20 Essential Museum Shows to See in Europe in 2020, From Matisse at the Pompidou to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Tate Britian
Between celebrations centered on the lives and legacies of
Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci, not
to mention the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin
Wall, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the
Bauhaus, and the Venice Biennale,
2019 was an action-packed year of sometimes-bloated blockbusters.
By comparison, 2020 will provide a more refined, in-depth look at
an exciting and diverse array of artists.
Looking to plan your art-viewing schedule? Below, see our picks
of the shows that you cannot afford to miss in the first half of
2020.
“Up to and Including Limits:
After Carolee Schneemann” at Muzeum Susch
Carolee Schneemann, from the series “Eye
Body: 36 Transformative Actions for Camera,” (1963/2005).Courtesy
of the Estate of Carolee Schneemann, Galerie Lelong & Co., Hales
Gallery, and P•P•O•W, New York ©Carolee Schneemann.
WHAT: The
first institutional show dedicated to the late avant-garde
feminist performance artist since her death in March, this
exhibition will examine Schneemann’s contributions to art history
through the work of artists and collectives in subsequent
generations. Ten seminal works by Schneemann, including the show’s
eponymous work, Up to and Including Her
Limits (1973–76), will be placed in dialogue with more
than 60 works by artists including Matthew Barney, Chicks on Speed,
Katrina Daschner, Andrea Fraser, Ragnar Kjartansson, Kris Lemsalu,
Sarah Lucas, Paulina Ołowska, and Pipilotti Rist.
WHERE: Muzeum Susch, Sur Punt 78,
7542, Zernez, Switzerland
WHEN: December 29, 2019–June 28, 2020
“Edward Hopper” at
the Beyeler Foundation
Edward Hopper, Cape Cod Evening
(1939). Photo: courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C.
WHAT: The American artist is perhaps best known for
his cityscapes, but he was also a prolific landscape artist. This
exhibition focuses on rural paintings by Edward Hopper, who grew up
in upstate New York on the Hudson River. And while he spent his
heyday in Greenwich Village in the heart of Manhattan, he went on
frequent road trips and would spend nearly every summer from the
1930s to the 1950s on Cape Cod. The filmmaker Wim Wenders has
created a 3D film, Two or Three Things I Know
About Hopper, specifically for the exhibition.
WHERE: Fondation Beyeler,
Baselstrasse 101, 4125 Riehen, near Basel, Switzerland
WHEN: January 26–May
17
“Wolfgang Tillmans: Today Is
the First Day” at WIELS
Wolfgang Tillmans, Nite Queen,
(2013). Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne, Maureen Paley,
London, David Zwirner, New York
WHAT: “Today Is the First Day” will be the
first solo show of photographer Wolfgang Tillmans in Belgium.
Never-before-seen photographs, as well as video installations and
sound works, will be presented across two floors. The Berlin-based
artist aims to “make pictures that talk about what it feels like to
be alive today,” whether he is offering a view of a large London
round-about under construction or the underground club scene in
Iran.
WHERE: Centre Av. Van Volxemlaan 354,
1190, Brussels
WHEN: February 1–May 24
“Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution” at MSK
Ghent
A conservator at work on the Ghent
Altarpiece.
WHAT: This exhibition will
“only” include 10 works by Jan van Eyck, a titan of the Northern
Renaissance—but that is half of all the Flemish painter’s surviving
known works. His masterpiece, the Ghent Altarpiece, or
the Adoration of the
Mystic Lamb (1432), has been newly restored and will be a
highlight of the show. The exhibition places Van Eyck’s achievement
in a wider context, and includes around 80 works by the artist’s
late Medieval contemporaries from Germany, France, Italy, and
Spain. The curators also aim to show how Van Eyck changed the
course of Western art through his skill in oil painting, coupled
with scientific knowledge and unrivaled observational skills. To
cope with the expected crowds, the Museum of Fine Arts (MSK) Ghent
will be open seven days a week during the run of the
show.
WHERE: Fernand Scribedreef 1,
9000 Ghent, Belgium
WHEN: February 1–April
30
“Peter Lindbergh: Untold
Stories” at Kunstpalast Düsseldorf
White Shirts: Estelle Léfebure, Karen
Alexander, Rachel Williams, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz &
Christy Turlington, Malibu, (1988) © Peter Lindbergh. Courtesy
of Peter Lindbergh, Paris / Gagosian Gallery.
