Best of 2025: Top 10 Art Installations Featured on My Modern Met

Best of 2025: Top 10 Art Installations Featured on My Modern Met

From monumental sculptures in city squares to immersive environments in deserts and oceans, the top art installations of 2025 reveal how creativity continues to shape our world. This year, artists expanded their creative boundaries, embracing technology, sustainability, and collective participation. From poetic reflections on light to powerful acts of environmental activism, these installations ask us not just to look, but to listen, feel, and take action.

Since 2013, My Modern Met has chronicled the evolution of installation art, documenting how each year’s highlights reflect the era’s most pressing themes. In 2025, the dialogue between humanity, nature, and technology reached new heights. Artists used light as a metaphor, AI as a collaborator, and architecture as a stage. Many of these works incorporated public participation, creating moments of artistic connection that transcended the gallery space in a trend that continued from last year’s best installations.

At their core, each of these 10 installations carried a strong conceptual thread, whether confronting the climate crisis, exploring the rhythm of everyday life, or transforming familiar materials into new perspectives on connection.

Scroll down to discover the installations that defined 2025 and stay tuned for more of our Best of 2025 series on My Modern Met.

Here are the top 10 art installations that defined 2025.

BUTCHERED by Anish Kapoor

Photo: courtesy of Greenpeace

Renowned artist Anish Kapoor partnered with Greenpeace to create a memorable environmental statement in the North Sea. Installed on the side of an active Shell gas platform, BUTCHERED features a 39-by-26-foot canvas drenched in a mixture of seawater, beetroot powder, and food-based dye—spilling a red trail into the ocean as a striking protest against fossil fuel exploitation.

“I wanted to make something visual, physical, visceral to reflect the butchery they are inflicting on our planet,” Kapoor explained. The installation turned a site of extraction into one of confrontation, urging corporations and governments alike to reckon with their environmental legacy.

clinamen by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot 

Photo: courtesy of Bourse de Commerce—Pinault Collection

Within the rotunda of Paris’ Bourse de Commerce, artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot invited visitors into a meditative world of sound. The installation clinamen featured an 18-meter circular pool filled with gently drifting porcelain bowls whose random collisions created delicate, melodic tones.

Inspired by ancient Epicurean physics, the work reflected on the unpredictable motion of atoms, and by extension, life itself. “If in the moment before two porcelain bowls collide you try to anticipate the resulting note or timbre,” the artist explained, “most of the time your expectation will be foiled by the sound of the collision.” The installation’s quiet harmonies transformed chance into symphony.

To Breathe – Coachella Valley by Kimsooja

Photo: courtesy of Desert X

For Desert X 2025, Korean artist Kimsooja unveiled To Breathe – Coachella Valley, an iridescent spiral of diffraction film that shimmered like a mirage against California’s desert landscape. Inspired by traditional Korean bottari textiles, the installation became a “bottari of light,” reflecting the sun’s spectrum in waves of pink, green, and gold.

“The film acts as a transparent textile,” Kimsooja explained, “enveloping the architecture in light.” Mirroring her parallel work in Saudi Arabia’s AlUla desert, the piece linked continents through shared reflection, becoming an ephemeral bridge between light, culture, and contemplation.

Library of Light by Es Devlin

Photo: Monica Spezia, courtesy of Salone del Mobile

In the courtyard of Milan’s Pinacoteca di Brera, artist Es Devlin erected a rotating 60-foot library for Salone del Mobile 2025. Containing 3,200 illuminated books, Library of Light celebrated the act of learning as a communal, luminous exchange.

“I have always experienced libraries as silently, intensely vibrant places where minds and imaginations soar,” Devlin said. By day, mirrors scattered sunlight across historic sculptures; by night, LED screens projected texts and readings by figures such as Benedict Cumberbatch. The installation, supported by bookseller Feltrinelli, became a living network of knowledge where people could participate in the action. Dynamic, radiant, and ever-expanding, the installation sparked a series of pieces that unfolded at Miami Art Week.

