Art & Exhibitions

In the two years that Curt Bloch spent hiding from the Nazis in the attic of a house in the Netherlands, he launched a weekly satirical magazine filled with photomontages and poems about his own experiences, as well as wider political developments in the outside world. All 95 issues of Het Onderwater Cabaret (The Underwater Cabaret) will be the subject of a free exhibition at the Jewish Museum Berlin from February 9 through May 26, 2024.
The Dutch term onderwater translates to underwater, but is also often used to mean that someone has gone into hiding. The handmade publication took aim at the Nazis, in particular Joseph Goebbels. In one poem about the notorious propagandist, he advised: “If he writes straight, read it crooked. If he writes crooked, read it straight.”
Curt Bloch. Photo: Jewish Museum Berlin, gift of Lide Schattenkerk.
“The overwhelming majority of writings that were created in hiding were destroyed,” the exhibition’s curator Aubrey Pomerance told the New York Times. “If they weren’t, they’ve come to the public attention before now. So, it’s tremendously exciting.”
Born in the western German city of Dortmund in 1908, Bloch’s was working as a legal clerk before his life changed forever at the age of 24. A sharp rise in antisemitism after Hitler came to power in 1933 forced Bloch to flee across the northern border into the Netherlands. In 1940, the Nazis invaded and Bloch moved to the small city of Enschede near the German border.
Curt Bloch, Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover from 16.09.1945. Het Onderwater Cabaret 30 Aug 1943; Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Blochʼs family.
Bloch would escape deportation thanks to the heroic efforts of Leendert Overduin, a pastor for the Dutch Reformed Church who set up Group Overduin to help at least 1,000 Jewish people hide from the Nazis. In April 1943, the organization installed Bloch in the home of a couple, Bertus and Aleida Menneken, and he shared their tiny attic with another German-Jewish couple, Bruno Löwenberg and Karola Wolf. Group Overduin would continue to protect Bloch and his companions, supplying them with food and, unusually, the printed materials, glue, pens, and paper necessary to run his publication.
Curt Bloch, Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover from 30.08.1945. Het Onderwater Cabaret 30 Aug 1943; Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Blochʼs family.
Though Bloch made one copy of each issue of Het Onderwater Cabaret, these were small enough to slip into a pocket and were passed around, possibly to other members of Group Overduin. Luckily, all 95 booklets were eventually returned and Bloch was able to take them home after the liberation in 1945. He soon met fellow Holocaust survivor Ruth Kan, and the couple emigrated to New York where they set up a business selling European antiques.
Curt Bloch, Het Onderwater Cabaret, Magazine cover from 18.12.1945. Het Onderwater Cabaret 30 Aug 1943; Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Blochʼs family.
Meanwhile, the magazines remained family heirlooms collecting dust on a shelf until Bloch’s granddaughter Lucy decided to make them the subject of her own research. Her efforts to promote the magazine would lead to the forthcoming exhibition, “‘My Verses Are Like Dynamite’: Curt Bloch’s Het Onderwater Cabaret,” in Berlin and an accompanying book The Underwater Cabaret: The Satirical Resistance of Curt Bloch by Gerard Groeneveld. German, Dutch and English versions of Bloch’s poems will also be made available online on a dedicated website launched by Bloch’s daughter Simone Bloch.