WHAT: “Untold Stories” is
due to be the first major survey dedicated to the beloved
photographer since his death this September—and it was, amazingly,
curated by Lindbergh himself. He spent the last two years of his
life preparing the show, which will include 140 photographs
spanning the 1980s to 2019, including
fashion commissions from Vogue, Harper’s
Bazaar, and Interview, among others. The show will
travel to the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, the
Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, and MADRE in Naples.
WHERE: Ehrenhof 4-5, 40479 Düsseldorf,
Germany
WHEN: February 5–June
6
“Olafur Eliasson: In Real
Life” at the Guggenheim Bilbao
Olafur Eliasson. Beauty (1993).
Installation view at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2015. Photo: Anders
Sune Berg. Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin;
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles © 1993 Olafur
Eliasson.
WHAT: Some 30 artworks by Danish-Icelandic
artist will put viewers at the center of his inventive and
transporting artistic practice. For “In Real Life,” Eliasson’s
diverse sculptures, photographs, paintings, and installations will
span a range of materials including moss, water, glacial ice, and
fog.
WHERE: Abandoibarra Etorb., 2, 48009
Bilbao, Spain
WHEN: February 14–June 21
“Tomàs Saraceno” at
Palazzo Strozzi
Tomás Saraceno, Stillness in
Motion–Cloud Cities(2016). Installation view at San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), USA. Courtesy of the artist;
Andersen’s, Copenhagen: Ruth Benzacar, Buenos Aires; Tanya Bonakdar
Gallery, New York/Los Angeles; Pinksummer contemporary art, Genoa;
Esther Schipper, Berlin. ©Photography by Studio Tomás Saraceno,
2016.
WHAT: The Italian
palazzo will host the Argentinian artist’s largest exhibition in
Italy to date. Saraceno will present a selection of his major works
together with a radical new site-specific installation in the
palace’s courtyard. (We bet the odds are good it
involves spiderwebs.) The exhibition promises to create “a sort of
living system inhabited by the human and non-human—a shared reality
in which all entities contribute to the network of resonances
between beings.”
WHERE: Palazzo Strozzi, Piazza degli Strozzi, 50123
Florence, Italy
WHEN: February 22–July
19
“Lygia Clark: Painting as an
Experimental Field” at the Guggenheim Bilbao
Lygia Clark, the Violoncellist (O
Violoncelista) (1951). © Courtesy of “The World of Lygia Clark”
Cultural Association
WHAT: The
artist Lygia Clark was a
leading figure in the Brazilian avant-garde—but less is known about
her early work, before she shifted into experimental sculpture and
ultimately art that was more akin to what we could call social
practice today. This exhibition, on the other hand, focuses on her
innovative work in the decade between 1948 and 1958. Her
experiments that hovered between figurative art and geometric
abstraction laid the foundation of her later work in painting,
sculpture, film- and print-making, as well as participatory
actions.
WHERE: Avenida
Abandoibarra, 2, 48009, Bilbao, Spain
WHEN: March 6–May
31
“Abel Rodríguez” at the BALTIC
Center for Contemporary Art
Abel Rodríguez, Terraza Alta III
(2018). Courtesy by the artist and Instituto de Visión.
WHAT: This
exhibition will be the first ever solo show dedicated to Abel
Rodríguez, an elder artist from the Nonuya ethnic group. Native to
the Colombian Amazon, Rodríguez and his family were displaced to
Bogota by the Colombian armed conflict and exploitation of the
natural resources of the rainforest in the 1990s. His practice is
rooted in his ancestral knowledge of the indigenous plants of the
Amazon, passed down to him by his uncle. Through detailed paintings
and drawings, Rodríguez depicts the rainforest’s ecosystem as a way
to preserve his own knowledge and memory of the
region.
WHERE: BALTIC Center for Contemporary
Art, S Shore Rd, Gateshead NE8 3BA, UK
WHEN: March 14–June 28
“Christo and Jeanne-Claude
in Paris” at the Centre Pompidou
Christo, L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped
(Project for Paris – Place de l’Etoile – Charles de Gaulle). ©
2019 Christo. Photo:
André Grossmann.
