The best art exhibitions around the world to see in 2022
Extensive list of the most anticipated, interesting and exciting museum shows of the year
The year 2020, when we all suddenly got stuck in our homes, gave us a wonderful opportunity to look at the art we love with a fresh perspective.
In 2021, we finally got the opportunity to visit our local and national museums and see the put-on-hold exhibitions in a somewhat privileged setting without usual tourist crowds.
Let’s hope, that this new year of 2022 finally opens up the borders and we get lucky to visit a couple of the long-awaited and important art history exhibitions in iconic museums across the world.
Isolated from museums and curated shows, many of us discovered the digital universe of art on the websites of museums and art and history dedicated apps, like Smart Art — Art History Escape resources I shared in my story on The Best Apps and Websites for Art Lovers.
This is a list of the ongoing and future shows that you might include into your travel schedule of an art lover.
There is absolutely no chance to name every remarkable art exhibition planned for this year, so I will focus mostly on the major shows expected in the field of Old Masters and Modern Art painting.
Let’s begin with large monographic projects.
Francis Bacon: Man and the Beast
Dates: 29 January — 17 April
Location: Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
“One of the most eagerly awaited shows”, as it was called by the Financial Times, this solo exhibition of this iconic 20th-century artist has all the chances to top the box-office charts by the end of the year.
This powerful exhibition will focus on Bacon’s unerring fascination with animals: how it both shaped his approach to the human body and distorted it; how, caught at the most extreme moments of existence, his figures are barely recognisable as either human or beast.
Spanning Bacon’s 50-year career, highlights include some of Bacon’s earliest works and his last-ever painting, alongside a trio of bullfight paintings which will be exhibited together for the first time.
“These raw expressions of anxiety and instinct — both animal and human — feel poignantly relevant today,”
— states the Royal Academy.
It’s a pleasure to admit the overall robust schedule of events planned by RA for 2022, so whenever you are in London this year, check what’s on right now — chances are you’ll:
- catch up John Constable’s late career highlights (until 13 February),
- admire James McNeill Whistler’s charming portraits of his favourite muse (28 February — 22 May),
- get mazed by the stunning ukiyo-e drawings of one of Japan’s most important master painters Kawanabe Kyōsai (19 March — 19 June),
- contemplate the colourful work of the North American Milton Avery [whose art constantly breaks records at auctions] this side of the Atlantic (15 July — 16 October),
- or celebrate female German Modernists and their innovative expressionist paintings and works on paper (starting 12 November).
Cezanne
Dates: 15 May — 5 September (Chicago); 6 October — 12 March 2023 (London)
Location: Art Institute of Chicago, USA; Tate Modern, London, UK
“With an apple, I will astonish Paris”
This groundbreaking retrospective sheds new light not only on how this pivotal artist created his works but also on why his art remains so vital today.
The ambitious show is named with just a surname of the painter, omitting l’accent aigu [Cézanne –> Cezanne] to stress his international significance which outgrew his French origins.
This cross-border exhibition kicks off in May in the Art Institute of Chicago to then fly over the Atlantics and adorn the walls of the Tate Modern in London in the autumn.
Mikhail Vrubel
Dates: until 8 March
Location: New Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
Another not-to-miss blockbuster for those into Art Nouveau and Symbolism. The insane genius of the Russian Vrubel left an important ingenious mark on the development of these art movements at the edge of the 19th and 20th century and this major retrospective show fully immerses the viewer into the worlds of his rebellious mind.
For those who would like to get to know the art of his pitiful lesser-known abroad painter, I’ve come up with an immersive 30-minute walkthrough of the exhibition.
Alphonse Mucha
Dates: 5 February — 3 July
Location: Kunstmuseum den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands
The Dutch museum shows Art Nouveau from a different angle by showing a large selection of the Czech artist’s work in collaboration with the Mucha Foundation.
