The best art exhibitions around the world to see in 2023
Extensive list of the most anticipated, interesting and exciting museum shows of the year
The previous post-pandemic year (in the majority of parts of the world) witnessed an unprecedented interest in all offline activities. Museums and their curated shows were no exception. Well, even my previous blog dedicated to the not-to-miss exhibitions of the year became the most-read piece of all I wrote in 2022.
So, without further ado, I’m happy to get you covered with the shortlist of the long-awaited and important art history exhibitions prepared for you by iconic museums across the globe in 2023.
And while you start planning your own travel schedule of an art lover, make sure you have downloaded my Smart Art — Art History Escape app — a perfect way to feed your art and history appetite in between your museum visits!
One last caveat: 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 me know if there is something I missed and you feel worth including in the list!
Let’s begin with the US venues.
Art Exhibitions in the US in 2023
Beyond the Light: Identity and Place in Nineteenth-Century Danish Art
Dates: 26 January — 16 April (New York); 23 May — 20 August (Los Angeles)
Location: The MET, New York City, USA; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, USA
The art of Nordics has been recently on the rise in terms of the critics’ attention and overall popularity. No wonder, that the giant MET dedicated the first inaugural show of the year to the Danish Golden Age. Unlike other periods of historical interest that were coinciding with the incredible flourishing of arts, this show focuses on the times that witnessed the transformation of a once-powerful Denmark into a small, somewhat marginalized country at the edge of Europe.
The exhibition features approximately 100 works from The Met collection, SMK — The National Gallery of Denmark, and several American collections, and highlights such artists as Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Christen Købke, Constantin Hansen, Martinus Rørbye, and Vilhelm Hammershøi as well as lesser-known figures like Anton Melbye, Johan Thomas Lundbye, Peter Christian Skovgaard, and Heinrich Gustav Ferdinand Holm, among others.
And even some of these names may sound unfamiliar to you, I highly recommend beginning your years with their discovery — once into their luminous and at the same time melancholic art, you’ll never regret it, I promise.
And yeah, if you fail to make it on the East coast these days, this exhibition will then travel to the Getty Museum in LA for summer.
Manet/Degas
Dates: 28 March — 23 July (Paris); 24 September — 7 January 2024 (New York)
Location: Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France; The MET, New York City, USA
This is another exhibition that is organised by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in collaboration with other institutions. After the first stop at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris (from 28 March to 23 July), the fabulous juxtaposition of the two close friends will travel overseas.
Born only two years apart, Manet (1832–1883) and Degas (1834–1917) were friends, rivals, and, at times, antagonists who worked to define modern painting in France.
This is a definitely not-to-miss show for you if you are into the Impressionists and their epoch. The museum is planning to show 150 paintings and works on paper taking a fresh look at the interactions of these two artists in the context of the family relationships, friendships, and intellectual circles that influenced their artistic and professional choices, deepening our understanding of a key moment in nineteenth-century French painting.
There are a couple of other one-artist shows in the MET planned for this year that are well worth a visit:
- Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter (3 April — 16 July) promises to offer an unprecedented look at the life and artistic achievements of one of the great Velásquez’s famous sitters, who would later become an artist in his own right;
- and the reexamining of the crowd-favourites Van Gogh’s Cypresses (from 22 May to 27 August) might become a perfect way to celebrate the round date of 170 years since the artist’s birth.
There is an interesting Last Call shows in the MET that you might pop in before it closes its doors on 22 January — Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition. This is a curious look at Cubism through the lens of the age-old tradition of trompe l’oeil painting, so hurry up.
Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: The Modern Landscape
Dates: 14 May — 4 September (Chicago); 6 October — 12 March 2024 (London)
Location: Art Institute of Chicago, USA; Tate Modern, London, UK
Together with Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Art Institute of Chicago has prepared their own major event to commemorate the beloved Post-Impressionist on both sides of the Atlantic.
For this purpose, apart from the great Vincent, they have brought together Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard, and Charles Angrand to explore their joint efforts in exploring sunlight, water, and the colors of nature while experimenting with color and paint application in those bold brushstrokes and dots.
And here is the Last Call for another must-visit exhibition from the previous year dedicated to Van Gogh in America which will be over on 22 January in the Detroit Museum of Arts.
