NEW THIS MONTH
IN U.S. MUSEUMS

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Nov. 1, 2011
The grand reopening of 15 redone galleries -- 19,000-square-feet in all -- traces the course of Islamic civilization over a span of 13 centuries, exhibiting a rotating selection of 1,200 works in textile, tapestry, calligraphy, metalwork, textile, books and more, and including the ornate Damascus Room, built in A.H.1119/ 1707 A.D., one of the finest examples of Syrian Ottoman reception rooms
Also on view: “Art in Renaissance Venice, 1400-1515: Paintings and Drawings from the Museum’s Collections,” Nov. 8, 2011-Feb. 5, 2012; “The Game of Kings: Medieval Ivory Chessmen from the Isle of Lewis,” Nov. 15, 2011-Apr. 22, 2012; “Lisbon’s Hebrew Bible: Medieval Jewish Art in Context,” Nov. 22, 2011-Jan. 16, 2012; “Storytelling in Japanese Art,” Nov. 19, 2011-May 6, 2012

Museum of Arts and Design
Nov. 1, 2011-Feb. 19, 2012
David and Serenella Ciclitira’s Korean Eye project, co-founded with the Saatchi Gallery, illuminates the Korean art scene with work by 21 emerging and established Korean artists, from Seung Hyo Jang’s photo-sculptures to a large shark fabricated from repurposed car tires by Yong Ho Ji and Meekyoung Shin's "antique" porcelain vases rendered in soap
Curators: Johnson Chang, Serenella Ciclitira, Nigel Hurst, Holly Hotchner, David Revere McFadden, Lowery Stokes
Catalogue: SKIRA, 389 pp., $50
Funding: Standard Chartered, Dr. Young Yang Chung, the Seol Won Foundation
Tour: The exhibition comes to New York from the Saatchi Gallery, London, and will travel internationally following its run at MAD
Also on view: “Beauty in All Things: Japanese Art and Design,” Nov. 22, 2011-Feb. 19, 2012

J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Villa
Nov. 2, 2011-Jan. 16, 2012
Exploring the alliance between the avant-garde and antiquity via 17 paintings, drawings and sculptures by Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, Fernand Léger and Francis Picabia, all created between 1906-1936, placed in conversation with a dozen antique objects
Curators: Jens Daehner, Christopher Green
Tour: Following its debut at the Getty, the exhibition travels to its co-organizing institution, the Musée Picasso, Antibes, Feb. 16-May 20, 2012
Also on view: “Images of the Artist,” Nov. 15, 2011-Feb. 12, 2012

Corcoran Gallery of Art
Nov. 3-13, 2011
The first exhibition of works by the 12 photographers shortlisted this year for the Prix Pictet photography prize, organized by Swiss bank Pictet & Cie and awarded to photographers of social and environmental change, includes Taryn Simon, Mitch Epstein and Thomas Wolf

Norton Simon Museum
Guggenheim Museum
Nov. 4, 2011-Jan. 22, 2012
The first U.S. museum survey of the infamous Italian prankster (b. 1960) -- supposedly marking his retirement from art-making -- unites more than 130 works he has made since 1989, all suspended by rope from the ceiling in the museum’s rotunda, as well as excerpts and images from his new magazine, Toilet Paper
Curator: Nancy Spector
Catalogue: 255 pp., $45
Funding: Steven A. and Alexandra M. Cohen Foundation, Amalia Dayan and Adam
Lindemann, Massimo De Carlo, others

Jewish Museum
Nov. 4, 2011-Mar. 25, 2012
150 vintage photographs taken by more than 70 photographers (almost a third of them women) connected with the New York City-based Photo League, including W. Eugene Smith, Weegee, Lisette Model, Berenice Abbott and Aaron Siskind,  as well as newsreels, ephemera and excerpts from League members Ruth Orkin and Morris Engels' 1953 film Little Fugitive
Curators: Mason Klein, Catherine Evans
Catalogue: Yale University Press, 248 pp., $50
Funding: Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, Betsy Karel, WNET New York Public Media
Tour: After its debut at the Jewish Museum, the exhibition travels to its co-organizing institution, the Columbus Museum of Art, and then to the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, and the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, Florida
Also on view: “Jem Cohen: NYC Weights and Measures,” Nov. 4, 2011-Mar. 25, 2012

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Nov. 5, 2011-Feb. 20, 2012
Thirty years after the Colorado-based, 22-year-old photographer committed suicide (in 1981), the most comprehensive exhibition of her work presents 160 vintage photographs from her earliest experiments while a student at RISD to her late, large-scale “blueprint studies,” as well as artist books and screenings of her recently discovered short videos
Curator: Corey Keller
Catalogue: D.A.P., 244 pp., $49.95
Funding: Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Tour: Following its debut at SF MoMA, the exhibition travels to the Guggenheim Museum in spring of 2012
Also on view: “The Air We Breathe,” Nov. 5, 2011-Feb. 20, 2012; “Jim Campbell: Exploded Views,” Nov. 5, 2011-Sept. 25, 2012; “New Work: Richard Aldrich,” Nov. 18, 2011-Mar. 25, 2012

Freer/Sackler Galleries
Opens Nov. 5, 2011
Inaugurating a new gallery devoted to the arts of Korea, 44 stoneware vessels dating from the 11th through the 16th century illustrate the historic Korean technique of sanggam, the art of inlaying designs with black-and-white pigments
Curator: Louise Cort
Funding: The National Museum of Korea
Also on view: “Silk Road Luxuries from China,” opens Nov. 5, 2011; “Chinese Ceramics: 10th-13th Century,” opens Nov. 5, 2011

