Top 10 Modern and Contemporary Art Exhibitions Worth Visiting In 2023

Happy New Year and welcome to a 2023 that appears (fingers crossed) promising for art lovers and travelers. I am also coming out of something of a blogging hibernation to breathe life back into my weekly round-up after a 2022 that had my time and attention focused on other priorities and without the same energy and optimism for the often-depressing state of the art world. But in recent months, with the successful planning and recruitment of excited students signing up to join the Paris Field School I will be co-running in June, along with finding something to a closer to a “new normal” in the balance of post-pandemic teaching and research, I am finding myself itching and excited to reconnect with those who find these kinds of posts of interest.  

The art world and art tourism, as an industry having the spent the better part of three years under a cloud of uncertainty, also appears to be awakening. With pandemic restrictions preventing large-scale exhibitions since 2020, it is heartening to see the calendars of “future exhibitions” sections of major museum and galleries advertising some fantastic shows for the year ahead. What I present here below is part of a tradition that I started back in 2011 on my website when I responded to students and blog visitors who would ask me what I would recommend as art cities and art shows to visit in the year ahead. In subsequent years, I developed the top ten selection of modern and contemporary art exhibitions in part based upon where I planned to travel, but also based upon where I would want to go if I had the time and resources. For 2023, I have already booked travel to New York and Paris and hope to make it to London in the fall (the selections for these cities below are big highlights for me), but I always have a list like this in mind when talking to artists and fellow art travellers. And yes, always a selection closer to home (I’m looking at you Vancouver). Happy exploring and best wishes for the year ahead—I hope this list whets your appetite for a return to travel and a return to experiencing art in person.

P.S. I present the exhibitions in chronological order of opening, not in any other oder of preference— they are all special and important in their own way.

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NEW YORK| Meret Oppenheim, My Exhibition (Jan 1 – Mar 4)

STOCKHOLM| Moderna Museet: Laurie Anderson (Jan 4-Mar 9)

LOS ANGELES| LACMA: Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952-1982 (Feb 12-July 2)

PARIS| ORSAY: Manet/Degas (Mar 28-July23)

NEW YORK| WHITNEY: Josh Kline: Project For A New American Century (Apr 19-Aug 31)

PARIS| Foundation Louis Vuitton: BASQUIAT X WARHOL. Painting 4 Hands  (May 4-Aug 28

AMSTERDAM| Modern (May 18-Sept 24)

VANCOUVER| VAG: Fashion Fictions (May 27-Oct 9)

LONDON| Tate Modern: Capturing the Moment: A Journey Through 100 Years of Painting and Photography (June 14-Jan 28, 2024)

LONDON|Royal Academy of Arts: Marina Abramovic (Sept 23-Dec 10)

Birthday Thoughts: Alex Colville's To Prince Edward Island (1965)

I’ve always loved this painting. Coincidentally, Alex Colville is a Canadian modern painter with whom I share a birthday today, and the older I get, the more I appreciate this picture's wisdom and every nuance.

When I was younger, I was drawn to the pleasing symmetry of the painting's formal composition-- the strong line, cool colour palette, and contoured shapes-- and how it existed in a strange and uneasy tension with the picture’s unfolding content.

We are first presented with a woman looking through binoculars, suggesting a commanding female gaze and strong subjectivity, but then made to shift focus entirely and reconcile the ominous male figure hovering behind her. In an instance, the woman is rendered an object, both by him and ironically by us, the viewer.

Over time, I have come to see this painting less however as a statement of the woman's victimhood or the man's privileged vision. When I look at this painting today, I see a strong and determined woman who is completely aware but, importantly, equally indifferent, to the dominant vision that attempts to define who and what she is.

With middle age comes the confidence to dismiss and ignore how others wish to define you and/or who and what you should be. This shifting and unapologetic perspective-- mirrored in this extraordinary work of art-- teaches you to look straight through the judgement, ignoring society’s expectations, channeling the unflinching spirit of the powerful woman holding the binoculars.

Weekly Musings + Round Up... And A Few More Things

Feeling paralyzed and not knowing what to write the past few weeks, my round up this Sunday focuses on links related to the global art community's response to the war in Europe.

Conceptual artist Adrian Piper's work has also been haunting my thoughts lately-- this image below and featured, relates to a performance art work first started in response to 9/11 attacks when she asked volunteers to temporarily tattoo the words "EVERYTHING WILL BE TAKEN AWAY" on their foreheads and document the public's response as they walked, took transit, and went about their lives in the streets of New York in the aftermath of violence.

"Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova: ‘You cannot play nice with Putin. He is insane. He might open fire on his own people’"

theguardian.com

"Why We Need a Post-Colonial Lens to Look at Ukraine and Russia"

artnet.com

"Why We Need a Post-Colonial Lens to Look at Ukraine and Russia"

hyperallergic.com

"Russian Yachts Are Held in Harbors. What About Art in Secretive Free Ports?"

bloomberg.com

"Three Years Ago, I Had Dinner With Vladimir Putin. What He Told Me Makes Me Fearful for Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage"

artnet.com

"Venice Biennale Organizers Commit to Staging the Ukrainian Pavilion as Planned"

artnews.com

"12 essential books on Ukraine, Russia and Putin"

latimes.com

"Ukrainian Artists Are Building Anti-Tank Obstacles"

hyperallergic.com

"Calling For “No-Fly Zone” Over Ukraine, Artists Launch Hundreds of Paper Planes at Guggenheim Museum"

hyperallergic.com

"Here's how you can help the Ukraine aid effort by buying art"

theartnewspaper.com

• Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova: ‘You cannot play nice with Putin. He is insane. He might open fire on his own people’

• I Grew Up Behind the Iron Curtain. Isolating Russia’s Art and Artists Will Not Help Us Achieve Peace

• Why We Need a Post-Colonial Lens to Look at Ukraine and Russia

• Russian Yachts Are Held in Harbors. What About Art in Secretive Free Ports?

• Three Years Ago, I Had Dinner With Vladimir Putin. What He Told Me Makes Me Fearful for Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage

• Venice Biennale Organizers Commit to Staging the Ukrainian Pavilion as Planned

• 12 essential books on Ukraine, Russia and Putin

• Ukrainian Artists Are Building Anti-Tank Obstacles

• Calling For “No-Fly Zone” Over Ukraine, Artists Launch Hundreds of Paper Planes at Guggenheim Museum

• Here's how you can help the Ukraine aid effort by buying art

Weekly Musings + Round Up... And A Few More Things

As we celebrate Family Day here in Canada under loosening Covid-19 restrictions this long weekend, I have been thinking about how central “the home” has been to the experience of the pandemic. Finding ways to comfortably inhabit a space for long periods of isolation forced many of us to pay careful attention to the architecture of family dwellings. What may surprise many, however, is how directly the historical avant-garde has impacted the way we imagine, plan, and arrange the spaces of our homes. In particular, the Bauhaus— a German art and design school that flourished in Germany’s Weimar period from 1919-1933— transformed the architecture and traditions of 19th century living spaces to the modern ones that predominate our contemporary lives. The radical departure embodied in the Bauhaus mantra “form follows function” lead to a reimagining of family dwellings as purpose built spaces that privilege how individuals actually live instead of forcing preconceived ideas of how individuals should live.

Flex-spaces, for example, derive from this ethos, along with open plan family rooms, sliding walls, and outdoor living space that extend the experience of indoor spaces to the natural environment. In Bauhaus Dream-House: Modernity and Globalization, author Katerina Rüedi Ray examines the profound social, cultural and spatial transformations that the Bauhaus had on family home design in the decades following WWII. She writes: “The rejection of academic autonomy, historicism and aestheticism was central to the curriculum. The Bauhaus saw the past as discredited, and the task of the artist, designer and architect as beginning with a 'tabula rasa' - a clean slate -and disregarding old hierarchies between the arts, crafts and architecture (p. 26).” If you look around your own home today, you will see traces of Bauhaus influence at every turn. If you don’t believe me, simply watch the “Bauhaus Explained” video linked here and think about the freedom of spatial design you may be taking for granted in your own dwelling. Wishing you all a happy Family Day— enjoy the links!

"Art Problems: Is My Art Good Enough?"

hyperallergic.com

"When Warhol met Basquiat"

theartnewspaper.com

"Sephora on the Champs-Élysées"

parisreview.org

"Arlene Gottfried, the Street Photographer who Captured the Soul of 1980s New York"

elephant.art

"John Lennon on the Satisfying Difficulty of Excellence and the Vital Role of Invisible Incubation in the Creative Process"

themarginalian.org

"Making fun of mental health? Van Gogh ‘earaser’ and ‘tortured artist’ soap removed from Courtauld gift shop"

theartnewspaper.com

"Fragonard to Frozen: how French art inspired Disney animators"

theguardian.com

"AI-Generated Faces Have Crossed the Uncanny Valley"

fastcompany.com

"Dan Graham, Conceptual Artist Who Bent Time and Space, Dies at 79"

artnews,ca

"The Stories Totem Poles Tell | Smarthistory (VIDEO)"

Smarhistory.org

• Art Problems: Is My Art Good Enough?

• When Warhol met Basquiat

• Sephora on the Champs-Élysées

• Arlene Gottfried, the Street Photographer who Captured the Soul of 1980s New York

• John Lennon on the Satisfying Difficulty of Excellence and the Vital Role of Invisible Incubation in the Creative Process

• Making fun of mental health? Van Gogh ‘earaser’ and ‘tortured artist’ soap removed from Courtauld gift shop

• Fragonard to Frozen: how French art inspired Disney animators

• AI-Generated Faces Have Crossed the Uncanny Valley

• Dan Graham, Conceptual Artist Who Bent Time and Space, Dies at 79

• The Stories Totem Poles Tell | Smarthistory (VIDEO)

Weekly Musings + Round Up... And A Few More Things

I first learned about Anna Sorokin aka Anna Delvey through her criminal trial and her connections to the New York art world— the topic of this fascinating book written by one of the close friends Sorokin defrauded.

