NEW THIS MONTH
IN U.S. MUSEUMS

Philadelphia Museum of Art
Apr. 2-July 31, 2011
Presenting some 50 odd international health-related posters dating from 1846-1985 whose subjects range from good hygiene to “amoral behavior” to pharmaceuticals and which demonstrate the versatility of the 19th- and 20th-century poster designer
Curators: Innis Howe Shoemaker, John Ittman
Catalogue: 60 pp., $18
Funding: GlaxoSmithKline Laboratories, Andrew W. Mellon Fund for Scholarly Publications
Also on view: “Unsettled: Photography and Politics in Contemporary Art,” Apr. 9-Summer 2011

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Apr. 3–July 24, 2011
100 sculptures, drawings, paintings and photographs by the great American sculptor, offering examples of his early engagement with a series of international movements including Cubism, American surrealism and Expressionism, and terminating with his untimely death in 1965, at which point his work had reached a pinnacle of reductive geometry
Curator: Carol S. Eliel
Funding: Alice and Nahum Lainer, Gagoisian Gallery, Steven F. Roth Family Foundation, others
Also on view: “Magna Carta,” Apr. 26–May 5, 2011

Freer Gallery of Art
Apr. 9, 2011-April 2013
The Gallery’s most iconic artwork, a lavish dining room designed in 1908 by James McNeill Whistler to house more than 250 ceramic works from the Far East, is reinstalled for the first time as it originally appeared in the home of museum founder Charles Lang Freer -- ceramics included

Cleveland Museum of Art
Apr. 9, 2011-Feb. 26, 2012
A concise exhibition of a dozen Op Art works from the collection surveying the output of the "Cleveland School," including Ernest Benkert, Edwin Mieczkowski and Julian Stanczak
Curator: Mark Cole
Also on view: “The Art of Daily Life: Portable Objects from Southeast Asia,” Apr. 16, 2011-Feb. 26, 2012

Museum of Fine Arts, Boson
Apr. 10-Aug. 4, 2011
Thousands of individually made hand-blown glass components in a dozen installations, some made specifically for this exhibition, and including the 42-foot tall Lime Green Icicle Tower, displayed in the museum galleries, courtyard and surrounding gardens
Curator: Gerald W.R. Ward
Funding: Highland Street Foundation, Boston Phoenix, WFNX Radio Network

National Gallery of Art
Apr. 10-July 24, 2011
The first monographic exhibition in the U.S. of the Dutch prodigy (who was celebrated as a painter at age 14) unites 35 works, from iconic genre paintings to well as religious scenes, still lifes and portraits
Curator: Adriaan E. Waiboer, Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
Catalogue: Yale University Press, 244 pp., $65
Funding: Hata Stichting
Tour: The exhibition debuted at its co-organizing institution, the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, Sept.4-Dev. 5, 2010, before continuing to its other co-organizing museum, the Rijksmuseum, Dec. 16, 2010-Mar. 21, 2011

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Apr. 10-July 17, 2011
Allegories of the five senses (typically associated with vice!) plus realistic invocations of sight, sound, smell, touch and taste, via two dozen paintings and prints by Rembrandt van Rijn, Jusepe de Ribera, others
Curator: Leslie Scattone
Funding: The Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation

Queens Museum of Art
Apr. 10-Aug. 14, 2011
The transformation of a salt marsh into the 1,216-acre New York World Fair of 1939 is documented by vintage silver prints and original documents, including copies of the blueprints for Wallace Harrison’s steelwork, Salvador Dali’s notes for the construction of his fabulist World's Fair pavilion and photographs created by NYWF president Grover Whalen’s publicity machine, the NYWF Department of Press
Curator: Louise Weinberg
Funding: Irene Feldman and Charles W. Schwartz, others
Also on view: “Not the way you remembered,” Apr. 10-Aug. 14, 2011

