Museums in over 11 cities will headline art exhibitions created by the American Federation of Arts, with more cities to come.

The American Federation of Arts (AFA), the leader in traveling exhibitions worldwide since its founding in 1909, has announced its new line-up for the fall of 2025 through 2027. 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’s experience and understanding of the visual arts.

“The AFA’s 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,” says Pauline Forlenza, the Director and CEO of the American Federation of Arts. “Our longstanding commitment to touring art exhibitions, publishing exhibition catalogues with scholarly research, and developing educational programs is vital – now more than ever.”

These traveling museum shows will open doors to creativity for the next sixteen months to museum goers. Some of the shows include:

Abstract Expressionists: The Women

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.  •  Featuring 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.  Features 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.

The paintings of the Abstract Expressionist movement have historically been associated with male creativity. Until recently, the historical and critical reception of Abstract Expressionism has almost uniformly marginalized its women practitioners. This exhibition upends this gendered narrative, demonstrating that these women were not merely acolytes or interpreters, they were ambitious innovators all their own.

“Too often, the canon of art history has relegated women artists to supporting roles in major art movements,” says Pauline Forlenza, the Director and CEO of the AFA. “This 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,” adds Forlenza.  The 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.

Civic Virtue in Rembrandt’s Amsterdam: 17th-Century Group Portraits from the Amsterdam Museum

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. 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. Amsterdam’s economic success, however, was the result of ruthless trade wars within Europe, colonization and enslavement overseas.

• 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.  •  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.

Presence: The Photography Collection of Judy Glickman Lauder
100 photographs by 70 artists. 

Explores the concept of presence through the tenderness of portraits, the awe within landscapes, the clarity of reportage, and the spontaneity of cityscapes. 

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. Photographs can be imprinted with the totality of human experiences, and this exhibition embraces that totality, examining the deeply humanistic history of photography.

Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776–1976

Presenting more than 100 of the most acclaimed and recognizable works of American art.  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. 

Women artists participated in PAFA’s 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).

 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. 

Curated by Anna O. Marley, PhD., a scholar of American art and material culture from the colonial era to today.   

Alex Katz: Theater and Dance

The first comprehensive museum presentation of Katzʼs highly collaborative and playful work with choreographers, dancers, and members of avant-garde theater ensembles over six decades.  •  Showcases Katz’s deep and lasting influence on the history of the American performing arts.  •  Rare archival materials, major sets and paintings, and previously unexhibited sketches from more than two dozen productions.

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.  •  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’s studio.  

Provides an innovative kind of retrospective: that of an artistic sensibility.  •  Attesting to the intertwined histories of painting and stage design in Katzʼs works.

Curated by Levi Prombaum, former Katz Consulting Curator, Colby College Museum of Art.      

Willie Birch: Stories to Tell

Chronicles Birch’s unique vision of the Black American experience and examines the interconnected nature of global art forms. •  The first ever career retrospective brings together groundbreaking works from the early 1970s to the present. 

Throughout his career, the artist has explored how African traditions have been retained in music, art, and culture in America and beyond. •Birch was raised in New Orleans and trained in Europe, Baltimore, and New York. 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.   

Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection

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.    Sculpture, painting, installation, textiles, pottery, and mixed media works all converge.

 Pioneering examples of post-war abstraction —including early works by Janet Sobel, Judy Chicago, and Mary Corse — are shown alongside compositions by leading contemporary artists such as Julie Mehretu, Lorna Simpson, and Aria Dean. • Paintings and mixed media works by Christina Quarles, Tschabalala Self, and Firelei Báez blur the boundaries between abstraction and figuration.  •  Connections between the handmade and digital emerge in the various forms of piecework employed in Faith Ringgold’s quilts, Howardena Pindell’s collages, and the pixelated, hypermediated canvases made by Jacqueline Humphries and Anicka Yi. 

Works by the Freedom Quilting Bee, Françoise Grossen, and Sheila Hicks explore irregular geometries and eccentric abstractions via fabric and fiber. 

Curated by Cecilia Alemani of High Line Arts in New York City.

 Experimental Ground: Modernist Printmaking in Paris & New York at Atelier 17

The first large-scale survey of original prints made at Atelier 17 to tour the U.S. in 50 years.  •  This revolutionary printmaking workshop (1927 to 1988) was famous for its impact on the development of modern art.  

 It served as a hub of artistic and intellectual exchange — first for Surrealists in interwar Paris, and after World War II for the exploration of abstraction and other modernist styles. 

Presents works by notable artists who gained formative skills at Atelier 17, such as Joan Miró, 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.  •  Atelier 17 attracted hundreds of international artists, drawn to the radical vision of printmaking as a mode for experimentation rather than reproduction.

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. 

Since 1909, the AFA has toured more than 3,500 exhibitions that have been viewed by millions of people in museums in every U.S. state, and in Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

From the Smithsonian – “A 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’s precedent. This national nonprofit museum service organization is recognized for striving to unite American art institutions, collectors, artists, and museums.”

“Through the years, the AFA has also had an impact on patronage in the arts. During its 116-year history, the Federation’s 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. Throughout 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 – exposing viewers to new ways of thinking and expression.”

View the full list of tours at: amfedarts.org/exhibitions/current and amfedarts.org/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/