Europe’s Exciting Museum Exhibits: Spring and Summer 2021!

By Cindy Brzostowski, for Museum Spotlight Europe (March, 2021)

It goes without saying that this year is looking a bit different when it comes to museum tourism. Dates and visitor protocols may be changing based on different countries’ COVID regulations, but the show goes on with exciting exhibits starting to open across Europe. From retrospectives on major artists to immersive, multimedia displays, these are Europe’s exciting museum exhibits for spring and summer 2021.

After years in the making, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands is opening a groundbreaking, major exhibition on slavery during the Dutch colonial period (from the 17th to the 19th century). Set to open on March 30, Slavery is structured around 10 true stories and showcases items from Dutch museums, foreign museums, archives, and private collections. Given recent conversations around the world surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement and Amsterdam’s own recent public reckoning with its slave-trading past, this is a must-see exhibit.

Contemporary Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama has continued to delight the world with her ultra-popular, immersive installations. From March 19 to August 1, Gropius Bau in Berlin, Germany will put on “Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective,” the first comprehensive retrospective in the country for Kusama’s work. The exhibit will take up almost 3000 m² and examines the development of Kusama’s art across her career, which spans seven decades. And yes, there will be a new Infinity Mirror Room to enjoy!

Through its many different adaptations and reinventions, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has gone from an imaginative book for children to a full-on global phenomenon. Opening on March 27 at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, England, the immersive “Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser” exhibit explores this evolution and the work’s ongoing impact through over 300 objects plus theatrical sets and large-scale digital projections.

That’s not the only exciting exhibit the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, England has going on this season. From now until September 12, you can check out “Epic Iran” to take a deep dive through 5,000 years of Iranian art, design, and culture. Shining a light on one of the great historic civilizations and its monumental artistic achievements, this special exhibit comprises over 300 ancient and contemporary objects.

Considered a pioneer of abstract art, avant-garde Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp challenged the line between fine art and craft, breaking boundaries between different genres and forms. At “Sophie Taeuber-Arp: Living Abstraction” at Kunstmuseum Basel in Basel, Switzerland, visitors can enjoy a comprehensive retrospective of her impressive oeuvre. From textiles to stained glass windows to relief sculptures, this temporary exhibit is made up of around 400 wide-ranging pieces from public and private collections. It runs from March 20 to June 20 before it moves to the Tate in London, England.

Can’t get enough O’Keeffe? Madrid, Spain’s Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum will host the first retrospective in Spain on Georgia O’Keeffe from April 20 to August 8. Pay a visit, and you can enjoy a complete survey of her career through a selection of approximately 80 works. This exhibit offers a great chance to better understand why O’Keeffe is hailed as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. If you miss the exhibit in Madrid, you can catch it when it moves next to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France or to Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland after that.

During your travels, you may have had the chance to see one of Banksy’s works out in the wild. While you’re in Madrid, Spain, you can check out more than 50 of the mysterious and controversial street artist’s works in one convenient place at “BANKSY: The Street is a Canvas.” Running since December until May 9 at Círculo de Bellas Artes, this unauthorized exhibition of Banksy’s art features more than 50 original works from international private collectors, many of which are being exhibited in Madrid for the first time.

At the Glyptoteket in Copenhagen, Denmark, “Auguste Rodin – Displacements” puts French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s antiquities into conversation with his own art. With its unique focus, this exhibit examines how collection played a role in the working process of the artist famous for iconic works such as “The Thinker” and “The Kiss.” Depending on the museum’s reopening, this exhibit is set to run from March 25 to August 15.

If you’re in Paris, France, consider stopping by the Centre Pompidou to see “Hito Steyerl. I will survive,” which runs from February 3 to June 7. Through this multimedia exhibit, acclaimed German artist and filmmaker Hito Steyerl reflects on the social role of art and museums. An added highlight is that the show makes use of Centre Pompidou’s unique architecture.

Before you leave Paris, you may also want to plan a trip to see “Carte Blanche: Anne Imhof « Natures Mortes »” at Palais de Tokyo. In this exhibit, German visual and performance artist Anne Imhof combines performance, painting, music, and installation works to “create effects of resonance and duplication amid an open architectural space, transformed into a vast sonic body and an inhabited labyrinth.” Another in the museum’s “carte blanche” series of shows, this is the German artist’s first large-scale exhibition in France and starts in April.

If you’re a self-professed shoeaholic or someone who’s simply interested in all things fashion history, then you’ll love to see “Shoephoria!” at Fashion Museum Bath in Bath, England. Through 200 pairs of footwear (the oldest being a pair of red velvet mules from the 1690s), this exhibit chronicles the evolution of shoe style over the last three centuries. The museum is set to reopen in May in accordance with government guidelines.

Fascinated by gods and whatever other powerful, unseen forces there may be? Then you should check out “Higher Powers” at Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. Through 80 diverse artifacts, this exhibition examines how different civilizations across time have believed in and envisaged higher powers. You can catch the exhibit from May 18 to August 15.

Aldo Rossi, an Italian architect and designer, is famous for having achieved international recognition in architectural theory, drawing, design—and product design. Bringing together materials from international collections and archives, “Aldo Rossi: The Architect and the Cities” at MAXXI in Rome, Italy explores the intersection of architecture and city in the Pritzker Architecture Prize winner’s work. The exhibit is open to visitors from now until October 17.

Other Special Exhibits: Set to end on March 21 is “Rembrandt: Portrait of a Man,” a representative exhibition dedicated to the painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn, at the National Gallery Prague in Prague, Czech Republic. From now until August 8, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland is showing the Freud Project, which features 52 works by realist painter Lucian Freud and marks a major five-year initiative for the museum. The Design Museum in Helsinki, Finland will put on “Iittala – Kaleidoscope”, a special exhibit on the 140-year history of world-renowned Finnish design brand Iittala, from March 26 to September 19. At the National Gallery of Art in Vilnius, Lithuania, “Shaping the Future: Environments by Aleksandra Kasuba” presents the creative heritage of environmental artist Aleksandra Fledžinskaitė-Kašubienė-Kasuba for the first time. The exhibit takes place from March 20 to May 23.