Spectacle in all its many forms is the big theme of the summer season, when big, glitzy projects will take over museums across the globe. Laure Prouvost has been given a wide playing field for a show about quantum physics at Paris’s Grand Palais, while Carsten Höller is planning a vast exhibition for Beijing’s UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, the details of which he has largely kept secret. Meanwhile, Tomás Saraceno will bring his monumental sculptures to Munich’s Haus der Kunst; a permanent land artwork by him is also going on view in his native Argentina.
He is hardly the only artist considering the land and all the histories embedded within it. Carolina Caycedo is having a show at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, while the National Gallery of Canada is surveying contemporary Indigenous artists from Inuit Nunaat, Sápmi, and Denendeh. This is not exactly a new theme, of course, and Ana Mendieta was considering it before many others. Tate Modern is giving her a proper retrospective, in one of the season’s most anticipated art events.
This period of relative quiet will also leave collectors, curators, critics, and artists with plenty of time to travel—perhaps to the Venice Biennale, which remains on view through November. It’s not the biennial happening this season, however. Manifesta, a roving European biennial, this time touches down in Germany’s Ruhr region, while two new biennial-style shows will launch in the Northeastern US. If you can’t beat biennial fatigue, join it.
Below is a look at 46 museum exhibitions and biennials to see this summer.
