NEW THIS MONTH
IN U.S. MUSEUMS

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Feb. 2-July 4, 2011
The Mexican artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the U.S. presents 30 sculptures and 15 collages made from receipts, newspaper, plastic bags and other such materials, and includes Untitled (Superama), a series of three nine-foot tall hand-woven tapestries made to look like Wal-Mart receipts
Tour: The exhibition has been organized by the Balffer Art Museum at the University of Houston
Funding: Eleanor and Frank Freed Foundation, the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Consulate General of Mexico in Houston, the George and Mary Josephine Hammam Foundation, and Bank of America

El Museo del Barrio
Feb. 2-May 29, 2011
An eye-opening survey of text-based and other conceptual artworks made since the 1960s by the Venezuela-born artist, a professor at SUNY Old Westbury who seldom exhibited his work in New York, drawn from the collection of the Daros Foundation in Zurich
Curators: Hans-Michael Herzog, Katrin Steffen
Catalogue: Hatje Cantz, 228 pp., €39.80
Tour: The show premiered in Zurich and is scheduled for an extensive tour, with stops in Zapopan, Vancouver, Bogota, Medellin and elsewhere

Art Institute of Chicago
Feb. 3–April 17, 2011
Defining the Fischli & Weiss esthetic via two photographic series and a 15-channel slide installation, in the first major show of the artists’ work in Chicago in 20 years  
Funding: Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation, Maureen and Edward Byron Smith, Jr., Family Endowment for Exhibitions, others

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Feb. 4–June 1, 2011
The Gugg’s legendary holdings of German, French and Italian modernism, via more than 100 works by almost 50 artists, from both the Venice and NYC collections
Curators: Tracey Bashkoff, Megan Fontanella
Funding: Joseph and Sylvia Slifka Foundation
Also on view: "The Deutsche Bank Series at the Guggenheim: Found in Translation," Feb. 11–May 1, 2011, and "A Chronology: The Guggenheim Collection, 1909–1979," Feb. 18–Sept. 11, 2011

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Feb. 6-July 4, 2011
150 works, including room-sized chromatic environments, paintings, architectural models and videos -- plus a 3D atelier environment -- made from the 1940s to the present by the Venezuelan kinetic and op artist (b. 1923), who now lives in France
Curator: Mari Carmen Ramírez
Catalogue: 500 pp., Yale University Press, $75
Funding: MetLife Foundation, Mrs. Linnet F. Deily, Boeing Company, others
Also on view: "Eye on Third Ward: Jack Yates High School Photography," Feb. 8-May 30, 2011; "Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art," Feb. 20-May 23, 2011; "Romancing the West: Alfred Jacob Miller in the Bank of America Collection," Feb. 13-May 8, 2011

J. Paul Getty Museum
Feb. 8–May 1, 2011
A visual history of 19th- and early-20th-century China, by largely unknown Chinese photographers, featuring panoramas and hand-painted photographs that reflect Chinese traditions as well as glass slides of revolutionary soldiers in 1911
Curators: Jeffrey W. Cody, Frances Terpak
Catalogue: 220 pp., $45

New Museum
Feb. 9-June 19th, 2011
"Pour sculptures," wax reliefs, media interventions and videos -- including her 1971 polyurethane installation Phantom, originally staged at Kansas State University and never before seen in NYC -- in the first survey of work by the celebrated feminist artist in 20 years
Curators: Franck Gautherot, Caroline Hancock, Laura Hoptman, Judith Tannenbaum
Catalogue: Les Presses du Réel, 480 pp., $60

Metropolitan Museum of Art
Feb. 9-May 8, 2011
The first show devoted to this series includes more than 20 works, including loans from a dozen museums (though not, of course, the Barnes Foundation), and features as well portraits of some of the peasant-models for the compositions
Curators: Barnaby Wright, Nancy Ireson, Gary Tinterow
Catalogue: 160 pp.
Tour: The exhibition premiered at the Courtauld Gallery, its co-organizing institution

UCLA Hammer Museum
Feb. 12-May 22, 2011
Gay male voyeurism as a critique of representation, via collages and sculptures engaging everything from 19th-century French Decadent literature to post-structuralist theory
Curator: Lisa Dorin
Tour: The show premiered at the Art Institute of Chicago
Funding: Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, George Freeman, Samantha and Colin Magowan, Alan Hergott and Curt Shepard

