The Top 10 Summer Art Exhibitions To Visit – Online Or In Person

The pandemic has been a challenge, for countries and societies, for individuals and institutions. But it has also been an opportunity. In the art world, it has given museums a chance to share their collections online with a worldwide audience – and patrons have embraced the offer to click their way through art they may never have been able to view in person. Now that the world is slowly re-opening for business, you have the choice: visit virtually or live.

Visit The Uffizi

In person 
Art lovers looking for the silver lining may seize this moment as the first time in decades when they can enjoy some of the world’s most famous art collections in relative peace. Reduced international travel and limited visitor numbers mean those visitors that manage to secure a time slot will have the chance to enjoy art capitals and their museums minus the crowds. Case in point: Florence and its famous Uffizi Galleries.

Online
If you won’t make it to Italy this year, you can delve in online. Browse the ornate galleries in a 360° view, explore many of the collection’s masterpieces in HD, and view themed virtual exhibitions like “On Being Present: Recovering Blackness in the Uffizi Galleries”, curated for Black History Month.

Explore The Groundbreaking Photography Of Kwame Brathwaite

In Person
At the Columbia Museum of Art (CMA) in South Carolina, a photography exhibition impressively complements the real-time political empowerment of African-American citizens with documentary evidence of those who lived, protested and achieved visibility in the past. Kwame Brathwaite brought the slogan “Black Is Beautiful” to life with fashion and documentary photography during the 1950s and 60s. “Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite” is the first exhibition dedicated to his career.

[Photos from Kwame Brathwaite: Black Is Beautiful (Aperture, 2019) © Kwame Brathwaite. Courtesy the artist and Philip Martin Gallery, Los Angeles]

Online
Kwame Brathwaite’s work is not yet part of the CMA’s Museum from Home programme, but that may change during the run of the exhibition. Meanwhile, explore the photographer’s portfolio on his official website and watch a panel discussion featuring his son, filmed during the exhibition’s original run at the Museum of the African Diaspora last year.

Visit Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin

In Person
Located on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, The Blanton Museum of Art is home to 19,000 works from different countries, eras and styles. The most famous by far is “Austin” by Ellsworth Kelly, the only building ever designed by the artist.

Online
While the museum remains closed, avail of the opportunity to check in on the artwork at different times, experiencing how the colourful squares of light move around the room and change the space with the course of the sun. The “Austin” livestream offers two views and complementary reading can help visitors make sense of the piece.

Remember Christo and Jeanne-Claude At Centre Pompidou

In Person
“Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Paris!” at Centre Pompidou was conceived as an exhibition contextualising the artists’ wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe, originally planned for 2020. This large-scale project has been postponed until late 2021 and – along with the Mastaba, a project for Abu Dhabi – will now become the art duo’s last public work. With the passing of Christo in June, the exhibition instead becomes a memorial to the late artist and his better half, whose name continued to be included in projects even after her death in 2009.

[Images: The Arc de Triomphe (Project for Paris, Place de l’Etoile – Charles de Gaulle) Wrapped. Photo: André Grossmann© 2018 Christo]

Online
The Paris exhibition is currently not available for online viewing, but the art duo’s official website features virtual tours of two exhibitions and a host of videos documenting some of their most epic works.

Visit The Met Costume Institute’s Spring 2020 Exhibition

In Person
Fashionistas are still mourning the cancellation of the 2020 Met Gala. While we’ll never know what fashion icons, designers and social media darlings would have paraded down the arguably most inventive red carpet in the world, we still get to discover what the accompanying exhibition holds in store. “About Time: Fashion and Duration” has been rescheduled to open in October at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York.

Online
To whet our appetite, the museum released footage from previous Met Galas online and published reading material related to the annual theme of “temporal associations that conflate the past, present, and future” in fashion. Finally, a beautiful 11-minute black-and-white video brings the concept to life.

View Warhol At Tate Modern

In Person
In the future, everyone will be able to click through an Andy Warhol exhibition for 15 minutes. In fact, until August, that’s the only way to view the show that had to close just days after opening in March. According to the museum’s director, reduced visitor numbers after reopening could well lead to an extended run, so it may still stand a chance of becoming the blockbuster exhibition it was expected to be.

Online
Although no virtual experience can ever replace seeing art in real life, the exhibition tour video does offer the unique opportunity to explore it with its curators. The Tate website also lets visitors explore the exhibition room by room, grouped by themes with accompanying texts. Finally if you really want to go deep, you can also view the episode of BBC‘s “Museums in Quarantine” series dedicated to the exhibition.

Visit Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room

In Person
The Japanese artist’s famous immersive light-and-mirror installations are audience magnets wherever they pop up. Currently, they are harder to find, as many of the museums that boast the popular works are closed, yet easier to view, due to reduced visitor numbers at those museums that are open. Plus, what better way to practice social distancing than by stepping into a room to enjoy a work of art all by yourself? Museums open now include Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Tate Modern, UK; Gropiusbau Berlin, Germany (as of September); The Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Australia; The National Gallery of Australia; and, of course, the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo, Japan.

Online
Visitors to the Broad can choose between two Infinity Mirror Rooms – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away and Longing for Eternity. At the time of researching, the Los Angeles museum remains closed, but you can view the former of the rooms online, in a video “featuring deep cuts by celebrated musicians and sound artists from Los Angeles and beyond”.

Visit Nxt Museum

In Person
With museums closing all over the world, some sadly forever, opening a new museum in the midst of a pandemic seems like a ballsy move. The team behind Nxt Museum isn’t letting that stop it. The “start-up museum” is due to open in Amsterdam-Noord, a rapidly gentrifying formerly industrial area in the city’s north, on 29 August. The opening exhibition, “Shifting Proximities”, will feature seven room-sized works, including four new commissions, and will run for up to 12 months.

[Photo by Lisette Appeldorn]

Online
Details of an online programme have not been announced, but due to the museum’s focus on new media art, it seems likely that the opening will be accompanied by some form of virtual scheduling.

Visit CHART Art Fair

In Person
CHART art fair is really leaning into the idea of crisis as a chance to change. The Copenhagen event was already intended to feature women artists only, now it has also pivoted to a “de-centred art fair format”, with exhibitions taking place in Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, Reykjavik and Stockholm to reduce the size of the crowd and the need for international travel, without limiting the number of galleries and artworks on show.

[Tacita Dean. Quarantania, 2018. Photo: BORCH Gallery & Editions ]

Online
To prevent the fragmentation of the international event into smaller, local gatherings, the physical programme will be complemented by online activities, to be announced closer to the opening date.

Visit Art Basel

In Person
The physical edition of the art fair has been postponed and will open in September. Several participating galleries are planning to make the most of lost time by also showing previews of their Art Basel booth during the originally scheduled summer slot, in other locations. König Galerie is going particularly big with “Messe in St. Agnes”, an exhibition of over 100 works that will be displayed in the former St. Agnes church in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district in June.

Online
Instead of completely abandoning the summer event, the world’s most influential art fair is also going online, with Online Viewing Rooms – a “virtual platform connecting the world’s leading galleries with our global network of collectors and art enthusiasts.”