From Monet to Munch, the Art Exhibitions You Don't Want To Miss in 2024

The most anticipated museum exhibitions of the season have a little something for everyone — from new explorations of classic movements like Impressionism and Surrealism to immersive sculptural installations and quirky cartoony art.

Use our comprehensive guide to plan your artistic adventures. Here are the best upcoming art exhibitions in Dallas:

Sarah Sze

Feb. 3 – Aug. 18
Nasher Sculpture Center, 2001 Flora St.
Fresh off an epic solo show at New York’s Guggenheim, Sarah Sze’s kaleidoscopic installations are a textural delight. Blending projection, gadgets and printed-out materials that dangle in the air or spill out on the floor, each of her works makes the most of ephemeral stuff with an explosive effect that can be simultaneously inviting and threatening.

Taking over three gallery spaces at the Nasher with new site-specific works, these dizzying compositions are a spring must-see. Sze will be on hand for an artist talk at 2 p.m. on opening day.

The Impressionist Revolution: From Monet to Matisse

Feb. 11 – Nov. 3, Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 N. Harwood St.
The artists who bucked France’s Academy of Fine Arts aesthetic in the 19th century are now viewed as icons of modern painting. To realize how radical the work was at the time, the DMA has broken down “the Impressionist Revolution” via thematic sections on key players, materials and the backlash and influence of this formerly rebellious movement.

Drawn from the museum’s holdings, this particular revolution will showcase icons of the genre including Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse and Mondrian.

From Munch to Kirchner: The Heins Collection of Modern and Expressionist Art

Feb. 25, 2024 – Jan. 5, 2025, Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 N. Harwood St.
Celebrating the legacy of Swiss art collector Marie “Elinor” Heins, this recent gift to the DMA of 30 paintings, sculptures and works on paper touches on most of the significant movements in the 19th and 20th centuries: Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and (Heins’ favorite) German Expressionism.

If you’ve never had the opportunity to gaze upon the tortured subjects of an Edvard Munch IRL, do yourself a favor and see it.

Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists Since 1940

March 10 – July 28, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St.
Opening on the centennial anniversary of the publication of artist André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, the Modern’s tentpole exhibition of the season gives a fresh twist to the avant-garde movement, viewing it through the vivid lens of Afrosurrealism and Afrofuturism.

With over 50 pieces from the 1940s through today, Surrealism will highlight the Black experience, touching on social oppression, resistant beauty and African religion and spirituality, including Vodou and Santeria. Embracing sculpture, drawing, video and installation, this colorful collective is the first opportunity to view a gathering of Caribbean work in the North Texas region.

Pompeii: The Immortal City

March 30 – June 23, Arlington Museum of Art, 1200 Ballpark Way
The Arlington Museum of Art has always been the little institution that could. Sandwiched between two mighty arts districts in Dallas and Fort Worth, the AMA is known for its populist bent. In recent years, it has shown everything from a Keith Haring retrospective to an exhibition of Taylor Swift’s outfits.

Launched in 1990 by the Arlington Art Association in a former JCPenney, the museum has long since outgrown its original digs, making a brand-new location in the city’s former Convention Center Expo Hall a welcome development. Going from 5,500 to 40,000 square feet means plenty of space to exhibit more ambitious shows such as Pompeii: The Immortal City. Including artifacts and works of art from the ancient city, Pompeii will be paired with the immersive One Point Five Degrees from artists Adam Fung and Sabrina Ratté, which highlights the fragility of the natural world.

Who’s Afraid of Cartoony Figuration?

April 3 – Sept. 22, Dallas Contemporary, 161 Glass St.
The Contemporary’s spring exhibition makes the most of a lighthearted subject with a subversive slant. Emerging in the ’60s and ’70s, cartoony figuration owes a debt to underground comix and commercial illustration. Still, the underlying socio-political themes in the work take it beyond the banality of pop art and pop culture.

Curated by Alison M. Gingeras, Who’s Afraid highlights the quirky figurative language embraced by artists of varying generations (including Karolina Jabłońska, Tabboo! and Frohawk Two Feathers), all of whom critique American culture via their sculpture, painting and works on paper. This promises to be one of those “choose your own adventure” experiences that can appeal on an amusing surface level or spark deeper conversation.

Barnaby Fitzgerald: An Eye for Ballast

May 5 – Sept. 22, Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, 5900 Bishop Blvd.
A Dallas-based master of the egg tempura technique, Fitzgerald and his otherworldly paintings have enjoyed a career spanning five decades and three continents.

A rare opportunity to view work from an artist you could still collect, An Eye for Ballast also serves as a celebration of the painter’s recent election as professor of art emeritus at SMU. But his luminous, mysterious subjects are what make this show so compelling. Drawing on influences from the Romanesque to the early Renaissance, each canvas holds a story alongside Fitzgerald's elegant technique.

Moonlight: The Haas Brothers

May 11 – Aug. 25 Nasher Sculpture Center, 2001 Flora St.
Born in Austin, fraternal twins Nikolai and Simon Haas have built a stellar reputation in art with their adorable creature-feature creations, including a 2018 installation at the Joule charmingly titled “King Dong.”

Even with a tendency to hide elements of sexual innuendo within their anthropomorphic characters, the duo’s flora- and fauna-influenced work should enchant viewers of all ages. They've also dabbled in jewelry and home products, so let’s hope there’s good reason to exit through the Nasher’s gift shop after your visit.

Moving Pictures: Karl Struss and the Rise of Hollywood

May 12 – Aug. 25, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth

In the early 20th century, New York-based photographer Karl Struss made the ultimate pivot, joining the nascent movie industry in Hollywood as a cinematographer. The Carter, which owns the artist’s archive, is highlighting his contributions to the genre of photography and filmmaking with an exhibition exploring his long, storied career.

A dreamy glimpse into Hollywood’s Golden Age, Moving Pictures will present some of Struss’ moody landscapes hung alongside uber-flattering imagery of the day's icons. The inventor of the soft-focus “Struss pictorial lens,” Struss made every starlet in front of his camera look pleasingly blurry, an effect influencers should still be thanking him for.

The Signal: Dario Robleto

May 12 – Oct. 27, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth

Remember earlier this year when the government went, "Yeah, aliens are real," and the world just kind of collectively shrugged? Artist Dario Robleto is doing his part to ensure we keep things cool with our spacy neighbors with The Signal, focusing on his multiyear exploration of the Golden Record. A gold-plated phonograph recording containing sounds and images selected by NASA in the 1970s to portray life on Earth to extraterrestrials, the Record inspired Robleto's sculptures and works on paper.

Signal (which includes an installation that pairs fossilized whale bones, butterfly wings and pulled Bob Dylan audiotape records in a natural history-styled tableau) balances nicely at the intersection of science, art and engineering, making it a thought-provoking experience for the artsy tech nerd in your life.