The exhibitions not to be missed this autumn

From 1 July 2022 to 29 January 2023, the Brooklyn Museum in New York presents Virgil Abloh: "Figures of Speech", a project by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago asserting the communicative power of design. The exhibition retraces twenty years of the pioneering artistic practice of fashion designer and entrepreneur Virgil Abloh, including collaborations with artist Takashi Murakami, musician Kanye West and architect Rem Koolhaas. This is the first exhibition project dedicated to Abloh, who died prematurely in 2021. The display designed for the Brooklyn Museum includes unseen objects from the artist's archive and a "social sculpture" inspired by Abloh's architectural background.

Carolee Schneemann Body Politics is the first major exhibition of the artist's work in the UK, on view until 8 January 2023 at the Barbican in London. The exhibition traces six decades of transgressive and unconventional artistic practice, which made Schneemann a key reference point for contemporary art and the feminist movement. The themes addressed concern the objectification of women, human suffering, the violence of war, and the precarious life experience of humans and animals. On display are paintings, sculptural assemblages and kinetic works, lyrical films and multimedia installations, for a total of over 200 objects and archive materials. 

Until 6 November 2022, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo presents the project "Listen to the Sound of the Earth Turning: Our Wellbeing since the Pandemic", exploring new ways of existing and living during the pandemic in relation to the concept of "wellbeing", the holistic health of body and mind. What does "living well" really mean? To try to answer such a question, works on display deal with themes related to life and existence - nature and human beings, the individual and society, the family, the repetitive nature of everyday life, the spiritual world, and death. The exhibition presents around 140 works by sixteen national and international artists, including installations, sculptures, videos, photographs and paintings. The exhibition's title is a quotation from a work by Yoko Ono and invites visitors to expand their consciousness to understand the majesty of the cosmos.

Until 26 February 2023 Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan presents “Bruce Naumann. Neons Corridors Rooms”, a project by Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, Tate Modern, London and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, dedicated to one of the most celebrated living artists, who has marked the history of contemporary art from the mid-1960s to the present. An artistic practice that explores themes of human experience, the psyche, the perception of the body in relation to space, time and language, and is articulated in multiple mediums, including installation, video, sculpture, performance, photography, drawing and sound. The focus of the exhibition is on Nauman's spatial and architectural research, and the exhibition itinerary is divided into corridors and rooms, outlining a sometimes confusing labyrinth that knows how to turn a difficult set-up into further food for thought. 

From 30 September 2022 to 29 January 2023 Reggia di Monza presents “Keith Haring. Radiant Vision” in the Orangerie, a travelling project made possible thanks to Pan Art Connections and with Artistic and Production Direction entrusted to Beside Studio. More than 100 works will be on show to retrace the short but intense artistic career of the most famous pop artist of the 1980s, including lithographs, silkscreens, drawings on paper and posters. A true tribute to Keith Haring, an advocate of nuclear de-escalation, civil rights, child welfare and AIDS awareness, who made art a "platform for his activism".  The exhibition, divided into nine sections, tells of Haring's passion for iconography, his life in New York City, and social justice issues. The exhibition also features Haring's largest print ever, "Medusa Head", more than two metres long and around one and a half metres high, realised in collaboration with the Danish printmaker Borch Jensen. 

The exhibition "Wolfgang Tillmans: To Look Without Fear" is on view at MoMA New York until 1 January 2023, and presents the public with the artist's intimate view of what it feels like to live in the present. For decades, Tillmans has studied "what it means to engage the world through photography", experimenting with and pursuing an approach that is attentive to social and political causes, the idea of togetherness and connection, the latter evidenced by the relationship between his photographs and the social space of the exhibition. The layout itself recalls the concept of "visual democracy in action", with images taped or pinned to the walls and framed photographs next to magazine pages.

From 12 November 2022 to 14 May 2023, M+ Museum in Hong Kong presents the exhibition "Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now", which traces the origins and revolutionary career of Yayoi Kusama, 21st century cultural icon and visionary artist. The exhibition boasts over 200 works including paintings, drawings, sculptures, installations and archive materials and is divided by themes: infinity, accumulation, radical connectivity, biocosmic, death and force of life.  On show are also previously unseen works, including the large installation "Death of Nerves" (2022), commissioned by M+, and "Dots Obsession-Aspiring to Heaven's Love" (2022), an immersive environment animated by the characteristic polka dots. On display in the main hall are also two sculptures titled "Pumpkin" (2022). 

Until 4 December 2022 the Haus Der Kunst in Munich presents the exhibition "Tony Cokes. Fragments, or just Moments", in collaboration with Kunstverein München. It is precisely the historical connection between the two institutions that inspired the artist to create the commissioned work "Some Munich Moments 1937-1972" (2022), which investigates the interconnection between the two exhibition venues during the Nazi period and beyond. In particular, the work connects the Nazi regime's cultural propaganda strategies with the visual identity of the 1972 Munich Olympics, coded as 'anti-fascist' and 'cosmopolitan'. In his practice, Cokes addresses issues of structural racism, capitalism, war, and gentrification. Since the late 1990s, he has developed a unique language, in particular by making video essays that reject representational imagery. 

From 24 September to 11 December 2022, the Royal Academy of Arts in London presents the largest exhibition dedicated to William Kentridge ever held in the UK. Unquestionably South Africa's most celebrated living artist, Kentridge was born in Johannesburg and made his first works in the 1980s, during the apartheid regime. His artistic practice ranges from printmaking, drawing, collage, film and sculpture to tapestry, theatre, opera, dance and music. Among the works on display, some have never been exhibited before or have been produced especially for the exhibition. It promises an unforgettable immersive experience, including rooms with 4-metre wide tapestries, Kentridge's characteristic charcoal trees and flowers and the breathtaking three-screen film "Notes Towards a Model Opera”.