The must-see exhibitions of 2019 — America

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• Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, until 31 March 2019

The Latvian-American artist’s wondrous drawings appear almost photographic, but in reality they are intricately worked layers of soft graphite pencil. Whether it is a picture of the desert floor or a spider’s web, Vija Celmans (b. 1938) strips down the colour and gesture until nothing but the barest elements remain, revealing some kind of spiritual truth. This hotly anticipated exhibition — the first in 25 years — features her paintings and drawings over a six-decade career.

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• Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Chicago, until 21 July

This expansive exhibition of artefacts shifts the narrative of Africa’s history from the Atlantic slave trade to the arid yet thriving trade routes of the Sahara Desert in the medieval age, when West African gold fuelled the global economy. At its heart was the Moorish overlord Mansa Musa, the emperor of Mali who controlled vast territories across the Western Sudan, where the purest goldfields could be found. A thought-provoking and insightful introduction to early globalism, revealing how Africa’s ancient history continues to be relevant today.

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• Berthe Morisot: Woman Impressionist Dallas Museum of Art, 24 February to 26 May

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, but while many other artists who did so have become household names — Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro — she has not. This exceptionally talented woman was overlooked by art historians, but not the writers who were part of her bohemian set. Apollinaire described her as ‘one of the most complete artists of her day’, while Stéphane Mallarmé, with whom she had a life-long friendship, recognised in her a fellow Symbolist, arguing that everything in her paintings was suggested rather than openly stated.

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• Charlotte Posenenske: Work in Progress Dia:Beacon, New York, from 8 March

This is the first North American retrospective dedicated to the minimalist Charlotte Posenenske (1930-1985), who believed that art should be playful, functional and fully embedded in society — not an untouchable artefact in a gallery space. Posenenske built modular sculptural elements out of cheap industrial materials and put them in public places, encouraging people to interact with them. Featuring more than 150 works, this is a long overdue opportunity to reassess this German innovator who, until recently, has been overlooked in the history of minimalism.

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• Soul of a Nation The Broad, Los Angeles, 23 March to 1 September

Set against a tumultuous period in America’s racial history, this exhibition begins in 1963 with Romare Bearden’s artist collective Spiral — a group of 15 artists who made work in the context of the Civil Rights movement. Their discussions about how black artists should respond to political events, and what kind of aesthetic that answer should take, arguably set a precedent for other African-American artists, who, equally torn by the paradox of the theorist W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of Double Consciousness, set about making art that spoke their language. From the Kool-Aid aesthetic of the AfriCOBRA collective to the uneasy tension of Faith Ringgold’s paintings, the response was multifarious and dynamic.

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• Tintoretto: Artist of Renaissance Venice National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 24 March to 7 July

Jacopo Tintoretto (1518/1519-1594) was the High Renaissance artist whose paintings of spiritual redemption shone out of 16th-century Venice. This stunning retrospective marking 500 years since the birth of the painter — a pious individual who believed he could unite a fractious city through art — is the first exhibition of the artist in North America and features regal portraits of Italian aristocracy and religious scenes.

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• Early Rubens The Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 6 April to 8 September

John Ruskin once wrote of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) that he had an ‘unfortunate want of seriousness and incapability of true passion’. This exhibition — the first dedicated to the artist’s early pivotal years between 1609 and 1621 — proves the 19th-century art critic wrong. Rubens was an artist of stupendous energy and force, and here he is young, virile and ambitious, displaying his prodigious talent for all to see. Featuring more than 50 works from private and public collections, the show will reveal Rubens’ talent for intense psychological drama.

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• The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2 June to 5 January 2020

This exhibition of modern artists from China who have, over the past four decades, been in the vanguard of experimentation, showcases the wide variety of unconventional materials they used. From Coca-Cola to gunpowder, plastic to hair, fire to water, each artist has developed a body of work that pushes the boundaries of what matter can be. A comprehensive survey of contemporary art, it features the work of Ai Weiwei, Cai Guo-Qiang and Zhang Huan, among others.

Don't miss... Cai Guo-Qiang’s ‘gunpowder drawings’ — pyrotechnic wizardry made by lighting the powder and letting it scorch the paper to make celestial impressions.

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• Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement Seattle Art Museum, 13 June to 8 September

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were three generations of rebellious young artists who brought notoriety to British art in the 19th century, shocking their peers with a new kind of modern art. Together with William Morris (1834-1896), who founded the Arts & Crafts Movement — a socially minded collective that championed the handmade over the industrial — they plundered the medieval period and the bible for sensual stories they could re-frame in a contemporary way.

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• Bertoldo di Giovanni: The Renaissance of Sculpture in Medici Florence The Frick Collection, 8 September to 19 January 2020

Student of Donatello, teacher of Michelangelo and the darling of Titian patron Lorenzo de Medici, Bertoldo di Giovanni (circa 1440-1491) was among the most innovative and influential sculptors in Renaissance Italy. Remarkably, this is the first ever exhibition of the Florentine artist in America, and reveals his exceptional skills across a wide range of media, including bronze, wood and terracotta. Featuring over 20 statues, reliefs, medals and statuettes, this is an opportunity to experience the prodigious ingenuity of this little-known artist.