Ten U.S. Museum Exhibitions to See in 2010

John Baldessari, Exhibiting Paintings, 1967-68. Acrylic on canvas, 67 3/4 x 56 1/2 in., at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. Photo: 16 Miles

As you may have heard, museums are going to be filled with great ideas this year: James Ensor and Georg Baselitz at the Seattle Art Museum, Yves Klein at the Hirshhorn and the Walker, and Marina Abramović dominating the Museum of Modern Art's atrium for 600 hours, to name just three examples. Artinfo's executive editor, Kris Wilton, and I decided to write about 10 of the exciting exhibitions opening in the United States over the next 12 months. There's also a fun slideshow, courtesy of the museums' press offices. Here's one entry I wrote, which previews the traveling Baldessari retrospective:

“John Baldessari: Pure Beauty” at LACMA, Los Angeles, June 27–Sept. 12, 2010
Last year, the British were spoiled with this massive retrospective; in June it will finally travel to Baldessari’s native California. None of his early paintings will be on display — he had them cremated — but just about every other period of his idiosyncratic career will be covered. His text-heavy early work looks like conceptual art, though it’s more waggish than that genre’s stereotype: One 1971 lithograph reads, “I will not make any more boring art.” We'd argue he’s fulfilled that promise since, mining found photographs (and eventually returning to painting) to create an inimitably bizarre vision of contemporary culture: America, as seen through the eyes of aliens

— "Ten U.S. Museum Exhibitions to See in 2010" at Artinfo