New Orleans Museum of Art and other venues
Nov. 1, 2008-Jan. 19, 2009
The first real biennial of contemporary art ever held in the United States includes 81 artists from around the world, with works on view at New Orleans museums, art centers, warehouses and other sites in the city’s 9th Ward, Warehouse District and elsewhere
Curator: Dan Cameron
Catalogue: 408 pp, $50

Museum of Modern Art
Nov. 2, 2008-Jan. 12, 2009
A decade of pictorial experimentation, some 90 works in all, by the pioneering modernist who said he wanted to "assassinate painting"
Curator: Anne Umland
Catalogue: 242 pp., $50
Funding: Institut Ramon Llull and the Ministry of Culture and the Media of the Government of Catalonia, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III

De Young Museum
Nov. 1, 2008-April 2008
The only U.S. stop of the exhibition, co-organized with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent Foundation, presents over 120 outfits spanning 40 years
Curators: Florence Müller, Dianne Charbonneau, Jill D’Alessandro
Catalogue: Yves Saint Laurent: Style, Abrams, $50

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Nov. 4, 2008-Mar. 1, 2009
A suite of works by the Indian-born, London-based painter, originally made in response to the "Holbein in England" exhibition held at Tate Britain in 2006-07
Also opening: "Reality Check: Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography," Nov. 4, 2008-Mar. 22, 2009; "Reopening of the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine Art and the Medieval Europe Gallery," Nov. 18, 2008-ongoing; "Art and Love in Renaissance Italy," Nov. 18, 2008-Feb. 16, 2009; "Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.," Nov. 18, 2008-Mar. 15, 2009; "Annual Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Creche," Nov. 25, 2008-Jan. 6, 2009; "Choirs of Angels: Painting in Italian Choir Books, 1300-1500," Nov. 25, 2008-Apr. 12, 2009

Art Institute of Chicago
Nov. 5, 2008-Jan. 5, 2009
Artists’ books, ephemera and examples of fine printing, focusing on selections from the AIC’s collection showcased in the fall 2008 issue of Museum Studies

Whitney Museum of American Art
Nov. 7, 2008-Jan. 25, 2009
Color and black-and-white photographs by the celebrated Southern photographer, as well as Stranded in Canton, his video work from the early 1970s
Curators: Elisabeth Sussman, Thomas Weski
Catalogue: 320 pp., $65
Funding: Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Norman and Melissa Selby, John and Annamaria Phillips Foundation, Marcia Dunn & Jonathan Sobel, National Endowment for the Arts
Tour: Haus der Kunst, Munich

Norton Simon Museum
Nov. 7, 2008-Feb. 2, 2009
Inaugurating a new work exchange program between the Norton Simon, the Frick and the NGA with Vermeer’s A Lady Writing
Curator: Carol Togneri
Also opening: "On the Enlightened Path: Jain Art from India," Nov. 21, 2008-July 13, 2009

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Nov. 8, 2008-Mar. 15, 2009
Art from the 1980s and ’90s by Chris Burden, Alfredo Jaar, Louise Lawler, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Adrian Piper, others
Curator: Elizabeth Smith, Tricia Van Eck
Also opening: "Joseph Grigely St. Cecilia," Nov. 22, 2008-Feb. 22, 2009

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Nov. 8, 2008-Feb. 8, 2009
The audience makes art happen in works by 40 artists, including John Cage, Lygia Clark, Dan Graham, Jochen Gerz, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Hans Haacke, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Erwin Wurm, others
Curator: Rudolf Frieling
Catalogue: 224 pp., $39.95
Also opening: "Martin Puryear," Nov. 8, 2008-Jan. 25, 2009; "New Work: Mai-Thu Perret," Nov. 21, 2008-Mar. 1, 2009

Jewish Museum
Nov. 9, 2008-Mar. 22, 2009
Set designs, posters, photographs, film clips and theater ephemera by Chagall and other artists such as Natan Altman and Robert Falk, in an exhibition exploring the contributions of Jewish artists to early Soviet theater
Curator: Susan Tamarkin Goodman
Catalogue: 240 pp., $65 cloth, $45 paper
Funding: Sammy and Aviva Ofer, others
Tour: Jewish Museum, San Francisco, Apr. 25-Spet. 7, 2009

Hammer Museum
Nov. 9, 2008-Feb. 8, 2009
Tracing the evolution of the woodcut, via works by Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Elizabeth Catlett, Willie Cole, Paul Gauguin, Wassily Kandinsky, Anselm Kiefer, Leopoldo Méndez, Edvard Munch, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Susan Rothenburg, Terry Winters, Shin Young-ok, many more
Curator: Allegra Pesenti
Funding: Susan Steinhauser and Daniel Greenberg, Ruth Greenberg, Greenberg Foundation
Also opening: "Oranges and Sardine: Conversations on Abstract Painting," Nov. 9, 2008-Feb. 8, 2009

