New Season Ahead: Museums Depart From the Obvious

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Holland Cotter

Wangechi Mutu’s “Riding Death in My Sleep,” 2002.

Coming after a ho-hum stretch in museums, the 2013-14 art season promises an unusually interesting mix of material from the distant past and art that engages with a politically fraught present. As the months go by, we should get a sense of what our art institutions can do when they depart, even a little, from the obvious. The surprises start with what won’t be there. Astonishingly, those box-office artists in residence Matisse and Picasso are on leave of absence. Traveling much further back in time at the Met, I’m particularly looking forward to “Medieval Treasures From Hildesheim”....“Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections,” at the National Gallery of Art in Washington...[and] “Yoga: The Art of Transformation” ... at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington. In a very different way, Wangechi Mutu, a young artist born in East Africa, blends ethnicity, sexuality and colonialism in her fantastically inventive collages, seen at the Brooklyn Museum. [link]