Hendricks.jpeg\")
J. S. B. III, by Barkley L. Hendricks (1968). Oil on canvas. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richardson Dilworth. \u00a9 Barkley L. Hendricks.
Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/28-Alex-Katz.jpg\")
Paul Taylor Dance Company\u2019s Sunset, with set design by Alex Katz (1983). Photo by Johan Elbers. \u00a9 2025 Alex Katz\/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society. Courtesy of the Paul Taylor Archives and American Federation of Arts.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/21-Willie-Birch-Memories-of-the-60s.jpg\")
Memories of the 60\u2019s, by Willie Birch (1992). Papier m\u00e2ch\u00e9, mixed media. Courtesy of Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/22-Willie-Birch-Uptown-Memories.jpg\")
Uptown Memories (A Day in the Life of the Magnolia Project), by Willie Birch (1995). Painted papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 and mixed media. New Orleans Museum of Art, Gift of Frederick R. Weisman. Image Copyright of New Orleans Museum of Art \/ Photo: Roman Alokhin.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/24-Tschabala-Self-Sisters.jpg\")
Sisters, by Tschabalala Self (2021). Velvet, felt, tulle, marbleized cotton, craft paper, fabric, and digitally printed, hand-printed, and painted canvas on canvas. Collection of the Shah Garg Foundation.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/25-Crisscross-Sarah-Sze.jpg\")
Crisscross, by Sarah Sze (2021). Oil, acrylic, acrylic polymer, and ink on composite aluminum panel, with wood support. Collection of the Shah Garg Foundation.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/26-Counterculture-Rose-B.-Simpson.jpeg\")
Counterculture B, by Rose B. Simpson (2022). Carved New Mexico pine, twine, clay and acrylic. Collection of the Shah Garg Foundation.<\/p>\n