The biggest exhibitions of 2021
While last year was a disaster for exhibition programming around the world, museums and curators have not been idle and there are plenty of ambitious exhibitions due to open this year (virus-related lockdowns notwithstanding). Below you will find some of the must-see shows of 2021, from the Rijksmuseum’s examination of the slave trade and a reassessment of the Roman arch-villain Nero, to landmark retrospectives for Barbara Kruger, Yayoi Kusama, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Jasper Johns. Many exhibitions will be subject to Covid-19 restrictions please check on the respective museum website before visiting Enslaved man working on the fields (around 1850) by an unknown artist
Spring 2021
Laura Owens,
Untitled (2016). Courtesy of the artist; Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York, Rome; Sadie Coles HQ, London; and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne,
This exhibition is a homecoming of sorts for Laura Owens. The wide-ranging and experimental painter grew up close to Cleveland in Norwalk, Ohio, and spent many hours exploring the Cleveland Museum of Art’s encyclopedic collections as a teenager. Owens, who has been based in Los Angeles for the past three decades, has developed this unique exhibition with high school students involved with the Cleveland museum’s Arts Mastery program.
The Transformer Station is located at 1460 West 29th Street, Cleveland
Crystal Bridges acquires an early Sam Gilliam drape painting
Sam Gilliam (b. 1933, Tupelo, Mississippi), Mazda, 1970, acrylic on canvas, installed: 135 × 90 in. (342.9 × 228.6 cm), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2020.12.
BENTONVILLE, ARK
.-Crystal Bridges announced the acquisition of Mazda (1970), an early drape painting by the renowned artist Sam Gilliam. For more than 60 years, Gilliam has pushed the limits of traditional painting. In the 1960s, he received international acclaim for his drape paintings as he continued to explore abstraction through works that jumped off the wall, an exploration that would continue throughout his career. His mixed media work, Black and Golden Door (1996), was a gift to the Crystal Bridges collection in 2016, and Gilliam was featured in Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which was on view at Crystal Bridges in 2018.
Process and invention: Four West Coast photographers expanding the medium
Meghann Riepenhoff, Ice #78 (29-34℉, Big Creek, WA 03.09.20), 2020. Unique Dynamic Cyanotype, 42 x 88 inches.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
.- From the landscape photography of Ansel Adams and Carleton Watkins to Eadward Muybridges panorama of San Francisco, the West Coast of the United States has long been an epicenter of American photography. Process and Invention, a new viewing room by Haines Gallery, brings together works by four photographers whose analog practices draw from this storied lineage while expanding the possibilities of their chosen medium.
The images and alternative processes of John Chiara, Binh Danh, Chris McCaw and Meghann Riepenhoff owe as much to this history of photography as they do to the West Coasts stunning and varied environs. Together, they represent an exciting new generation of artists who are reinvigorating handmade photography in our digital age.
Pippy Houldsworth Gallery opens an exhibition of works by Kenturah Davis, Mary Kelly, and Agnes Martin
Agnes Martin, The Peach, 1964. Graphite and ink on paper mounted on board, 30.5 x 30.5 cm, 12 x 12 in. Image courtesy the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London. Photo: Todd White.
LONDON
.-Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is presenting Kenturah Davis, Mary Kelly and Agnes Martin in Lines of Thought, an exhibition exploring the poetics and politics of language. Important unseen work by Kelly and new text drawings and weavings by Davis enter into conversation with the hand-drawn lines and gridded compositions of Martins works on paper.
Lines of Thought is the first UK presentation of work by young LA-based artist, Kenturah Davis. Four works (2020) from her series, Limen, pair portraiture with weaving, expressing how individuals are inseparable from the ideas and language that shape identity. Each portrait takes shape through a meticulous process of rubbing pencil across em