The best new art museum shows to see this spring

A new angle on Henri Matisse? Is that even possible? In this case, yes. Matisse drew, painted and made cutouts on marine themes throughout his career. The French artist voyaged long distances by ship. And of course, he loved the color blue. “Matisse and the Sea,” at the Saint Louis Art Museum, will include paintings, sculptures, paper cutouts, drawings, prints, ceramics and textiles. If nothing else, it’s bound to make everyone who sees it breathe more deeply. Feb. 17-May 12 at the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis. slam.org.

Pierre Bonnard, at his best, is hard to beat. Intensity of color, intimacy, reverie, bliss: He could turn colored oil paint and banal domesticity into pure enchantment. A selection of the Frenchman’s finest works is coming to the nation’s capital this spring. The exhibition, “Bonnard’s Worlds,” was organized by the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, where it showed last year. March 2-June 2 at the Phillips Collection, Washington. phillipscollection.org.

Marisol, one of the most fascinating artists of the 1960s, is enjoying a revival. People are discovering that the Venezuelan American artist (born María Sol Escobar) made powerful work (mostly wooden sculptures, but also drawings and installations) before and well after the decade with which she is mostly associated. This major retrospective, which opened in Montreal and will also travel to Buffalo and Dallas, reveals the psychological depth and compassion beneath Marisol’s cool and witty veneer. March 2-June 2 at the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo. toledomuseum.org.

Most of what we wear, and much else besides, is woven. “Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction” will display more than 160 paintings, weavings, basketry, netting, knotting and knitting to show how these woven items are intricately connected to modern art and to 20th-century society and politics. March 17-July 28 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. nga.gov.

With unrivaled expressive force, the great German artist Käthe Kollwitz depicted suffering, love and despair. “Käthe Kollwitz” will include drawings, prints and sculptures that give voice to the working poor, children and women, all of them animated by fierce compassion. March 31-July 20 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. moma.org.

“What Happened” is just the right subtitle for this first serious survey of the work of Nicole Eisenman. Based in Brooklyn, Eisenman is a poet of the absurd, the inexplicable, the dislocated, the dismayed. The French-born artist’s paintings, prints, sculptures and installations are witty and heartfelt responses to the ways in which personal and social life are ineluctably entangled with — and oftentimes stunned by — politics in the 21st century. April 9-Sept. 22 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. mcachicago.org.

Just as Paris has had an enormous impact on artists, writers, actors and dancers from other lands, so in turn have those exiles affected Paris. “Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris 1900-1939” will celebrate this reciprocity as it presents such transformative figures as Josephine Baker, Isadora Duncan, Anna May Wong, Loïs Mailou Jones, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Anaïs Nin and Gertrude Stein. April 26-Feb. 23, 2025, at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington. npg.si.edu.

The great contribution of the American photographer and activist LaToya Ruby Frazier has been to blast holes in the wall separating the art world from the plights of ordinary people. “LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity” will present an overview of her career so far. A champion of the dispossessed, the overlooked and the factored-out, Frazier uses old formats (the photo essay, the monument) to pit herself and her often-heroic subjects against historical amnesia. May 12-Sept. 7 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. moma.org.

For years, Dario Robleto has been obsessed with the Golden Record, the gold-plated phonograph disc containing sounds and images selected by a team at NASA to portray life on Earth to extraterrestrials. For many years, the American artist has been examining the Golden Record in films, sculptures and works on paper that are hilarious, haunting and brilliantly inventive. “Dario Robleto: The Signal” will present the artist’s meditations on this unique object, which is hurtling through space on the twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. May 12-Oct. 27 at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth. cartermuseum.org.

Identical twins Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, known as OSGEMEOS (Portuguese for “the twins”), have been amazing street-art audiences and charming museum-goers for more than 20 years. “OSGEMEOS: Endless Story,” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, will present an overview of the Brazilian duo’s career in a year-long exhibition of more than 1,000 works. It will include an immersive installation dedicated to “Tritrez,” a mystical universe the artists invented as children that they continue to populate with their signature small-bodied, large-headed figures. May 24-July 6, 2025, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. hirshhorn.si.edu.