We are coming to understand that art history rarely moves in a straight line. Whereas the canon was once seen in the West as a series of successive movements, now it is recognized as a cascade of different artists working in far-flung locales, often in divergent ways.

“We see now that the whole picture is so much broader and more complex and complicated,” Anke Kempkes, curator of a massive survey called “Queer Modernism” at the K20 museum in Düsseldorf, told Artsy earlier this year. This line of thinking was also apparent in a range of other museum shows held in 2025. These exhibitions, whether group surveys or retrospectives, proved that a full view of recent art history is still coming into focus.

Along the way, many curators, critics, and historians—and even dealers, to a lesser degree—have become involved in adding new figures to the canon. The trend continued this year as museums turned over their galleries to Australian Indigenous art, under-recognized female modernists, and lesser-shown Old Masters.

Below is a look at 10 artists who finally got their due in 2025.