The art world, a giant decentralized cyborg raging against nature, sleeps in the summer, exploding to life in the fall. And this fall will be great, folks.
Below are 10 shows I’m looking forward to. Use it as a guide if you like, but please also check your favorite museums’ websites: I had the hardest time winnowing out at least 10 other major exhibits, among them a Caravaggio-focused show at the Art Institute of Chicago, Alma Thomas at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Barkley L. Hendricks at the Frick, Ruth Asawa at the Whitney, Max Beckmann at the Neue Galerie, Judy Chicago at the New Museum, Simone Leigh at the Hirshhorn and John Singer Sargent at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Nonetheless, here are my 10. Get organized. Go. Enjoy!
‘Ed Ruscha / Now Then’
Museum of Modern Art, New York | Opens Sept. 10 | Find tickets
Does Ed Ruscha ever tire of being described as “cool”? He’s 85. Ruscha’s deathless art unites pop art’s ironic detachment with his own intimate feeling for the spooky action, the quantum entanglement, that garlands words and the way they look. It remains uncannily of the moment. His paintings are like the album covers Peter Saville designed for Joy Division and New Order: keys to an earlier zeitgeist that nonetheless never age.
Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53rd St., New York. moma.org.
