The must-see exhibitions of 2019 — America

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• By the Light of the Silvery Moon: A Century of Lunar Photographs National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.,
  14 July to 5 January 2020

There couldn’t be a better way to mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing (on 20 July 1969) than to show this treasure trove of images, which reveal the role of photography in preparing for the mission and shaping cultural consciousness.

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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.

• 3
• Soul of a Nation The Broad, Los Angeles, until 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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• Souls Grown Deep: Artists of the African American South Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, until 2 September

This exhibition sets the artistry of the women of Gee’s Bend in Alabama, who make quilts from worn-out clothes, alongside mixed media paintings and found-object sculptures by Thornton Dial and Lonnie Holley. The result is profoundly moving.

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• Early Rubens The Legion of Honor, San Francisco, until 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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• Charlotte Posenenske: Work in Progress Dia:Beacon, New York, until 9 September

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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• Phenomenal Nature: Mrinalini Mukherjee Met Breuer, New York, until 29 September

The reputation of Indian sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee has risen apace since her sudden death in 2015. She worked with natural fibre, weaving, knotting and dyeing hemp rope to create complex structures that are at once abstract and figurative, suggesting flowers and the body. She later embraced both ceramics and bronze, and those pieces are also represented in this, her first US retrospective.

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• The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China Los Angeles County Museum of Art, until 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, until 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, 18 September to 12 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.