The Best New Events in the World of the Arts in October

The Dandelion Chandelier Luxury Calendar for The Arts highlights noteworthy events around the world in October 2018 in ballet, modern dance, performance art, classical music, opera and jazz –plus notable new art museum exhibits and installations. For the rest of the Luxury Calendar, click here. 

The trees and their vibrant leaves aren’t the only ones putting on a show this month. All around the world there will be glittering performances and exhibitions making their debut. Here at home in New York, we can’t wait for the start of BAM’s annual Next Wave Festival and the short but sweet 2-week American Ballet Theater fall season. We’re also keen to see a number of new museum exhibits, including Hilma af Klint at the Guggenheim, Hiroshi Sugimoto at Versailles and Anni Albers at the Tate Modern. Like the fall foliage, these performances won’t last forever. Let’s go!

Performing Arts

Every autumn in Brittany, period instruments played by great artists can be heard in beautiful surroundings. Each concert is given in a church, chapel, cathedral or theater with outstanding acoustics. The Lanvellec and Trégor Festival lets listeners discover and explore ancient music and its greatest composers in a splendid setting – through Oct 21

Love jazz?  Swing University at Lincoln Center promises to help you become a better listener – Starts Oct 1

Fall for Dance, New York City Center’s beloved annual festival, celebrates its 15th anniversary this month with six world premieres and appearances by numerous dance world stars, including Sara Mearns, Justin Peck and Herman Cornejo – Oct 1 – 13

Few musical works are as beloved as The Six Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach. Taking this iconic masterpiece as her score, famed Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker explores the movement, dance, and transcendental dimensions found in this music in a new evening-length work at the Park Avenue Armory in New York – Oct 1 – 7

Launched in 1983, BAM’s 12-week annual Next Wave Festival serves as one of New York City’s most comprehensive surveys of avant garde music, theater, opera and dance. This year’s performances include acrobatic circus acts from Australian troupe Circa, choreography from Trisha Brown Dance Company, a contemporary staging of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Mark Morris’s playful re-imagining of The Nutcracker called The Hard Nut – Oct 3 – Dec 23

The Carnegie Hall Opening Night Gala features a pair of vocal superstars – Renée Fleming and Audra McDonald – along with the San Francisco Symphony for an evening of favorites from opera and musical theater, including orchestral music by Gershwin and Liszt’s whirling waltz – Oct 3

The LA Philharmonic kicks off the LA Fest festival with Esa-Pekka Salonen’s breakthrough work LA Variations. Gustavo Dudamel concludes the evening with a major new work by L.A.-based composer Andrew Norman, a winner of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award – Oct 4

The theme of this year’s Le Monde Festival in Paris is love. Performances and activities will take place at numerous venues throughout the city: the Opéra Bastille, the Palais Garnier, the Bouffes du Nord theater and the Gaumont Opéra – Oct 5 – 7

The New York City Ballet fall season continues with an exploration of 21st-century choreographers (Oct 5 – 9); the Short Stories program, featuring a suite from West Side Story (Oct 10 – 13); Robbins 100 (Oct 11 – 13) and a farewell to Principal Dancer Joaquin De Luz (Oct 14)

The New York Dance and Performance Awards, also known as the Bessie Awards, are being given for the 34th year; they recognize “exceptional achievement by independent dance artists presenting their work in New York City” – Oct 8

The American Symphony Orchestra will present A Walt Whitman Sampler at Carnegie Hall – Oct 17

World Premieres by Michelle Dorrance and Jessica Lang lead the American Ballet Theater’s Fall Season; opening night will include a Gala Performance dedicated to the works of female choreographers – Oct 17 – 28

In the New York premiere of Borderline at Lincoln Center, the Bessie Award-winning performers blend contemporary dance, street dance, and aerial movement to create a weightless visual poetry that transcends gravity and the very concept of boundaries – Oct 19 – 20

The young virtuoso Joey Alexander returns to Jazz at Lincoln Center – Oct 19 – 20

Composer Nico Muhly unveils his second new opera for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Marnie, with a gripping re-imagining of Winston Graham’s novel, set in the 1950s, about a beautiful, mysterious young woman who assumes multiple identities – Oct 19 – Nov 10

The 20th annual Shanghai International Arts Festival takes place this month, featuring local and international plays, concerts, and music and dance performances at various locations throughout the city – Oct 19 – Nov 18

Grammy-winning singer-songwriter and activist Youssou Ndour makes his eagerly-anticipated return to Carnegie Hall. Named one of the world’s 50 great voices by NPR, the Senegalese superstar is the world’s leading performer of mbalax – Oct 20

Metropolitan Opera favorite Sondra Radvanovsky and rising star Jennifer Rowley share the title role of the volatile diva at the heart of Puccini’s operatic thriller, Tosca – Oct 25 – Apr 6

The first comprehensive U.S. exhibition of artwork by the famed choreographer, William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston features interactive installations and sculptures. The show’s title, “Choreographic Objects,” is the artist’s term for his kinetic creations, which encourage visitors to create their own improvised performances – Oct 31 – Feb 24

Visual Arts

Explore the relationship between two of the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance, Giovanni Bellini and Andrea Mantegna. Comprising major loans of paintings, drawings and sculpture, Mantegna and Bellini at the National Gallery in London compares the work of two pre-eminent artists who also happened to be related by marriage – Oct 1 – Jan 27

Bruegel at the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna is being described as a “once in a lifetime” experience. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, an icon of 16th century arts in the Netherlands, is known for his portrayals of peasant life. Only 40 paintings, 60 drawings, and 70 prints of his remain, and over half of them are gathered here for the first major show ever devoted to the artist. 2019 marks the 450th anniversary of his death, and this exhibit is based on unprecedented loans from European and American collections, including the Prado in Madrid and the Frick in New York.  Oct 2 – Jan 13

