NEW THIS MONTH
IN U.S. MUSEUMS

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Apr. 3-Sept. 3, 2012
100 German, Swiss, Austrian and early Bohemian drawings by the likes of Martin Schongauer, Albrecht Altdorfer, Urs Grad, Hans Holbein the Elder and Albrecht Dürer -- including his iconic Self-portrait and Studies of the Artist’s Hand and a Pillow (1493) -- presented chronologically and grouped by city, school and theme
Curators: Stijn Alsteens, Freyda Spira
Catalogue: Yale University Press, 300 pp., $65
Also on view: “The Dawn of Egyptian Art,” Apr. 10-Aug. 5, 2012

J. Paul Getty Museum
Apr. 3-Aug. 26, 2012
The first big museum presentation of Herb Ritts (1952-2002), the Los Angeles-based fashion photographer of erotic nudes and saucy celebs
Curator: Paul Martineau
Catalogue: 224 pp., $59.95
Tour: Following its debut at the Getty, the show travels to the Cincinnati Art Museum in October 2012 and the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art from late February 201

Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
Apr. 4-Aug. 12, 2012
New York-based, Austria-born (1962) graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister presents typographic investigations of a series of maxims pertaining to the idea of “happiness,” as well as related work in film, print, infographics, sculptures and interactive installations
Curators: Claudia Gould, Anthony Elms
Funding: Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, Chodorow Exhibition Initiative Fun, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Dietrich Foundation, others
Tour: Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, winter 2013

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Apr. 7-July 31, 2012
50 works by Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama (b. 1938), who first came to prominence in the mid-60s with high-contrast, gritty depictions of Japanese life, including a series of his experimental photo-books and new color photos taken in Tokyo
Curator: Edward Robinson
Funding: Ralph M. Parsons Foundation

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Apr. 8-July 30, 2012
The first West Coast museum solo of the New-York based fireworks artist (b. 1957) features three new works commissioned by MoCA, including a four-stage pyrotechnical display done on the evening of Apr. 7th, 2012
Curators: Jeffrey Deitch, Rebecca Morse
Funding: East West Bank, ANTA Sports Products Limited, China Lilanz Limited, Bell Family Foundation, Andrew and Peggy Cherng, others

Museum of Modern Art
Apr. 10-Apr. 17, 2012
Curatorial auteur Klaus Biesenbach’s latest venture into masscult brings back the avant-garde electronic music group Kraftwerk in the museum atrium for eight consecutive evenings, each devoted to one of the group’s eight albums, plus a presentation of the outfit’s historical audio and visual material in the Performance Dome at MoMA PS1    
Curators: Klaus Biesenbach, Eliza Ryan
Funding: Volkswagen of America

Frances Lehman Loeb Art Canter, Vassar College
Apr. 13-June 17, 2012
20 etchings, aquatints, engravings, lithographs and screenprints made since 2000 as well as a selection of six paintings and drawings from the collection of Jeanne Greenberg and Nicolas Rohatyn
Curator: Siri Engberg
Catalogue: Highpoint Editions, 44 pp., $100
Funding: Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation, Carolyn Foundation, Hynnek Fund of HRK Foundation, Jerome Foundation, others
Tour: Organized by the Minneapolis-based Highpoint Center for Printmaking, the show has appeared at Cornell’s Herbert Johnson Museum of Art and Wesleyan’s Davidson Art Center

Art Institute of Chicago
Apr. 14-Sept. 13, 2012
Upping the fashion quotient in Chicago, via signature works by three international fashion design studios -- Bless (Austrian-German), Boudicca (U.K.) and Sandra Backlund (Sweden) -- as well as films, objects, printed materials and photography that inspired the collections
Curator: Zoë Ryan
Catalogue: Yale University Press, 96 pp., $16.95
Funding: Piper Jaffray Companies, Goldman Sachs, Kenneth and Anne Griffin, Thomas and Margot Pritzker, others

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Apr. 14-Aug. 5, 2012
The much-liked Chicago artist Rashid Johnson (b. 1977), now a New Yorker, breaks out with his first museum survey of 40 photographs, sculptures, videos, installations and paintings made over the last 13 years
Curator: Julie Rodrigues Widholm
Catalogue: 96 pp., $30
Funding: Joyce Foundation, Margo and George Grieg, Mary Ittelson, others

Grey Art Gallery
Apr. 17-July 14, 2012
50-plus preliminary sketches, finished drawings, compositional and figure studies and more by Jacques Callot, Francois Boucher, Theodore Rousseau and others
Curators: Cheryl K. Snay, Kenneth M. Grant, Jonathan Bober
Catalogue: Hudson Hills Press, 160 pp., $65
Funding: Grey’s Director’s Circle, Inter/National Council and Friends, Abby Weed Grey Trust, others
Tour: Organized by the Blandon, the show has appeared at the Frick Art & Historical Center in Pittsburgh, and travels to the Cantor Center for Visual Arts in Stanford in May 2014

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Apr. 22-Aug. 5, 2012
Collector Eduardo F. Costantini, who founded his museum in Buenos Aires in 2001, sends north a selection of 39 works by Tarsila do Amaral, Frida Kahlo, Wifredo Lam, Diego Rivera and others
Curator: Mari Carmen Ramírez
Funding: BBVA Compass, Gail and Louis Adler, Sotheby’s

National Gallery of Art
Apr. 22-Aug. 5, 2012
Street photography gets the NGA treatment via 90 works by Harry Callahan, Bruce Davidson, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Philip-Lorca diCorcia and others, arranged chronologically
Curator: Sarah Greenough
Funding: Ryna and Melvin Cohen Family Foundation, Trellis Fund, Tru Vue

Neue Galerie
Apr. 26-Aug. 27, 2012
Exploring 100 photographic prints and autochromes by the Austrian photographer Heinrich Kuehn (1866-1944), one of the first to make color images, situating his work in relation to the Viennese avant-garde and his friendships with major American photographers Alfred Steiglitz and Edward Steichen
Curator: Dr. Monika Faber
Catalogue: Prestel, 136 pp., $49.95

Smithsonian American Art Museum
Apr. 27-Sept. 3, 2012
The uptown avant-garde, via 100 artworks by 43 black artists, including Jacob Lawrence, Thornton Dial, Sr., Romare Bearden and Alma Thomas, organized thematically
Curator: Virginia Mecklenburg
Catalogue: Skira Rizzoli, 256 pp., $60
Funding: Alston & Bird, Amherst Holdings, LLC, Diane and Norman Bernstein foundation, Larry Irving and Leslie Wiley, others

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Apr. 28-July 29, 2012
Approximately 125 works from the Albertina Graphic Collection in Vienna, featuring   Rush, a series of 37 painted aluminum silhouetted heads, hung side-by-side at eye level like a continuous frieze
Curator: Clifford Ackley, Edward Saywell, Marietta Mautner Markhof
Catalogue: Hatje Cantz Albertina, 240 pp., $60
Funding: United Technologies Corporation, Shelly and Michael Kassen Fund, Stuff Magazine
Tour: The show debuted at the Albertina in Vienna, its co-organizing institution, in May 2010
Also on view: “Edward Weston: Leaves of Grass,” Apr. 21-Dec. 31, 2012