The Top 50 Global Exhibitions of 2024
From lesser-known artists to big names, our staff and contributors compiled our favorite shows around the globe in a year of exceptional art.
by Hyperallergic 
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Haegue Yang: Flat Works
The Arts Club of Chicago, September 18–December 20, 2024
Curated by Orianna Cacchione
This sleeper show was a joyous cultural celebration of paper cutting and how a contemporary artist is transforming the medium, while embracing its long history. Very un-Matisse-like in their layered temperament, Yang’s works mine folk and decorative traditions to create Rorschach-like forms that plumb the depths of what can feel like psychologically charged imagery. —HV
Beatriz da Costa: (un)disciplinary tactics
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), September 7, 2024–January 5, 2025
Curated by Daniela Lieja Quintanar and Ana Briz
Beatriz da Costa saw that every living thing could be creative, including vermin. She turned pigeons, cockroaches, and mice into artistic collaborators. The birds in “PigeonBlog” (2006–8) measured pollution, the cockroaches in “Zapped!” (2004–6) toyed with surveillance, and the mice used in medical research writhing in pain across the series Dying for the Otherwere choreographed dancers of sorts, dying from the same cancer that ate de Costa from the inside out. Her life was brief, but she was a workhorse, and she produced enough art to earn this small retrospective. The exhibition, a sentimental marriage of art and engineering, demonstrated that she spent every moment tinkering, teaching, and thriving. —RR
The Dance of Life: Figure and Imagination in American Art, 1876–1917
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, September 6, 2024–January 5, 2025
Curated by Mark D. Mitchell
This was an inspirational exhibition that reminded visitors that the United States once fostered populist arts that promoted democracy and its associated institutions. This large show focuses on three public buildings that commissioned major site-specific works in the post-Civil War era (Boston Public Library, Library of Congress, Pennsylvania State Capitol) and we are given a full range of sketches and oil studies by those and other major American artists (Edwin Austin Abbey, Edwin Blashfield, Daniel Chester French, Violet Oakley, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and John Singer Sargent). The effect is immersive and rich, providing insight into the evolving language of democracy in a country that had just a few decades before surfaced from a deadly national conflict. Experiencing the immense beauty of Edwin Austin Abbey’s large oil on canvas study for “The Hours” at the Pennsylvania State Capitol alone is worth a visit, but there are numerous other incredible works to behold, like Henry Siddons Mowbray’s “Muse of Electricity,” which was commissioned for a New York mansion and evokes the classical style of so much of the democratic imagery emerging during the era. While the US might be in the throes of oligarchs at the moment, it’s a good reminder that democracy is something we all engage with and fight for. —HV
Crip Arte Spazio: The DAM in Venice
CREA Cantieri del Contemporaneo, Venice, April 16, 2024–January 10, 2025
Curated by David Hevey
Running concurrently with the Venice Biennale, whose theme was “Foreigners Everywhere,” this exhibition brought to life the work of a community often othered to the point of foreignness: the UK’s Disability Arts Movement in the 1970s. Jason Wilsher-Mills’s “I Am Argonaut,” a large fiberglass and acrylic sculpture, explored the experience of becoming disabled during puberty, with written statements about his experience etched along the figure’s body. Simon Roy’s graphic novel illustrations featured major figures like Deborah Williams, who pushed for the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and Equality Act 2010. Prescient but also timeless was Ker Wallwork’s Merg, an animated short story set in London about the bureaucracy of care — and lack thereof — told predominantly through paperwork. As Williams is quoted saying: “It was an inaccessible society that disabled us, not the crip body.” —AXM
Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers
National Gallery, London, September 14, 2024–January 19, 2025
Curated by Cornelia Homburg and Christopher Riopelle
Great artists come round again and again, as if on an ever-revolving carousel. The trick is to present them afresh: new themes and new insights; surprising juxtapositions; works wrested from galleries perhaps reluctant to lend, or from the ferocious grip of private collectors who fear separation from their most treasured possessions. Curator Cornelia Homburg achieved all these ambitions in a show that wowed the most hardened of critics. One of the two key thematic elements was van Gogh’s lifelong fascination with poetry, announced in the exhibition’s very first gallery, which presented his only portrait of the young man van Gogh chose to characterize as The Poet — he was a Belgian painter called Eugène Boch — and a view of the public garden where he imagined great poets from antiquity wandering and conversing. —Michael Glover
Jeremy Frey: Woven
Art Institute of Chicago, October 26, 2024–February 10, 2025
Organized by the Portland Museum of Art, Maine and curated by Ramey Mize and Jaime DeSimone. This iteration of the exhibition was organized by Andrew Hamilton.
