July and August are usually the months of year that the art world essentially shuts down and jets off to sunnier climes to Instagram itself silly. But due to coronavirus lockdowns worldwide, many of the big shows planned for spring 2020 were cancelled, postponed or closed shortly after opening, and have subsequently sprung back up in the middle of summer. If you are able to get to them, here are some of the re-emerging shows not to miss.
Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (until 30 August) has come to the final stop of its three-year, six-city tour at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, which was one of the first major US museums to reopen after lockdown in May, despite increasing coronavirus cases in the state. The exhibition, which first opened at Tate Modern back in 2017, includes works by more than 60 black artists made from the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1960s until the early 1980s. Among the artists on show are the Chicago-based collective AfriCOBRA, the New York photographers Roy DeCarava and Albert Fennar, the abstract painters Sam Gilliam and Jack Whitten, the Los Angeles artist Betye Saar, and an additional gallery of works by Texas-based artists including Kermit Oliver and John Biggers.
Another All-American show that is coming to the end of its seven-venue tour is Norman Rockwell: Imagining Freedom, which has had its penultimate stop at the Denver Art Museum extended until 7 September. The tours’ organiser and final venue is the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, which plans to restore two of Rockwell’s most famous paintings, The Problem We All Live With (1964) and Freedom From Want (1943) before the final show.