Salvador Dalí: The Image Disappears
Dates: 18 February — 12 June
Location: Art Institute of Chicago, USA
Every Dalí exhibition has always been a real show in the most spectacular sense of this word. This rather intimate-scale event will bring together 25 paintings, drawings, and surrealist objects from the 1930s — the pivotal decade for the artist’s career.
It will consider Dalí’s work in light of two defining, if contradictory, impulses: an immense desire for visibility and the urge to disappear.
Featuring icons of the Art Institute’s won collection alongside celebrated loans from around the world, the exhibition explores a series of “disappearing acts” — some hidden and disappearing imagery within Dalí’s works that offer veiled personal meditations on his wry, sophisticated, and ultimately paranoid approach to art making.
Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence
Dates: 26 March — 16 July
Location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA
Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) is by far the most popular of the Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and has become a household name all over the world. This major exhibition in Boston is set to explore in detail his impact on other artists — both during his lifetime and beyond.
It will bring together over 90 woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books by Hokusai with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers.
A particularly indulging opportunity to plunge into the subtle art of the understated charm of ukiyo-e.
Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper
Dates: 19 November — 31 March 2024
Location: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., USA
Joy, despair, ecstasy, tragedy: these are some of the themes that Mark Rothko sought to express in his luminous art — that’s how the museum introduces this blockbuster they planned for the last months of the year.
This exhibition brings together more than 100 of Rothko’s most compelling paintings on paper, many on view for the first time. They range from early figurative subjects and surrealist works to the soft-edged rectangular fields, often realized at a monumental scale, for which Rothko is best known.
Must be a sheer delight for those into Modern Art in its most radical incarnation in painting.
For those more into the ‘good old’ Old Masters, don’t miss your chance to see the stunning Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice in the same museum. The show is on till 22 February.
There is another travelling exhibition that is about to wrap up in Denver Museum on 22 January to then reopen in Dallas on 19 February: Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks. Well, one could give a more precise title for this major juicy retrospective. Consider visiting to lift your spirit and be amazed by the humour of our predecessors.
Georgia O’Keeffe To See Takes Time
Dates: 9 April — 12 August
Location: Museum of Modern Art, New York City, USA
Another exhibition of Modern Art this year which is focusing on paper as a ‘serious’ support for painting and drawing, which goes beyond the sketch and study nature usually reserved for it.
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), best known for her flower paintings, extensively used paper to create extraordinary series of works in charcoal, pencil, watercolor, and pastel. Reuniting works on paper that are often seen individually, along with key paintings, this exhibition offers a rare glimpse of the artist’s working methods and invites us to take time to look.
And if you are coming to New York by the end of the year, pop in the celebrated MoMA for the juxtaposition of the versions of the two iconic paintings by the Spanish Pablo Picasso. Three Women at the Spring and Three Musicians will reveal many secrets about Picasso in Fontainebleau starting from 1 October until February 2024.
There are obviously many other interesting projects that are going to highlight the art year in the US:
- For those who are in love with the tender pastel medium, head to Getty in LA to visit the marvellous Pastel Portraits: Drawn from Life? (14 March — 17 September). Another brilliant exhibition, Eighteenth-Century Pastels, is on at the very moment and will close its doors on 26 February (fair warning!).
- From 18 July to 9 October, Getty will also feature a pitifully unknown, yet truly deserving of every accolade Italian Baroque painter — Giacomo Ceruti: A Compassionate Eye. A real pearl, in my opinion!
- Reckoning with Millet’s Man with a Hoe is going to focus on the tumultuous public life of Jean-François Millet’s iconic depiction of peasant labor which was bookended by two moments of controversy. Which ones? Find out in Getty Museum in LA from 5 September to 10 December.
- And the crowning show of the year in Los Angeles — William Blake: Visionary is a particularly exquisite international loan event that will explore the artist-poet’s imaginative world through his most celebrated works. Live in Getty from 17 October to 14 January 2024.
- There is also a really interesting exhibition wrapping up soon in the Whitney Museum of American Art. Edward Hopper’s New York (on view till 5 March) is eventually dedicated to the American city that he “knew best and like most.” This way, it is a comprehensive look at Hopper’s life and work, from his early impressions of New York in sketches, prints, and illustrations, to his late paintings, in which the city served as a backdrop for his evocative distillations of urban experience.
And now let’s fly over the Atlantic ocean and move on to see what’s on in Europe this year.