Back in the day, these instantly recognisable posters and illustrations were so popular that they were even stolen off the streets. Let’s hope the walls of the museum have better security, since, obviously, the exhibition has everything to bring in large crowds.
Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents & Force of Nature
Dates: 11 April — 31 July (New York); from 10 September (London)
Location: The Met Fifth Avenue, New York, USA; The National Gallery, London, UK
Crosscurrents represents the largest critical overview of Homer’s art and life in more than a quarter of a century, featuring approximately 90 oils and watercolours of the 19th-century American Realist.
This MET exhibition reconsiders his work through the lens of conflict, a theme that crosses his prolific career. The centrepiece of the exhibition is Homer’s iconic The Gulf Stream, a painting that reveals his lifelong engagement with charged subjects of race, politics, nature, and the environment.
Part of the works (including The Gulf Stream, 1899 — reworked by 1906, pictured above) will then travel overseas to be presented for the first time in the UK at the National Gallery. Overall, more than 50 paintings, covering over forty years of Homer’s career, will be shown in London.
Louise Bourgeois: The Woven Child & Paintings
Dates: 9 February — 15 May (London); 12 April — 7 August (New York)
Location: Hayward Gallery, London, UK; The Met Fifth Avenue, New York, USA
The year could be definitely named after the French-American artist Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010). The first comprehensive exhibition of her paintings is staged by The Met and at the very same time, the Hayward Gallery in London will focus exclusively on her work using fabrics and textiles.
It’s up to you to pick the most appealing [or visit both!]
Other notable solo shows in 2022
There are obviously many other important projects dedicated to the trailblazing painters in art history, that are worth the attention of art lovers worldwide.
See if there is something about your favourite painter:
- Vincent Van Gogh Self-Portraits will be shown at Courtauld Gallery in London (3 February — 8 May) while the Detroit Museum of Arts is going to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its purchase of the artist’s selfie with Van Gogh in America exhibition (from 2 October).
- Hans Holbein the Younger will be in the focus of the Morgan Library in New York with their project Holbein: Capturing Character — the first major exhibition dedicated to the artist in the United States (11 February — 15 May).
- The genius of Raphael will be celebrated in London by the National Gallery. This exhibition, one of the first-ever to explore Raphael’s complete career, looks at his celebrated paintings and drawings as well as his work in architecture, poetry, and design for sculpture, tapestry and prints. With loans from the Hermitage, the Louvre, National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Prado Museum, Uffizi Museum, the Vatican Museum and the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, this is an unprecedented opportunity to see the breadth of Raphael’s skill, creativity, and ingenuity (9 April — 31 July).
- And if you are more into 20th-century Realism, then don’t miss Lucian Freud: New Perspectives show in the same NG in London — the painter’s first major exhibition in 10 years that will bring together paintings from more than seven decades (starting 1 October).
- The great master of Late Renaissance, Paris Bordone, will be starring in the largest ever exhibition of his paintings at the Museum of Santa Caterina in Treviso, Italy (25 February — 26 June).
- And the Magic of the Real Bellotto (the nephew and pupil of Canaletto and one of the iconic masters the Venetian Vedute) retrospective in Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister [Old Masters Picture Gallery] is going to present the world’s largest inventory of Bernardo Bellotto’s paintings in Dresden, Germany (21 May — 28 August).
Several museum institutions are planning ambitious group shows that would assemble artworks by numerous painters assembled under a certain umbrella — be it a historic period, genre, style, or gender.
Donatello Florence
Dates: 19 March — 31 July (Florence), from 2 September (Berlin)
Location: Palazzo Strozzi and Museo del Bargello, Florence, Italy; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Germany
“The master of masters”
The first major Donatello exhibition in nearly 40 years is to open in Florence and then travel to Berlin and London. Centred around the oeuvre of the 15th-century sculptor, it will also include numerous paintings by his contemporaries.
“We will show how Donatello influenced his contemporaries — Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini — but also how his artistic vision reigned supreme until the arrival of Caravaggio. This has never been done before,” - Arturo Galansino, director of Palazzo Strozzi says.
