NEW THIS MONTH
IN U.S. MUSEUMS

Cleveland Art Museum
May 1-Sept. 18, 2011
Drawn from a little-known group of objects in the museum’s Asian collection, this exhibition of approximately 40 small Kalighat paintings, made between 1830 and 1870 near the temple for the goddess Kali in southern Calcutta, were originally created as souvenirs for 19th century tourists and are considered the beginning of modernism in Indian art
Curator: Deepak Sarma
Funding: Ohio Arts Council

Museum of Arts and Design
May 3-Oct. 2, 2011
Approximately 50 design objects and photographs selected by guest-curator Stephen Burks that explore the contributions of the “developing world” to contemporary design, with works by designers “from the African diaspora and beyond” such as Hella Jongerius, Mike Meire, Maarten van Severen, Delphine Diallo and Deidi von Schaewen
Curator: Stephen Burks
Funding: Newman’s Own Foundation, Taittinger, others

Metropolitan Museum of Art
May 4-July 31, 2011
The 2011 Costume Institute exhibition unites 100 ensembles and 70 accessories from the late British designer, highlighting his work’s recurring themes with categories such as “The Romantic Mind,” “Romantic Gothicism” and “Romantic Exoticism”
Curators: Andrew Bolton, Harold Joda
Catalogue: Yale University Press, $45
Funding: Alexander McQueen
Also on view: “Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe,” May 17, 2011–Aug. 14, 2011; “Highlights from the Modern Design Collection, 1900 to the Present, Part II,” May 17, 2011; “Historic Images of the Greek Bronze Age: The Reproductions of E. Gilliéron & Son,” May 17, 2011–Nov. 13, 2011

Guggenheim Museum
May 4-14, 2011
San Francisco art collective Futurefarmers installs a shoemaker’s bench in the museum’s Rotunda -- based on a fifth-century Athens shoemaker studio in which Socrates supposedly philosophized -- that anchors a number of ancillary projects taking place all around New York City and involving the physical involvement of interested participants
Curator: David van der Leer
Funding: Intervals Leadership Committee

Jewish Museum
May 6-Sept. 25, 2011
Over 50 masterworks of French art in painting, sculpture and works on paper from the Baltimore Museum of Art’s renowned Cone Collection, as well as textiles, photographs and other archival material documenting their history
Curator: Karen Levitov
Catalogue: Yale University Press, 80 pp., $20
Funding: Deutsche Bank
Tour: Following its New York debut, the exhibition travels to the Vancouver Art Gallery, its co-organizing institution, from June 2-Sept. 23, 2012

Museum of Modern Art, New York, and MoMA PS1
May 8-Aug. 1, 2011
Organized in collaboration with the Mexico City-based Belgian artist (b. 1959), Tate Modern and WIELS Centre of Contemporary Art in Brussels, the show at MoMA focuses on three recent acquisitions, all large-scale installations: Re-enactments (2001), When Faith Moves Mountains (2002), and Rehearsal I (Ensayo I) (1999–2001) -- on view at MoMA for the first time
Curators: Klaus Biesenbach, Cara Starke 
Catalogue: Tate Publishing, 192 pp., $35
Funding: MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation, Mr. Eugenio López Alonso, others
Also on view: “Projects 95: Runa Islam,” May 27-Sept. 19, 2011; “Boris Mikhailov: Case History,” May 26–Sept. 5, 2011

National Gallery of Art
May 8–Nov. 27, 2011
65 Italian compositions and study sheets, including works by Giulio Romano, Pellegrino Tibaldi, Canaletto, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, others
Curator: Margaret Morgan Grasselli
Catalogue: Paul Holberton Publishing, London, 170 pp., $50
Funding: Stiftung Ratjen, Liechtenstein
Also on view: “The Gothic Spirit of John Taylor Arms,” May 8–Nov. 27, 2011

Art Institute of Chicago
May 14-Sept. 14, 2011
Presenting 15 inkjet prints created especially for the exhibition by the Los Angeles-based German photographer (b. 1958), comprising a new series titled “. . .and to draw a bright white line with light”
Curator: Elizabeth Siegel
Funding: Goldman Sachs, Kenneth and Anne Griffin, Thomas and Margot Pritzker, Earl and Brenda Shapiro Foundation, others
Also on view: “Artist’s Caricatures from the World’s Columbian Exposition,” May 11-July 4, 2011