Art Exhibitions in Great Britain in 2023
The Rossettis
Dates: 6 April — 24 September
Location: Tate Britain, London, UK
A major exhibition devoted to the radical Rossetti generation.
Indeed, the art world can’t wait to see the result of this carefully curated retrospective of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose art was shaped by the booming revival of the Medieval chivalry spirit no less than by his unconventional relationships with his sitters and muses: Elizabeth Siddal, Fanny Cornforth and Jane Morris.
It will also be the most comprehensive exhibition of Elizabeth Siddal’s work for 30 years, featuring rare surviving watercolours and important drawings.
And if you come to Tate before 12 March, make sure to pop in the major blockbuster of the previous year — Cezanne — a career-spanning survey of a pivotal figure in modern art, as the museum calls it.
After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art
Dates: 25 March — 13 August
Location: National Gallery, London, UK
This exhibition follows the success waves of the Paul Cézanne standalone shows from 2022 and celebrates him as well as two giants of the era: Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin and follows the influences they had on younger generations of French artists, on their peers and on wider circles of artists across Europe in Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels and Vienna.
With over a hundred works by artists ranging from Klimt and Kokoschka, Matisse and Picasso to Mondrian and Kandinsky complemented by a selection of sculpture by artists including Rodin and Camille Claudel, the exhibition follows the creation of a new, modern art, free of convention, taking in Expressionism, Cubism and Abstraction.
In other words, a great opportunity to plunge into the colourful world of the Post-Impressionist epoch at the turn of the century and get inspired by the spirit of progress and that fresh wind they were breathing in the last decades before the war.
Frans Hals
Dates: 30 September — 21 January 2024
Location: National Gallery, London, UK
For this major retrospective of Hals in more than thirty years, some 50 of Hals’s finest works will be brought together, including the exceptional, first-ever loan of his most famous picture, ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ (1624), from the Wallace Collection (the story of how painful it was for the museum curators is worth its own teller).
There’s the hint of a smile, a hand resting nonchalantly on a hip, and just occasionally, a burst of laughter…
No wonder these captivating traits made Hals one of the most copied and faked painters of his epoch. So, don’t miss is a brilliant chance to see those signature sparks in the eyes of his sitters and feel the warmth of their flesh when there will be so many of them in one room.
There are other two interesting shows planned by NG for this year. The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance (16 March — 11 June) focuses on one of the best-known faces in the National Gallery: Quinten Massys’s 16th-century depiction of an old woman reunited in the exhibition with her companion, ‘An Old Man’, on rare loan from a private collection.
And Discover Liotard and the Lavergne Family Breakfast is reuniting for the first time in 250 years Swiss painter Jean-Etienne Liotard’s pastel and oil versions of ‘The Lavergne Family Breakfast’. This cornerstone works by the artist and the whole pastel medium will be on view from 16 November.
Spain and the Hispanic World
Dates: 21 January — 10 April
Location: Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
Discover the rich story of Spanish and Hispanic art and culture from the ancient world to the early 20th century through over 150 fascinating works: from masterpieces by El Greco, Zurbarán, Velázquez and Goya to sculptures, paintings, silk textiles, ceramics, lustreware, silverwork, precious jewellery, maps, drawings, illuminated manuscripts and stunning decorative lacquerware from Latin America.
Could there be any deeper immersion into the art of the multiple Hispanic cultural contexts? A not to miss project, that’s for sure.
Impressionists on Paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec
Dates: 25 November — 10 March
Location: Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
Another look on Impressionists, and again, a focus on works on paper — drawings, pastels, watercolours, temperas, gouaches — it certainly must be a trend somehow, huh?
This groundbreaking exhibition, as stated by its curators, will bring together around 70 works by Degas, Cézanne, Renoir, Van Gogh, and others, who transformed the future direction of art and ultimately even paved the way for later movements like Abstract Expressionism.
Before moving on to continental Europe, let’s not forget about one of the geniuses of the Renaissance — Donatello, arguably the greatest sculptor of all time. Victoria & Albert Museum in London has planned its first major UK exhibition to explore exceptional talents. Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance opens on 11 February.
Important Art Exhibitions in the Netherlands in 2023
Vermeer
Dates: 10 February — 4 June
Location: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Never before have so many Vermeers been brought together.