With striking silhouettes and hypnotic textures, high-craft sculptures dazzle in Jeremy Frey: Woven.This show marks the sculptor’s first museum exhibition in his two-decade career, and his artistic voice shines through bright and clear, in harmony with those of his ancestors. Some 50 of the seventh-generation Passamaquoddy basket maker’s vessels take the spotlight (several of which have recently joined major institutional collections), alongside a selection of elegant relief prints based on basket designs. A lush, wordless 11-minute video shadows the artist through each stage of making a basket, following in the footsteps of his predecessors: Felling a slim brown ash tree in Maine’s northern forests, splitting and dyeing thin strips of wood, weaving with nimble hands. Embedded with open-ended reflections on the environment and art, legacy and land, the exhibition situates Wabanaki basketry squarely in the realm of the art museum and Frey as a contemporary artist to watch. —Julie Schneider
Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum
Baltimore Museum of Art, April 21, 2024–February 16, 2025
Curated by Dare Turner and Elise Boulanger
I’m not sure if calling this an exhibition is correct, considering that there are many aspects to this project, which includes community interventions and conversations that are not visible to most visitors, but the resulting exhibits distributed around the museum and organized by curator Dare Turner add up to an impactful and wide-ranging display of contemporary Native American and First Nations art by some of the leading practitioners today. The project includes a solo presentation by Dana Claxton, which was an absolutely stunning show in itself; as well as one by Dyani White Hawk, perfectly arranged in the Modern galleries; Laura Ortman, located in a quiet corner so you can enjoy the immersive quality of the work; Nicholas Galanin, who shines when allotted the space; and so many others, including the truly superb video program — I can’t remember the last time an hour of viewing flew by in a museum gallery. Even group shows like Illustrated Agencywere a delight as the list of artists (Wendy Red Star, Julie Buffalohead, Rose B. Simpson, Alan Michelson, and to name a few) was perfectly chosen. Once you get past the notion that Preoccupiedis “one” show, and allow yourself to wander throughout the institution, it is a worthwhile exploration that foregrounds Indigenous North American art as foundational to contemporary art on this continent. —HV
Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, October 19, 2024–February 18, 2025
Curated by Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, Seph Rodney, and Katy Siegel
Art and sports occupy separate and rarely intersecting spheres in the American imagination (@artbutmakeitsports is a notable exception), but as a lifelong superfan of both, I’ve long thought about the connection between the “unnecessary” but ubiquitous existence of art and sports across human history and cultures. Aiming to illuminate that connection, SFMOMA’s expansive show feels as sprawling and teeming as a football stadium — and it’s just as fun and filled with talent. My favorites include Catherine Opie’s 2012 nude portrait of swimmer Diana Nyad’s near abusive tan lines, Hank Willis Thomas’s “Guernica” (2016), composed of famous players’ basketball jerseys, Maurizio Cattelan’s “Stadium” (1991), a working foosball table for 22 players (that you’re allowed to play), and Tabitha Soren’s “Net Impact” (2024), in which piercing portraits of young baseball players, bone fragments, and sport-specific netting strongly imply that sports and religion share their own close connection. —BQ
Broken Boxes: A Decade of Art, Action, and Dialogue
Albuquerque Museum, September 7, 2024–March 2, 2025
Curated by Ginger Dunnill and Josie Lopez
This group exhibition gave me a new appreciation for a curatorial format that, for me at least, can often feel forced or just plain boring. Featuring works by 23 artists who participated in the Broken Boxes Podcast, the show resists thematic homogeneity by highlighting each artist according to relationships rather than aesthetics. Here, the artists’ voices are literally amplified, creating an ambient soundtrack for the show and offering visitors multiple perspectives on art making and meaning. With sculptures, installations, films, and more that embody topics like mental and physical health, Indigenous sovereignty, and migration, I was compelled to visit multiple times, eagerly trying to commit it all to memory. —NZ
Sci-Fi, Magick, Queer L.A.: Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation
USC Fisher Museum of Art, Los Angeles, August 22, 2024–March 15, 2025
Curated by Alexis Bard Johnson
Science fiction fandom, occult societies, and queer organizing are the three areas that structure this exhibition, but all are rooted in the drama and fantasy endemic to Los Angeles. Spanning the 1930s through the ’60s, the show expertly balances archival materials and fine art to tell interweaving stories without neglecting the extraordinary art that came out of countercultural groups like the LA Science Fantasy Society and Ordo Templi Orientis. Co-organized with USC’s vast LGBTQ+ repository, ONE Archives, the show is a rabbit hole of otherworldly, occult, and extraterrestrial tales that I didn’t want to leave — and that doesn’t even touch on its glam aesthetic. Extended into 2025 (though closed until January 14), anyone with even a passing interest in the subject matter should see it if they can. —NH
The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970–2020
Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago, November 9, 2024–March 16, 2025
Curated by Jamillah James and Jack Schneider
This ambitious display seems eager to chart how technology has extended painting in new ways. It’s a fascinating show in which archival work contextualizes so much of the art. The more recent artists’ wanderings are just as interesting, albeit incomplete and sometimes soliciting headscratching. Overall it’s a delight to investigate and find connections between art projects that span decades and communities. Even on an entire floor of the museum it feels like this show is just the beginning of a far larger exploration that I hope is expanded.
As an added bonus, a must-see display of works by Arthur Jafa in the MCA’s collection is on view. It was one of the finest ways to survey those works I’ve yet to see. Do yourself a favor and check out both. —HV
By dawn’s early light
Nasher Museumof Art at Duke University, Durham, North CarolinaAugust 1, 2024–May 11, 2025
Organized by Xuxa Rodríguez, Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Curator of Contemporary Art, with support from Julianne Miao, Curatorial Assistant
Where are we now, some 60 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965? That’s the question this exhibition examines through a selection of outstanding works from the Nasher’s collection. Artists include Titus Kaphar, Hank Willis Thomas, Nari Ward, Fred Wilson, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Barkley L. Hendricks, Mel Chin, Scherezade García, and many other greats. The answer to this loaded questionis elusive and incomplete as it’s still soaked in blood and tears. —HB
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