THE WORLD OUTSIDE: LOUISE NEVELSON AT MIDCENTURY Nevelson, the flamboyant doyenne of American Modernism, was born just outside Kyiv and emigrated to little Rockand, Maine, as a child in 1905. Escaping Russian antisemitism for America saved her first; art saved her next, transporting her from the backwoods of early-20th-century Maine to New York City, when radical new forms of art were taking hold. This show, at Colby College, just up the road from Rockland in Waterville, is as significant a survey as Nevelson has had in years. And you can double up in Nevelson’s hometown with the Farnsworth Museum’s “Louise Nevelson: Dawn to Dusk,” which runs through Sept. 24. Feb. 8-June 9. Colby College Museum of Art, 5600 Mayflower Hill, Waterville, Maine. 207-859-5600, colby.edu/museum
WU TSANG: OF WHALES Worcester-born Tsang crafts film, video, and performance pieces, often at grand scale. This work, an immersive film experience, is one part of her trilogy that riffs on Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” using the perspective of a sperm whale as it dives more deeply than any other mammal for up to an hour at a time in search of its prey. Made using the Unity gaming platform with XR (extended reality) technologies, it’s a deep dive, if you’ll pardon the pun, into life beneath the waves. Feb 15-Aug 4. Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 25 Harbor Shore Drive. 617-478-3100, icaboston.org
© Raqib Shaw, Photo © White Cube, Theo Cristelis
RAQIB SHAW: BALLADS OF EAST AND WEST One of the Gardner Museum’s rare “takeover” exhibitions, where the work of a single artist occupies all of its contemporary exhibition spaces (its main Hoestetter gallery, its little Fenway gallery, and its facade installation), “Ballads of East and West” will be an expansive showcase of Shaw’s extravagant painterly vision as a visual collision of his trans-continental life. Born and raised in the Indian city of Srinigar in the Himalayas and now living in London, Shaw looks back at the region of his youth as a former paradise fallen victim to political tumult and outside influence. Feb. 15-May 12. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way. 617-566-1401, www.gardnermuseum.org
MUNCH AND KIRCHNER: ANXIETY AND EXPRESSION More than 60 works on paper explore the shared distress of two of early Modernism’s towering figures over a world transforming before their eyes. They share a grim catalog of experience, from depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and psychiatric treatment, and who could blame them? Their adult lives spanned the onset of rapid industrialization, the First World War, and the rise of Nazism; their experimental printmaking is indelibly stamped with the harrowing truths of their age. Feb. 16-June 23. Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., New Haven. 203-432-0600, artgallery.yale.edu
OUR TIME ON EARTH A shockingly upbeat view of a future planet adapting creatively to the accelerating impacts of the climate crisis, this exhibition, which comes from the Barbican Museum in London, engages viewers with immersive, experiential artworks meant to prompt out-of-box thinking to meet the inevitably massive change of the next few decades. Unexpected, at least by me, is a collaborative piece by the art/science/advertising collective Holition and noted climate sage George Monbiot, whose 2006 book “Heat” was among the very early warnings of a rapidly changing global climate. Feb. 17-June 9. Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem. 978-745-9500, pem.org
NANCY ELIZABETH PROPHET: I WILL NOT BEND AN INCH Prophet, who was of Black and Native American descent, was among the first known women of color to graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design in the early 20th century. She left the US for Paris early in her career, as many Black American artists did, finding greater acceptance and freedom in its cosmopolitan, avant-garde environment than at home; but it also meant that she’s been largely overlooked in the US. This exhibition finally brings her home, exploring her legacy as a groundbreaking Modern sculptor. Feb. 17-Aug. 4. RISD Museum, 20 N Main St., Providence. 401-454-6500, risdmuseum.org
ROBERT FRANK AND TODD WEBB: ACROSS AMERICA, 1955 Two photographers, one American, one Swiss, who helped capture the United States at the critical crossroads of the postwar era, are the subject of this compelling exhibition at the Addison Gallery of American Art. In 1955, Frank, the Swiss, embarked on the cross-country road trip that would result in his iconic book, “The Americans,” the result of a Guggenheim Foundation grant. Unbeknownst to him, an American photographer, Todd Webb, was on the road with Guggenheim grant money, too, but instead of driving, Webb made his trek on public transit, bicycle, and foot, a slowed-down perspective in public space that made the journey itself a trenchant presence all its own. Feb. 19-July 31. Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, 3 Chapel Ave., Andover. 978-749-4015, www.addisongallery.org
LATOYA M. HOBBS: IT’S TIME “Carving Out Time” (2020-21) is Hobbs’s series of five lifesize woodcuts, in which she portrays a day in the life of her family in Baltimore, where she lives. An intimately diaristic view of her everyday with husband Ariston Jacks, also an artist, and their two children, “Carving Out Time” offers an unvarnished view of a woman artist’s many competing responsibilities as wife, mother, and caregiver, and of the deep history from which she comes. Look closely and you’ll see canonic artists like Alma Thomas, Elizabeth Catlett, and Kerry James Marshall embedded in her images, a lineage that gives her impetus to carry ever on. March 1-July 21. Harvard Art Museums. 32 Quincy St., Cambridge. 617-495-9400, www.harvardartmuseums.org
NOÉ MARTÍNEZ: THE BODY REMEMBERS The imprint of the ages on his DNA is of primary concern to MartÍnez, a Mexico-based artist of Indigenous Huastecan descent. That extends from his ancestors themselves to the deep traumas of colonial repression, genocide, and the remarkable resilience that, despite it all, has kept their culture alive in the present. Centered on traditional materials like clay, which predate colonial contact, MartÍnez evokes an ancient culture with memory brought to life in material gesture. March 13-June 16. Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, 415 South St., Waltham. 781-736-3434, www.brandeis.edu/rose
HALLYU! THE KOREAN WAVE It’s no secret that popular culture from South Korea has been exploding in recent years (if you haven’t heard of “Parasite,” “Squid Game,” or BTS, you may as well stop here). Exploring its rapid rise to global prominence is this exhibition, which combines art, fashion, music, drama, and technology to provide a closer look at a little country with expansively American-esque global cultural import. March 24-July 28. Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 465 Huntington Ave.. 617-267-9300, www.mfa.org
Murray Whyte can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @TheMurrayWhyte.