WHAT: Christo
wouldn’t be Christo without Paris. It’s the city where the young
Bulgarian artist met his wife and artistic partner Jeanne-Claude,
and where they lived between 1958 and 1964. It was in Paris that he
turned from painting to wrapping everyday objects. Within three
years, the pair were also realizing their first public
interventions, albeit on a small scale initially but they always
thought big. They first imagined wrapping the Arc de Triomphe in
1962. More than five decades later, that project—delayed by nesting
birds this past spring—is finally due to be
realized in the fall. It will debut in conjunction with an
exhibition that explores the works the duo made in and about the
city.
WHERE:
Place Georges-Pompidou, 75004
Paris, France
WHEN: March 18–June
15
“Artemisia” at the National
Gallery, London
Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait
as Saint Catherine of Alexandria (circa 1615–17). Photo
courtesy of the National Gallery, London.
WHAT:
Overlooked by (mainly male) art historians, feminist scholars where
the first to rediscover the work of Artemisia Gentileschi, the most
famous female artist of the 17th century. The National Gallery’s
purchase, in 2018, of a recently rediscovered painting was the
catalyst for this solo show, its first of a female Baroque artist.
Featuring around 35 works, the exhibition will trace her training
in Rome under her father Orazio Gentileschi and how she survived
rape and a harrowing trial to establish herself as an independent
artist in Florence and Naples.
WHERE:
Trafalgar Square, London, WC2N 5DN,
UK
WHEN: April 6–July
26
“Smoke and Mirrors: The
Roaring Twenties” at Kunsthaus Zürich
Marianne (My) Ullmann, Modest
(1925). University of Applied Arts Vienna © Estate of Marianne (My)
Ullmann.
WHAT: After
World War I, art flourished as social conventions were overturned
in cities including Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and Zurich, the
birthplace of Dada. This show places lesser-known female artists in
the foreground and adds a contemporary twist by including the work
of living artists inspired by the artistic, design, and
architectural innovations of the 1920s. The show travels to the
Guggenheim Bilbao in the fall.
WHERE: Heimplatz 1, 8001 Zürich,
Switzerland
WHEN: April 24–July
19
“Otobong Nkanga” at
Gropius Bau
Otobong Nkanga, The Encounter That
Took a Part of Me (2016), (exhibition view, Nottingham
Contemporary). Photo: Stuart Whipps
WHAT: The Nigerian-born artist will
present new work inspired by the extensive research she conducted
during her yearlong residency at Gropius Bau in 2019. The show will
present drawing, installation, and performance that all explore
Nkanga’s frequent subject: tracking the migration of minerals,
resources, and people. During her stay at the museum,
Nkanga built upon her acclaimed documenta 14
project, Carved to Flow, where she produced
black marbled soaps in Athens with materials sourced from the
Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Africa.
WHERE: Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963
Berlin, Germany
WHEN: April 30–August
2
“Katharina Grosse: It Wasn’t
Us” at Hamburger Bahnhof
Katharina Grosse, This Drove my
Mother up the Wall (2017). Photo Andy Keate, courtesy South
London Gallery.
WHAT: For her solo exhibition entitled “It
Wasn’t Us,” German installation artist and painter Katharina Grosse
will present an array of spectacular large-scale and site-specific
paintings. It seems that nothing is safe from Grosse’s air guns and
vibrant acrylic paints, which crawl up the walls and across the
floors. They will grip the historical main hall of the museum (and
the public grounds outside) with color and contrast. It’s bound to
be an Instagram hit.
WHERE: Invalidenstraße 50-51, 10557
Berlin, Germany
WHEN: April 24–October 4
“Henri Matisse” at the
Centre Pompidou
Henri Matisse, Deux danseurs (Two
Dancers) (1937–38). © Succession H. Matisse.
WHAT: To mark
the 150th anniversary of the French artist’s birth, the Centre
Pompidou will present works from across Matisse’s long career in a
show billed as Paris’s biggest Matisse exhibition since a blowout
at the Grand Palais in 1970. The Pompidou will supplement Matisse’s
works in National Museum of Modern Art collection with those on
loan from the Musée Matisse in Cateau-Cambrésis and from the
Matisse museum in Nice, where the artist lived in his final
decades. The show is divided into nine chapters, as if Matisse’s
career were a great novel. It will also draw on his own writings to
illuminate his paintings, collages, and stained
glass.
