The best exhibitions to visit this fall

Through November 26 Cave_Bureau is a firm of architects and researchers based in Nairobi. Their research focuses on architecture and urbanism in relation to nature, considering the anthropological and geological context of the post-colonial African city, as a case study for addressing the challenges of rural and urban environments. Following the presentation of the Obsidian Rain project at the last Venice Architecture Biennale, the Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen is hosting Cave_Bureau as protagonist of the latest chapter of The Architect’s Studio series, with a true immersion in the vast volcanic cave systems of Kenya. 

September 10 – January 13 From September 10 through January 13, 2024, MoMA in New York is hosting the most comprehensive retrospective ever dedicated to Ed Ruscha: “Ed Ruscha/Now Then” will present more than two hundred and fifty works made from 1958 to the present, depicting the American artist’s interdisciplinary approach. In addition to some of his best-known and most pop works, it will also feature drawings, prints, films, photographs, artist's books, and installations. Curated by Christophe Cherix, this exhibition portrays the vision of one of the most influential artists of the American twentieth century. 

September 30 – February 4 “Diego Marcon. Glassa” will be the largest retrospective dedicated to the Lombard artist ever held in an Italian institution. Open to the public from September 30, 2023, to February 4, 2024, at Centro Pecci in Prato, the ten rooms of the Gamberini wing will be transformed into a unique immersive experience through the installation of already known works and new works, in a set-up designed especially for Centro Pecci.

October 7 – January 28  “I have always wanted to be a filmmaker. My slideshows are films made up of stills”: this quote by Nan Goldin captures the idea behind the exhibition opening October, 7 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, “This Will Not End Well”. Although her exploration of the human experience through photography is known worldwide, the Dutch retrospective will present Goldin as a film-maker. Through the installation of six unique buildings designed by Hala Wardé, an architect friend of the artist, each work will have a specific space for viewing.

Through January 7 New York-based artist Adam Pendleton’s first solo exhibition in Europe, entitled “Blackness, White, and Light” is on view through January, 7 at Mumok in Vienna. Many of the works on display were created for the occasion and complement a body of paintings, drawings, videos, and sculptures that speak to visitors about compositional and abstract experimentation in search of new languages. Improvisation, painting, music: art in all its forms is a battlefield for Pendleton, where themes of political struggle, love and history meet.

October 7 – February 25 London’s Tate Modern is hosting “Troubled Times”, an extraordinary Philip Guston monographic exhibition, one of the most celebrated painters of the 1950s and 1960s, along with Mark Rothko and his childhood friend Jackson Pollock. Racism and war are central to the works of the artist’s early period, partly as autobiographical elements. The transition from abstract painting to the production of large-scale works in a more cartoonish style then occurred in the late 1960s. This exhibition emphasizes the complexity of his work, which brings together personal and political themes, the abstract and the figurative, the comic and the tragic.

October 12 – February 18  More than thirty years after his retrospective at Castello di Rivoli, the works of American artist James Jee Byars return to the Navate of Pirelli HangarBicocca for an extraordinary exhibition. Open to the public from October, 12 and on view until February 18, 2024, the exhibition will host a wide selection of monumental sculptures and installations, including some works rarely accessible to the public and shown in Italy for the first time. It will be a great opportunity to get into the advanced vision of this great master and re-read the questions that dominated his artistic work, namely, the pursuit of perfection, the doubt as a way of life and the finiteness of human beings.

September 23 – January 1  A major retrospective of Marina Abramović, including videos, installations, performances, sculptures, and new pieces created especially for the Royal Academy, will be presented at the Royal Academy in London, celebrating the Serbian artist’s 50-year career. Imponderabilia (1977), Rhythm 0 (1974), The Artist is Present (2010), are just some of the works celebrated in the London show. The exhibition will open to the public on September 23, 2023, and will remain on view until January 1, 2024.

October 12 – January 14 Judy Chicago’s feminist energy comes to the New Museum with the exhibition “Judy Chicago: Herstory”, which will trace the 60-year career of the American artist who made feminism and a number of social issues central to her artistic practice. Contextualizing her feminist methodology within the multiple art movements she was part of, often without due recognition, the three-floor exhibition at the New Museum in New York will highlight Judy Chicago’s major impact on American art.

September 30, 2023 – September 8, 2024 Stockholm’s Moderna Museet is presenting “Seven Rooms and a Garden”, an exhibition dedicated to Rashid Johnson, the American filmmaker and artist. Johnson’s pieces will dialogue with the museum’s collection in seven rooms and in the garden, enabling new dialogues and personal, political and historical connections that he puts forth in his art. The artist’s idea is to look at the museum’s collection as an intimate space in which an interchange of different acts and sensations is created. 

Through February 26  The history and meanings of folding screens is the focus of the new exhibition at Fondazione Prada in Milan, “Paraventi: Folding Screens from the 17th to 21st Centuries”, opening October, 26. Starting from this object ,which is halfway between furnishing accessory and art object, curator Nicholas Cullinan investigates the contaminations between East and West, the ambiguities and hybridizations between art forms and functions, and the approach of designers and artists. 

