What exhibitions in 2024 helped define the art world chatter, for better or worse? We’ve selected a few that managed to hit a collective nerve or stir debate, sometimes perhaps revealing more about our current zeitgeist than the art on display.

A few highlights didn’t make the cut, like “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was widely seen as an effort at rectifying a botched attempt in 1969 that famously did not include any art by African Americans. The Met’s second try was duly praised as a sign of overdue recognition for the artistic movement.

There was also the 15th Gwangju Biennale, which was something of a flop: it was called “disconcertingly vague,” by ArtReview, while Frieze agreed it, “quickly frays at its conceptual edges.” Other major exhibitions, like a Gustave Caillebotte show, “Painting Men” at the Musée d’Orsay, will head to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Art Institute of Chicago next. The blockbuster was criticized in France for its gendered interpretation of the Impressionist artist’s work, while implying he may have been gay, so it will be interesting to see what American audiences think.

With that, here are a few others for your perusal.

“Surrealism” at the Centre Pompidou, Paris
Through January 13, 2025

Leonora Carrington, Green Tea (1942). © Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence. © Adagp, Paris, 2024.

There’s still time to catch the expansive, traveling “Surrealism” show on its Paris leg, where the movement originated. This trailblazing exhibition, which changes drastically as it travels—it began at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, and heads to Madrid, Hamburg, and Philadelphia next—is a celebration of the movement’s centennial. It also feeds into conversations around several evolving contemporary developments across the art world, including an awakened appreciation for women Surrealist artists, such as Leonora Carrington, who has been setting auction records; as well as new interest in overlooked artists from Latin America; and lastly, a now widespread understanding that art history must been seen as a more pluralistic and global constellation of activity, rather than simply centering on Europe and America.

Curator Marie Sarré told Artnet the show is meant to feature “Surrealism in all of its diversity,” which also includes iconic greats. Notably, readers will recognize René Magritte’s L’empire des Lumières on loan from Brussels. It is one of a handful of variations the artist painted of the hauntingly beautiful light and shadow cast by a residential streetlamp, which set a $121.2 million auction record in November. Leading up to the sale, its display in Brussels and Paris museums could not have hurt.

“Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Through February 17, 2025

Fred Wilson, Grey Area (Brown Version) (1993). Photo courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Met’s current exhibit highlights almost 200 years of Black cultural production inspired by ancient Egypt. “It’s a noteworthy celebration that feels uncharacteristic—if not unheard of—at this institutional scale,” wrote Journey Streams for Artnet, adding the museum’s endeavor “imbues the space with an authenticity that is above all else deeply comforting.”

But the show nevertheless poses other unresolved questions by evoking controversial claims that classical Egypt was a Black civilization. The exhibition is not actually about archaeological history, but rather, the cultural impact of ancient Egypt on Black artists, though it directly references the heritage claim with featured items that have backed it, like a copy of Martin Bernal’s Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (1987). The “bombshell” book sparked heated debate in the 1980s and 1990s, as New York Times critic Jason Farago pointed out. Ultimately, he argued the show “dances around an answer” to its core question: “Just how malleable is the classical tradition, and how free are you to play with history?” Egypt was a rich source of classical ennoblement to African Americans, as the show illustrates, “but inventing classical origins… was no innocent undertaking in the 20th century,” added Farago.

In the catalog, curator Akili Tommasino actually makes a distinction between a Black embrace of an ancient empire and its rulers, where the Black form of classicism is about liberation, rather than oppression. “Might there be other routes to freedom, perhaps less gilded ones, that do not place such a premium on origins and lineage?” Farago asked. It’s a question that would have to be put to all groups, including other minorities, who understandably seek redemption from a painful past.

“Foreigners Everywhere,” the 60th Venice Biennale
April 20–November 24, 2024

“Bambus” by Brazilian artist Ione Saldanha in the central pavilion during the pre-opening of the Venice Biennale art show, on April 16, 2024 in Venice. Photo: Gabriel Bouys / AFP via Getty Images.

