NEW THIS MONTH
IN U.S. MUSEUMS

Frick Collection
May 1-July 29, 2012
The first U.S. monographic exhibition dedicated to Pier Jacopo Alari de Bonacolsi aka Antico (ca. 1455-1528), master sculptor to the courts of northern Italy, presents 46 objects -- 37 by Antico -- comprising three-quarters of his rare surviving oeuvre and including medals, statuettes, life-size busts and reliefs
Curators: Eleonora Luciano, Denise Allen
Funding: Christian Humann Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah M. Bogert, Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill III, others
Tour: The show debuted at the National Gallery of Art in fall 2011

New Museum
May 2-June 24, 2012
The first New York solo exhibition for the abstract British sculptor (b. 1944) known for her sophisticated use of abject materials, comprises a new site-specific sculptural installation in the museum’s fourth-floor gallery made from concrete, felt, polystyrene and fabric
Curator: Gary Carrion-Murayari
Funding: Toby Devan Lewis Emerging Artists Exhibition Fund

Museum of Modern Art
May 2-Sept. 3, 2012
Photography as anthropology? The new project by New York artist Taryn Simon (b. 1975), known for emotional portraits of cleared Death Row inmates as well as minimal still-lifes of airport contraband, presents August Sander-type color photos of individuals related by bloodline, collected during her worldwide travels in 2008-2011, along with text panels telling their stories
Curator: Roxanna Marocci
Funding: Robert B. Menschel, Aaron and Barbara Levine

Jewish Museum
May 4-Sept. 23, 2012
Vuillard wasn’t Jewish but many of his patrons were -- this is the context for this fresh survey of the French artist’s career, featuring 50 works in various media, ranging from the vanguard 1890s to the urbane domesticity of his lesser-known late portraits
Curator: Stephen Brown
Funding: Jerome L. Greene Foundation, Estate of Lyn Barris, Bloomberg, others

Clyfford Still Museum
May 4-Sept. 30, 2012
The second section of the new museum’s inaugural exhibition features 70 rarely seen paintings and works on paper by the seminal Ab-Ex artist (1904-1980), ranging from his early figurative and landscape paintings to the drawings and prints he made in the 1940s, all organized by geography and chronology
Curators: Dean Sobel, David Anfam
Catalogue: Skira Rizzoli, 250 pp., $65

Philadelphia Museum of Art
May 5-Aug. 12, 2012
Ceramic, rubber, bronze, glass, wood, silver, silk and natural fibers, 41 works by 39 craft artists from 11 countries, featuring a participatory section of lectures and videos titled CraftLAB
Curator: Elisabeth Agro
Funding: Leonard and Norma Klorfine Foundation Fund for Modern and Contemporary Craft, Whidgate Charitable Foundation, Lion Brand Yarn, others

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
May 5-Oct. 21, 2012
“Phantom Limb”? Is that painting as a tortured memory of castration? Count the women in this survey of 30 examples of “painterly activity” from the museum collection, complemented by additions from the local community, including works by Robert Rauschenberg to Wade Guyton, as well as Rebecca Morris, Kerstin Brätsch and others
Curator: Michael Darling
Funding: Pritzker Traubert Collection Exhibition Fund, Marilyn and Larry Fields, Nancy Lauter McDougal and Alfred L. McDougal

National Gallery of Art
May 6-Aug. 12, 2012
Organized by the Tate Modern with the Fundacio Joan Mirò, the U.S. debut presents 120 paintings and works on paper that span the artist’s entire career and reveal his active engagement with the political and social turmoil surrounding him, from Civil War to fascist rule; in conjunction with the show, award-winning Washington-based chef José Andrés transforms the menu in the Garden Café with signature Catalan dishes
Curators: Harry Cooper, Marko Daniel, Mathew Gale, Teresa Montaner
Catalogue:  Thames and Hudson and Tate Modern, 240 pp., $60
Funding: Anna-Maria and Stephan Kellen Foundation, Buffy and William Cafritz, Institut Ramon Llull, others

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute at the Explorers Club, New York
May 9-Aug. 3, 2012
This specially commissioned installation by Mark Dion (b. 1961) in the Explorers Club’s Trophy Room in Manhattan reflects on museum founder Sterling Clark’s 1908-1909 scientific expedition to Northern China, for which the artist made unpainted papier-mâché sculptures of equipment and tools and surreal “specimens,” as well as a “field guide” that leads visitors through the show
Curator: Lisa G. Corrin
Funding: Fernleigh Foundation, David Rodgers

Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston
May 12-July 29, 2012
Looking towards the 100th anniversary of the “readymade,” an art form pioneered by Marcel Duchamp with his 1913 Bicycle Wheel, with 35 works by 18 artists, including Claire Fontaine, Bill Bollinger, Klara Liden, Pratchaya Phinthong and Fleix Gonzales-Torres, as well as a catalogue of texts-as-readymades by Duchamp himself, Lucy Lippard and Joseph Kosuth
Curator:  Dean Daderko
Catalogue: Dancing Foxes Press, 104 pp., $26.95
Funding: Union Pacific Foundation, Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, Fayez Sarofim, Michael Silkha, others

Freer /Sackler
May 12-Apr. 7, 2012
Presented concurrently with the retrospective of the celebrated Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) at the Hirshhorn Museum, the Freer / Sackler hosts the U.S. debut of Weiwei’s Fragments, a massive installation of salvaged ironwood pillars and beams held together by an elaborate system of joinery that draws on the 2,000-year-old Chinese technique of “post and beam” construction
Curator: Carol Huh

Art Institute of Chicago
May 16-Sept. 3, 2012
Organized in collaboration with the Tate Modern in London, the largest-ever exhibition of the seminal Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) presents 160 works spanning his entire career, including never-before-seen paintings, drawings and sculpture
Curators: James Rondeau, Sheena Wagstaff
Catalogue: 250 pp., $65
Funding: Bank of America, Bette and Neison Harris Exhibitions Fund, Terra Foundation for American Art, others
Tour: Following its debut in Chicago, the show travels to the National Gallery of Art in October 2012

Asian Art Museum, San Francisco
May 18-Sept. 2, 2012
Organized in collaboration with the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the show presents 60 works by 31 artists, including Hiroshi Sugimoto, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Adeela Suleman, Raqib Shaw and Choi Jeong Hwa, placed alongside 90 objects from the museum’s collection and organized around four themes that explore the cross-cultural perspectives of Asian cosmology and spirituality
Curators: Mami Kataoka, Allison Harding
Catalogue: 280 pp., $30
Funding: Bernard Osher Foundation, W.L.S. Spencer Foundation, Koret Foundation, Christie’s, others

International Center of Photography
May 18-Sept. 2, 2012
The first U.S. presentation of work by the Swedish photographer Christer Strömholm (1918-2002), who is little known outside of Sweden, includes a body of work titled Les Amis de Place Blanche, which documents transsexual “ladies of  the night” in 1960s Paris
Curator: Pauline Vermare
Funding: Peggy and Keith Anderson, W Magazine, others

Morgan Library
May 18-Sept. 23, 2012
The first display of the Morgan’s holdings in this area presents 74 works by Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Carpaccio and others, as well as books, prints, maps and letters between the artists and their patrons
Curator: Rhoda Eitel-Porter
Funding: Alex Gordon Fund for Exhibitions, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Robert B. Loper, others

Wexner Center for the Arts
May 18-Aug. 5, 2012
Israeli artist Omer Fast (b. 1972) juxtaposes two videos made a decade apart, 5000 Feet is the Best (2011) and CNN Concatenated (2001)
Funding: Consulate General of Israel to the Mid-Atlantic Region

Virginia Museum of Fine Art
May 21-Aug. 19, 2012
Organized by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the show’s sole east coast presentation brings together 200 objects, including jewels, armor, decorative arts and paintings, which explore the rich visual culture of India’s last royal families, from the early 18th century to the mid-20th century
Curators: John Henry Rice, Anna Jackson, Amin Jaffer, Deepika Ahlawat
Catalogue: Victoria and Albert, 240 pp., $34.95
Funding: E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Fred T. and Roddy P. Tattersall, Style Weekly, others

Miami Art Museum
May 24-Sept. 2, 2012
The first U.S. retrospective for José Bedia (b. 1959), a pivotal member of Cuba’s pioneering “Generation of the ‘80s,” features 35 large-scale figurative paintings, installations and drawings and explores the influence of indigenous cultures and religions from North and South America and Africa on the artist’s work over the last three decades
Curators: Judith Bettelheim, Janet Catherine Berlo
Catalogue: University of Washington Press, 216 pp., $35
Funding: Donald B. Cordry Memorial Fund, Fay-Bettye Green Fund, Pasadena Art Alliance, others
Tour: The show originated at UCLA’s Fowler Museum in fall 2011

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
May 27-Sept. 3, 2012
Co-organized with Haus der Kunst in Munich, the first large-scale exhibition to deal broadly with Land Art highlights the movement’s early years of untested artistic experimentations and concludes in the mid-‘70s, before it became an institutionalized category, presenting works in photography, film and television as well as sculpture, by more than 80 artists, all organized around Michael Heizer’s work Double Negative (1969-70)
Curators: Philipp Kaiser, Miwon Kwon
Catalogue: Prestel, 264 pp., $60
Funding: Barbara Kruger, L&M Arts, Los Angeles, Kathi and Gary Cypress, Suzanne and David Johnson, others