And, of course, it will include the Girl with the Pearl Earring from Mauritshuis, The Hague, as well as the famous Geographer (Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main), Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid (The National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) and Woman Holding a Balance (The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC). Moreover, there will be works that have never been shown to the public in the Netherlands, including the newly restored Girl Reading a Letter at the Open Window from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.
Speaking of the Mauritshuis Museum, they will be holding the supporting show — Vrel, Forerunner of Vermeer (from 16 February to 29 May), who was already producing minimalistic interior and street scenes before the paint was dry on Vermeer’s first masterpiece.
They have also planned another extremely fascinating exhibition — Looted Art for the coming summer. Further details are going to be released closer to the date.
Art exhibitions in Paris in 2023
Alas, many major French museums have not yet revealed their calendars for 2023, and we have already covered the loud premiere of the year that Musée d’Orsay is organising together with the MET (see Manet / Degas featured above). So, let’s have a quick look at what has been revealed at this point:
- The Louvre in Paris is wrapping up its large exhibition on Still Lifes they called Things. Hurry up, it closes on 23 January.
- Apart from Manet / Degas, the fabulous Musée d’Orsay is also looking at the subtle paintings executed in pastel chalks. Pastels du musée d’Orsay show begins on 14 March and will last until the 14th of July.
- The autumn at the former railway station will be dedicated to the last months of the great Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh à Auvers-sur-Oise: Les derniers mois will be on 3 October.
- There are also a couple of notable solo-artist exhibitions that you could manage to see if you are already in Paris right now: Rosa Bonheur and Edward Munch in Orsay will close their doors on 15 and 22 January respectively, and the exquisite Füssli in Jaquemart-André Museum, dedicated to the spooky oeuvre of the Swiss-born British painter, Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli, 1741–1825) is wrapping up on 23 January.
Art exhibitions in Germany in 2023
Several particularly interesting shows are scheduled for this season in famous German museums.
- Berlin Gemäldegalerie is going to feature the stunning Early Netherlandish painter who was largely regarded as the prototype of the “mad genius”, with whom even Vincent van Gogh identified. Hugo van der Goes: Between Pain and Bliss opens on 31 March and will be on view till 16 July.
- Städel Museum in Frankfurt celebrates the work of the important Italian Baroque painter Guido Reni. His solo show, Guido Reni: The Divine, is already on and is waiting for your curious eye until 5 March.
- Their next show, Outstanding! The Relief from Rodin to Picasso (24 May — 17 September) will present a major survey on the possibilities explored in reliefs from 1800 to the 1960s.
- Well, you can’t complete your impression of pastel as a medium without a look at its trail braising artist — the stunning Rosalba Carriera. Elegante Begegnungen. Rosalba Carriera — Perfektion in Pastell is the retrospective show they give for her in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden from 9 June till 24 September.
- And if you come to Munich, don’t miss the ongoing large-scale monographic exhibition in Pinakotheken dedicated to the expressionist art of Max Beckmann. His life was marked by tragic experiences of war and uprooting, transit and exile, but also by glamorous vacations, the urge for freedom and the longing to travel. Around 70 loans from important private and public Beckmann collections in Europe and the USA will be on view at Max Beckmann: Departure until 12 March.
Other interesting art exhibitions around the world
- Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain is showing the curated selection of Portraits by Joaquín Sorolla (already on till 18 June). Think of a Tissot and Sargent merged together with that secret ingredient of luminous light going through the layers — a real pleasure for the eyes.
- And if you are in Madrid in January, don’t lose your chance to see The other Renaissance. Spanish artists in Naples in the early Cinquecento — a curious insight into one of the most productive and unknown chapters within European Renaissance culture, namely the transition of Spanish and southern Italian art towards the “modern manner”. Live in Prado until 29 January.
- Egon Schiele from the Collection of the Leopold Museum — Young Genius in Vienna 1900 will travel as far as the Land of the Rising Sun. This solo show by the controversially disturbing genius will be on from 26 January to 9 April at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, Japan.
- And, finally, we got to know that Palazzo Reale in Milan, Italy, is preparing their El Greco. Few details are known, yet mark pick the time starting the 13 October, this painter’s art is never a disappointment.
Luckily, no unfortunate circumstances are going to ruin your art endeavours for 2023 and you’ll be able to visit as many exhibitions as you like.
