10 Must-See Museum Exhibitions in 2024
Firelei Báez, Can I Pass? Introducing the Paper Bag to the Fan Test for the Month of July (detail), 2011. © Firelei Báez. Photo by Mats Nordman. Courtesy the artist and James Cohan, New York.
Caspar David Friedrich, Frau am Fenster, 1822. Photo by Jörg P. Anders. Courtesy of Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie.
The year 2023 produced blockbuster exhibitions worldwide, from the sold-out presentation of Johannes Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum, to the varied shows on the life and legacy of Pablo Picasso that coincided with the 50th anniversary of the artist’s death. The year demonstrated a return to business as usual, as museums staged the final set of shows postponed by the pandemic and began to reflect on timely issues of climate change and Indigenous representation. As 2024 rolls around, marked by economic uncertainties, elections, and global conflicts, museums are uniquely positioned to reflect on, and offer a respite from, the prevailing concerns of the day.
From strong debut solo museum exhibitions to in-depth explorations of pivotal figures in art history, here are 10 museum shows to visit across the globe in 2024.
Anselm Kiefer Engelssturz, 2022–23. Courtesy of Palazzo Strozzi.
Bringing together new and historic paintings, sculptures, prints, and installations, “Fallen Angels” offers a comprehensive look at the influential German artist’s career. Kiefer, one of the most important figures in German art over his six-decade-long career, draws from a range of sources, including mythology, religion, philosophy, collective memory, and the history of war, in particular the impact of World War II on the cultural identity of Germany.
Often monumental in scale, his work blends figuration and abstraction to engage with the viewer in profound emotional, psychological, and physical ways. Investigating and critiquing the nationalism that bolstered the German Third Reich, Kiefer uses materials that evoke the dark, earthy side of nature (such as charcoal and clay) and industry (like heavy metals). The exhibition promises to explore the complexity of Kiefer’s work, showcasing this range of subjects and materials in the context of Palazzo Strozzi’s historic Renaissance architecture.
“Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism”
Musée d’Orsay, Paris (also traveling to National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
Mar. 24–July 14
Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant, 1872. © Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris / Studio Baraja SLB. Courtesy of Musée d’Orsay.
Celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of the avant-garde movement, “Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism” brings together nearly 130 pieces by prominent artists from the period, including Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The show traces the political and cultural circumstances that led these and other artists to go against the conventions of the academies of the time (which favored religious and historical imagery) and adopt a form of painting that depicted scenes of everyday life.
Emerging in a climate defined by industrialization and conflict (notably the Franco-German war of 1870 and the Paris Commune that followed it), Impressionism was first presented to the public in an exhibition that opened April 15, 1874. The movement ushered in a new era of art in which looser and smaller brushstrokes and en plein air painting conveyed transient aspects of artists’ environments, such as the changes in light and atmosphere. “Paris 1874” will present Impressionist works, along with artworks outside Impressionism that debuted the same year that illustrate how radical this new style was at the time.
Firelei Báez, Adjusting the Moon (The right to non-imperative clarities): Waxing, 2019–20. © Firelei Báez. Photo by Christopher Burke Studios. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, New York.
Firelei Báez, A Drexcyen chronocommons (To win the war you fought it sideways) (detail), 2019. © Firelei Báez. Photo by Phoebe d’Heurle. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, New York.
Fresh off of joining blue-chip powerhouse Hauser & Wirth, Firelei Báez is set to open her first museum survey show in 2024, at ICA Boston. In richly colored, layered work, Dominican-born Báez investigates the historical narratives and legacy of colonialism, in particular the African diaspora in the Caribbean. The exhibition offers a close look into Báez’s practice with paintings, drawings, and installations that draw inspiration from a wide range of sources, including science fiction, folklore, fantasy, anthropology, and social history.
Colors abound in Báez’s works, which often contain vibrant figures and references to geography and material culture that question power and examine gender, nationality, and race while also acting as tools both for storytelling and mythmaking. In this light, the artist rethinks the past while also creating a new image of contemporary art in the Caribbean and proposing pathways toward different futures.
Caspar David Friedrich, Das Eismeer, 1823–24. Photo by Elke Walford. Courtesy of Hamburger Kunsthalle / bpk.
Celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), “Infinite Landscapes” joins two other major German exhibitions of the Romantic landscape painter’s work. In Hamburg, Dresden, and the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, these shows examine Friedrich’s life and legacy, with each location taking a different point of entry. The Hamburger Kunsthalle will explore the artist’s portrayal of man and nature and his ongoing impact on contemporary art; in Dresden, where the artist lived for more than 40 years, the Albertinum will showcase his work within the context of his artistic influences in the city.
Meanwhile in Berlin, the Alte Nationalgalerie will highlight its own relationship with Friedrich, having rediscovered the artist in the early 20th century. Its major 1906 retrospective “Deutsche Jahrhundertausstellung” brought the artist back into recognition after having become relatively unknown upon his death. “Infinite Landscapes” will bring together nearly 60 paintings and 50 drawings, including several pairs of paintings that the artist created to explore the concepts of perspective and change. Like Hamburg and Dresden, the city of Berlin played a significant role in Friedrich’s career, staging considerable exhibitions during his life. The three cities are now home to the most important collections of Friedrich’s work.
Theaster Gates, installation view of The Listening House, 2022, at Aichi Triennale 2022. Photo by ToLoLo studio. Courtesy of Mori Mu.
Marking Theaster Gates’s first comprehensive survey in Japan, this eponymous solo show will bring together a range of works by the renowned American artist. Spanning sculpture, painting, music, performance, architecture, and design, Gates’s multifaceted practice has made him a leading figure in contemporary art. The artist is known for founding the Rebuild Foundation, his nonprofit in Chicago that assists in civic regeneration and cultural development, as well as his ongoing “Tar Paintings” series (2020–present) that considers the legacy of Black artists in abstraction. The exhibition will include new pieces made for the occasion, as well as a presentation that examines how Japanese art and culture influences his work.
With an emphasis on social practice, Gates considers the structures of urban planning, and the ways that unequal investment in African American communities impacts Black life and culture. His work aims to disrupt artistic traditions to illustrate the importance of critical discourse on issues of race and politics. At the same time, Gates celebrates Black art and culture as a form of collective determination and preservation. Within the context of Japan, the exhibition fills a gap in public awareness and understanding of Black traditions, aesthetics, and histories, introducing local audiences to Gates’s practice as a broader lens to diasporic cultures.
LaToya Ruby Frazier, Momme from the series “The Notion of Family,” 2008. © 2023 LaToya Ruby Frazier. Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery.
In “Monuments of Solidarity,” MoMA will present a range of works, including photography, text, and moving image, from the interdisciplinary artist-activist LaToya Ruby Frazier’s prolific career. Frazier’s first museum survey, the show spans over 20 years and highlights her ongoing interest in revitalizing and preserving overlooked and erased stories from America’s post-industrial era, in particular narratives of gender, race, inequality, and labor.
Social activism and storytelling are at the heart of Frazier’s practice. The exhibition will take the form of a series of original installations that bring together different bodies of work, including some that have never been shown before, and demonstrate the varied concerns the artist has addressed over the years. With a feminist lens that underscores the work of women and people of color, the show considers specific issues such as the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as well as broader, intergenerational injustices, including unequal access to healthcare and ongoing threats to human rights.
Jenny Holzer, Untitled (Selections from Truisms, Inflammatory Essays, The Living Series, The Survival Series, Under a Rock, Laments, and Child Text), 1989. © 2023 Jenny Holzer. Photo by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. Courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
Thirty-five years after Jenny Holzer’s groundbreaking retrospective installation took over the rotunda of the Guggenheim, the museum is revisiting the artist’s influential practice with “Light Line,” an expanded version of the landmark show. With electronic signs displaying scrolling text from Holzer’s decades of work with aphorisms, the 2024 version will consider the artist’s long-standing use of written word to address social concerns and encourage public engagement.
Often in the form of stream-of-consciousness ideas, Holzer’s texts underscore the relativity of truth. Described by the museum in 1989 as a “conflation of the personal and the political—in short, some of the urgent issues of American art in the 1980s,” the original presentation was hugely influential at the time. The forthcoming reimagining of the show is coming at a time when truth, community, and personal freedoms are once again at the heart of some of the major issues facing society. The 2024 exhibition will include some of Holzer’s earliest and rarely shown work alongside new text that has been generated with artificial intelligence, illustrating the artist’s continued interest in employing the latest tech innovations.
