In 2022, many museums are looking back at our artistic history as well as our social history. Prominent among exhibitions this year are those that probe the history of Black Americans as artists and subjects.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in addition to hosting the Obama portraits through January 2, will host Black American Portraits through April 17. The museum notes that the exhibition “highlights emancipation and early studio photography, scenes from the Harlem Renaissance, portraits from the civil rights and Black Power eras, and multiculturalism of the 1990s. Black American Portraits chronicles the ways in which Black Americans have used portraiture to envision themselves in their own eyes.”

The Springfield Museum of Art in Ohio will show BLACK LIFE as subject MATTER II through February 27. “Curated by Willis Bing Davis, BLACK LIFE as subject MATTER II views all aspects of the Black experience as valid subject matter for creative expression.” 

There Is a Woman in Every Color: Black Women in Art will be at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine, through January 30. The museum explains, “The exhibition brings together more than 60 works of art, objects and artist books to challenge histories of marginalization and to make visible the presence of women of color in American art history. It pairs historical and contemporary works to offer nuanced and multifaceted perspectives on the experiences of Black women in the United States.”William J. Glackens (1870-1938), Children Roller Skating, ca. 1913. Oil on canvas, 23 5⁄8 x 29½ in. NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale; gift of the Sansom Foundation, Inc. On view in William J. Glackens: From Pencil to Paint at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale.Individual Black artists are the subject of exhibitions in several museums.

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) is featured in two solo exhibitions. Lawrence painted in a style referred to as “dynamic cubism” and documented Black American historical events as well as scenes of contemporary life. 

The Colby Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, will show Jacob Lawrence: The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture through February 20. In 1937-8, Lawrence produced 41 paintings of Haitian revolutionary general Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803). He re-envisioned the series in silkscreen prints beginning in 1986. In his art, he said, he explored “our continuous struggle for liberty.”

Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club will debut this year at Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, from October 7 through January 8, 2023. The Mbari Artists & Writers Club was an organization of Nigerian artists, writers and dramatists that produced the Nigerian publication Black Orpheus. The exhibition features Lawrence’s paintings and “works by the artists featured in Black Orpheus, archival images, videos and letters.”Sargent Claude Johnson (1888-1967), Chester, 1930. Painted terra cotta, 11½ x 4½ x 4¾ in., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Mrs. William J. Robertson in memory of her father Adolph Loewi, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA. On view in Black American Portraits at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Bob Thompson (1937–1966) is the subject of the exhibition Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine, on display through January 9 at Colby Museum of Art. The museum notes, “The first museum exhibition devoted to the artist in more than 20 years, This House Is Mine traces Thompson’s brief but prolific transatlantic career, examining his formal inventiveness and his engagement with universal themes of collectivity, bearing witness, struggle and justice.”

Stephen Towns: Declaration & Resistance will be at the Westmoreland Museum of Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, January 30 through May 8. Working both in paint and fiber, Towns “examines the American dream through the lives of Black Americans from the late 18th century to the present time. Using labor as a backdrop, Towns highlights the role African Americans have played in shaping the economy, and explores their resilience, resistance and endurance that have challenged the United States to truly embrace the tenants of its Declaration of Independence.”

Sons: Seeing the Modern African American Male will be at the Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, Michigan, January 23 through April 16. It features Jerry Taliaferro’s photographic portraits of men from the Flint area. Taliaferro says, “Recent events point to the urgent need for conversations about the contemporary Black American male. Any effort, however humble, to foster an understanding of this largely misunderstood and often marginalized segment of the American population is of utmost importance.”

The Lyman Allen Art Museum in New London, Connecticut, will show the exhibition The Way Sisters: Miniaturists of the Early Republic through January 23. It is one of many exhibitions this year focusing on the lives and artistic endeavors of American women. The museum notes, “Among the earliest independent women artists working in the United States, the Way sisters made important and lasting contributions to the art and history of Connecticut and the young nation. Their work deepens our understanding of early American art, with objects and stories from the past that equally resonate with issues of the present.”

The New Woman: Recent Acquisitions will be shown at the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, through April 17. The museum says, “The title refers to the phrase which came to be used in the late 19th century, to characterize the newly present women of the middle and upper class who were beginning to participate in urban life…This exhibition depicts women on both ends of the societal spectrum during the Gilded Age of America, and it is between these two spheres of the domestic and the bohemian, that the New Woman of the 20th century would take form.”Margaret Foster Richardson (1881-ca. 1945), A Motion Picture, 1912. Oil on canvas, 40¾ x 23 1⁄8 in. Henry D. Gilpin Fund, 1913.13. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Photography by Barbara Katus. On view in Women in Motion: 150 Years of Women’s Artistic Networks at PAFA at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California, and the Denver Art Museum in Colorado will host Modern Women/Modern Vision: Works from the Bank of America Collection. The exhibition “celebrates the bold and dynamic contributions of women to the development and evolution of photography in the 20th century. Diverse in style, tone and subject, these images range from spontaneous to composed, detached to empathetic, monumental to intimate.” It will be shown in Denver May 1 through August 28 and in Sacramento from October 2 through December 31.