Milwaukee Art Museum
Feb. 12-May 15, 2011
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Taliesin via over 150 objects, models, photos and more, including 33 never-before-shown drawings, in a show organized in conjunction with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in Scottsdale

Museum of Modern Art
Feb. 13-June 6, 2011
"It’s not a sculpture, it’s not a painting -- it’s a guitar!" 70 collages, constructions, drawings, mixed-media paintings and photographs made between 1912 and 1914
Curators: Anne Umland, Blair Hartzell
Funding: Hanjin Shipping, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III and Fundacíon Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte
Also on view: "Looking at Music 3.0," Feb. 16–June 6, 2011; "Plywood: Material, Process, Form," opening Feb. 2, 2011

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Feb. 13-Apr. 3, 2011
The Hollywood elite, especially on Oscar night, from the Vanity Fair photographer
Book: Larry Fink: The Vanities: Hollywood Parties 2000-2009, Schirmer/Mosel, 120 pp., $60
Funding: The Alix Brotman Foundation of California

Saint Louis Art Museum
Feb. 13-May 8, 2011
More than 90 artifacts from Mexico, Belize, Honduras and Guatemala, in a show organized by the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass.
Curators: Daniel Finamore, Stephen D. Houston
Catalogue: Yale, 328 pp., $65
Funding: Lowell Institute, ECHO

Frick Collection
Feb. 15-May 15, 2011
Five paintings shown together in the museum’s oval room, plus, in the downstairs gallery, a loan exhibition of 66 works on paper from the Fondation Custodia in Paris
Curators: Colin B. Bailey, Margaret Iacono, Joanna Sheers
Funding: Christian Humann Foundation, Jean-Marie and Elizabeth Eveillard, Melvin R. Seiden, Fiduciary Trust Company International

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Feb. 18–June 5, 2011
Exploring the historical significance of Paris’ 1906 jewelry firm Van Cleef & Arpels, the exhibition presents more than 250 works, including jewels, timepieces, fashion accessories and objets d’art, many made exclusively for the American market
Curator: The show is designed by Patrick Jouin
Funding: Van Cleef & Arpels, Softel Luxury Hotels

Brooklyn Museum
Feb. 18-May 15, 2011
Plains tribal culture via the tipi, as an architectural form and an interior space for domestic and ritual use, with emphasis on the role of women, in a show of more than 160 objects from the collection, plus objects by contemporary Plains artists and three full-sized tipis
Funding: American Express, Barbara and Richard Debs Exhibition Fund, others

Virgina Museum of Fine Arts
Feb. 19-May15, 2011
A comprehensive survey of the artist’s oeuvre via 176 works from the artist’s personal collection 
Funding: Altria Group

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Feb. 25-May 22, 2011
A series of new watercolors and tissue paper collages, as well as a performance piece on Feb. 24, 2011, by the young Russian artist (b. 1979), who draws on the traditions of the Soviet avant-garde and Russian Constructivism to create mixed-media collages á la Hannah Hoch
Curator: John Zarobell
Funding: Mimi and Peter Haas Fund, Robin Wright and Ian Reeves, Martha and Bruce Atwater, others

Indianapolis Museum of Art
Feb. 25-May 15, 2011
70 large-scale paintings, drawings and found-object sculptures by the Southern folk artist (b. 1928), including 25 works on view for the first time
Curator: Joanne Cubbs
Catalogue: Prestel USA, 240 pp., $45
Funding: Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation

Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art
Feb. 26-June 12, 2011
2010 Turner Prize winner Susan Philipsz’s site-specific sound installation is shown concurrently with an earlier sound-work, The International (1999), in the second-floor atrium
Curator: Dominic Molon
Funding: Chauncey and Marion D. McCormick Family Foundation, Nancy Lauter McDougal and Alfred L. McDougal

National Gallery of Art
Feb. 27–June 5, 2011
120 trademark works as well as rarely shown letters, memoirs and sketchbooks from the French post-Impressionist’s travels to Brittany and Tahiti in an exhibition organized by the Tate Modern
Curators: Belinda Thomson, Christine Riding, Amy Dickson
Catalogue: Princeton University Press, 256 pp., $55
Funding: Bank of America, The Marshall B. Coyne Foundation, The Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art