In Florence, there will be around 130 works on display, including the most important collection of works by the sculptor with David (around 1440), the first freestanding nude male sculpture made since antiquity.
Part of the show will be then set at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin in September and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2023.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo and His Time
Dates: from November
Location: State Pushkin Art Museum, Moscow, Russia
If only everything works out as planned, this tremendous exhibition is going to crown the art season in Moscow, since that would be the first time that this artist’s works [remember those surreal portraits made of vegetables?] have come to Russia.
Curators hope to bring in works from European state and private collections and present the art of Arcimboldo (1526–1593) in the broader context of the European culture of late mannerism of the 17th century.
A not-to-miss exhibition will feature works by Arcimboldo and his contemporaries: about 80 paintings, graphic pieces (drawings and engravings), and objects of applied art, including 8 famous “heads” from the museums of Italy, Sweden, Germany, Japan, and other countries.
By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500–1800
Dates: 6 February — 29 May
Location: The Detroit Institute of Arts, USA
Women artists played a vibrant and often untold role in Italy around 1600.
How did they work and succeed in a male-dominated art world?
The Detroit Institute of Arts in collaboration with the Wadsworth Atheneum plans to explore this question and celebrate Italian women artists with a show devoted to their artistic accomplishments.
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–c. 1656), arguably one of the most famous 17th-century Italian painters today, will take center stage.
Other interesting thematic exhibitions
- The Louvre in Paris will be opening a large exhibition on Still Lifes in autumn entitled Les Choses: Une histoire de la nature morte depuis la Préhistoire. As the title suggests, artworks will span from antiquity to the 20th century, and will also include works outside Western culture (from 13 October).
- Tate Modern in London aimed high and will try to rewrite the history of one revolutionary art movement with their landmark exhibition Surrealism Beyond Borders. It will reach across the world and over 50 years and show how artists around the world have been inspired and united by surrealism — from centres as diverse as Buenos Aires, Cairo, Lisbon, Mexico City, Prague, Seoul, and Tokyo (24 February — 29 August).
- After its debut in The Morozov collection of icons of Modern art in Paris (see it at Fondation Louis Vuitton till 22 February) moves to Moscow. The major exhibition brings together 200 masterpieces from the French and Russian modern art collection of the brothers Mikhaïl (1870–1903) and Ivan Morozov (1871–1921) — one of the world’s foremost collections of Impressionist and Modern art (27 June — 30 October).
And, finally, let’s have a brief look at the rather popular concept of one-on-one exhibitions that focus on the juxtaposition of two painters and their artworks head to head. Sometimes there is a huge time distance between them (and the old master was clearly inspiring the follower), and in other cases, they were living at the same time breathing the same air of art novelties, trends and inventions.
Pablo Picasso has never gone out of fashion — neither during his long life nor after death.
This year presents two interesting art shows exploring his artistic interconnections with the masters of the past.
- Picasso — El Greco exhibition in Basel, Switzerland is going to juxtapose some 40 pairings of their pictures, tracing the course of one of the most fascinating dialogues in the history of art (11 June — 25 September).
- In turn, the National Gallery in London prepares Picasso — Ingres: Face to Face bringing Picasso’s ‘Woman with a Book’, 1932 from the Norton Simon Museum, California, together with the painting that inspired it, ‘Madame Moitessier’ by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (3 June — 9 October).
- Dalí — Freud: An Obsession by Belvedere Museum in Vienna, Austria, goes further and uncovers the integration between one man’s art, another man’s theories. This comprehensive exhibition illustrates the obsession for the psychoanalytical in the work of the Surrealists, particularly as it is present in Dali’s surrealist pictorial world (28 January — 29 May).
Luckily, no unfortunate circumstances are going to ruin your art endeavours for 2022 and that more other museums will be able to confirm their fascinating exhibitions plans in the near future!
