Preview: best art exhibitions in the USA, early 2024

A first look at some of the most interesting art exhibitions that will be on view in the United States in early 2024

Source: Getty Museum, Malibu / National Gallery of Art, Washington / The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / Museum of Modern Art, New York / Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco · Image: Katsushika Hokusai, (1760-1849), “Cresting Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa (The Great Wave)”, from the series “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji”, ca. 1830-1832

“Sculpted Portraits from Ancient Egypt” at the Getty Villa (January 24, 2024 to January 25, 2027)

Egypt’s 26th Dynasty (664–526 BC) was a period of revival and renewal. It marks the last great phase of native pharaonic rule in ancient Egypt and is notable for its exceptional artworks, particularly stone sculpture. The achievements of Egyptian artists of this period are vividly expressed in the sculpted portraits of officials associated with the court and priesthood, which were created to be displayed in tombs and temples.

“The Anxious Eye: German Expressionism and Its Legacy” at the National Gallery of Art, Washington (February 11 to May 27, 2024)

“The Anxious Eye: German Expressionism and Its Legacy” presents insights into the work of these inventive early 20th-century artists and their continuing impact a century later. The exhibition features recent acquisitions as well as works that have rarely, if ever, been on view, including gifts donated by celebrated Washington, DC, collectors Jacob and Ruth Cole Kainen.

“The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (February 25 to July 28, 2024)

Through some 160 works, the exhibition explores the comprehensive and far-reaching ways in which Black artists portrayed everyday modern life in the new Black cities that took shape in the 1920s–40s in New York City’s Harlem and Chicago’s South Side and nationwide in the early decades of the Great Migration when millions of African Americans began to move away from the segregated rural South.

“Joan Jonas” at the Museum of Modern Art (March 17 through July 7, 2024)

The exhibition features works produced from 1968 through the present, including videos, drawings, notebooks, photographs, and major installations and performances—many of which are being revisited and reconfigured by the artist on the occasion of this exhibition. Joan Jonas also presents extensive corresponding archival materials, as well as newly commissioned oral histories highlighting Jonas’s enduring multimedia legacy for generations of younger artists.

“Japanese Prints in Transition: From the Floating World to the Modern World” at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco (April 6 to August 18, 2024)

As major societal upheaval ushered in a new government, print traditions under Japan’s emperor would change drastically in the late 19th century. Spanning two pivotal eras of social and political change in Japan, Japanese Prints in Transition is the first US exhibition to trace the artistic development of 18th-century ukiyo-e (or “floating world pictures”) to the brightly colored woodblock prints of the imperial Meiji era, following the ouster of the shogun in 1868.