Feature

Top Contemporary US Art Exhibitions To Visit This Winter Season

05 Dec 2017

by ArtRabbit

The fast-approaching winter holidays often prove to be one of the best times to explore art in another city. ArtRabbit has highlighted and mapped some of the most interesting US shows this winter. Take a look at our suggestions to find your perfect artistic destination.

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA at Various Venues, Los Angeles

Various Opening Times

Led by the Getty, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is the latest collaborative effort from art institutions across Southern California. Through a series of thematically linked exhibitions, it presents a wide variety of important works of art, much of them new to Southern California audiences.

Future Shock at Site Santa Fe, Santa Fe

Mon - Tues 10am-5pm, Wed- Thur 10am-5pm, Fri 10am -7pm, Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 12pm-5pm

Future Shock is a large-scale exhibition of works by international artists that articulates the profound impact of the acceleration of technological, social, and structural change upon contemporary life. Future Shock takes its title from Alvin Toffler’s prophetic 1970’s book, in which he describes the exhilaration and consequences of our rapidly advancing world. With Toffler’s predictions and warnings as a backdrop, the exhibition brings together the work of ten artists whose works imagine a range of visions of our present and future.

Mark Rothko: Reflection at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Mon - Tue 10am–5pm, Wed - Fri 10am-10pm, Sat - Sun 10am-5pm
Closed 25 Dec and 1 Jan


Offering the full sweep of Rothko’s paintings from early surrealist work to multiform compositions to classic colour field paintings while tracing his exploration of the expressive potential of colour. Enveloped by the large-scale paintings in an intimate setting, viewers can experience Rothko’s work as the artist originally intended.

Walker Evans at SFMOMA, San Francisco

Fri - Tues 10am–5pm, Thurs 10am–9pm
Closed 25 Dec

Unprecedented in scope and scale, this major retrospective of seminal photographer Walker Evans views his work through the lens of one of his obsessions — the American vernacular, or the language of everyday life found in roadside attractions, postcards, storefronts, and signage across the country.

Robert Rauschenberg: Erasing the Rules at SFMOMA, San Francisco

Fri - Tues 10am–5pm, Thurs 10am–9pm
Closed 25 Dec

From the 1940s until his passing in 2008, Rauschenberg worked with everything from photography to items scavenged from New York City streets to vats of bubbling mud. More than 150 of Rauschenberg’s artworks, including prints, sculptures, paintings, and Combines (works that incorporate painting and sculpture), will be on view in the retrospective Robert Rauschenberg: Erasing the Rules, celebrating the artist’s continual experimentation with materials and collaborative working processes.

Louise Bourgeois Spiders at SFMOMA, San Francisco

Fri - Tue 10am–5pm, Thur 10am–9pm
Closed 25 Dec

Louise Bourgeois created the first of her darkly compelling spider sculptures in the mid-1990s when she was in her eighties. Partly a reference to her mother, partly to herself, spiders for her represented cleverness, industriousness, and protectiveness. Filling the museum’s sculpture gallery on Floor 5, Louise Bourgeois Spiders explores the captivating complexity of the artist’s conception of these elegant and fearsome creatures, with works sculpted in a range of materials and scales, from the intimate to the monumental.

One Life: Sylvia Plath at Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington

Daily 11:30am-7pm
Closed 25 Dec

One Life explores how Sylvia Plath shaped her identity visually as she came of age as a writer in the 1950s. Visitors will get a look into Plath’s personal life and her dualistic nature she explained as her “brown-haired” and “platinum” personalities. Through personal letters, her own artwork, family photographs and relevant objects, this exhibition highlights Plath’s struggle to understand herself and to navigate the societal pressures placed on young women during her time

D-Cyphered: Portraits by Jenny Risher at Detroit Institute of Art

Tue - Thur 9am-4pm, Fri 9am-10pm, Sat - Sun 10am-5pm
Closed Mon, 24, 25 Dec and 1 Jan

D-Cyphered: Portraits by Jenny Risher takes viewers on a photographic timeline that makes up the story of the Detroit hip-hop scene. Often overlooked by the movements in New York and Los Angeles, Detroit’s hip-hop history is deeply shaped by the various elements of Motown and Detroit techno. Since the emergence of Eminem and his movie 8 Mile, and the recognition of the genius of the late J. Dilla, Detroit has seen a deep underground scene emerge and gain national recognition. Through this exhibition the rich history that makes Detroit hip-hop a one-of-a kind genre will be explored.