“I think it will be remembered well,” wrote Ben Davis in the first of a three-part essay for Artnet. Such large art events can be a mixed bag, but overall, it appears to have mustered a fair degree of approval, despite Davis reporting, “opinion has ranged from airy affirmation to fiery dismissal of the show as the latest crime of political correctness against taste.” There was certainly some fire. The New York Times called it, “at best a missed opportunity, and at worst something like a tragedy.” And Dean Kissick’s controversial cover essay for Harper’s described it as “a nostalgic turn to history and a fascination with identity, rendered in familiar forms.” He dug further, criticizing nearly a decade of biennials for exhibiting “recycled junk, traditional craft, and folk art.”

What, ultimately, was at stake in the biennial? Though it focused on the Global South, “it is more about a kind of metaphor for what is farthest from power,” Davis wrote. Yet Adriano Pedrosa’s vision of global art history can be “murky,” particularly regarding an unbalanced selection of non-Western artists in the Padiglione Centrale Giardini building, Davis observed. “Is the geographic skew a statement about where significant movements happened? Is it a catalogue of Pedrosa’s likes? … It’s not clear!” Ultimately, Davis suggested Pedrosa may have “flipped” art history, but not necessarily expanded it, and this analysis rings true. The show “wants to dissent from ‘Westernization’ in terms of historic associations with industry, design, and the machine… flipping a system that over-valued proximity to Europe and the United States and downplayed local and craft associations as backwards,” he added. We can expect to see more of said “flipping,” but let’s hope it comes with that promised expansion.

Group show with changing title at Fondation Beyeler, Basel
May 19–August 11, 2024

Installation view, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2024 © Rudolf Stingel; Succession Alberto Giacometti; The Estate of Francis Bacon; 2024, ProLitteris, Zürich Photo: Mark Niedermann

This mysterious, experimental group show was the talk of the art world after it descended on Basel for its namesake June fair. Even the exhibition’s title kept changing, from things like “Dance with Daemons” and “Cloud Chronicles,” to “The Richness of Going Slowly.” A press release gave few indications of what was on view, which was also the point. “It is both over-stuffed with ideas and coyly under-explained—seemingly because the idea is to throw you off balance,” wrote Ben Davis for Artnet.

So what was the show? A constantly changing exhibition. Artworks in several rooms were moved around and rehung in front of visitors, often in totally unorthodox ways—frames touching frames. In other rooms, where installations were not constantly shuffled, sculptures were placed just opposite paintings or other sculptures, as if they were looking at each other. One favorite was a life-sized Alberto Giacometti figure staring at a Francis Bacon triptych. “Almost everything here challenges the audience to try to inhabit the museum in some kind of fresh way, engaging the senses as well as the brain,” Davis wrote.

Many also wondered whether the show had introduced an entirely new way of exhibiting art, but Davis noted the project—curated by seven artists and curators (Sam Keller, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Precious Okoyomon, Philippe Parreno, to name a few)—is also a “throwback to the ‘relational aesthetics’ moment that brought some of the bigger artists here to fame.” Still, “for my money, the loose-limbed 2000s vibe feels suddenly fresh again,” he said.

“Sargent and Fashion” at Tate Britain, London
February 22–7 July 2024

Installation view of “Sargent and Fashion” at Tate Britain showing La Carmencita (c. 1890). Photo: Larina Fernandes, © Tate.

This Tate exhibition aimed to shed new light on John Singer Sargent’s sumptuous portraits of late Victorian and Edwardian British society dressed in all their finery, by emphasizing fashion as central to the artist’s practice. But, to put it mildly, it fell flat with some critics. “This is a horrible exhibition,” began Jonathan Jones in his review for the Guardian. He wrote that the painter was interested in his subjects as “players in a social world,” and that he depicted them “in a way that is startling, modern and so truthful it hurts… But was he, above all, a painter of fashion, as this show claims? No way—what on earth are they talking about?” Worse, he said the exhibition’s display of clothes matching the paintings, reduces the artist to “a relic with no relevance.” Ouch. If you thought it couldn’t get worse, there’s also this headline from The Telegraph: “Tate Britain: confirms suspicions that Sargent is superficial.”

Of course, others said the show offered insights into Sargent’s eye for detail in fashion, which he used as a narrative tool for his striking, life-sized portraits. “Walking through the galleries, one feels almost like they are stepping into a century-old conversation between fully sentient figures,” wrote Jo Lawson-Tancred for Artnet. “Though some critics have struggled to understand the crucial role that fashion plays in constructing identity, its significance was obvious to Sargent and many of his sitters.” Indeed: the artist supposedly once said, he was both a “painter and a dressmaker.”