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The great Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli is best known for painted works such as Primavera (c. 1477–82) and The Birth of Venus (c. 1485–86), which hang in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, but a new show at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor, one of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, celebrates the artist’s drawings. “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” is the first-ever exhibition dedicated to his works in the medium.
The exhibition includes more than 60 artworks from 42 institutions, with 27 drawings on display. They come from institutions like the Uffizi as well as Paris’s Louvre Museum and the National Gallery in London. Many of these works rarely travel, and they temporarily turn the Bay Area into a remarkable showcase for the Renaissance master’s output.
Botticelli—born Alessandro Filipepi in 1445—ran his own large workshop in Florence after studying under the master Fra Filippo Lippi from around the age of 15. After his training, Botticelli developed a style which harked back to the artistic ideals of classical antiquity, and he is known for his individualized portraits. His group portraits often included real contemporary figures and self-portraits, the most famous of which can be seen in his The Adoration of the Magi (c. 1475).
In a short documentary produced by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Furio Rinaldi, the exhibition’s curator, explains the appeal of drawings as a route to a more intimate understanding of the Old Masters: “Most of these Old Masters are perceived as very remote and unapproachable, but through their drawings we can have a much more direct and fresh understanding on how they were thinking, how they were designing, how they were articulating their memorable compositions.”
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The exhibition examines the role preparatory drawing played in Botticelli’s practice, and pairs completed works with the initial drawings for them. His world-renowned Adoration of the Magi hangs alongside fragments of preparatory drawings on linen.
The exhibition also features works recently attributed to the Italian Renaissance master. These include preparatory drawings for The Cestello Annunciation (1489), from the Uffizi Gallery; Adoration of the Magi from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist (c. 1468–70), from the Louvre Museum. The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist is hung next to the newly attributed drawing.
Rinaldi has said that the new attributions “will help lay the groundwork for a fuller understanding of Botticelli’s artistic output and the field of Italian Renaissance art at large.”
“Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” is on view at the Legion of Honor, 100 34th Avenue, San Francisco, through February 11, 2024. See more works from the show below.
Sandro Botticelli, La Bella Simonetta (ca. 1485). Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum.
Installation view of “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” at Legion of Honor, San Francisco. Photo by Gary Sexton, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Installation view of “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” at Legion of Honor, San Francisco. Photo by Gary Sexton, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Sandro Botticelli, Fragment of Adoration of the Magi (ca. 1500). Photo courtesy of Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge / Art Resource, NY.
Sandro Botticelli, The Devout Jews at Pentecost (ca. 1505). Photo by Wolfgang Fuhrmannek, courtesy of Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt.
Sandro Botticelli, The Annunciation (ca. 1490–95). Courtesy Glasgow Museums.
Sandro Botticelli, The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist (Madonna of the Rose Garden) (ca. 1468). © RMN-Grand Palais. Photo Tony Querrec.
Installation view of “Botticelli: Rhythm of the Line” at Legion of Honor, San Francisco. Photo by Drew Altizer, courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

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Nicole Eisenman’s first major retrospective in the U.K., at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, contains over 100 works spanning some 30 years, although its impressive scope feels even wider, stretching across the history of art. Take a painting like Coping (2008), which is filled with individual vignettes in a manner reminiscent of Breughel, or Fishing (2000), where the symmetrical composition and arrangement of figures calls to mind a High Renaissance altarpiece. Elsewhere, Sloppy Bar Room Kiss (2011) has the same painterly, expressionistic approach to everyday modern life that was popularized by artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Brooklyn-based French-American painter and sculptor is adverse to giving interviews or offering any kind of oversimplifying explanations for these scenes, which can often be monumental in size and littered with references. What comes through clearly enough in the work, however, is her boldly biting yet always humorous critiques of contemporary socio-political issues including identity, war, economic downturn, and technology.
Throughout the show are scenes that celebrate lesbian life and love in downtown bars, parks, pools and domestic settings, but even a moment of intimacy shared in a work like Morning Studio (2016) contains a darker undercurrent. Eisenman uses a prominent computer screen to draw attention to the ways in which the prevalence of technology interferes with our everyday lives. She may often quote the past, but Eisenman’s keen observational eye always pulls these references back into the present.
Sculptural heads highly typical of Eisenman’s practice appear throughout the show, often appearing in large assortments of jumbled objects. Site-specific murals made by the artist between 1992 and 2003, but since destroyed, have also been revived for the first time thanks to a new animation film produced in collaboration with fellow artist Ryan McNamara.
“Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” runs through January 14, 2024. Check out more works from the show below.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
Nicole Eisenman, Beer Garden with Ulrike and Celeste (2009). Photo: Bryan Conley, courtesy Hall Art Foundation.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
Nicole Eisenman, Sloppy Bar Room Kiss (2011). Photo: Robert Wedemeyer, courtesy of the artist and Vielmetter Los Angeles.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
Nicole Eisenman, Econ Prof (2019). Photo courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
Nicole Eisenmann, Morning Studio (2016). Photo courtesy the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
Nicole Eisenman, Fishing (2000). Photo: Bryan Conley, courtesy Carnegie Museum of Art.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.
Nicole Eisenman, Coping (2008). Photo courtesy Whitechapel Gallery.
Installation view of “Nicole Eisenman: What Happened” at Whitechapel Gallery in London closing January 14, 2024. Photo: Damian Griffiths, courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery.

