Exhibitions

A Female Gaze: Seven Decades of Women Street Photographers at Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York: Until April 2, 2022 At Howard Greenberg Gallery, a new exhibition showcases over seven decades of street photography by 12 great women photographers, from Diane Arbus, Helen Levitt and Vivian Maier to Mary Ellen Mark and Ruth Orkin. Spanning the 1930s through to the early 2000s, the show is filled with perfectly captured snapshots of everyday life in an ever-transforming world. As Mark herself once said, “photograph the world as it is, because nothing is more interesting than reality.” 

Daniel Mebarek from the project La Lucha Continúa, 2020

Drawing a Blank at 14 Wharf Road, London: February 17-27, 2022
The multi-city exhibition series Drawing a Blank returns to London this month for a pop-up show at the former site of Parasol Unit in Shoreditch. As with its previous iterations, the exhibition centers around the democratization of the white cube, and “breaking down the very real barriers that prevent young and emerging artists from accessing, or even feeling comfortable in, these kinds of spaces”, in the words of the series’ founder Ben Broome. The show will offer visitors the chance to discover work by some of the most exciting new names in contemporary art, with featured artists including Rhea Dillon, Daniel Mebarek, Ebun Sodipo, Leo Xu, and many more.

Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Painter), 2008 Courtesy of the artist, David Zwirner London and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, photography by Steve Briggs

A Century of the Artist’s Studio 1920-2020 at Whitechapel Gallery, London: February 17 – May 29, 2022
In London, meanwhile, Whitechapel Gallery will soon present a compelling survey of the artist’s studio, as depicted in the work of various international artists and image-makers over a 100-year time span. Including paintings, sculptures, installations, and films, the show will take us inside the workspaces of such icons as Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Egon Schiele, and Andy Warhol, as well as contemporary figures like Walead Beshty, Lisa Brice, and Kerry James Marshall, to examine “the wide-ranging possibilities and significance of these crucibles of creativity”.

Helen Frankenthaler, Madame Butterfly, 2000© 2021 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / ARS, NY and DACS, London / Tyler Graphic Ltd., Mount Kisco, NY

Helen Frankenthaler: Radical Beauty at Dulwich Picture Gallery: Until April 18, 2022
Londoners, be sure to catch Dulwich Picture Gallery’s current display of rare and previously unseen woodcuts by the late pioneer of abstract expressionism, Helen Frankenthaler. With their sumptuous colors and surprisingly fluid forms, the works on display are a feast for the eyes, while revealing Frankenthaler as an experimental “trailblazer of the printmaking movement,” as the exhibition text notes.

Herb Ritts, Darati – Profile, Africa, 1993 Courtesy of Hamiltons Gallery.

The Great and The Good at Hamiltons Gallery, London: Until March 3, 2022
For fashion photography fans, there’s a new show at Hamiltons Gallery, featuring a range of spellbinding imagery by its represented artists. Mario Testino turns his lens on an elegant Gisele Bundchen, Richard Avedon captures a spliff-toking Lauren Hutton, while Helmut Newton’s iconic image of two models, one nude, the other decked in Yves Saint Laurent’s 1966 Le Smoking tuxedo, sits alongside Hiro’s famous image of a model sporting Cristóbal Balenciaga’s 1967 Four Cornered Dress.

Faith Ringgold, Matisse’s Model: The French Collection Part I, #5, 1991 © Faith Ringgold / ARS, NY and DACS, London, courtesy ACA Galleries, New York.

Faith Ringgold: American People at New Museum, New York: February 17 – June 5, 2022
The remarkable American artist, author, educator, and organizer Faith Ringgold is the subject of an expansive retrospective, opening at New York’s New Museum later this month. Traversing her 60-year career, and featuring all of Ringgold’s best-known series, the show will examine the artist’s distinct figurative style “as it [has] evolved to meet the urgency of political and social change”. It will also spotlight Ringgold’s “radical explorations of gender and racial identities” as incorporated into her paintings, soft sculptures, and singular story quilts.

Helene Schjerfbeck, Forty Years Old, 1939 , Courtesy of the Finnish National Gallery, photography by Hannu Aaltonen.

The Modern Woman at Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki: February 11 – March 27, 2022
In Helsinki, a forthcoming show will foreground the work of 12 Finnish women artists and their striking contributions to 20th-century modernism. Some 180 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and accompanying artists’ biographies, will reveal how each artist’s gender, social status, and upbringing influenced both their independent professional careers and the works themselves. A particular highlight is the selection of breathtaking paintings by Helene Schjerfbeck, doyenne of the abstracted self-portrait.

Charles Ray, Plank Piece II, 1973 © Charles Ray, courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery.

Charles Ray at Centre Pompidou and the Pinault Collection, Paris: February 16 – June 20, 2022
For 50 years, the American artist Charles Ray has interrogated the meaning of sculpture, while inviting his audience to do the same. This month, at the Centre Pompidou and the Pinault Collection in Paris, a new two-part exhibition designed in dialogue with the artist himself, will guide visitors through Ray’s various investigations into sculpture over the years, from his early experimental performances, featuring his own body, through to his figurative pieces from the 1990s onwards. It will also present key new works, rendered in everything from computer-milled stainless steel to painted paper.

The Collaboration at The Young Vic.

Last but not least, at The Almeida, be sure to catch the new production of Eugène Ionesco’s tragic farce The Chairs, translated and directed by Omar Elerian. Starring veteran stage actors Kathryn Hunter and Marcello Magni, the play “reflects on a life lived together: on what has been, what might have been, and what it all really means”. Elsewhere, The Young Vic is soon to stage the world premiere of Anthony McCarten’s latest play The Collaboration, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah and centered on the relationship between legendary artists Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1980s New York. While for opera aficionados, there’s the ENO’s latest production of Leoš Janáček’s beloved opera The Cunning Little Vixen about a clever fox and the forester from whose clutches she escapes.