New York City, London, Paris or Milan? We have your travel plans sorted with these celebrations of creative might and ingenuity in architecture, art and fashion.
Questioning Pictures
Curated by Francesco Zanot, Stefano Graziani’s latest exhibition project at the Osservatorio in Galleria Vittorio, Milan, includes a new body of works commissioned by Fondazione Prada that explores photography as a tool for narration, cataloguing and reinterpretation. Graziani investigates archival and conservation systems in some of the most revered museums focusing on the ambivalent relationship between photography and the museum object. Through his lens, Graziani breathes new life into rare museum archives. At the very least, Questioning Pictures is a masterclass on how to photograph in museums; at its zenith, it presents museum collections with a sense of humanity and accessibility which could be lost in a traditional museum set up. (Ends February 27, Milan)
Being Modern: MoMa in Paris
Spread over three floors of Fondation Louis Vuitton, the Frank Ghery designed futuristic museum, Being Modern features over 200 works from — as you would expect — some of the biggest names in arts. Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, rub shoulders with Edward Hopper, René Magritte, Walker Evans, Paul Cézanne in this steel and glass sanctuary for the arts.
Tracing the New York institute’s chronology from its opening in 1929, the Parisian presentation journeys though the museum’s most iconic and monumental presentations.
From the first major painting acquired by the museum, Edward Hopper’s House by the Railroad, to Roman Ondak’s interactive performance work Measuring the Universe— a room where visitors can be measured and write their names and the date next to it — Being Modern goes beyond a ‘best of class’ show, it becomes its own distinct being. One that celebrates the vastness of the human experience, and its reflection. (Ends March 5 2018, Paris)
Azzedine Alaia: The Couturier
Celebrated for his mastery of cut, fit, tailoring, of innovative forms and materials, Alaïa designed by draping and sculpting directly on the human frame. He also meticulously cut all his own patterns, which was virtually without equivalent.
For the past year, the Design Museum has been working closely with Azzedine Alaia in planning an exhibition that explores his career and creative process.
Following his untimely passing on 18 November 2017, the Design Museum will now present this unique exhibition planned by Alaia himself exploring his passion and energy for fashion as he himself intended it to be seen. The exhibition will present more than 60 exceptional examples of Alaïa’s craft from the past thirty-five years, hand-picked by Monsieur Alaïa and guest curator Mark Wilson. (May 10 to October 7, 2018, London)
Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination
The Costume Institute’s spring 2018 exhibition at The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters will feature a dialogue between fashion and religious artworks from The Met collection to examine the relationship between creativity and the religious imagination. Serving as the cornerstone of the exhibition, papal robes and accessories from the Sistine Chapel sacristy, many of which have never been seen outside The Vatican, will be on view in the Anna Wintour Costume Center.
Fashions from the early 20th century to the present will be shown in The Met’s Medieval and Byzantine galleries and at The Met Cloisters alongside religious artworks, to provide an interpretative context for fashion’s engagement with Catholicism. (May 10 to October 8 2018, NYC)
Bodys Isek Kingelez Retrospective
MoMA presents the works of the Congolese sculptor who worked with paper, commercial packaging, and materials from everyday life to create what he called ‘extreme maquettes’ that encompass civic buildings, public monuments, and national pavilions. The retrospective spans the artist’s career over three decades, ranging from early works that were included in the landmark 1989 exhibition Magiciens de la terre at the Centre Pompidou to his streamlined, dramatic forms of the 2000s. The first retrospective of Kingelez’s work, and the first substantial monographic presentation of his work in the US, this exhibition features works from each of the key periods of his career, from early single-building sculptures, to spectacular sprawling cities, to futuristic late works, which incorporate increasingly unorthodox materials. (May 26 to October 21, 2018, New York City)