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Goddesses, saints, demons: ‘Revered and Feared. Feminine Power in Art and Belief’ is a collaborative exhibition created by Madrid’s ‘La Caixa’ Foundation and London’s British Museum, bringing together 166 historical objects to highlight spiritual perceptions of femininity around the globe.
Objects on display date from prehistory through to the 21st century, and follow five themes: “Creation and Nature,” “Passion and Desire,” “Magic and Malice,” “Justice and Defence,” and “Compassion and Salvation.” Contemporary artists involved in the show include Marina Abramović and Zanele Muholi. The objects—which span over 5,000 years—call into question our beliefs about gender expression, examine women’s multifaceted roles in society and folklore, and celebrate ancient customs and traditions. 
Its curators have called it “the first exhibition of its kind.”
The show has been co-curated by Belinda Crerar, of the British Museum, and Risa Martínez, an independent curator and advisor for the selection of the contemporary artworks included in the show.
In an interview for the Fundación “La Caixa”, Crerar explained that the exhibition explores “all the different ways that female identity has been framed throughout history and around the world” and that it is “particularly relevant today in light of recent gender equality movements, to be reflecting on our own cultural pre-conceptions when it comes to gender identity and female empowerment”.
Highlights in the show include a bust of the Roman goddess Minerva, a Buddhist figure of Bodhisattva Guanyin, a Taraka dance mask from West Bengal, and a statuette of the river deity Oshun from the Yoruba culture of Nigeria.
‘Revered and Feared. Feminine Power in Art and Belief’ is on view at CaixaForum, Madrid, through January 14, 2024. Check out more works from the show below.
Zanele Muholi, Somnyama IV, Oslo (2015). Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson, New York.
Painted Terracotta, Italy (c. 500 B.C.E.) © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
Egyptian Amulet, (1069–664 BC) © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
Queen of the Night, Iraq (c. 1750 B.C.E.) © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
Workshop of Sri Kajal Datta, Dance Mask of Taraka (1994). © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
White Tara, Tibet (1700–1900). © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
Porcelain, China (c. 1700-22). © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
Silver Medal of Queen Anne, UK (1707). © The Trustees of the British Museum (2023).
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Renaissance architecture and Anish Kapoor’s iconic sculptures may seem to have little in common. But the team at Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy, sees an uncanny connection between the two and has decided to bring them together.
The result is an expansive solo show titled “Untrue Unreal.” It features a vast range of works from across Kapoor’s oeuvre, including those monumental in scale. The show transforms the historic site into a space of contemplation, by inviting audiences to immerse themselves in a realm where the perception of truth becomes an illusion.
“Kapoor has engaged in a direct dialogue with the Renaissance architecture. The result is entirely original, almost a kind of dialectical juxtaposition, where symmetry, harmony, and rigor are called into question, and the boundaries between material and immaterial dissolve,” Arturo Galansino, general director of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation and curator of the exhibition, noted in a statement.
“Amidst the rational geometries of Palazzo Strozzi, Kapoor invites us in this exhibition to lose and rediscover ourselves, prompting us to question what is untrue or unreal.”
The exhibition shines a spotlight on the internationally acclaimed artist’s ongoing experimentation with materiality, space, form, and color, between the galleries at the Piano Nobile and the Renaissance courtyard. Among the highlights include To Reflect an Intimate Part of the Red (1981), a signature piece from the earlier stage of Kapoor’s career; Non-Object Black (2015), which challenges viewers’s perception through the use of Vantablack, a material that absorbs more than 99.9 percent of visible light; and Void Pavilion VII (2023), a newly architecturally scaled work conceived for the site’s Renaissance courtyard.
Below are the images of the exhibition. “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal” runs through February 4, 2024.
Anish Kapoor, Svayambhu (2007). © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio
Anish Kapoor, Svayambhu (2007). © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio
Anish Kapoor, Void Pavilion VII (2023). © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio.
Anish Kapoor, Angel (1990). © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio
Installation view of “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal”. © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio
Installation view of “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal”. © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio
Installation view of “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal”. © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio.
Installation view of “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal”. © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio.
Installation view of “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal”. © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio.
Anish Kapoor, Gathering Clouds (2014)
Installation view of “Anish Kapoor. Untrue Unreal”. © photo Ela Bialkowska OKNO studio.
Anish Kapoor, To Reflect an Intimate Part of the Red (1981)