Studying art history and attending grad school with MFAs in an art school context, you quickly learn that the complicated milieu in which artists achieve “success.” Just this past week, I was lecturing on the significant influence of New York curator Henry Geldzahler in identifying and legitimizing artists associated with the Pop Art movement in the 1960s—most importantly Andy Warhol—through the development of close personal relationships and introductions of these artists to the New York elite, for whom Geldzahler became an important advisor. In today’s world, Geldzahler would be understood as an influencer, and would no doubt have the ear of all the most important art collectors in the world.

What Geldzahler lacked in personal wealth, he made up with cultural capital. His education, taste, knowledge of art, food, fashion, and understanding of the networks in which art was circulated, bought, and sold, gave Geldzahler a power that eventually landed him in the unlikely role of the first contemporary art curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a position he convinced the museum, one that had no real interest in contemporary art, that it needed. The story of how this happened is legend, but what Geldzahler achieved is often ascribed to his charm, entrepreneurship, and incredible personal connections. And any artists he promoted along the way were immediately seen as significant.

All of this helps us understand the fascinating story of Anna Sorokin (aka Anna Delvey), the fake German heiress who in 2015-2017 infamously duped many members of the New York art world and fashionable elite (along with defrauding banks and investment firms along the way) in her attempt to fund and build an exclusive multi-million dollar art space, social club, and artist residence in New York called the ADV (Anna Delvey Foundation). I first heard of the Sorokin story when her criminal trial became art world news back in 2018-19 and the book My Friend Anna was published, detailing how successfully this otherwise imposter penetrated the New York art world. Two years later, the Netflix series Inventing Anna-- starring the incredible Julia Garner as Sorokin—gives us the dramatized treatment of just how significant cultural capital is to almost every decision around how artists find their way to fame and success.

What is perhaps most striking is the way Sorokin is portrayed as gaining her curatorial talents through her impeccable personal taste and understanding of art as a kind of social lubricant that becomes the backdrop for exclusive and carefully managed social spaces that mingle the world of art and finance. Sorokin imagines an art space that will serve as a VIP refuge for only the most privileged members, leveraging the art world trend, even in public art galleries, museums, and art fairs, to create more and more exclusivity in the experience of art, along with meeting and getting to know the “chosen” artists of any given moment. In the Netflix version of the story, we see this come through in the discussion and display of today’s art world darlings, most notably Cindy Sherman. Artists and their art are reduced to brands and commodities, no different than the carefully chosen fashions, décor, and restaurants that are referred to directly and indirectly throughout the series. At many points in the Sorokin story, this is made unapologetically and even shockingly clear, along with the implication that any art world “expertise” is less a measure of actual education and experience, and more a measure of how well an individual can leverage their personal cultural capital.

All of this is endlessly fascinating to me and in last week’s post, I made mention of my current research interests exploring the symbolic capital around which the art world has operated in the past few decades. No doubt that the Anna Sorokin story and the filmic treatment created by Shonda Rhimes will serve as a rich reference point in my continued explorations. It should also prove eye-opening to artists, and to those who continue to be baffled by the current state of the art world.

"Walter Scott’s Sandy, the Most Unlikable Person Ever, Visits the Museum"

moma.org

"Russian painting vandalised by ‘bored’ gallery guard who drew eyes on it"

theguardian.com

"Grey Organization"

artforum.com

"The Art Angle Podcast: How Lucy Lippard and a Band of Artists Fought U.S. Imperialism (PODCAST)"

artnet.com

"Beeple Is Probably Right That NFTs Will Change Politics. So Far, That Change Is for the Worse"

artnet.com

"Netflix’s ‘Inventing Anna’ Goes for Broke in Its Sleek Retelling of the Fake German Heiress Who Scammed New York’s Art World"

artnews.com

"The Invasion of New York’s Chinatown"

elephant.art

"The Most Hilarious Memes About Putin and Macron’s Bizarre Kremlin Meeting"

hyperallergic.com

"National Gallery of Canada launches an Indigenous ways and decolonisation department"

theartnewspaper.com

"Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It's Kept (VIDEO)"

whitneymuseum

• Walter Scott’s Sandy, the Most Unlikable Person Ever, Visits the Museum

• Russian painting vandalised by ‘bored’ gallery guard who drew eyes on it

• Grey Organization

• The Art Angle Podcast: How Lucy Lippard and a Band of Artists Fought U.S. Imperialism (PODCAST)

• Beeple Is Probably Right That NFTs Will Change Politics. So Far, That Change Is for the Worse

• Netflix’s ‘Inventing Anna’ Goes for Broke in Its Sleek Retelling of the Fake German Heiress Who Scammed New York’s Art World

• The Invasion of New York’s Chinatown

• The Most Hilarious Memes About Putin and Macron’s Bizarre Kremlin Meeting

• National Gallery of Canada launches an Indigenous ways and decolonisation department

• Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It's Kept (VIDEO)