In Europe, celebrate milestones in the arts

After the summer crowds and heat are gone, autumn is a pleasant time to make a trip to Europe and a great time to see special museum exhibits. This year marks a few important anniversaries, including 100 years since the death of Switzerland’s Ferdinand Hodler, 500 years since Tintoretto’s birth, and 250 years since the founding of London’s Royal Academy of Arts. Several museums will show rarely seen works, including a Monet exhibit in Vienna, an Oceania exhibit in the U.K., and a collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art traveling to Spain.

“Picasso. Blue and Rose” at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris

Through Jan. 6 In its first major partnership with the Musee National Picasso-Paris, the Musee d’Orsay presents a show about Pablo Picasso’s “Blue and Rose periods.” Some iconic Picasso works from this period in 1900 to 1906 will make their first appearance in France for this exhibit. The show features more than 300 works, including 80 paintings, 150 drawings, sculptures and prints, alongside photographs and correspondence from this time in the artist’s life.

“Hodler // Parallelism” at the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland

Through Jan. 13 This year marks a century since the death of Ferdinand Hodler, one of Switzerland’s renowned painters. To honor his legacy, the Kunstmuseum Bern and Geneva’s Museum of Art and History have joined forces for a show focused on Hodler’s theory of parallelism, which he revealed through the use of repetition, patterns, symmetry and mirror images. The show features 99 of Holder’s works.

“Claude Monet” at the Albertina in Vienna

Through Jan. 6 For the first time in more than 20 years, a large-scale Monet exhibit can be seen in Austria. The Albertina has gathered 100 paintings from more than 40 museums and private collections, including the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the National Gallery in London, the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. Highlights include “On the Boat,” “Boulevard des Capucines,” “Grainstack in Sunlight,” and “The Japanese Bridge.”

“Tintoretto 1519-1594” at the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, Italy

Nov. 1, 2018-March 31, 2019 Tintoretto is considered “the most Venetian of the Renaissance artists” thanks to his work in the city’s palaces and churches. All of Venice will celebrate his legacy in 2018, which marks 500 years since his birth. The Doge’s Palace has collaborated with the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Gallerie dell’Accademia di Venezia to open the first Tintoretto exhibit in Venice in several years. The show features 50 signed paintings and 20 drawings lent by museums around the world.

“Videogames” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

Through Feb. 24 In what’s being billed as “the first exhibition of its kind,” London’s Victoria and Albert museum takes on modern video gaming design and culture since the mid-2000s, when technological advancements changed the field. In the 40 years that video games have been around, they’ve transformed into a way of life for some, and today’s designers, players and critics are pushing boundaries. The exhibit features sections on the creative process of developing games (including original prototypes and early character designs), interactive installations, and a look into the social and political issues related to the hobby.

“Pose and Variations: Sculpture in Paris in the Age of Rodin” at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Portugal

Oct. 26, 2018-Feb. 4, 2019 Drawn from its own collections and that of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, Denmark, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum has gathered 30 sculptures in an exhibit on the art of the pose in 19-century French sculpture. Auguste Rodin’s work is featured, along with works by Jean-Antoine Houdon, Aimé-Jules Dalou, Paul Dubois, JeanBaptiste Carpeaux, Edgar Degas and Denys-Pierre Puech. Some of the sculptures focus on standard posing learned in the artists’ early stages of training, while others show them trying to distance themselves from their predecessors and contemporaries.

“Van Gogh to Picasso: The Thannhauser Legacy” at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain

Through March 24 Since its arrival at the Guggenheim in New York City more than 50 years ago, the majority of the renowned Thannhauser Collection has never left New York. Now, nearly 50 works by impressionist, post-impressionist and early modern masters will be shown in Bilbao. This exhibit features paintings, sculptures and works on paper by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh. It also provides a look at how the collection came to be through archives documenting the Thannhauser family’s engagement with the artists.

“Europe and the Sea” at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin

Through Jan. 6 With more than 43,000 miles of coastline, Europe has proportionally more contact with bodies of water than any other continent. Most Europeans don’t think much of their connection to the sea, but Deutsches Historisches Museum hopes to change that with this exhibit. Through 400 items, including paintings, photographs and artifacts, the exhibit addresses 2,500 years of maritime history, commerce, power, environmental threats and Europe’s current refugee crisis.

“Oceania” at the Royal Academy of Arts in London

Through Dec. 10 In honor of its 250th anniversary and that of the year that Captain James Cook set sail on his first expedition to the Pacific, London’s Royal Academy of Arts presents the U.K.’s first major exhibition on the art of Oceania. The show features 200 works from Micronesia, Polynesia, New Guinea, Easter Island, Hawaii, New Zealand and more. Three main themes help organize the exhibit: transportation, settlement and trade.

HELLO GAMES LTD. In what’s being called “the first exhibition of its kind,” London’s Victoria and Albert museum takes on video gaming design and culture.