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In January 2015, the Vancouver Art Gallery was gifted 10 painted sketches by James Edward Hervey MacDonald, a modern landscape artist and founding member of the renowned Group of Seven. Supposed studies for larger paintings, the works were deemed long lost and forgotten, with the museum’s curator Ian Thom hailing their rediscovery at that time as lending “considerable insight into the transformation of [the artist’s] style.”  
Eight years on, the pieces have gone on view at the museum, but with one significant caveat—they’re no longer attributed to MacDonald.
“J.E.H. MacDonald? A Tangled Garden” brings together the 10 paintings alongside the detailed findings that led the institution to reattribute them. It’s an effort, said Anthony Kiendl, CEO and executive director of the Vancouver Art Gallery, to unpack a “fascinating story” that has seen the undoing of a high-profile gift. 
Unknown artist, Sketch after Falls, Montreal River. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
The paperboard sketches were a gift from Ephry and Melvin Merkur, who had inherited them from their father Max Merkur, a Toronto-based art collector. According to the museum, the works were buried by MacDonald and his son Thoreau in the backyard of the family’s property for safekeeping in 1931. These boxes were then excavated in 1974, whereupon they were snapped up by Merkur. 
But in the wake of the donation, questions were raised, most prominently by the Globe and Mail, about the authenticity of the works. Among their doubts, experts pointed out the anachronistic paint types used in the works and more egregiously, misspellings in the artist’s signature. The cloud surrounding the paintings led the museum to shelf a planned exhibition, and recruit art historians, handwriting experts, and the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) to untangle the matter. 
Unknown artist, Sketch after Leaves in the Brook. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
The CCI undertook scientific research and visual analysis of the paintings, supported by art history specialists who offered qualitative assessments. Their study found pigments that did not exist in MacDonald’s lifetime, as well as the use of boards that were unlike those the artist typically drew on. A handful of the purported sketches, too, were found to resemble the completed works in such a way that experts suggest they were created after, rather than for, the final compositions. 
Based on these findings, the museum is now attributing the 10 pieces to an unknown artist. 
“This investigation exemplifies how scientific examination can play an important role in the understanding and preservation of cultural heritage The CCI’s findings were crucial to the conclusive outcome of the investigation, which has led to the revised attribution of these 10 painted sketches,” said Kate Helwig, a conservation scientist at the CCI. 
Unknown artist, Sketch after The Wild River. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Still, “A Tangled Garden” will feature an installation of oil sketches by J.E.H. MacDonald, as well as those of his Group of Seven peers. Active from 1920 through ’33, the cadre of artists were celebrated for their modern, almost romantic, approach to landscape painting. Defying the staid formalism of 19th-century naturalism, they produced deeply energetic and expressive canvases, exemplified by Tom Thomson’s The West Wind (1916–17), Lawren Harris’s Lake and Mountains (1928), and MacDonald’s Falls, Montreal River (1920).  
While the new attribution might be humbling, particularly following the highs of the 2015 rediscovery, the museum sees moving forward with an exhibition of faked works as critical to its mission. Kiendl, for one, touts the project as reflective of “our commitment to research, artistic inquiry, and sharing new knowledge with our communities.”
“The gallery seeks to foster an environment of critical inquiry and transparency,” he added, “in which our audiences participate in the discourse surrounding the meaning of these artworks.” 
“J.E.H. MacDonald? A Tangled Garden” is on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby St, Vancouver, Canada, through May 12, 2024. 

