Age of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
3 April-16 July
In a remarkable cultural exchange, 31 institutions in China are lending 160 objects to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for this show exploring the Qin and Han dynasties. The exhibition, which covers around 440 years of history, examines the development of a cohesive Chinese Han ethnic identity in light of recent scholarship and archaeological digs conducted in the past 50 years. The show opens with a group of the famous terracotta warriors that guarded the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, and also includes later works such as a monumental stone carving of a lion, which carries the influence of Persian and Hellenistic art, pointing to early exchanges between East and West.
Damien Hirst
Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana, Venice
9 April-November
Damien Hirst’s first major show in Italy in more than a decade, and the first to be held in both of the Pinault Collection’s Venetian venues, “has been ten years in the making”, according to a press statement. The show seems to be shrouded in secrecy, with little more than the opening date and venues announced so far. Speaking to the Guardian newspaper last year, Hirst did give some clues as to what he might be showing. The artist said that he was going to be retrieving works he had buried at sea off the coast of Mexico two decades ago, which he “wanted all covered in coral”; although it was unclear whether this was said tongue-in-cheek. The sheer scale of the double show is sure to make it a big talking point in the run-up to the Venice Biennale.
The Luther Effect: Protestantism, 500 Years in the World
Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
12 April-5 November
The Protestant Reformation began, in the conventional reckoning, on 31 October 1517 when Martin Luther supposedly nailed his 95 Theses, a list of the abuses of the Catholic Church, to the door of the electoral church of Wittenberg in Saxony. This year marks the 500th anniversary of the event that changed the religious and political face not only of Europe, but of the world. Luther’s criticism of the church spawned a multitude of Protestant denominations and was the seed that flowered in modern individualism, human rights and nationalism. This exhibition, organised by the Deutsches Historisches Museum (but shown in the Martin-Gropius-Bau) illustrates Reformation history and its international reach from the beginning to the present.
Best of the rest opening in April Pity and Terror in Picasso: the Path to Guernica
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
4 April-4 September
Queer British Art 1861-1967
Tate Britain, London
5 April-1 October
Rosa Barba
Secession, Vienna
6 April-18 June
Matisse in the Studio
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
9 April-9 July
Irving Penn: Centennial
Metropolitan Museum, New York
24 April-30 July
Juergen Teller: Enjoy Your Life!
Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
20 April-3 July
In the Light of Naples: the Art of Francesco de Mura
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Poughkeepsie
21 April-2 July
Georgia O’Keeffe
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
22 April-30 July
Bacon, Freud and the School of London
Museo Picasso Malaga, Malaga
25 April-17 September
Walker Evans
Centre Pompidou, Paris
26 April-14 August
Nari Ward: Sun Splashed
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
26 April-4 September
Photographs Become Pictures: the Becher Class
Städel Museum, Frankfurt
27 April-13 August
Teresinha Soares
Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo
27 April-6 August
Louise Lawler: Why Pictures Now
Museum of Modern Art, New York
30 April-30 July