WHERE: Place
Georges-Pompidou, 75004 Paris, France
WHEN: May
13–August 31
“Kara Walker
: A Black Hole Is Everything
a Star Longs To Be: Drawings 1993–2020” at Kunstmuseum
Basel
Kara Walker, A Shocking Declaration
of Independence (2018). Image courtesy of the artist.
WHAT: In her first
expansive solo show in Switzerland, Kara Walker is letting museum
visitors in on her closely guarded personal archive of drawings.
Spanning the past 27 years, the American artist is presenting
hundreds of drawings and works on paper from her studio alongside
brand new works. Paper has been a central medium in Walker’s
provocative oeuvre, which takes an unflinching look at US
history.
WHERE: Kunstmuseum Basel, St. Alban-Graben 16, 4051
Basel, Switzerland
WHEN: May 16–August
23
“Tracey Emin/Edvard Munch:
The Loneliness of the Soul” at the Munch Museum
Tracey Emin, It – didnt stop – I
didnt stop (2019). “Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch: The
Loneliness of the Soul” Image courtesy Royal Academy of Arts.
WHAT: One of the
inaugural exhibitions at the soon-to-open, newly expanded Munch
Museum will reveal Tracey Emin’s long-held fascination with the
Expressionist pioneer Edvard Munch. Drawn back time and time again
to the Norwegian artist’s expressionism and interest in the human
psyche, Emin says, “I’ve been in love with this man since I was
18.” New and older works by Emin will be presented alongside
Munch’s, as well as a new bronze sculpture by the British
artist, The Mother, which will be unveiled as a permanent
site-specific work on Oslo’s Museum Island, next door to the
institution. The
exhibition will travel to the Royal Academy in London
in November.
WHERE: Munch Museet, Edvard Munchs plass 1. 0194 Oslo,
Norway
WHEN: May (exact dates to
be confirmed)
“Lynette Yiadom-Boakye”
at Tate Britain
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Condor and the
Mole(2011). Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London.
©Courtesy of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
WHAT: The British painter and writer, who
was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2013, is best known for her
contemporary portraits of imaginary black characters, which often
allude to European art history, from Goya to John Singer Sargent to
Édouard Manet. The politics of identity and representation come to
the fore in this exhibition, which will bring more than 80
paintings and works on paper spanning 2003 to the present in
Yiadom-Boakye’s most extensive museum survey to date.
WHERE: Tate Britain, Millbank,
Westminster, London SW1P 4RG, UK
WHEN: May 19–August 31
“Magdalena Abakanowicz”
at Tate Modern
Magdalena Abakanowicz, Abakan
Red (1969). Tate. © Magdalena Abakanowicz Foundation.
WHAT: The Polish sculptor Magdalena
Abakanowicz is best known for her so-called “Abakans,” towering
hanging sculptures made with woven sisal fiber, which she created
in the 1960s and ’70s. Now, Tate will exhibit the most significant
examples of these works, which are rarely seen together, in a
209-foot-long open gallery space. Other key works in the show
include early textiles, her “War Games” sculptures, as well as wood
and iron pieces made around the trunks of felled trees.
WHERE: Tate Modern, Bankside, London
SE1 9TG, UK
WHEN: June 17–September 13
“Hito Steyerl” at Centre
Pompidou
A viewer taking in Hito Steyerl’s work
on at the newly expanded MoMA in New York. Photo by Kena
Betancur/VIEWpress.
WHAT: Paris’s Centre Pompidou and K21 in
Düsseldorf are collaborating on a major joint retrospective
dedicated to the rabble-rousing, uncompromising German artist,
whose work explores technology, systems of power, and history
through mind-bending videos and installations. The show will
include major works, a new production, and two publications. In her
new work, Steyerl will use the architecture of the Centre Pompidou
as one of her points of departure. After its run in Paris, the show
opens at K21 in Düsseldorf on September 26.
WHERE: Place Georges-Pompidou, 75004
Paris, France
WHEN: June 24–August 24
The post 20 Essential Museum Shows to See in Europe in 2020,
From Matisse at the Pompidou to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Tate
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