Working on It: New Canadian Sculpture, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton (Jan. 20 to May 12)
When it comes to three-dimensional work, the Beaverbrook’s new curator has the enviable task of building a collection from a blank slate. The gallery has not traditionally collected much sculpture, so Ray Cronin is setting that to rights with donations, purchases and some temporary loans. This first exhibition will feature sculpture by contemporary Canadian artists.
Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore: Giants of Modern Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Feb. 10 to June 2)
This unusual and ambitious exhibition organized by the San Diego Museum of Art compares the work of the American painter Georgia O’Keeffe and the British sculptor Henry Moore, finding numerous similarities in their approach to organic form. O’Keeffe, renowned for her erotic images of massive flowers and bleached cows’ skulls, was a decade older than Moore, known for his abstracted human figures, but both long-lived artists died in 1986 having built careers that spanned the modernist century.
Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, (Oct. 25 to March 2, 2025)
Remember the macramé wall hanging? In a show about the relationship between textile art and abstraction, the National Gallery of Canada will examine a neglected area of 20th- and 21st-century art. The show, which originates with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, includes the work of 45 international artists. It looks at a century’s worth of woven textiles and preloom techniques such as knotting, netting and basketry, from the worlds of fine art, fashion, design and craft.
Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (March 27 to July 1)
Judith Leyster. Self-Portrait, c.1630.Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
This large exhibition of more than 200 historical works by female European artists takes a broad approach to women’s contribution to the visual arts: It adds textiles, woodworking, ceramics and even perfume-making along with painting and sculpture as it corrects the canon. It’s a co-production with the Baltimore Museum of Art, where it got very strong reviews when it made its debut last fall.
Crossing: Art, Heritage and Personal Journeys, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (Feb. 10 to May 26)
The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria’s Asian art curator Heng Wu brings together a provocative encounter of tradition and innovation with this show about the migrant experience, featuring three Asian-Canadian artists. On the one hand, Chinese immigrant Andy Lou specializes in traditional Chinese brush painting, a technique he applies to West Coast landscapes. On the other, Chrystal Phan, the child of Vietnamese boat people, paints aggressively realistic scenes of second-generation life and Asian cultural motifs, mixing photo realism with a dose of symbolism. Yumie Kono, an artist of Japanese heritage, takes a softer approach with drawings and paintings of landscapes and figures.