A week at the knees by Alex Chinneck

Photo: Charles Emerson, courtesy of Alex Chinneck

At Clerkenwell Design Week in London, Alex Chinneck once again defied architectural logic with A Week at the Knees, a four-story brick facade that appeared to bend and “sit down.” The surreal, whimsical structure mirrored surrounding Georgian houses, yet undulated as though it was melting.

Constructed from 7,000 bricks and reinforced with steel salvaged from the former U.S. Embassy, the 12.6-ton sculpture was both technically impressive and playfully absurd. By turning a static building into a sculpture waiting to be explored, Chinneck invited the public to see the poetry hidden in everyday architecture.

CHOIR by Katharina Grosse

Photo: Jens Ziehe, courtesy of the artist (c) VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025

For the 55th edition of Art Basel, German artist Katharina Grosse transformed the Messeplatz into a vast expanse of color. CHOIR stretched across more than 5,000 square meters (about 53,820 square feet), saturating Herzog & de Meuron’s architecture in sweeping sprays of white and magenta. Magenta was a purposeful choice, as it’s the most visible hue to the human eye.

Color grabs your attention and alters how you relate to your surroundings,” Grosse explains. Ephemeral and monumental, CHOIR redefined public space as a fleeting act of freedom, contrasting the commercial nature of the art fair with the transient beauty of pure expression.

Nosso Barco Tambor Terra by Ernesto Neto 

Photo: © GrandPalaisRmn 2025 / Photo Didier Plowy, courtesy of Grand Palais

Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto filled the Grand Palais with an immense crocheted “forest” woven from bark, earth, and spices. Nosso Barco Tambor Terra, created in partnership with Lisbon’s MAAT, explores humanity’s bond with nature and rhythm.

Visitors walked barefoot across earthen floors and played woven instruments incorporated into the structure. The result was a multi-sensory dialogue on community, culture, and ecology. Through scent, sound, and touch, Neto created a spiritual refuge within the heart of Paris.

Harmony in Light by HYBYCOZO

Photo: courtesy of HYBYCOZO

In Mason City, Iowa,  HYBYCOZO unveiled Harmony in Light, a permanent installation of 20 stainless steel pillars that glow from within. Inspired by the city’s musical and architectural legacy, the work married Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School geometry with abstract sound waves carved into each column.

“The final design balances geometry and fluidity, with perforated patterns that glow from within, creating a visual rhythm that feels musical in itself,” the artists shared. As visitors walked among the towers, light shifted and rhythms changed, evoking the flow of melody through space. Warm and inviting, Harmony in Light stood as a beacon of unity between art, architecture, and community.

The Thinker’s Burden by Benjamin Von Wong

Photo: ©️Von Wong Productions 2025 – Global Plastics Treaty INC 5.2 – The Thinker’s Burden / Le Fardeau du Penseur

At the United Nations’ Plastic Treaty negotiations in Geneva, artist Benjamin Von Wong unveiled The Thinker’s Burden, a towering 20-foot remix of Rodin’s iconic sculpture. Constructed from recycled plastic waste, the piece slowly accumulated layers of debris throughout the negotiations, thus symbolizing the growing weight of inaction on global health.

By reimagining The Thinker cradling a baby amid spiraling strands of DNA, Von Wong visualized humanity’s responsibility to future generations. His installation became a rallying symbol for treaty advocates and a poignant reminder that microplastics are not just environmental hazards but also threats to our own health.

The Whispering Mountains by ENESS

Photo: Julian Aspe, courtesy of ENESS

At the foot of The Remarkables in Queenstown, Australian art collective ENESS brought to life a family of glowing, AI-infused “oracles.” The Whispering Mountains awoke as visitors approached, whispering reflective, often mischievous musings generated by artificial intelligence.

Equal parts mystical and unsettling, the installation blurred boundaries between the natural and digital worlds. AI is the first technology in human history capable of writing its own story, ENESS noted, prompting visitors to question the future of creativity and wisdom itself.

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READ: Best of 2025: Top 10 Art Installations Featured on My Modern Met