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Nov. 9, 2008-Feb. 1, 2009
Selection of 170 works from the collection of tabloid magnate William Randolph Hearst (1860-1951), one of LACMA’s greatest benefactors, in an exhibition that seeks to correct the "freakish image" of Hearst left by his portrayal in Citizen Kane
Curator: Mary Levkoff
Catalogue: 256 pp., $50
Funding: William Randolph Hearst Foundation
Also opening: "Shell-Shocked: Expressionism after the Great War: Selections from the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies," Nov. 9, 2008-Apr. 19, 2009

Dallas Museum of Art
Nov. 9, 2008-Mar. 15, 2009
Sculpture, photography and large-scale immersive installations from 1993 to the present by the Icelandic "weather artist"
Curator: Madeleine Grynsztejn
Catalogue: Thames & Hudson, 272 pp., $50, contributions by Mieke Bal, Klaus Biesenbach and Roxana Marcoci, Daniel Birnbaum, Olafur Eliasson and Robert Irwin, Pamela M. Lee, Henry Urbach
Tour: This show has already appeared at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Modern Art / P.S.1

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Nov. 12, 2008-Mar. 1, 2009
The work of Catherine D’Ignazio, Rania Matar, Andrew Witkin and Joe Zane, finalists for the $25,000 Foster Prize, to be announced in 2009
Also opening: "Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall," Nov. 4, 2008-Nov. 1, 2009; "Momentum 12: Gerard Byrne," Nov. 12, 2008-Mar. 1, 2009

Studio Museum, Harlem
Nov. 12, 2008-Mar. 15, 2009
Career retrospective of the African-American painter, known for his life-size portraits of people of color living in urban areas in the 1960s and ’70s
Curator: Trevor Schoonmaker
Catalogue: 140 pp., $39.95,
Funding: Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, North Carolina Arts Council
Tour: This show has already appeared at the Nasher Museum of Art; it subsequently appears at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
Also opening: "VideoStudio," Nov. 12, 2008-Mar. 15, 2009

Seattle Art Museum
Nov. 13, 2008-Mar. 1, 2009
Hopper’s Chop Suey (1929) and other restaurant scenes featuring young women clientele
Curator: Patricia Junker
Funding: Safeco Insurance Foundation

Phoenix Art Museum
Nov. 15, 2008-Feb. 8, 2009
54 drawings by the American academic painter Elihu Vedder (1836-1923), made to accompany Omar Khayyám’s classic 12th century Persian poem, the Rubáiyát, in 1884
Funding: C.F. Foundation, William R. Kenan, Jr. Endowment Fund, others
Tour: This show has already appeared at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Nov. 15, 2008-Jan. 11, 2009
Second of a two-part tribute to the artist residency program at the MFAH’s Glassell School of Art, this section focusing on artists who responded to the Texas landscape, including Mequita Ahuja, Santiago Cucullu, Dana Frankfort, Charles Mary Kubricht, Cindy Loehr, Stephanie Martz, Julie Mehretu, Karyn Olivier and Dean Ruck
Curator: Alison de Lima Greene

Legion of Honor, San Francisco
Fantastical explorations, anatomical studies and working drawings such as Study for the Angel (1485) in the painting Madonna of the Rocks, from the quintessential Renaissance man
Curator: James Ganz
Catalogue: $30
Tour: This show has already been seen at the Birmingham Museum of Art

MASS MoCA
Nov. 16, 2008
Ca. 100 works -- covering nearly an acre of wall surface in MASS MoCA’s Building 7 -- that LeWitt created from 1968 to 2007
Catalogue: Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings: A Catalogue Raisonné

High Museum of Art
Nov. 16, 2008-Apr. 19, 2009
Artifacts relating to the famous Qin Dynasty army of terracotta warriors from China, including 12 figures from the actual army
Catalogue: 256 pp., $40,
Funding: GE, others
Tour: This show has already appeared at the British Museum

Brooklyn Museum
Nov. 21, 2008-Mar.29, 2009
Twenty-one 58 x 44 in. photo portraits of African-American cultural icons, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Sean Combs, Vernon Jordan, Toni Morrison, Chris Rock and Al Sharpton, captured during interviews for Greenfield-Sanders’ documentary The Black List
Funding: Credit Suisse

Norton Museum of Art
Nov. 22, 2008-Feb. 15, 2009
Portraits by Max Becher, Valérie Belin, Andrea Robbins, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Bill Viola
Funding: William and Sarah Ross Soter, Photography Committee of the Norton Museum of Art, Milton and Sheila Fine Endowment for Contemporary Art

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Nov. 28, 2008-May 31, 2009
Recent works from artists associated with the professional development program jointly organized between the Aldrich and the Ridgefield Guild of Artists
Curator: Regine Basha