6 unmissable museum exhibitions to see this fall

This fall, under-recognized artists like Elizabeth Catlett and Tamara de Lempicka are getting their due, with major retrospectives in New York and California focusing on their groundbreaking works. Not every museum opening this season focuses on the unsung — you can also check out several of Pablo Picasso's rarely seen prints at the British Museum and a survey of surrealism at Centre Pompidou in Paris.

'Marina Abramovic: Transforming Energy,' Modern Art Museum, Shanghai

This "100% interactive" exhibition is a bold new offering from Marina Abramovic, who declared that she has "never had a show like this in my entire life." Inspired by her 1988 walk across China, "Transforming Energy" gives visitors the opportunity to see "Transitory Objects," a collection of sculptures made from 6,600 pounds of minerals. Abramovic believes crystals like quartz, hematite and tourmaline have healing properties, and visitors can "interact with these objects and, hopefully, gain some spiritual fulfillment from them," ARTnews said. Oct. 10, 2024 through Feb. 28, 2025.

'Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies,' Brooklyn Museum 

Elizabeth Catlett was a "defining Black woman artist of the 20th century," the Brooklyn Museum said, but has "not received the mainstream art-world attention afforded many of her peers." The retrospective "Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies," featuring 150 objects she created over the span of eight decades, aims to change that. A feminist and social justice advocate who moved from the U.S. to Mexico in the 1940s, her belief in equality spills into her artwork, where the "bold lines and voluptuous forms" continue to "speak directly to all those united in the fight against poverty, racism and imperialism." Through Jan. 19, 2025.

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'Tamara de Lempicka,' de Young Museum, San Francisco

Tamara de Lempicka is having a moment. A pioneer of the Art Deco movement, the artist inspired a Broadway musical that opened in the spring and stars in her first North American retrospective this fall at the de Young Museum. The exhibition's aim is to "provide a more three-dimensional understanding of Lempicka," curator Furio Rinaldi said to Artnet, and will showcase several of her iconic modernist paintings of the "New Woman," as well as rare sketches. Oct. 12, 2024 through Feb. 9, 2025.

'Paulo Nazareth: Luzia,' Museo Tamayo, Mexico City

In his first solo show in Mexico, Brazilian artist Paulo Nazareth presents an exhibition that is "part scientific inquiry and part speculative conceptual art project," ARTnews said. Nazareth was inspired by Luzia, an 11,500-year-old skeleton found 50 years ago in Brazil. Over the last several years, Nazareth has been charting her history, "using found objects" to "exhume the full breadth of her lineage." What he discovered both "challenges the authority of scientific discourse and negotiates the complex terrain that is Latin American identity," Museo Tamayo said. Oct. 3, 2024 through Feb. 9, 2025.

'Picasso: printmaker,' British Museum 

Pablo Picasso's most well-known works, like the anti-war "Guernica" and "La Reve," a study of his young muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, are all paintings. But he also made prints, producing about 2,400 during his career. "Picasso: printmaker" will feature 100 of those prints and "explore Picasso's relationships with his wives and lovers, and his sometimes tender but at times troubling depictions of sex," the British Museum said. The exhibition will open with 1904's "The Frugal Meal," an etching many regard as one of the most important pieces that came out of Picasso's Blue Period, and includes several never-before-shown prints from the artist's "347 Suite" series. Nov. 7, 2024 through March 30, 2025.

'Surrealism,' Centre Pompidou, Paris

Celebrate a century of surrealism with this "blockbuster" exhibition, "which aspires to be just as perplexing as much of the art associated with the movement," ARTnews said. To complement this avant-garde style, the "Surrealism" exhibition is designed like a maze, with paintings, drawings, photographs, films and documents by such luminaries as Salvador Dalí, Leonora Carrington, René Magritte, Max Ernst and Joan Miró and lesser-known artists, including Tatsuo Ikeda and Ithell Colquhoun. Through Jan. 13, 2025.