Art Institute of Chicago
May 1-Sept. 19, 2010
A site-specific commission by the 2009 Turner Prize nominee -- celebrated for coating structures with bright blue copper sulphate crystals -- sees him mount two Pratt and Whitney TF33 P9 engines atop the AIC’s Bluhm Family Terrace
Funding: Boeing

National Gallery of Art
May 2-Sept. 6, 2010
Seventy-nine photos by the Beat legend, ranging from his 1950s "drugstore" prints to portraits of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs
Curator: Sarah Greenough
Catalogue: $49.95, 144 pp.
Funding: Trellis Fund, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc.

Museum of Modern Art
May 5-Aug. 16, 2010
Works by three generations of women artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Gego, Mona Hatoum, Yayoi Kusama and Anna Maria Maiolino
Curators: Alexandra Schwartz, Sarah Suzuki
Catalogue: Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art, $70, 512 pp.

Metropolitan Museum of Art
May 5-Aug. 15, 2010
The first Costume Institute exhibition drawn from the newly established "Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection" at the Met, features 80+ items showcasing developing perceptions of the modern American woman from 1890 to 1940 via such archetypes as "Gibson Girls," "Bohemians" and "Screen Sirens" (a related exhibition is opening at the Brooklyn Museum -- see below)
Curators: Andrew Bolton, Harold Koda
Funding: Gap

Brooklyn Museum
May 7-Aug. 1, 2010
Ca. 85 dressed mannequins and a selection of hats, shoes, sketches and other fashion-related material, celebrating the Brooklyn Museum’s new alliance with the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Curators: Jan Glier Reeder, Kevin Stayton
Funding: Lisa and Dick Cashin, Barbara and Richard Debs, Cheryl and Blair Effron, Arline and Norman M. Feinberg, Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia, Barbara and Richard Moore, Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin, Barbara M. and John L. Vogelstein

MIT List Visual Arts Center
May 7-July 11, 2010
Works related to an ongoing project by Bahamas-born, New York-based artist Tavares Strachan that involves the exploration of gravitational stress, including a submersible underwater sea rover made entirely out of blown glass
Funding: National Endowment for the Arts, Nimoy Foundation, Council for the Arts at MIT, Massachusetts Cultural Council

Wexner Center for the Arts
May 8-Aug. 15, 2010
Works from the past decade by the Los Angeles-based collage artist, plus new paintings and other projects produced as part of Bradford’s residency at the Wexner
Curator: Christopher Bedford
Catalogue: $65, 256 pp., contributions by Christopher Bedford, Robert Storr, Richard Shiff, Katy Siegel, Hilton Als, interviews with the artist by Carol S. Eliel and Hamza Walker
Funding: Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Resource Interactive

Museum of Arts and Design
May 13-Aug. 15, 2010
Twenty-one hand-built bicycles by six internationally renowned bicycle builders: Mike Flanigan, Alternative Needs Transportation (A.N.T); Jeff Jones, Jeff Jones Custom Bicycles; Dario Pegoretti, Pegoretti Cicli; Richard Sachs, Richard Sachs Cycles; J. Peter Weigle, J. Peter Weigle Cycles; and Sacha White, Vanilla Bicycles
Curators: Michael Maharam
Catalogue: Holly Hotchner, Julie Lasky, dialogue between Michael Maharam and Sacha White

Seattle Art Museum
May 13-Sept. 6, 2010
Celebrating the impact of Kurt Cobain and grunge music on the visual arts, via works by Rodney Graham, Douglas Gordon Elizabeth Peyton, others
Curator: Michael Darling

Guggenheim Museum
May 14-Oct. 6, 2010
A suite of paintings commissioned from the celebrated Addis Ababa-born painter Julie Mehretu that reflect the psychogeography of Berlin and, obliquely, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
Curator: Joan Young
Catalogue: $45, 128 pp.
Funding: Deutsche Bank

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
May 14, 2010-Jan. 9, 2011
Exploring the work of designers addressing human and environmental problems across many fields, from architecture and products to fashion, graphics, new media and landscapes
Curators: Ellen Lupton, Cara McCarty, Matilda McQuaid, Cynthia Smith
Catalogue: $40, 192 pp.
Funding: General Electric, others

Hammer Museum, UCLA
May 15-Aug. 15, 2010
A new piece by Syria-born, Brooklyn-based sculptor Diana Al-Hadid, inspired by early Netherlandish Renaissance paintings as well as the Islamic astronomer and inventor Al-Jazari’s water clock built in 1206
Curator: Anne Ellegood

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
May 16-Aug. 8, 2010
The art of Sufism from the 9th century to the present, via furnishings used for mosque lighting; attributes and representations of Sufi mystics; illustrated, illuminated and laser-etched manuscripts of Sufi poetry; and contemporary works inspired by Sufi principles and practices
Curator: Ladan Akbarnia, Francesca Leoni
Catalogue: $25, 160 pp.
Tour: A smaller version of this show has already appeared at the Brooklyn Museum

Morgan Library & Museum
May 18-Sept. 12, 2010
Eight drawings by German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), alongside prints and treatises by the artist
Funding: William C. Bullitt Foundation

Getty Center
May 18-Oct. 17, 2010
Suite of engraved reproductions of Charles Le Brun’s late-17th-century paintings and tapestry designs
Curator: Louis Marchesano
Catalogue: $50

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Park
May 20-Sept. 12, 2010
Examples from all the major series by the legendary French artist (1928-1962), including his "Anthropometries," "Cosmogonies," fire paintings, planetary reliefs and blue monochromes, as well as lesser-known gold and pink monochromes, body and sponge reliefs, "air architecture" and immaterial works
Curators: Kerry Brougher, Philippe Vergne
Catalogue: $65, 320 pp.
Tour: Walker Art Center, Oct. 23, 2010-Feb. 13, 2011

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
May 21-August 22, 2010
Texas-based artist David Bates’ suite of paintings responding to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster on the Gulf Coast

International Center of Photography
May 21-Sept. 12, 2010
230 photographs, objects and clips from television and film investigating the role of visual culture in the fight for racial equality and justice in the U.S., from the late 1940s to the mid 1970s
Curator: Maurice Berger
Catalogue: $39.95, 224 pp.
Funding: National Endowment for the Humanities, Trellis Fund, James A. Macdonald Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, St. Paul Travelers Corporation, Communities Foundation of Texas, Maryland State Arts Council
Tour: Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, June-Oct. 2011; Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Sept. 2012-Jan. 2013

Yale University Art Gallery
May 28-Sept. 12, 2010
ca. 50 paintings from the 14th through the 17th century by Taddeo Gaddi, Orcagna, Lorenzo Monaco, Fra Angelico, Annibale and Ludovico Carracci, Domenichino, Guercino, and Orazio Gentileschi, from the collection of Madison Avenue art dealer Richard Feigen
Curator: Laurence Kanter, John Marciari
Catalogue: $55, 192 pp.
Funding: National Endowment for the Arts, Robert Lehman Exhibition and Publication Fund

MASS MoCA
May-29, 2010-Feb. 2011
A selection of work from the last 10 years by New York artist Petah Coyne, known for her baroque Victorian sensibility, alongside two new works and Coyne’s photographs featuring blurred figures of children and Buddhist monks
Funding: Toby D. Lewis Philanthropic Fund of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, Elizabeth A. Sackler Museum Educational Trust, he Massachusetts Cultural Council, others