by This year, American museums are bringing their A-game to diversity and innovation, exploring art movements, less famous creators, and forms of expression. Here’s a look at a series of standout exhibitions that move away from the tried and true masters to offer museum visitors something closer to the true breadth of creativity that makes art such a vital and necessary part of our world.
Related: Ch-ch-ch-changes! The artists who prove that it is never too late to try something new
Harold Cohen: AARON
With the sudden emergence of ChatGPT in 2023, AI-assisted creation quickly became a hot and extremely divisive topic. Harold Cohen: The Whitney’s AARON is a timely exposé of how we have used, and continue to use, machines to advance our art. Focusing on AARON, an AI art software that has been used since the 1960s, the exhibition showcases art assisted by AARON and delves into how the software works. The show promises to offer new perspectives on a debate that will likely persist for quite some time.
Zanele Muholi: Look at me
Since the early 2000s, South African “visual activist” Zanele Muholi has used his camera to document the marginalization and ongoing search for representation of LGBTQ+ people across his home country. Opening in January at SF MoMA, this “first major exhibition of Muholi’s work on the West Coast” gives audiences the opportunity to immerse themselves in Muholi’s beautiful and challenging looks at blackness and queer identities, as both confront oppression and find paths to resilience.
Lee Mingwei: Care rituals
Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei has built his artistic practice through installations that invite audiences to participate in aesthetic experiences that offer a space to contemplate relationships and build connections with strangers. Starting in February, the deYoung Museum in San Francisco will host an exhibition of Mingwei’s installations. They include The Letter Writing Project, where museum visitors can take a moment to write a letter to a friend they’ve been thinking about, as well as Guernica in Sand, in which one of Picasso’s best-known works is reinterpreted in sand, and Then it is erased little by little.
Käthe Kollwitz
Known for her austere, highly expressionistic works depicting the hardships of life, German artist Käthe Kollwitz’s art is invigorating, distinctive and transcendent. This spring, MoMA promises “the first major retrospective dedicated to Kollwitz in a New York museum,” as well as the largest American exhibition of Kollwitz’s art in decades. This major exhibition will offer pieces from collections around the world and some of the artist’s most iconic pieces, giving the public a thought-provoking display of the traumas of political and social upheaval in a society gone tragically wrong.
Creating Aloha
This spring, the Honolulu Museum of Art invites the public to reflect on what aloha means and how it has translated into fashion, led by the world-famous aloha shirt. Aloha, often used as a greeting in Hawaii, has much deeper cultural implications, stemming from the beliefs of native Hawaiian societies; It was even the subject of a 1986 law requiring state officials to treat people with compassion and mercy. This exhibition traces the beginnings of aloha fashion in the 1930s and then shows how it has evolved over the decades, drawing inspiration from places like Japan and China, and always projecting a sense of Hawaiian identity and spirit.
Christina Ramberg: a retrospective
The fine line between fashion and fetish is negotiated in the art of Christina Ramberg, where she examined her fascination and repulsion with the ways society forces women to modify, contort and transform their bodies. This spring, the Art Institute of Chicago will draw attention to the artist “best known for her stylized paintings of fragmented female bodies” with the first retrospective of her work in decades. With around 100 works drawn from numerous collections, this is a valuable look at and an underrated artist.
Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art
This exciting exhibit at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in northern Arkansas delves into the Indian Space Painters movement, a group of abstract artists who sought to combine Native American motifs with European modernism to create a national Indian style. Space Makers, opening in the spring, promises to offer new narratives and new ways of looking at the history of American art with these creative forces in mind.
Simone Leigh
Fresh from being named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2023, Black artist Simone Leigh is hosting a major career retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, beginning in May 2024. This exhibition collects 20 years of the internationally acclaimed artist’s work. , giving the public the opportunity to see the trajectory of a creator who has reflected on issues related to blackness and femininity. Leigh is known for embracing artistic practices from across the African diaspora, as well as for her commentary on contemporary events, such as the tragic death of Esmin Elizabeth Green, a black woman who sat in the waiting room of a Brooklyn hospital for 24 hours. . finally dying of blood clots
Tiff Massey: 7 miles + Livernois
Detroit artist Tiff Massey works primarily in metal, drawing heavily on hip-hop culture, the Detroit area, and the African diaspora to create installations, sculptures, and jewelry that range in size from the wearable to the architectural. With 7 Mile + Livernois, the Detroit Institute of Art promises the emerging artist’s “most ambitious museum installation to date,” with new works commissioned especially for this exhibition.
Finally, here are a few more special mentions of upcoming featured exhibitions. The Dallas Museum of Art is tapping into its funds to mount a major exhibition covering the “Impressionist Revolution” starting in February. K-pop invades Boston starting in March, when the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston presents a comprehensive look at “hallyu,” also known as the Korean Wave. In June, the Art Institute Chicago offers a look at the New York cityscape through the eyes of Georgia O’Keeffe. Starting this fall, the Guggenheim delves into the heyday of the Orphist abstract art movement in interwar Paris.