Another photographic exhibition, Women Behind the Lens, will be at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, through May 1. The museum notes, “Since the beginnings of photography in the mid-19th-century, women have played prominent roles as artists and patrons. The popularization of the medium in the first decades of the 20th century met with a confluence of social forces, including art and activism, that expanded opportunities for women in both art and public life.”

Women in Motion: 150 Years of Women’s Artistic Networks at PAFA will be at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia through July 24. “This exhibition and its accompanying catalog will introduce PAFA’s audiences to the networks of talented women artists and will include more than 80 works of art by more than 50 women artists working professionally in the American art world from PAFA’s founding in 1805 to the end of World War II,” the museum explains.

Picturing Motherhood Now will be at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio through March 13. The museum notes, Picturing Motherhood Now focuses on art made in the past two decades, while integrating work by significant pioneers to narrate an intergenerational and evolving story of motherhood.Lee Krasner (1908-1984), Still Life, 1938. Oil on paper, 19 x 24¾ in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase in honor of Charles Simon, with funds given by his friends from Salomon Brothers on the occasion of his 75th birthday, and with funds from an anonymous donor and the Drawing Committee 90.19. © 2021 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. On view in Labyrinth of Forms: Women and Abstraction. 1930-1950 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, will show Women Painting Women May 15 through September 25. The exhibition features the work of 46 women artists who have chosen women as their subject. “Four themes trend in the works included in Women Painting Women: The Body, Nature Personified, Color as Portrait and Selfhood. Through these themes, the artists conceive new ways to activate and elaborate on the portrayal of women,” according to the museum.

Individual women artists are featured in several exhibitions this year. Among them is A Fanciful World: Jessie Arms Botke at the Laguna Art Museum in California, through January 16. Botke (1883-1971) “reached her stylistic peak in the 1930s with eye-dazzling artworks adorned with gold and silver leaf, inspired by Japanese design and European landscape aesthetics. Despite her prolific output and successful career, few exhibitions have focused solely on Botke’s work.”

Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works, 1990–2003 will be at the Palm Springs Art Museum in California, through February 22. Frankenthaler (1928-2011) “played a key role in the 1950s transition from abstract expressionism to color field painting. Her innovative soak-stain technique involved pouring thinned paint directly onto unprimed canvas. The resulting combination of amorphous fields of color and gestural brushstrokes produced a vigorous rhythm of activity as conveyed in the surface textures of her mark making.”Alexander Calder (1898-1976), Double Gong, 1953. Metal and paint, 60 x 132 x 132 in. The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; © Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. On view in Alexander Calder: Dissonant Harmony at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Another aspect of Frankenthaler’s work is highlighted in the exhibition Without Limits: Helen Frankenthaler, Abstraction, and the Language of Print at the Blanton Museum of Art in Blanton, Texas, through February 20. The exhibition “celebrates the generous gift from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation of 10 prints and six proofs that span five decades of the artist’s career.”

Labyrinth of Forms: Women and Abstraction, 1930–1950 will be at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, through March. The museum notes, “During the 1930s and 1940s, abstraction began to gain momentum as an exciting, fresh approach to modern artmaking in the United States, and a small contingent of American artists dedicated themselves to it…A significant number of American abstractionists were women, and their efforts propelled the formal, technical and conceptual evolution of abstract art in this country.”

Midcentury Abstraction: A Closer Look is at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, February 25 through June 26. The gallery notes, “Eschewing the notion that there was a linear shift toward abstraction at midcentury, the exhibition showcases a group of artists who freely moved in and out of abstraction or blended their radical approaches with traditional subject matter, such as landscape, portraiture or still life.”

The art of craft is featured in several exhibitions.

This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World opens at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., on May 13 and continues through April 2, 2023. The exhibition highlights “nearly 150 artworks from the museum’s permanent collection in a range of craft mediums from fiber and ceramics to glass and mixed media. Approximately 135 of the featured artworks are new acquisitions, never before seen at the Renwick Gallery.”

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, features Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories through January 22. The museum notes, “Visitors see and hear from artists, educators, academics, and activists, and the remarkable examples on view are by an underrecognized diversity of artistic hands and minds from the 17th century to today, including female and male, known and unidentified, urban and rural makers; immigrants; and Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian and LGBTQIA+ Americans.”