J. Paul Getty Museum
May 17–Oct. 2, 2011
138 images of Cuba as witnessed by photographers before, during and after the country’s 1959 revolution, which juxtaposes Walker Evans’ never-before-seen images from 1933 with revolution-era photographers including Alberto Korda and Osvaldo Salas, and contemporary photographers such as Alex Harris and Alexey Titarenko
Curators: Judith Keller, Brett Abbott
Catalogue: 96 pp., $24.95
Also on view: “Fashion in the Middle Ages,” May 31–Aug.14, 2011; “Display and Art History: The Düsseldorf Gallery and Its Catalogue,”May 31–Aug. 21, 2011

New Museum
May 19-July 3, 2011
The first solo U.S. exhibition of the London-based activist artist (b. 1926), the founder of the little-known "Auto-Destructive Art" movement, features a series of sculptural installations titled “Historic Photographs,” designed to involve the viewer in tragic historical events through physical participation
Curator: Massimiliano Gioni
Funding: Robert Mapplethorpe Photography Fund
Also on view: “Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Primitive,” May 19-July 3, 2011

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
May 21-Sept. 6, 2011
Over 200 works by Matisse and Picasso, plus Pierre Bonnard, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, Felix Vallotton and others, once collected by Gertrude Stein and her brothers Michael and Leo (and Michael's wife, Sarah), plus archival material such as family albums, correspondence and film clips; SF MoMA concurrently hosts a restaging of Virgil Thomson’s opera based on Stein’s play, Four Saints in Three Acts, and a tandem exhibition, "Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories," is on view at SF’s Contemporary Jewish Museum, May 12-Sept. 6, 2011
Curators: Janet Bishop, Cecile Debray, Rebecca Rabinow, Gary Tinterow
Catalogue: Yale University Press, 464 pp., $75
Funding: The Charles Schwab Corporation, Evelyn D. Haas Exhibition Fund, Koret Foundation, others
Tour: Co-organized by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the show travels to Paris’s Grand Palais, Oct. 2011-Jan. 2012, and the Met, Feb.-June 2012, following its SF MoMA debut
Also on view: “David Claerbout: Architecture of Narrative,” May 21-Sept. 6, 2011

Philadelphia Museum of Art
May 21, 2011-Winter 2012
Presenting around 80 works from the museum’s collection of modern and contemporary design, including ceramics, glass, wallpaper, lighting and functional objects made between 1902 and 2008 by designers such as Alvar Aalto, Charles and Ray Eames, Frank Gehry, Ettore Sottsass, Jr., and Philippe Starck
Curator: Diane L. Minnite

Frick Collection
May 22-Aug. 28, 2011
A concentrated study of Bellini’s masterpiece by Met painting conservator Charlotte Hale is presented in the museum's brand new educational Multimedia Room -- zounds! at the Frick? -- with computer kiosks and thematic videos, plus a series of related lectures and gallery talks
Curator: Susannah Rutherglen
Funding: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Queens Museum of Art
May 22-Aug. 14, 2011
The first New York museum presentation of the Egyptian video artist’s four-channel video installation Hidden Location (2004), a 52-minute work with 16 sections, features the artist performing his 45-minute music set The Big One (2009) on the eve of the exhibition opening
Curator: Sohrab Mohebbi
Funding: Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of the New York Community Trust

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
May 22-Aug. 14, 2011
25 Venetian Renaissance paintings and drawings by Tintoretto, Veronese, Lotto and others, including two of Titian’s most famous paintings, Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto, never before exhibited in the U.S.
Catalogue: Yale University Press, 108 pp., $29.95
Funding: Brown Foundation, Inc., Mary Lawrence Porter, Fayez Sarofim and Meredith Long Exhibitions Endowment, Ms. Ann G. Trammell
Tour: The exhibition debuted at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, one of its co-organizing institutions, in October 2010, and travelled to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, another co-organizer, before opening at MFAH this month

Whitney Museum of American Art
May 26-Sept. 11, 2011
The Brooklyn-based artist’s first major New York museum show brings together his video game art, single channel videos, kinetic sculptures, prints and drawings, and highlights the multi-channel work Various Self Playing Bowling Games (aka Beat the Champ) (2011) -- based on bowling video games from the late 1970s to the 2000s -- co-commissioned with the Barbican in London, where it debuted earlier this year
Curator: Christiane Paul
Also on view: “Designing the Whitney of the Future,” May 26, 2011

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