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Apr. 13-Aug. 28, 2011
Organized by Menil Collection, Houston, Serra's first drawing retrospective features 60 sketchbooks, drawings and even films made since the 1970s, including some that are 20 feet wide  
Curators: Bernice Rose, Michelle White, Gary Garrels
Catalogue: Yale University Press, 232 pp., $50
Tour: San Francisco Modern of Art, Oct. 15, 2011-January 2012; Menil Collection, Houston, Mar. 2-June 10, 2012
Funding: Jane and Robert Carroll Fund
Also on view: “Rooms with a View: the Open Window in the 19th Century,” Apr. 5-July 4, 2011; “The Washington Haggadah: Medieval Jewish Art in Context,” Apr. 5-June 26, 2011; “Poetry in Clay: Korean Buncheong ceramics from Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art,” Apr. 7-Aug. 2011; “Night Vision: Photography after Dark,” Apr. 26-Sept. 5, 2011

Walker Art Center
Apr. 14-Aug. 1, 2011
Anchored around a black-and-white tapestry depicting a 40-acre tract of land in Minnesota that accidentally survived logging due to a surveyor’s error, the exhibition features photographs of these woods -- the “Lost Forty” -- taken by the Polish artist (b. 1967), interwoven with images of historic figures related to her research for the project, including Marcel Duchamp as well as museum founder T.B. Walker
Curators: Peter Eleey, Bartholomew Ryan
Funding: Bush Foundation

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Apr. 15-Sept. 5, 2011
All about vinyl, via 99 works by 41 artists, including Laurie Anderson, Christian Marclay, Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha and Carrie Mae Weems, and featuring Laurie Anderson’s Viophonograph, a hybrid violin and record player, and the life-sized Polaroid photomontage by David Byrne that was used as the cover of the 1978 Talking Heads album More Songs About Buildings and Food
Curator: Trevor Schoonmaker
Catalogue: Duke University Press, 240 pp., $45
Tour: The show debuted at its organizing institution, the Nasher Museum of art at Duke University, in September 2010
Funding: Boston Phoenix, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Marilyn M. Arthur, the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, others
Also on view: Catherine Opie, Apr. 15-Sept. 5, 2011

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Apr. 17-Aug. 8, 2011
The first U.S. museum survey of graffiti and street art boasts work, including some special installations, by 50 artists, including Fab 5 Freddy (N.Y.), Shepard Fairey (L.A.), Os Gêmeos (São Paolo) and JR (Paris), as well as documentary material by filmmakers and photographers ranging from Terry Richardson to Spike Jonze
Curators: Jeffrey Deitch, Roger Gastman, Aaron Rose
Tour: Brooklyn Museum, Mar. 30-July 8, 2012
Funding: Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, Sydney Irmas Exhibition Endowment, others

Hirshhorn Museum
Apr. 21-Sept. 5, 2011
The Italian artist (b. 1963) known for large-scale video projections that she describes as “frescoes of light,” integrates documentary imagery collected from urban night surveillance and military satellite footage with her own photography and cinematography, and projects it on the walls in an endless loop of distorted nightscapes for her first solo U.S. museum exhibition
Curator: Kelly Gordon
Also on view: “Black Box: Laurent Grasso,” Apr. 4-July 24, 2011

Apr. 26–Aug. 7, 2011
J. Paul Getty Villa Museum
Paintings, furniture, scientific and musical instruments, maps, clocks -- 160 objects in all -- arranged chronologically to chart a day in the life, from morning to night, of a Parisian aristocrat in the 1700s
Curators: Charissa Bremer-David, Peter Björn Kerber
Tour: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Sept. 18-Dec. 10, 2011
Funding: Breuget

Whitney Museum of American Art
Apr. 28-Sept. 18, 2011
The first in a multiyear review of the museum collection presents 100 works that made up the Whit's initial holdings, ranging from Charles Sheeler and Edward Hopper to lesser-artists like Robert Laurent and Clarence Carter
Curators: Barbara Haskell, Sasha Nicholas
Funding: Bank of America
Also on view: “Dianna Molzan: Bologna Meissen,” opening Apr. 8, 2011; “More Than That: The Films of Kevin Jerome Anderson,” Apr. 28-Sept. 18, 2011

Art Institute of Chicago
Apr. 30-July 10, 2011
We may treasure Renaissance-era prints now, but their original owners were less reverent, cutting and pasting them onto books or turning them into fans and headdresses, a practice delved into here via 100 rare objects, including illustrated books, wearable ornaments, printed sundials, anatomical charts and devotional images
Curator: Suzanne Carr Schmidt
Catalogue: Yale University Press, 104 pp., $35
Funding: Goldman Sachs, Kenneth and Anne Griffin, Thomas and Margot Pritzker, others

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