The US museums are bringing their A-game when it comes to diversity and innovation, exploring artist movements, less-celebrated creators and forms of expression. There are a number of exhibitions that get away from the tried and true masters to instead offer museum-goers something closer to the true breadth of creativity that makes art such a vital and necessary part of our world.
Artificial intelligence-assisted creation became a hot topic with the emergence of the ChatGPT in 2023. The AARON software that has been used since the 1960s is the focus of the exhibit. Eye Me is by Zanele Muholi.
There is a photograph of Zanele.
In the early 2000s, the South African "visual activist" Zanele Muholi used their camera to document the marginalization and ongoing quest for representation of LGBTQ+ individuals throughout their home country. The exhibition at SF MoMA will be the first major exhibition of Muholi's work on the west coast. Lee Mingwei is an author of Rituals of Care.
The Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei has built his artistic practice using installations that invite audiences in, asking them to participate in aesthetic experiences that offer space to contemplate relationships and build connections with strangers. The deYoung Museum in San Francisco will hold an exhibition of Mingwei's installations. The Letter Writing Project is where museum-goers can take a moment to write a letter to a friend who they have been thinking about, as well as Guernica in Sand, in which one of Picasso's best-known works is recreated in sand. The Kollwitz.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York has a collection of The Parents (Die Eltern) from War.
The German artist Kthe Kollwitz is known for her stark, highly expressionistic works depicting life's deprivations. The largest US exhibition of Kollwitz's art in decades will be displayed at MoMA in the spring. This major show will offer pieces from collections all around the world and some of the artist's most famous pieces, giving audiences a bracing showcase of the traumas of political and social upheaval in a society that went tragically wrong.
The Honolulu Museum of Art invites people to ponder what aloha stands for and how it has been translated into fashion. In Hawaii, aloha is often used as a greeting and is related to the beliefs of native Hawaiian societies. The exhibit shows how aloha fashion has evolved over the years, drawing in influence from places like Japan and China, always projecting a sense of Hawaiian identity and ethos.
Kris Graves took this photo of Christina Ramberg.
Christina Ramberg looked at her fascination and revulsion at the ways society forces women to modify, contort and otherwise transform their bodies in her art. The first retrospective of the artist's work in decades will be held at the Art Institute of Chicago. Space Makers are artists from Indigenous and New American cultures.
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, are the subject of an exciting exhibit in the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Space Makers is going to offer new narratives and new ways of seeing the history of American art by taking into account these creative forces.
The 59th Venice Art Biennale has a bronze sculpture called Brick House by Simone Leigh.
Simone Leigh was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2023 and will have a career retrospective hosted at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in May 2024. The 20 years of the acclaimed artist's work is collected in this show, which will give viewers a change to see the trajectory of a creator who has pondered questions around Blackness and femininity. The death of Esmin Elizabeth Green, a Black woman who died of blood clot in the waiting room of a Brooklyn hospital, is a tragic example of what can happen when we don't speak up.
7 Mile + Livernois.
The Detroit artist, who is African, draws heavily on hip-hop culture, the Detroit area and the African diaspora in order to create installations, sculptures and jewelry ranging in size from the small to the large. The Detroit Institute of Art promises the emerging artist's "most ambitious museum installation to date" with new work specially commissioned for this exhibit. The Dallas Art Museum will mount a major exhibition about the impressionists in February. The Museum of Fine Arts Boston will host an all-embracing look at the Korean Wave in March. The Guggenheim dives into the Orphism heyday in Paris in the fall.