At the Phoenix Art Museum through April 24 is Clay and Paper: Japanese Ceramics and Screens. The exhibition features large moveable folding screens that divided spaces in Japanese houses as well as works in clay that were made for functional use and purely for decoration.Gilbert Stuart (1755-1818), Portrait of Thomas Jefferson, ca. 1805-7. Oil on canvas, 48½ x 39 7⁄8 in. Bequest of the Honorable James Bowdoin III. 1813.55. On view in Re|Framing the Collection: New Considerations in European and American Art, 1475-1875 at Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

The Rhode Island School of Design in Providence features On the Surface: Contemporary Ceramics through June 30, 2023. The museum explains, “From the mid-1900s to today, artists working in ceramics have continued to revise old methods and experiment with new ones, drawing inspiration from the world around them and pushing the boundaries of their medium.”

Form & Fire: American Studio Ceramics from the E. John Bullard Collection will be shown at the Louisiana State University Museum of Art in Baton Rouge will be shown through February 13. “This collection comprises artworks by 69 artists, including important figures in ceramics history….” 

Gifts from the Fire: American Ceramics from the Collection of Martin Eidelberg will be shown at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City through October 16. “Following the nation’s Centennial in 1876, American ceramics, often inspired by Europe, China and Japan, quickly developed into an art form that demonstrated the nation’s own artistic originality.” 

The Nevada Museum of Art in Reno will feature Picasso in Clay: Selections from the Robert Felton and Lindsay Wallis Collection February 5 through May 8. Known for his modernist and cubist paintings and sculpture, Picasso produced nearly 4,000 ceramic objects. 

The Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, will host the Crocker Art Museum’s exhibition Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings February 5 through May 8. Honoring the artist’s 100th birthday in 2020, the exhibition spans the breadth of the artist’s accomplishments.

The museum explores another aspect of American art in Gatecrashers: The Rise of the Self-Taught Artist in America May 28 through September 5. It explains, “This exhibition examines how, after World War I, artists without formal training ‘crashed the gates’ of major museums in the United States, diversifying the art world across lines of race, ethnicity, class, ability and gender.”

The Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minnesota presents Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art from February 19 through May 15. “This exhibition explores the numerous ways that artists in the United States have made sense of their own experiences of the paranormal and the supernatural, developing a rich visual culture of the intangible.”

The NSU Art Museum also focuses on a highlight of its collections in the exhibition William J. Glackens: From Pencil to Paint on view through April 17. The museum notes, “By presenting drawings from the beginning to end of his career and juxtaposing them with specific paintings for which they were made, the exhibition sheds new light on Glackens’ lifelong commitment to the field in which he first excelled and his uncanny ability to capture specific gestures, places and significant historical events such as the Spanish American War.”

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art continues its exhibition Alexander Calder: Dissonant Harmony through June 2023. It explains, “Through the interactions of shapes, colors and movement, Alexander Calder revealed how opposing elements and forces could attain symbiosis in his dynamic and groundbreaking sculptures. His works often appear whimsical, yet they are carefully calibrated and composed. Gongs, dings, hums and silent pauses add humor and sound to enliven Calder’s abstractions and bring their contrasting components together as cohesive reflections of the surrounding world.”

Several museums are reexamining their own collections to create dialogues among the works and to support various themes.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, “brings more than 60 works of art from across the collection—including 23 newly acquired contemporary pieces—into thought-provoking dialogue. Organized into 21 ‘conversations,’ the exhibition juxtaposes each contemporary work with one or two rarely seen objects acquired earlier in the Museum’s history” in its exhibition New Light: Encounters and Connections. It continues through August 22.Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), Market Scene, 1966. Gouache on paper. Museum purchase, 2018.22. © Jacob Lawrence / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. On view in Black Orpheus: Jacbo Lawrence and the Mbari Club at Chrysler Museum of Art.

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art has assembled Re|Framing the Collection: New Considerations in European and American Art, 1475-1875. “Based on the permanent collection, this exhibition of art in the Atlantic World considers empire-building across Europe, North America and their colonies, and how it shaped interconnected global networks from the 15th to the 19th centuries.” It continues through December 31, 2023.

Exhibitions of French impressionism often highlight an exhibition year. In 2022, the Baltimore Museum of Art will show Matisse: The Sinuous Line through April 24; the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio will show Through Vincent’s Eyes: Van Gogh and His Sources through February 6 before it travels to the Santa Barbara Museum in California, February 27 through May 22; Van Gogh and the Olive Groves will be at the Dallas Museum of Art through February 6; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, will host Incomparable Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through March 27; and the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina, will show Light Effects: The French Impressionists through February 20.

Among the many pleasant surprises is Retrospectrum: Bob Dylan “which features over 180 paintings, drawings, ironwork and ephemera, showcasing the development and range of Dylan’s visual practice, in tandem with that of his musical and literary canon.” It will be at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum of Florida International University in Miami through April 17. —

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