When Art Basel Paris was first announced, skeptics predicted it would cannibalize its Swiss progenitor. Now in its fourth edition at the Grand Palais (October 24–26, 2025), the fair has settled into its own confident rhythm—one that complements rather than competes with Basel proper. Its distinguishing quality? The gargantuan blockbuster shows that seem to proliferate each year across the city’s dense network of private foundations and public institutions. If it’s a spectacle you’re after, Paris in October delivers.
Below, the nine shows, exhibits, and installations you won’t want to miss:
Alex Da Corte, “Kermit the Frog, Even” at Place Vendôme
These days, it seems like Inflatable frogs are everywhere in the news, but there is one amphibian in particular making headlines this week, thanks to Alex Da Corte. The artist has transformed Place Vendôme with a parade-sized Kermit the Frog inflatable titled “Kermit the Frog, Even.” Tethered to the ground face down in what appears to be a kind of mourning or prayer posture, Da Corte’s Kermit revives a 1991 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day meltdown where the iconic frog deflated in front of a live TV audience. The uncanny perspicacity of this work, at this moment, can not be undersold.
Meg Webster, “Minimal,” at Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection
When one thinks of the word minimalism, it rarely conjures a scent, but Dia Director Jessica Morgan’s epic new exhibition at the Pinault Collection at Bourse de Commerce challenges everything we think we know about the term and its relationship to the senses. So, don’t be surprised if you smell Meg Webster’s works before you see them. Morgan has installed a suite of the New York–based artist’s work under the Bourse’s iconic domed gallery, including a towering wall of beeswax and a wreath of grass—the sweetness of which follows you through this airtight polemic.
Melvin Edwards Retrospective at Palais de Tokyo
For those unfamiliar with the work of Melvin Edwards, a new Palais de Tokyo retrospective, curated by Naomi Beckwith, provides an unprecedented crash course in the artist’s singular material genius. Edwards never adds more than he must to make you feel everything. Spanning six decades of welded steel, chain, and barbed wire, the exhibition reveals how Edwards has turned the detritus of industry into a language of remembrance and resistance.
Meriem Bennani, “Sole Crushing,” at Lafayette Anticipations
The peeled smack of a flip-flop is the unofficial ringtone of the summer, a percussion beating out sunny days step by step. New York–based artist Meriem Bennani has employed this singular sound to great effect with an exuberant installation that transforms the plastic sandal into a functioning symphony. Bennani’s inanimate band will play all winter long in the capacious halls of Lafayette Anticipations or until the straps give out.
Gerhard Richter Retrospective at Fondation Louis Vuitton
Every year, the Fondation Louis Vuitton treats the city to at least one pilgrimage-worthy exhibition, and this year’s blockbuster Gerhard Richter will not disappoint the disciples. The show arrives as a robust homage to the depths and shallows of Richter’s oeuvre, fleshing out the painter’s idiosyncratic relationship to photography past and present. All the hits are there: the candlesticks, the nude on the stairs, the infinite rainbow scrapes, and the lesser-known connective tissue that ties each Richter masterpiece to the last.
Albert Oehlen, “Endless Summer,” at Max Hetzler
It seems fitting, somehow, that if Gerhard Richter is having a big Paris moment, Albert Oehlen has one too. It arrives in the form of a three-part show stretching from the Fagan all the way across two Max Hetzler locations. The show’s title, “Endless Summer,” alludes to the work’s point of departure: the bather in portraiture. Those initiated in the alphabet of Oehlen will see that the new body of work draws upon themes he’s been chipping away at since the 1980s.
Precious Okoyomon at Mendes Wood DM
After a monumental show at Kunsthaus Bregenz last spring, Precious Okoyomon returned to Europe, teddy bears in tow, for her first Paris exhibition with her new gallery, Mendes Wood DM. Titled “It’s important to have ur fangs out at the end of the world,” the show extends the New York–based artist’s vocabulary of fantasy ecology, where butterflies and cartoon bears coexist in white-cube harmony. Yet beneath the sweetness lies something feral and uneasy—an undercurrent of darkness and desire that complicates all that surface-level charm.
Kai Althoff at Tramps
Across town, the London-based gallery Tramps has planted its flag in Paris. They’re kicking things off with a rare presentation by painter Kai Althoff—a pairing that, for those in the know, feels like a kind of eclipse. The cool here isn’t cultivated; it’s innate. The new space is as charming and charactered as past Tramps outposts, and Althoff meets the architecture with his magpie intuition and delicate paintings. Though the show sits at the fringe of the fair circuit, it’s the one you’ll carry with you long after if you make the trek.
Augustas Serapinas, “Mudmen,” at Dover Street Market
If you like your art with a side of fashion, don’t miss a trip to Dover Street Market’s Paris HQ, where Rier founder Andreas Steiner has tapped Lithuanian artist Augustas Serapinas to create an installation in which to situate the newest garments from his Tyrolean-inspired line. Serapinas answered the call with his own take on the snowman, made from balls of hay. As in the sculptor’s past works, there is a living and decaying component to the piece that brings rural life into the white cube—or, in this case, turns the concept store into one.
Source: W Magazine
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