Pierre Huyghe, one of the world’s leading conceptual artists, known for creating complex immersive ecosystems, will present a new exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London – Oct 3 – Feb 10

The privately-owned Glenstone museum on the outskirts of Washington, DC unveils its significant new expansion – Oct 4

The sixth volume in The Luxury Collection series, The Luxury Collection: Global Artisans ($50) is about the world’s best craftsmanship that can be found in hotels around the world. It showcases the artisanal products that make each venue truly distinct – like the clear sound and precise craftwork of a traditional Spanish guitar at Hotel Alfonso XIII in Seville – publication date Oct 5

Catastrophe and the Power of Art at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo addresses the profound question: What art can do in chaotic times where the future is uncertain? The exhibit will examine how artists respond to the major catastrophes that strike communities, as well as personal tragedies, and the role that art can play in our recovery – Oct 6 – Jan 20

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas is hosting the first major survey of contemporary Native art, Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now. Bringing together work by 80 artists – among them Kay WalkingStick, Athena LaTocha, and Shan Goshorn – and encompassing a vast array of mediums and approaches, the show aims to turn the spotlight on a slice of recent art history – a distinctly Indigenous perspective – that’s too long been omitted by museums – Oct 6 – Jan 7

Charles White: A Retrospective is the first major museum survey devoted to the artist in over 30 years. The exhibition charts White’s full career—from the 1930’s through his premature death in 1979—with over 100 works, including drawings, paintings, prints, photographs, illustrated books, record covers and archival materials – Oct 7 – Jan 13

Perhaps most famous for his transgressive films of the 1970s starring the iconic drag queen Divine, John Waters has more recently become a fixture in the contemporary art world.  John Waters: Indecent Exposure at the Baltimore Museum of Art will be Waters’s first exhibition, and will track his artistic output from 1992 until today – Oct 7 – Jan 6

One hundred years after the Harlem Renaissance emerged as a creative force at the close of World War I, I Too Sing America ($55) offers a major survey on the visual art and material culture of the groundbreaking movement – publication date Oct 9

Anni Albers combined the ancient craft of hand weaving with the language of modern art.  A long overdue recognition of Albers’s pivotal contribution to modern art and design, Anni Albers at the Tate Modern is the first major exhibition of her work in the UK – Oct 11 – Jan 27

For Opacity: Elijah Burgher, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Nathaniel Mary Quinn at The Drawing Center in SoHo in New York City is the first exhibit under the leadership of Laura Hoptman, the museum’s new director (she was previously at the MoMA). The focus is on three young artists who explore diverse identities through portraiture – Oct 12 – Feb 3

Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future at the Guggenheim Museum in New York is the first major solo retrospective of the work of the early 20th century Swedish abstract painter, and makes the case that she was actually the first modernist artist to paint entirely abstract works. The exhibit will include 160 works from the long under-recognized innovator of abstract art – Oct 12 – Feb 3

The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania hosts the longest-running biennial style show in North America: Carnegie International. The 57th edition, under the direction of Ingrid Schaffne, includes artists from around the globe, including Kenyan photographer Mimi Cherono Ng’ok and the Vietnam-based art collective Art Labor – Oct 13 – Mar 25

Laurie Simmons’s work considers how what’s fake can come to seem real through photography, and how women are frequently treated like objects in mass media. Big Camera/Little Camera at the Modern Art Museum Fort Worth will bring together photographs, sculptures, and videos from the past four decades – from early experiments to works from her 2015 series “How We See,” in which she took pictures of female models with eyes painted onto their eyelids – Oct 14 – Jan 27

For its 11th exhibition of contemporary art, the Palace of Versailles has invited the Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto to invest the gardens of the estate of Trianon with art, architecture and performance – Oct 16 – Jan 20

The Palais de Tokyo has given carte blanche to Tomás Saraceno to fill the entirety of the museum’s vast, cavernous spaces this fall. No stranger to grand gestures and best known for his installations involving spiders and webs, the artist will once again return to arachnology, combining it here with an interest in dust particles and what he’s called “cloud cities”: utopian models of airy-looking metropolises – Oct 17 – Jan 6

The Atlas of Brutalist Architecture ($150) explores more than 850 buildings – existing and demolished, classic and contemporary – around the world – publication date Oct 17

Bruce Nauman: Disappearing Acts at the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 is the first comprehensive retrospective of the conceptual artist’s work in over 20 years.  It includes work from the start of his career in the 1960’s through to the present day – Oct 21 – Feb 25

At the Wallach Art Gallery at the Lenfest Center of the Arts at Columbia University in New York City, in partnership with the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today explores the changing modes of representation of the black figure in modern art – Oct 24 – Feb 10

One of the last pre-Raphaelites, Edward Burne-Jones brought imaginary worlds to life in awe-inspiring paintings, stained glass windows and tapestries.  Edward Burne-Jones is his first solo show at the Tate in London since 1933, and charts his rise from an outsider with little formal art training to one of the most influential British artists of the late 19th century – Oct 24 – Feb 24

The 13th edition of the FEMSA Biennial will be its first edition in the Mexican state of Zacatecas. Bearing the title “We Have Never Been Contemporary,” the exhibition is part of an 18-month curatorial project assessing the ways in which the city and state of Zacatecas are the result of a mingling of baroque, colonial, and modern influences, as well as an inquiry into the region’s distinctions between fine and popular arts – Oct 26 – Feb 17

Lily van der Stokker: Friendly Good at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam will present a selection of her wall paintings and drawings, dating from the 1980s to the present – Oct 27 – Feb 24

See other October 2018 Events:

— Travel

— Food & Drink

— Planes, Yachts & Autos

— Fitness & Sports

— Fashion & Design

— Entertainment

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