This year, American museums bring their A-game when it comes to diversity and innovation, exploring artist movements, less celebrated creators and forms of expression. Here’s a look at some standout exhibitions that depart from the tried-and-true masters and offer museumgoers something closer to the true breadth of creativity that makes art such a vital and necessary part of our world.
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Harold Cohen: AARON
With the sudden rise of ChatGPT in 2023, AI-assisted creation quickly became a popular – and extremely divisive – topic. The Whitney’s Harold Cohen: AARON is a timely exhibition of how we have used and continue to use machines to fuel our art. Centered around AARON, AI art software that has been used since the 1960s, the exhibition features AARON-enabled art and explores how the software works. The show promises to offer new perspectives on a debate that will likely continue for some time.
Zanele Muholi: Look at me
Since the early 2000s, South African ‘visual activist’ Zanele Muholi has used their camera to document the marginalization and ongoing quest for representation of LGBTQ+ individuals in their home country. Opening in January at SF MoMA, this “first major exhibition of Muholi’s work on the West Coast” will give audiences the opportunity to immerse themselves in Muholi’s beautiful and provocative looks at blackness and queer identities as they confront both with oppression as finding paths of resilience.
Lee Mingwei: Care rituals
Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei has built his artistic practice through installations that invite audiences to engage in aesthetic experiences that provide space to reflect on relationships and build connections with strangers. Starting in February, the deYoung Museum in San Francisco will host an exhibition of Mingwei’s installations. These include The Letter Writing Project, where museum visitors can take a moment to write a letter to a friend they are thinking of, and Guernica in Sand, in which one of Picasso’s best-known works is reinterpreted in sand, and then piecemeal erased a bit.
Kathe Kollwitz
Known for her stark, highly expressionistic works depicting the hardships of life, the art of German artist Käthe Kollwitz is invigorating, unmistakable and transcendent. This spring, MoMA promises “the first major retrospective devoted to Kollwitz in a New York museum,” as well as the largest U.S. exhibition of Kollwitz’s art in decades. This major show features pieces from collections around the world and some of the artist’s most iconic pieces, giving audiences an invigorating showcase of the trauma of political and social upheaval in a society gone tragically wrong.
Making Aloha
This spring, the Honolulu Museum of Art invites the public to reflect on what aloha stands for and how it has been translated into fashion, led by the globally famous aloha shirt. Aloha is often used as a greeting in Hawaii and has much deeper cultural implications, which stem from the beliefs of native Hawaiian societies. It was even the subject of a 1986 law that required state officials to treat individuals with compassion and mercy. This exhibition traces the beginnings of aloha fashion in the 1930s and then shows how it has developed over the decades, influenced by places like Japan and China, always projecting a sense of Hawaiian identity and ethos .
Christina Ramberg: a retrospective
The fine line between fashion and fetish is traversed in the art of Christina Ramberg, where she explores her fascination and revulsion with the ways in which society forces women to alter, contort, or otherwise transform their bodies. In the spring, the Art Institute of Chicago will bring welcome attention to the artist “best known for her stylized paintings of fragmented female bodies,” with the first retrospective of her work in decades. With approximately 100 works from numerous collections, this is a valuable presence and an underrated artist.
Space Makers: Indigenous Expression and a New American Art
This exciting exhibition 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 indigenous style. Opening in the spring, Space Makers promises to offer new stories and new ways of looking at the history of American art by considering these creative forces.
Simone Leigh
Fresh from being named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2023, black artist Simone Leigh will receive a major career retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art starting in May 2024. This show collects 20 years of the internationally acclaimed artist’s work. , giving audiences a chance to see the journey of a creator who has reflected on questions surrounding blackness and femininity. Leigh is known for adopting 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 spent 24 hours in the waiting room of a Brooklyn hospital. eventually dying from blood clots
Tiff Massey: 7 miles + Liverpool
Detroit artist Tiff Massey works primarily in metal, drawing heavily from hip-hop culture, the Detroit area, and the African diaspora to create installations, sculptures, and jewelry ranging in size from wearable to architectural. With 7 Mile + Livernois, the Detroit Institute of Art promises the emerging artist’s “most ambitious museum installation to date,” with new work specially commissioned for this exhibition.
Finally, here are some special mentions of important upcoming exhibitions. The Dallas Art Museum is using its assets to stage a major exhibition on the “Impressionist Revolution” starting in February. K-pop invades Boston starting in March, as the Museum of Fine Arts Boston takes a comprehensive look at “hallyu,” also known as the Korean Wave. In June, Art Institute Chicago offers a look at the New York cityscape through the eyes of Georgia O’Keeffe. In the fall, the Guggenheim delves deep into the heyday of the abstract art movement Orphism in Paris between the world wars.