November presents a remarkable array of exhibitions spanning continents and artistic disciplines, featuring everything from Gerhard Richter's sweeping retrospective in Paris to Ruth Asawa's comprehensive survey in San Francisco. These shows demonstrate how contemporary artists transform process into poetry while exploring the intersections of art, design, and architecture through material and memory.

Among the month's most significant offerings, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presents "KAWS: FAMILY," the artist's first major West Coast museum exhibition spanning three decades of work from November 15, 2025, through May 3, 2026. The show features paintings, drawings, sculptures, and interventions including ad takeovers, collaborations, and toys that showcase KAWS's evolving visual language built around recurring figures and reimagined pop imagery. At the exhibition's center stands "FAMILY" (2021), a monumental bronze sculpture gathering KAWS's well-known characters in gestures of tenderness and fragility that mirror human experiences of care and connection.

In Paris, Lafayette Anticipations hosts Meriem Bennani's "Sole Crushing" through February 8, 2026, transforming the foundation into a vast resonant instrument with a multi-floor sound installation featuring more than two hundred flip-flops performing a composition that blends orchestral harmony with collective noise energy. This reimagined version from its 2024-25 Fondazione Prada presentation includes a new soundtrack by Reda Senhaji (Cheb Runner) and site-specific design attuned to Lafayette Anticipations' architecture.

Architecture takes center stage at Kraków's Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, where "Shigeru Ban: Architecture and Social Contributions" runs until May 3, 2026. The exhibition showcases the Pritzker Prize-winning architect's inventive use of materials, especially wood and cardboard, across diverse contexts from private residences to humanitarian crisis response projects. Original models from Japan, France, and Ukraine, along with reconstructions, drawings, photographs, and diagrams illuminate Ban's balance of structural experimentation, spatial clarity, and social purpose.

The Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth presents "Paola Pivi: I Don't Like It, I Love It" from November 8, 2025, through April 26, 2026, transforming the gallery's Brutalist spaces into a vivid, imaginative world where humor meets gravity. Known for surreal scenarios featuring feathered polar bears, inverted airplanes, and zebras in snow, Pivi explores coexistence, empathy, and environmental fragility through new commissions including a giant inflatable comic cell created with Big Nate creator Lincoln Peirce.

Celebrating its tenth anniversary, Galerie Philia presents "STRATES" until November 30, 2025, staged across two Brutalist icons in Noisy-le-Grand: Jacques Kalisz's Mont d'Est parking structure and Ricardo Bofill's Espaces Abraxas. The exhibition brings together one emblematic work from each Philia artist, retracing a decade of dialogue between art, design, and architecture while exploring how memory and projection shape both objects and place.

London's Design Museum offers unprecedented access to Wes Anderson's creative process in "Wes Anderson: The Archives" from November 21, 2025, through July 26, 2026. For the first time in Britain, more than 600 objects including storyboards, Polaroids, puppets, costumes, and miniature sets trace over thirty years of the filmmaker's evolution. Highlights include the pink model of The Grand Budapest Hotel, vending machines from Asteroid City, Margot Tenenbaum's FENDI fur coat, and stop-motion puppets from Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Photography enthusiasts can explore Juergen Teller's work at the Onassis Foundation's new Athens space in "you are invited," running until December 30, 2025. The inaugural exhibition presents photographs, videos, and previously unseen images from the 1990s to today, tracing Teller's distinctive blend of intimacy and irony across portraits of figures like Iggy Pop, Kate Moss, and Charlotte Rampling.

Tokyo's 21_21 Design Sight presents "Learning from Design Maestros" from November 21, 2025, through March 8, 2026, reflecting on six visionary figures whose ideas continue shaping design thinking: Bruno Munari, Max Bill, Achille Castiglioni, Otl Aicher, Enzo Mari, and Dieter Rams. Through films, archival materials, and key works, the exhibition reveals how these designers fused creativity, teaching, and social awareness to redefine their disciplines.

New York galleries feature compelling contemporary work, with Gagosian presenting Jeff Koons's "Porcelain Series" from November 13, 2025, through February 28, 2026. The first show devoted entirely to this body of work features new sculptures and paintings that transform familiar forms into radiant, reflective icons exploring beauty, desire, and cultural memory through mirror-polished stainless steel and layered paintings bridging centuries of visual tradition.

Meanwhile, Friedman Benda showcases Adam Pendleton's "Who Owns Geometry Anyway?" from November 7 through December 19, 2025, marking the artist's first furniture exploration. Known for weaving together expressionism, minimalism, and conceptual rigor, Pendleton reimagines geometry through functional objects in wood, onyx, and granite that merge precision with poetics.

The Museum of Modern Art presents "Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective" until February 7, 2026, gathering nearly 300 works across mediums including wire and bronze sculptures, drawings, prints, and public commissions. The exhibition traces the artist's six-decade fascination with material transformation and spatial tension, honoring her vision of finding infinite variation in the simplest means.

International exhibitions explore broader cultural themes, with São Paulo's MASP presenting "Histories of Ecology" until February 1, 2026, coinciding with Brazil hosting COP30 in Belém. Featuring works by 116 artists, many from the Global South, the exhibition examines how colonialism, environmental racism, and capitalism have shaped contemporary ecological realities while foregrounding resilience and interconnectedness.

Milan's ADI Design Museum hosts "Alchimia: The Revolution of Italian Design" from November 11, 2025, through January 22, 2026, the first comprehensive retrospective of the Milanese collective founded by Alessandro and Adriana Guerriero in 1976. Featuring over 150 works from furniture and objects to paintings and films, the exhibition traces Alchimia's radical redefinition of design as a space for irony, storytelling, and visionary thought.

Additional notable exhibitions include Los Angeles's Petersen Automotive Museum's "Performance and Prestige: A History of Aston Martin" running through October 2026, the Fondation Louis Vuitton's comprehensive Gerhard Richter retrospective with 275 works spanning six decades until March 2, 2026, and Rotterdam's Nieuwe Instituut's "FUNGI: Anarchist Designers" from November 21, 2025, through August 9, 2026, reimagining mushrooms as autonomous collaborators in world-shaping.

These exhibitions collectively demonstrate the global art world's continued exploration of cross-disciplinary boundaries, inviting visitors to experience how contemporary artists and designers address themes ranging from cultural memory and environmental consciousness to technological innovation and social responsibility. The diverse geographic spread from San Francisco to São Paulo, Tokyo to Athens, reflects the international dialogue shaping today's creative landscape.