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Nov. 19, 2011-Mar. 11, 2012
This 7,000-square-foot exhibition of ancient Egyptian antiquities from the British Museum’s collection unites 120 artifacts, from a mummified cat to a portrait from a coffin’s lid, all organized around the mummy of temple priest Nesperennub, as well as a 3D film about mummies narrated by actor Patrick Stewart
Curators: John H. Taylor, Dr. Peter Schertz
Catalogue: 80 pp., $9.95

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Nov. 6, 2011-Feb. 5, 2012
More than 150 avant-garde works by Czech artists amassed by Houston philanthropists Roy and Mary Cullen, including publications from the Devetsil Artistic Association, which united the post-WWI Czech avant-garde, plus examples of Czech Surrealism, rare artists' books and periodicals, works from the Skupina 42 and blown modern glass
Curators: Karen Srp, Lenka Bydžovská, Alison de Lima Greene
Catalogue: Yale University Press, 320 pp.,$75
Also on view: “Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection,” Nov. 13, 2011-Feb. 12, 2012

Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art
Nov. 6, 2011-Jan. 29, 2012
Some 200 paintings, sculptures, codices, manuscripts, feather works and other traditional objects from indigenous peoples and cultures that contributed to the artistic landscape of Latin America, organized into six thematic categories and explored through the lens of Mexico and Peru between the 15th-19th centuries
Curator: Ilona Katzew
Catalogue: Yale University Press, 320 pp., $70
Funding: Camilla Chandler Frost, Alice and Nahum Lainer, Betty and Brack Duker, others
Tour: After its run at LACMA, the exhibition travels to itss co-organizing institution, the Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City, opening in July 2012

Whitney Museum of American Art
Nov. 10, 2011-Jan. 29, 2012
The first major museum survey of the famed American appropriation artist (b. 1947) unites her photographs, prints, paintings and sculptures made from the 1980s to the present
Curators: Johanna Burton, Elisabeth Sussman, Carrie Springer
Catalogue: Yale University Press, 272 pp., $60
Funding: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Glenstone, Aaron I. Fleischman and Lin Lougheed, others

MoMA PS1
Nov. 13, 2011-Mar. 12, 2012
The African-American artist (b. 1971) presents video and photographic documentation of his enactment of instructional “performance scores” that he solicited from 26 other African-American artists, including Coco Fusco, Rico Gaston, Glenn Ligon and Kara Walker, and performs a number of them live
Curator: Christopher Y. Lee
Catalogue: An accompanying artist book will be released in late 2012 or early 2013
Funding: The Annenberg Foundation, Bernard Lumpkin, Carmine Boccuzzi, others

Museum of Modern Art, New York
Nov. 13, 2011-May 14, 2012
Five “portable murals” made by the Mexican artist (1886-1957) for an exhibition at the museum in 1931, exhibited together for the first time since their production, along with three large working drawings, smaller drawings, watercolors, and prints
Curator: Leah Dickerman
Catalogue: 128 pp., $35
Funding: BBVA Bancomer, David Rockefeller, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, Mexican Friends of Rivera, others
Also on view: “Projects 96: Harris Epaminonda,” Nov. 17, 2011-Feb. 20, 2012; “Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954-003064: A Public Reading,” Nov. 12-13, 2011

Brooklyn Museum
Nov. 18, 2011-Feb. 12, 2012
The NGA’s infamous survey exploring gender and sexuality in modern American portraiture is reorganized with the Tacoma Art Museum to present 100 paintings, photographs, works on paper, film and installations by George Bellows, Alice Neel, AA Bronson, Annie Leibovitz -- and David Wojnarowicz
Curators: David C. Ward, Jonathan D. Katz, Tricia Laughlin Bloom
Catalogue: Smithsonian Books, 296 pp., $45
Funding: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Barbara and Richard Moore, The Calamus Foundation, others
Also on view: “Raw/Cooked: Lan Tuazon,” Nov. 4, 2011-Jan. 15, 2012

Art Institute of Chicago
Nov. 19, 2011-Feb. 26, 2012
140 drawings made primarily during the 1960s -- from diagrams to instructions for fabrication to notes made during lectures -- by some 90 artists, including Agnes Denes, Eva Hesse, Brice Marden, Jasper Johns and Ellsworth Kelly, among others, all from the collection of AIC trustee Irving Stenn Jr.
Curator: Mark Pascale
Catalogue: Yale University Press, 160 pp., $35
Also on view: “Holiday Thorne Rooms,” Nov. 11, 2011-Jan. 7, 2012; “Animals around the World: Picture Books by Steve Jenkins,” Nov. 19, 2011-Apr. 22, 2012; “focus: Sharon Hayes,” Nov. 10, 2011-Mar. 11, 2012

Norton Museum of Art
Nov. 30, 2011-Mar. 4, 2012
The first exhibition in the museum’s “Recognition of Art by Women” series present 25 canvases and drawings made since 1992 by the YBA (b. 1970), uniting her well-known figurative paintings with drawings from her recent series Reproduction drawing (after the Leonardo cartoon) (2009-10), and works from her studio that have not been exhibited before
Curator: Cheryl Brutvan
Catalogue: 110 pp.
Funding: Sophie Davis Fund/MLDauray Arts Initiative
Also on view: “Dave Cole: Flags of the World,” Nov. 3, 2011-Jan. 16, 2012
Curator: David Hogge