Mickalene Thomas, “All About Love”
The Broad, Los Angeles (also traveling to The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; Hayward Gallery, London)
May 25–Sep. 29
Portrait of Mickalene Thomas by Malike Sidibe. Courtesy of the Broad.
Mickalene Thomas, Portrait of Maya No. 10, 2017. © Mickalene Thomas. Courtesy of The Broad.
Mickalene Thomas is known for her vibrant depictions of confident Black women that claim space and agency, often portraying them in leisurely and domestic settings. Spanning the last two decades of Thomas’s career, “All About Love” is the artist’s first major international touring show. With over 80 pieces, the exhibition illustrates Thomas’s ongoing interest in celebrating Black female representation, as well as her range of materials and disciplines, including larger-scale mixed-media painting, immersive installation, collage, and photography.
Centered on the theme of love as a tool for healing, the show draws inspiration from the book of the same name by bell hooks. Throughout her practice, Thomas considers themes of sexuality and politics, as well as a close view of the legacy of portraiture in art history, in particular how Black bodies have traditionally been excluded. At times, she references specific artists and artworks, in particular 19th-century French paintings, to confront the systems of oppression portrayed in these works and pervasive in Western cultural narratives.
“When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting”
Kunstmuseum Basel
May 25–Oct. 27
Esiri Erheriene-Essi, The Birthday Party, 2021. Courtesy of Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Miami.
Drawing inspiration from Ava DuVernay’s 2019 Netflix series When They See Us, the group show “When We See Us” considers the legacy of figuration in painting by artists from Africa and the diaspora. DuVernay’s series focused on how young Black people are unjustly viewed as potential threats; this exhibition, curated by Tandazani Dhlakama and Koyo Kouoh of Zeitz MOCAA where it was originally shown, instead turns the lens inward to how young Black people view themselves. Now opening in 2024 at Kunstmuseum Basel, the show spans the last century and features over 200 works by 156 artists.
Highlighting the lived experiences of Black artists and their subjects, the show offers an intimate and dynamic view of Black figuration. Organized into themes such as “The Everyday,” “Joy and Revelry,” “Repose,” and “Sensuality,” the exhibition aims to consider multiple facets of daily life over the last century—from stunning portraits showing personal fashion choices to images of figures at leisure in their homes, to a crowd dancing at a concert in Kinshasa—while engaging in critical discourse on topics related to colonialism, African liberation and independence, civil rights, and 20th-century movements like Black Lives Matter. Featuring leading artists from the 1920s to today, including Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Ben Enwonwu, Jacob Lawrence, Danielle Mckinney, and Amy Sherald, the exhibition also aims to foster a greater understanding of Black perspectives in modern and contemporary art.
Francis Alÿs in collaboration with Julien Devaux and Félix Blume, Children’s Game 14, Piedra, papel o tijera, Mexico City, Mexico, 2013. Courtesy of the artist.
Marking the Mexican-based Belgian artist’s largest institutional solo show in the U.K. for over a decade, Francis Alÿs’s Barbican exhibition will bring together a range of projects that exemplify his dynamic, interdisciplinary practice. Through film, photography, painting, and performance, Alÿs work takes an intimate approach to observing and engaging with the world around us. The show will take the form of a playground of games, including the U.K. premiere of the artist’s immersive, multi-screen film series Children’s Games (1999–present), one installment of which premiered at the 2022 Venice Biennale.
Created over the last two decades as Alÿs traveled across the world, the series cuts together short clips of children playing to highlight the universal spontaneity and joy of these moments, celebrating the things we have in common despite different backgrounds and traditions. As the project has evolved over the years, the interactions shown in Alÿs’s series reveal other themes: the consequences of urbanization and the rise of social media, including the loss of interpersonal connections, all reflected through these innocent experiences of youthful play. Expanding the artist’s cross-cultural exchange, the Barbican show will include a new site-specific project to engage the local community.