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A series of portraits of Joseph Beuys created by Andy Warhol during the 1980s are currently on view at London’s Thaddaeus Ropac, as part of an exhibition that delves into the relationship between the social sculptor and Pop legend.
“Andy Warhol: The Joseph Beuys Portraits” marks the first time that the Beuys pictures are presented together for over 40 years. Made between 1980 and 1986, the series of screen prints feature Warhol’s characteristic use of scale and repetition, and variously bear vivid hues and others diamond dust—all of them recreations of a 1979 Polaroid photo he took of the German artist in his signature felt hat.
The pair first officially met at an exhibition opening in Düsseldorf in 1979. Writer David Galloway described the moment as having “all the ceremonial aura of two rival popes meeting in Avignon.” Later that year, Beuys visited Warhol at his New York studio, the Factory, to be photographed—incidentally at the same time as the modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe.
Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys, Lucio Amelio [Gallery], Naples (1980). © DACS, 2023; Photo: Tate.Although the pair were not close friends and pursued dramatically different approaches to their practices, they showed great respect for each other’s work. Pre-dating their meeting in Düsseldorf, Warhol had created a propaganda poster for Germany’s Green Party at the request of Beuys.
“He himself is sort of [a] ghost; he has spirituality,” Beuys said of Warhol. “Maybe this tabular rasa that Andy Warhol does [in his portraits], this emptiness and cleansing of any traditional signature… is something that creates the possibility of allowing radically different perspectives to enter.”
Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys (1980–83). © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Schellmann Art / DACS, London, 2023.
The first exhibition of Warhol’s Beuys portraits took place at Galleria Lucio Amelio in Naples in 1980, the opening of which saw both artists in attendance. Later exhibitions of the images happened in Munich and Geneva; today, the portraits are held in major collections including that of London’s Tate Museum and New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
The show at Thaddaeus Ropac will also include trial proofs and other rare works on paper by Warhol. It is, in a way, a full-circle moment for Ropac: in the 1980s, the Austrian gallerist served as an intern for Beuys, who he described to the Guardian as possessing “incredible charisma.”
Ropac also highlighted how Warhol’s Beuys elaborate series stood out at a time when the Pop artist had taken to churning out one-off portrait commissions. That he had opted to develop and experiment with variations of the Beuys image—as a line drawing, a diamond-dusted canvas, a two-toned silkscreen—is proof of how the image captured his eye.
“When you see the same face in all these variations, you realize there is an incredible connection,” Ropac added. “He caught the face, but also a state of mind.”
See more images from the show below.
Installation view of “Andy Warhol: The Joseph Beuys Portraits” at Thaddaeus Ropac London. Photo: Aggie Cherrie. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /DACS, London, 2023. Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.
Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys (1980–83). © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Schellmann Art / DACS, London, 2023.
Installation view of “Andy Warhol: The Joseph Beuys Portraits” at Thaddaeus Ropac London. Photo: Aggie Cherrie. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /DACS, London, 2023. Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.
Installation view of “Andy Warhol: The Joseph Beuys Portraits” at Thaddaeus Ropac London. Photo: Aggie Cherrie. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /DACS, London, 2023. Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.
Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys (1980–83). © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Schellmann Art / DACS, London, 2023.
Installation view of “Andy Warhol: The Joseph Beuys Portraits” at Thaddaeus Ropac London. Photo: Aggie Cherrie. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. /DACS, London, 2023. Courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac gallery.
“Andy Warhol: The Joseph Beuys Portraits” is on view at Thaddaeus Ropac, Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London, through February 9, 2024. 

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Art lovers the world over will be swarming Europe next year for the Venice Biennale, which as per usual boasts dozens of national pavilions and the highly anticipated main exhibition, “Foreigners Everywhere,” curated by Adriano Pedrosa. Anyone hoping to stay on for an early vacation is in luck, as the continent is anticipating a bumper crop of blockbuster museum shows, from a celebration of supermodel Naomi Campbell in London, to a retrospective honoring American land artist Nancy Holt in Berlin. There is also the opening of a shiny new museum dedicated to Nordic modernism in Kristiansand, a coastal city in southern Norway.
Our European team has hand-picked what they are most excited to see in 2024.

“Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind”Tate Modern, LondonFebruary 15—September 1, 2024
Yoko Ono, Half-A-Room, from Half – A Wind Show at Lisson Gallery London. Photo by Clay Perry ©Yoko Ono
London played a tremendous role in the life and artistic career of Yoko Ono (born 1933, Tokyo). During her five-year stay, the U.K. capital was where the Japanese-born artist and activist encountered a web of artists and creative minds that had gathered there in the mid-1960s; it was also a place where she created some of her radical works, and the city where Ono met John Lennon, her future husband and long-time collaborator.
In 2024, London will make a mark on Ono’s artistic trajectory again as Tate Modern stages “Music of the Mind,” the artist’s biggest exhibition in the U.K. to date. The show will feature more than 200 works ranging from installations, films, music, and photography that chart Ono’s path as a multidisciplinary artist and her profound impact on contemporary culture over the decades. Ono’s body of work created during her London years, including installations at Indica and Lisson Gallery such as Apple 1966 and Half-A-Room 1967, will be among the highlights.
—Vivienne Chow 
“Vera Molnár”Centre Pompidou, ParisFebruary 28—August 26, 2024
Vera Molnár, Icône (1964). Photo: © Centre Pompidou / Dist. Rmn-Gp.
This pioneer of computer art, who died in December at the age of 99, had a creative vision that was decades ahead of her time. When she began making generative artworks in the 1960s, using the early coding language of Fortran and computers that had mechanical plotters for printers, her peers could not understand it. In their eyes, she had “dehumanized” art, she said in an interview from her Paris nursing home in early 2022.
Much has changed over the past ten years, as the world finally caught up with the significance of Molnar’s experiments with the creative relationship between systems and randomness. This retrospective ranges from drawings produced as early as 1946 to new work made in 2023.
—Jo Lawson-Tancred

“Roy Lichtenstein”The Albertina Museum, ViennaMarch 8—July 14, 2024
Roy Lichtenstein, Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior (1992). © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Photo Courtesy of Albertina, Vienna.

In celebration of what would have been Roy Lichtenstein’s 100th birthday in 2024, Vienna’s Albertina Museum (with assistance from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and Estate) is putting on a major retrospective of the Pop Art legend’s work. The exhibition will include works on loan from private international collections and major institutions including New York’s Whitney Museum and MoMA, Vienna’s Museum Ludwig, and Madrid’s Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. The show follows the course of the artist’s five-decade career, starring his world-renowned large-scale comic-book inspired paintings from the 1960s. Other works on display include his 1970s mirror series, landscapes, and interiors.
–Verity Babbs

“Anselm Kiefer: Fallen Angels”Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, FlorenceMarch 22—July 21, 2024
German artist Anselm Kiefer “These Writings, When Burned, Will Finally Give Some Light” exhibition during the preview at Palazzo Ducale on March 25, 2022 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Roberto Serra – Iguana Press/Getty Images)
Anselm Kiefer returns to Italy after his major presentation at Palazzo Ducale in Venice 2022, this time taking over the historic Palazzo Strozzi for his major solo show “Fallen Angels.” Born in 1945 in Donaueschingen, Germany, Kiefer is known for his exploration of intricate emotions, memory, war, myth, and existence through his epic works, whether in the form of painting, or sculpture and installation. Curated by Arturo Galansino, director of the foundation, “Fallen Angels” will feature historical titles and new works, aiming to channel the “vital complexity” embodied in the art of the German artist.
The show opening at the heel of 2023’s release of Anselm, the 3D documentary dedicated to the artist by the acclaimed Wim Wenders, who was also born in the same year as Kiefer and brought up in post-war Germany.
—Vivienne Chow 

“Nancy Holt: Circles of Light”Gropius Bau, BerlinMarch 22—July 21, 2024
Archival image of Nancy Holt’s Holes of Light at the Hayward Gallery’s exhibition “Light Show” in 2013 (Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
Born in 1938 in Worcester in Massachusetts and grew up in New Jersey, Nancy Holt was a member of the earth, land, and conceptual art movements. She was known for her site-specific installation and moving image through which she explored how we understand our place on earth for five decades. Featuring works including film, video, photography, poetry, sculptures, and installations drawn from over the past 25 years, “Circles of Light” at Gropius Bau is the most comprehensive survey exhibition of the artist in Germany to date. The show will also shine a spotlight on Holt’s working process through the presentation of texts and recordings by the artist.
—Vivienne Chow 

“Histórias indígenas / Urfolkshistorier”Kode Art Museum, BergenApril 26—August 25, 2024
Duhigó, Nepu Arquepu (2019). Photo courtesy of Kode Bergen.

