Looking for some inspiration for your next museum visit? This month, we're taking a tour of four of the world's most exciting and innovative museum exhibitions with Tim Marlow, CEO and Director of the Design Museum, London.
Monet: in Full Light
Grimaldi Forum, Monaco
8 July–3 September 2023
Claude Monet made his reputation in Northern France, but his first visit to the Riviera in 1853 was a pivotal moment in his illustrious career. Monet: in Full Light features over 100 paintings – at the heart of which is a group of canvases he made in Antibe, Roquebrune, Bordighera and of course, Monte Carlo.
They see his palette brighten and the sharp clear light of the south of France begin to illuminate his work profoundly. Given its location, Monet’s impact extends well beyond what we see on the walls of the galleries.
Matisse by Matisse
UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing
15 July–15 October 2023
Matisse by Matisse is the artist’s first solo exhibition in China and looks to be well worth the wait. Displaying over 200 works, it will span seven intensely creative decades, from oils to textiles. With all drawn from the personal collection of the great French artist, who had strong views on how his art should be displayed, there is a tantalising whiff of posthumous self-curation.
Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
21 July–13 November 2023
Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India charts the inspiring impact that Buddhism had on art and the religious landscape in ancient India from over 600 years starting around 200 BCE.
More than 125 objects will feature, including major loans from India, spanning stone sculptures to metalwork, ivory, ceramics, jewelry, as well as, of course, painting. The exhibition promises to be enlightening in every sense of the word, dynamic on occasion, but also meditative.
Grayson Perry: Smash Hits
Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
22 July–12 November 2023
Over 80 works will be organised thematically and will wrestle with Sir Grayson’s lifelong preoccupations of masculinity, sexuality, class, religion, politics, and identity.
The show will include plenty of pots, as well as prints, tapestries and a custom-built motorcycle with a shrine on the back housing Alan Measles, Grayson’s personal God and childhood teddy bear. Like the artist himself, the exhibition, Grayson Perry: Smash Hits, will be vividly entertaining as well as intelligently questioning.