Through January 7 Nancy Holt’s work, spanning more than fifty years, is presented at Macba in Barcelona, in the largest European exhibition dedicated to her, “Inside Outside”, a unique opportunity to experience her transdisciplinary vision of art. With a background as a biologist, Holt has followed multiple lines in her artistic practice, making films, videos, photographs, concrete poetry and sound works, sculptures and installations in dialogue with nature. While her work is often relegated to the Land Art and Conceptual Art current, exhibition curators Teresa Grandas and Lisa Le Feuvre recall how the American artist preferred to call herself “an artist of perception.” 

October 13 – February 19 The Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection in Paris will host a major retrospective of the work of Mike Kelley, a seminal artist of the California scene between the 1980s and 2000s. His approach was never stuck on a single mean of expression, but ranged from performance to music and drawing, and then writing, painting, installations, photography and video. A provocative and personal artistic journey that addresses elements of society and collective memory from an irreverent and sometimes melancholy and touching perspective.

September 14 – January 7 Coco Fusco is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist and writer who has been advancing a progressive position on issues of representation, feminism, post-colonial theories and institutional critique for more than thirty years. From September 14, 2023 to January 7, 2024, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin will host the exhibition “Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island”, featuring works that question the institutional infrastructures that rule and condition the circulation and creation of value in art and visual culture.

Through February 12 “Something Like an Appleseed” is the exhibition on view through February 12, 2024 at the Korean Nam June Paik Art Center. The title refers to a talk Nam June Paik gave during a lecture at MoMA New York in 1980, in which the space of intersection between art and communication is recounted as the seed of video art. Furthermore, artworks by Aldo Tambellini, Allan Kaprow, James Seawright, and Thomas Tadlock are on view, as well as the work Random Access Audio Tape, which is displayed in South Korea for the first time since its acquisition by the foundation.

Through January 20  The first exhibition since the passing of Ilya Kabakov last May 27, “Tomorrow We Fly” is a retrospective of the work of one of the best-known artist couples in the contemporary art world. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s exhibition explores the political and cultural influence of art and its potential to change the world, presenting some of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov’s most iconic installations, including Not Everyone Will Be Taken into the Future (2001), which raises fundamental questions about the relationship with the past, the artist’s role in society, and the understanding of each artist’s work. 

October 14 – February 25  Designed by Japanese architect Jun Aoki, the elegant Aomori Museum of Art is one of Japan’s most interesting museums. From October 14, 2023 to February 25, 2024, it will host the exhibition “Yoshitomo Nara: The Beginning Place” dedicated to the master of Japanese Pop Art. Nara’s works are a unique combination of pop elements, manga, and traditional Japanese art influences that has captured the attention of collectors and art enthusiasts worldwide. His paintings, drawings and sculptures often explore themes of childhood, loneliness and the human condition, with a sense of melancholy, ambiguity and vulnerability. This exhibition focuses on Nara’s work over the past twelve years, since the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, while also presenting some of his most notable works.

September 27 – January 22  From September 27, 2023, the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid is hosting an extraordinary exhibition on the projects, books, and initiatives of Dick Higgins’ publishing house: Something Else Press was founded exactly sixty years ago in Manhattan, and played a pivotal role in publishing texts and works by the artists of Fluxus, American Conceptual Art, and other leading modernists. The exhibition presents three sections, which feature a complete archive of publications, an archive of Something Else Gallery exhibitions and events, and finally a selection of publications, edited by Something Else Press during its eleven years of activity, exemplifying the variety of practices supported by Higgins’ project.

October 18 – April 02 The Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is hosting a major retrospective dedicated to Mark Rothko. An exhibition that traces the entire career of the American artist, with more than one hundred works displayed in chronological order, coming from institutional and private collections around the world. Furthermore, within the museum’s highest space, where Rothko’s works are displayed, there is a compelling interplay between Frank Gehry’s architecture and Alberto Giacometti’s imposing sculptural figures. This intriguing combination evokes memories of Rothko’s unrealized project for a Unesco commission.

September 30 – February 4  Jasper Johns is undoubtedly one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century, a leading figure of New Dada alongside Robert Rauschenberg. The Kunstmuseum Basel sheds light on another lesser-known aspect of Johns’ life – his role as a collector – in the exhibition “Jasper Johns – The artist as collector”. While artists’ collections often result from gifts and exchanges of works with colleagues throughout their careers, this is not the case for Jasper Johns. Instead, a significant portion of the pieces in his collection were personally acquired by the artist. Drawings and works by Cezanne, Picasso, Duchamp, Sol Lewitt, among others, showcase the artist’s affinity for drawing techniques and other subjects beyond his primary practice, such as the human body.

October 13 – January 7  Gabriele Basilico made contemporary cities and landscapes the favored subjects of his lens. Milan, where he was born in 1944, often took center stage in his exploration, capturing its myriad facets from the late 1960s until 2013, the year of his passing. This fall, the Lombard capital celebrates this master of Italian photography with a major exhibition featuring two chapters. Starting from October 13, 2023, Triennale Milano presents an immersive journey that unites several of Basilico’s works focusing on architecture, suburbs, and the transformations of Milan. This includes the renowned “Milano Ritratti di Fabbriche” series from 1978 to 1980. On the other hand, Palazzo Reale showcases the photographs capturing the cities and places that Basilico explored during his extensive travels around the world.