Following its appearance in Brazil at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, ‘Histórias indígenas / Urfolkshistorier’ will arrive at Bergen’s Kode Art Museum for a four-month run. The exhibition explores Indigenous experiences across South America, North America, Oceania, and Scandinavia. Some 285 works by over 170 Indigenous and Indigenous-descent artists are brought together in the show, making sure to recognize the deeply complex and individual experiences of Indigenous people in each of the geographical areas explored in the exhibition. The show is also accompanied by two publications, a catalogue, and an anthology, which further explore the research put into the exhibition.
—Verity Babbs

“Passions of the North”Kunstsilo, NorwayOpening May 11, 2024
Franciska Clausen, Contrastes des formes (1927). Photo: © Øystein Thorvaldsen.
Nordic modernism will be put on Europe’s cultural map next spring with the opening of the Kunstsilo in Kristiansand, southern Norway. The unique 1930s silo building has been converted into a state-of-the-art museum to house the expansive collection of Norwegian collector Nicolai Tangen. Its inaugural exhibition offers a greatest hits tour of this new holding, with a mix of avant-garde artists representing not only Norway but Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland.
—Jo Lawson-Tancred

“When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting”Kunstmuseum BaselMay 25—October 27, 2024
Zandile Tshabalala, Two Reclining Women (2020). Photo courtesy of the Maduna Collection, © Zandile Tshabalala Studio.
Traveling to Europe after a critically acclaimed debut at the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, South Africa, this survey show brings together over 200 artworks by African artists like Ben Enwonwu and Zandile Tshabalala alongside those from the Diaspora, including Michael Armitage, Amy Sherald, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. It may well be the most comprehensive study of the Black figure in painting to date.
With a title that inverts When They See Us, a Netflix drama from 2019 about the prejudiced incrimination of the Central Park Five, the show celebrates artworks that defy racist assumptions, organizing its exhibits under themes like “Joy & Revelry” and “Sensuality.”
—Jo Lawson-Tancred

“NAOMI”Victoria & Albert Museum, LondonJune 22, 2024–April 6, 2025
Naomi Campbell (2023). Photo by Marco Bahler for V&A.

Taking to the runway for the first time at 15 after having been scouted in London’s Covent Garden, Naomi Campbell was just 18 when she became the first Black model on the cover of Vogue Paris, and has since starred on the front cover of more than 500 magazines.
From June, the V&A in London is celebrating the supermodel with an exhibition exploring her 40 year career in fashion. Around 100 outfits from Campbell’s personal wardrobe, including loaned pieces from her illustrious catwalk career and photographs by Tim Walker and Steven Meisel will be on display in this first-of-its-kind exhibition tracking Campbell’s work as a model, activist, and actress. This is a dream exhibition for fans of cultural history.
—Verity Babbs

“Art Povera”Bourse de Commerce, ParisOctober 9, 2024–March 24, 2025

Giuseppe Penone, Essere Vento (2014). Photo courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, Giuseppe PENONE © Adagp, Paris, 2023

Curated by Arte Povera expert Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the upcoming exhibition at Bourse de Commerce looks back at the history of the Italian “Poor Art” movement. The radical Arte Povera group exhibited together from the mid-1960s through into the ’70s, focused on the boundaries and mutualities between nature and culture, daily life and tradition, and using non-traditional everyday materials. The informal group was made up of artists across Italy, including key figures Alighiero Boetti, Jannis Kounellis, and Mario Merz. This show examines how the movement influenced the course of art history, using works from the Pinault Collection and pieces on loan from major European collections both private and public, including works owned by original Arte Povera artists.
—Verity Babbs

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