Ann-Marie Richard, Director, Sotheby’s Institute of Art-New York

Ben Shahn on Nonconformity
The Jewish Museum
May 23-October 26, 2025

Ben Shahn on Nonconformity at the Jewish Museum in New York is a must-see. Throughout his career the prolific and politically engaged American artist supported and captured seminal events reflecting socio-economic realities, namely the struggle for civil rights, labor activism and the decolonization movements. The exhibition is well documented incorporating photographs informing the artist’s iconography. Serious subject matter tackled by Shahn is counterbalanced by colorful compositions rendered in an illustrative style.

Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers
MoMA
Through September 27, 2025

The botanical studies executed between 1919-1920 are simply beautiful. The precise renditions are paired with small geometric pictograms which are meant to convey the spiritual state and imaginary motives of individual specimens. A refreshing visual summer treat.

Image credit: Installation view of Hilma af Klint: What Stands Behind the Flowers, on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 11–September 27, 2025. Photo: Jonathan Dorado. © The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

David Bellingham, Program Director, MA Art Business, London

Kiefer / Van Gogh (RA) | Anselm Kiefer (White Cube)
Royal Academy of Arts, London and White Cube Mason’s Yard
Royal Academy of Arts: June 28-October 26, 2025
White Cube: June 25-August 16, 2025

I recommend Kiefer / Van Gogh at the Royal Academy of Arts. I took a group of MA Art Business students to the earlier exhibition in Amsterdam and they responded with great enthusiasm. They simply can’t wait to see it in London. One striking work is Kiefer’s monumental lead-and-straw reinterpretation of The Starry Night, a spectacular memorial to Vincent that begs a question from the viewer: does it amplify Van Gogh’s intimacy or risk eclipsing his fragile humanity?

Alongside the Royal Academy of Arts show and just five minutes’ walk, Anselm Kiefer’s companion (selling) exhibition at White Cube Mason’s Yard deepens his dialogue with Van Gogh through new paintings and sculptural installations.

Image credit: Anselm Kiefer, The Starry Night (De sterrennacht), 2019. Emulsion, oil, acrylic, shellac, straw, gold leaf, wood, wire and sediment of electrolysis on canvas, 470 × 840 cm. Courtesy of the artist and White Cube. Photo: Georges Poncet. © Anselm Kiefer

Morgan Falconer, Faculty, MA Contemporary Art, and MA Historic Art and Design, New York

The Michael C Rockefeller Wing
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Ongoing

The highlight of this summer in New York is the long-awaited reopening of the Met’s Michael C Rockefeller Wing, its home for the arts of Africa, the ancient Americas, and Oceania.

Displays of art from these regions have often attracted criticism: many were dismayed at the darkened galleries of Paris’ Musee du quai Branly, when those opened nearly twenty years ago, suggesting that they propped up old myths about these regions as places of fearful magic, mystery, and “primitive” art. But critics have warmed to the light-filled, spacious rooms of the new Rockefeller wing, and they may set the standard for decades to come.

Image credit: Seated Figure, 13th century. Middle Niger artist. Terracotta. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Purchase, Buckeye Trust and Mr. and Mrs. Milton F. Rosenthal Gifts, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest and Harris Brisbane Dick and Rogers Funds, 1981 (Accession Number: 1981.218).

Barbara Lasic, Faculty, MA in Fine and Decorative Art and Design, London

Colour and Line, Watteau Drawings
British Museum
May 15-September 14, 2025

One of the most influential artists of the early 18th-century, Antoine Watteau was celebrated for his Fêtes Galantes, small cabinet pictures depicting elegantly dressed characters engaged in amorous play in lush landscape settings.

Watteau was also an excellent and highly prolific draughtsman, producing thousands of drawings in the Trois Crayons technique, many of which were later integrated in his paintings.

This discreet yet erudite display showcases the British Museum’s own collection of Watteau drawings. Offering an intimate point of access into the artist’s creative process, it admirably conveys Watteau’s fluency and his skill at depicting human emotions. Seeing the show feels a little like having a private conversation with the artist himself!

© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.