Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance examines myriad ways photographic imagery is incorporated into recent practice and in the process underscores the unique power of reproductive media while documenting a widespread contemporary obsession, both collective and individual, with accessing the past.  Drawn primarily from the Guggenheim Museum collection, Haunted features recent acquisitions, many of which are exhibited by the museum for the first time. Included in the show is work by such artists as Marina Abramovic, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Sophie Calle, Tacita Dean, Stan Douglas, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roni Horn, Zoe Leonard, Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jeff Wall, and Andy Warhol.

This year—the Serpentine’s 40th Anniversary—the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion is designed by world-renowned French architect Jean Nouvel. This 2010 Pavilion is the 10th commission in the Gallery’s annual series. The design for the 2010 Pavilion is a contrast of lightweight materials and dramatic metal cantilevered structures. The entire design is rendered in a vivid red that, in a play of opposites, contrasts with the green of its park setting. In London, the colour reflects the iconic British images of traditional telephone boxes, post boxes and London buses.
The building consists of bold geometric forms, large retractable awnings and a sloped freestanding wall that stands 12m above the lawn.

Body Worlds , the controversial traveling exhibition of preserved human bodies and body parts that are prepared using a technique called plastination to reveal inner anatomical structures is in Istanbul.  The exhibition’s developer and promoter is German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, who invented the plastination technique in the late 1970s at the University of Heidelberg. The skinless bodies are not positioned to stand soberly in display cases — but rather, they run, jump, and play instruments. They’re positioned in mid-motion, smiling or grimacing.

ACMI, Australian Centre for the Moving Image hosts a unique exhibition direct from The Museum of Modern Art, New York. An Australian exclusive, Tim Burton: The Exhibition is a landmark exhibition charting Tim Burton’s creative vision and process from his earliest work to the spectacular Alice in Wonderland.

Curated in direct collaboration with Burton, the exhibition brings together over 700 works, including paintings, drawings, puppets, costumes, storyboards and film. Discover the elements of gothic fantasy, dark humour and motifs that characterise Burton’s work as director, concept artist, illustrator and photographer.

Internationally renowned for his intense video-installations featuring multiple screens and suspended between fiction and document, Kutlug Ataman and his art explores the complex nature of personal and collective identity, giving rise to portraits of great intimacy while at the same time also tackling broader social themes.

In Mesopotamian Dramaturgies, Ataman’s most ambitious project to date and presented in its entirety for the first time at MAXXI, Rome the theme of the construction of identity invests an entire geographical area, that middle ground between East and West that Turkey represents particularly well. The eight works – films, video installations and photographs – that constitute the cycle reveal the tension, the effort, the contradiction and the results of the meeting of two worlds, from the thrust towards modernity to the persistence of tradition.

Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary celebrates Istanbul’s art program in the framework of European Capital of Culture 2010 with the sonic pavilion The Morning Line by Matthew Ritchie with Aranda\Lasch and Arup AGU in an amazing location:  at famous Eminönü Square just in front of the Spice Bazar…
The Morning Line – an impressive 8 meter high and 20 meter long pavilion, built of 17 tons of black coated aluminum – explores the disciplinary interplays between art, architecture, music, mathematics, cosmology, and science.

Based on the curatorial premise of Tthe Beauty of Distance  : Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, the exhibition presents more than 440 works by 166 artists and collaborators from 36 countries, making it the largest exhibition ever staged by the Biennale of Sydney in its 37-year history.‘The exhibition explores connections between the visual arts and other art forms and presents artists’ works alongside the work of contemporary writers, filmmakers, commentators and musicians.

The 17th Biennale is presented at seven venues across Sydney, taking in high-profile museum and gallery spaces as well as non-traditional art environments. Visitors will be able to experience artworks at Cockatoo Island, Pier 2/3, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney Opera House, Royal Botanic Gardens, Artspace and the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Grand Court).

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960 –1988) was one of the most fascinating and controversial personalities in the art world. After starting on the New York underground scene as a graffiti sprayer, musician and actor, he began to devote himself to painting at nineteen. His highly expressive, energetic work soon found wide admiration. Supported by Andy Warhol, he advanced to become an internationally acclaimed star.  In the space of only eight years, he created an extensive oeuvre of about 1000 paintings and 2000 drawings before his tragic death at the age of only twenty-seven. To mark his fiftieth birthday, the Fondation Beyeler is devoting a large retrospective to Jean-Michel Basquiat, comprising more than 100 paintings, works on paper, and objects from renowned museums and private collections around the world.

Greater New York, the third iteration of the quinquennial exhibition organized by MoMA PS1 and The Museum of Modern Art, showcasing some 68 artists and collectives living and working in the metropolitan New York area. The 2010 exhibition will not only present recent work made within the past five years, but also will foster a productive workshop where artists are invited to experiment with new ideas within MoMA PS1’s building for the duration of the exhibition

Inaugurated in 2000, the Triennial program at Cooper Hewitt seeks out and presents the most innovative designs at the center of contemporary culture. In this fourth exhibition in the series, the National Design Triennial will explore the work of designers addressing human and environmental problems across many fields of the design practice, from architecture and products to fashion, graphics, new media, and landscapes.

“I’ve always had the highest of respect for this profession, which isn’t an art form per se, but which needs an artist in order for it to exist” – Yves Saint-Laurent.

The Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent and the Petit Palais (City of Paris Museum of Fine Arts) are showcasing the first Yves Saint-Laurent retrospective exhibition since the fashion designer passed away. A total of 307 haute couture and prêt-à-porter models are on show, ranging from the designer’s beginnings at Dior in 1958, with the famous “Trapèze” collection, to the splendor of the evening dresses from 2002.

Chris Chan Chong Fui  lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, and is the first Malaysian artist to present work at the Hirshhorn. In “BLOCK B,” (2008), a motionless camera watches night and day as dramas unfold on the various floors of a massive apartment complex in Malaysia. Chong captures this home to Indian expatriates working on temporary contracts, as if it is a documentary, with no special effects or lighting. He directs the viewers’ focus to realistic details within this fictionalized microcosm of urban humanity via imaginary voice-overs.