2019 was a great year to be a female artist. Across the globe women were ruling blockbuster exhibitions with the likes of Dora Maar and Lee Krasner finally stepping out of their lovers shadows – Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock respectively – onto the thrones they deserve. Luckily for us, art history’s recent obsession with female empowerment is set to carry through into the new decade, and here are our top pics of the shows you need to be seeing in 2020.
Georgia Sagri: IASI at Mimosa House
Greek artist Georgia Sagri is set to have a solo show at London’s Mimosa House. Over a 3-month period she will develop a new chapter of her ongoing research on IASI (“recovery” in Greek). During this time, she will offer a series of vocal tuning trainings and movement treatments for members of the public. The show runs between January and March 2020.
Vaginal Davis: The White To Be Angry at Art Institute Chicago
Naming herself after the activist Angela Davis, Vaginal Davis is a key figure in the history of queer music, performance and video art and emerged in the late 1970s. She is a founding member of the “homocore movement” that reinterpreted hardcore punk through queer cultures. Her Chicago show promises to embrace ambiguosity and extravagant dark humor to create an image of America that remains topical today. The show runs between 1 February and 26 April 2020.
Yuan Jai at Pompidou Center
The Pompidou Center in Paris will present the work of Chinese artist Yuan Jai, showing us a range of lush landscapes and references to oriental as well as European art. The show runs between 5 February and 27 April 2020.
Dorothea Lange: Words and Pictures at MoMA
Dorothea Lange is world famous for her photography. This will be Lange’s first major MoMA exhibition of in 50 years, bringing together iconic works from the collection with less seen photographs. The show runs between 9 February and 9 May 2020.
Linder Sterling: Linderism at Kettle’s Yard
This exhibition of new work by Linder Sterling will be on display at the Kettle’s Yard Archive. The show includes photomontage, as well as the display of Linder as a performance artist, zine-maker, musician, documentary-photographer, collaborator, muse, guru, medium and body-builder. The show runs between 15 February and 26 April 2020.
Hearts Of Our People: Native Women Artists at Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Museum
This landmark exhibition is the first major thematic show to explore the artistic achievements of Native women. The show includes 81 artworks dating from antiquity to the present, made in a variety of media from textiles and beadwork, to sculpture, time-based media and photography. A group of Native women artists, curators, and Native art historians have come together to generate new interpretations and scholarship of this art and their makers, offering multiple points of view and perspectives to enhance and deepen understanding of the ingenuity and innovation that have always been foundational to the art of Native women. The show runs between 21 February and 17 May 2020.
Neri Oxman: Material Ecology at MoMA
Besides being famous for being rumoured to be dating Brad Pitt, Neri Oxman is an accomplished artist, so accomplished that she is having a solo show at MoMA. Her work thinks about materials and construction and this “material ecology” is what will be on display. The show runs between 22 February and 25 May 2020.
Remedios Varo: Constelaciones at MALBA
Argentina’s MALBA is shining a spotlight on Remedios Varo, a central figure of surrealism and Latin American fantastic art and an unavoidable reference for the Mexican scene of the mid-twentieth century, which brought together an extraordinary group of exiled artists and intellectuals. The show opens on 6 March 2020.
Vera Lutter: Museum in the Camera at LACMA
The new show of work by Vera Lutter was made on residency at LACMA. Lutter uses one of the oldest optical technologies still in use, the camera obscura. By building room-sized cameras and placing unexposed photo paper across from a pinhole opening, Lutter has adopted the camera obscura as her singular working method, resulting in photographs with an ethereal, otherworldly beauty. The show runs between 29 March and 19 July 2020.
Artemisia at National Gallery
In the first major exhibition of Artemisia Gentileschi in the UK, London’s National Gallery will present 35 works from public and private collections around the world to give a selective overview of Artemisia’s career: From her training in Rome, to her time in Florence, and the last 25 years of her life, during which she set up a studio in Naples and undertook a brief trip to London. The show runs between 4 April and 26 July 2020.
Dora Maar at the Getty Center
More than just Picasso’s lover, Dora Maar has been getting a lot of love as of late. And, just as soon as her show closes at London’s Tate Modern, it is off to LA to appear a the Getty. This exhibition traces her career from assignments and street photographs made in the early 1930s to postwar paintings. The show runs between 21 April and 26 July 2020.
Anna-Eva Bergman: From North to South, Rhythms at Reina Sofia
Norweigan artist Anna-Eva Bergman viewed rhythm as a structural element of painting, building a career around line and rhythm. The show runs between 7 May and 21 October 2020.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Tate Britain
A favourite artist of Lolita Cross, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is getting a solo at Tate Britain. Through her focus on the depiction of imagined black characters Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings raise important questions of identity and representation. This exhibition will bring together over 80 paintings and works on paper from 2003 to the present day in the most extensive survey of the artist’s career to date. The show runs between 19 May and 31 August 2020.
Lee Krasner: Living Colour at Guggenheim Bilbao
Following its success at London’s Barbican Museum, Lee Krasner is stepping out of Jackson Pollock’s shadow once again at Guggenheim Bilbao. The show runs between 29 May and 6 October 2020.
Know My Name: Australian Women Artists at National Gallery of Australia
Know My Name showcases art made by women in Australia from 1900 to today. It brings together more than 150 works, drawn from collections across Australia. Featuring lesser-known and leading artists such as Margaret Preston, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Destiny Deacon and Julie Rrap, this exhibition tells a new story of Australian art. The show runs between 30 May and 13 September 2020.
Alice Neel: A Committed Look at Pompidou Center
Crossing the periods of abstraction, Pop Art, minimal and conceptual art, Alice Neel has always been against the grain of the avant-garde and faithful to a very personal figuration. The retrospective at the Pompidou rediscovers her work through two major themes: the class struggle and the gender struggle. It highlights the political and social commitment of an artist for whom the act of painting is fundamentally a quest for truth. The show runs between 10 June and 24 August 2020.
Lygia Clark: Painting As An Experimental Field at Peggy Guggenheim
Lygia Clark was a major figure in the Brazilian avant-garde. This exhibition presents a focus on her formative years, from 1948 to 1958, when she was experimenting between figuration and abstraction. Along with a pertinent representation of her early figurative work in rarely shown drawings, this exhibition will assemble paintings from other major series created during this period in order to provide a fundamental overview of the first decade of Clark’s career. The show runs between 27 June and 28 September 2020.
Prada Front and Back at Design Museum
Every art girl loves a bit of glamour, and who better to focus an exhibition on that Miuccia Prada?! Miuccia Prada joined the family business in the mid-70s, turning it into one of the most successful fashion houses in the world. With her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, she has changed the way that people dress, redefined how we understand luxury, explored new materials and technologies and invested passionately in art, design and architecture. The show will open in September 2020.
Marina Abramovic: After Life at Royal Academy
In Abramović’s first major exhibition in the UK, the Royal Academy show spans her 50-year career, along with new works. As Abramović approaches her mid-70s, her new work reflects on changes to the artist’s body, and explores her perception of the transition between life and death. She examines the question of legacy through photographs, videos, installations and re-performances by younger performers. The show runs between 26 September and 8 December 2020.
Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana at Prado
OK, so this exhibition technically opened in 2019, but we’re obsessed. The show brings Sofonisba and Lavinia together for the first time, two notable women painters of the 16th century. Featuring 65 works, the exhibition sheds new light on artistic personalities that became obscured over time. The show runs until 2 February 2020.
Text Lizzy Vartanian
