Summer in New York: Art exhibitions

Major-loan shows have become something of a rarity, given the cost of mounting them in a still-sputtering global economy. As it happens, the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Italy—home to masterpieces dating from the late middle ages to the 1800s—is closing for restoration. The Met is seizing the occasion to borrow 15 works from the 15th and 16th centuries, representing the high-water mark of the Venetian and Northern Italian Renaissance. Substantial contributions by the biggest names of the period are on view, all evincing the brilliant use of color and velvety-smooth brushwork that defined the art of that time and place. It’s essential viewing for Old Masters fans.

As home to Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I—purchased by the museum in 2006 for $135 million, the highest price ever paid for a painting by any artist at the time—it’s only fitting that Neue Galerie is planning a big party for the artist’s sesquicentennial. The museum is breaking out its superb Klimt holdings, including the aforementioned masterwork. And what birthday would be complete without the sweet stuff? The gallery’s Café Sabarsky is offering a special gilded chocolate-and-hazelnut Klimt cake for the run of the show: a sugar rush to complement the artist’s delirious style.

The Gugg gives the Dutch photographer the full-on midcareer survey treatment with this roundup of roughly 70 color-photo portraits and five video installations. Known for her straight-ahead style of capturing subjects against minimal backgrounds, Dijkstra is interested in conveying the individual at moments of transition. That can mean awkward teenagers standing on a beach, naked moms who just delivered their babies posing against a delivery room wall or Portuguese forcados freshly bruised from their encounters in the bullring.

Boetti (1940–1994) was a key figure in the Italian Conceptual-art movement known as Arte Povera, and has been a major influence on the work of younger artists such as Gabriel Orozco, Francis Alÿs and Maurizio Cattelan. Boetti’s aesthetic was avant la lettre, consisting of a peripatetic practice in which he traveled around, sent his friends mail art and even ran a hotel in Afghanistan. He used more conventional mediums as well, drawing being a particular strong suit. This retrospective represents the biggest U.S. show of his work to date.

Representing a homecoming of sorts, the Japanese legend’s Tate retrospective travels to New York. It was here in the 1960s that she first staked her claim on the art world with her dot paintings, nude outdoor happenings, suggestive, tendril-like “Accumulation” sculptures and mirrored “Infinity Room” environments. Having suffered from hallucinations since childhood, Kusama returned to her native Japan in 1977, where she’s resided since as a voluntary patient in a psychiatric hospital. Defying boundaries between outside and inside, West and East, male and female, Kusama is one of contemporary art’s most compelling figures.