The Dandelion Chandelier Luxury Calendar for The Arts highlights noteworthy events around the world in ballet, modern dance, performance art, classical music, opera and jazz. Plus notable new art museum exhibits and installations. These are the best new events in the world of the arts in December 2018. For the rest of the Luxury Calendar, click here.
the best new events in the world of the arts in December 2018
December is a holiday feast for your eyes and ears thanks to the splendid array of performances and exhibits to see. There’s a plethora of holiday vocal and instrumental concerts from which to choose in nearly every city in the world – not to mention there are Nutcrackers galore both classic and with modern twists. You will also find contemporary performances to enjoy such as Julia Wolfe’s oratorio Anthracite Fields in addition to innovative performances at BAM and Alvin Ailey. In visual arts, the focus is also contemporary with explorations of street art and survery’s of female artists like Judy Chicago, Vija Celmins and Rosana Paulino. We fear the only problem you will face this month will be choosing which artistic events you will attend.
Performing Arts
The New York City Ballet’s performances of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center continue this month – through Dec 30
All month, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performs at City Center – through Dec 31
The Bang on a Can All-Stars performs Julia Wolfe’s oratorio Anthracite Fields – a conjuring of hardscrabble coal-mining life in early-twentieth-century Pennsylvania – alongside the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, at Zankel Hall – Dec 1
The LA Phil and Michael Tilson Thomas take on Tchaikovsky’s urgent pathos and Ives’ wild, no-holds-barred invention during Tchaikovsky & Ives with MTT – Dec 1-2 and 7-9
Christmas classic The Nutcracker will be performed by the Royal Ballet in London – Dec 3 – Jan 15
La Traviata open’s at the Metropolitan Opera featuring a dazzling 19th-century setting that changes with the seasons. If you wait to see this show in April you will have a chance at seeing Plácido Domingo – Dec 4 – April 27
The New York premier of Halfway to Dawn is at BAM. Los Angeles-based choreographer David Roussève presents a jubilant dance-theater celebration of jazz composer and arranger Billy Strayhorn – Dec 5 – 8
Ballet West returns to the Kennedy Center with its whimsical new production of The Nutcracker – Dec 5 – 9
BAM raises the volume with a production of Greek by Mark-Anthony Turnage, which sets the Oedipus fable in bawdy nineteen-eighties London – Dec 5- 9
At the New York Philharmonic Jaap van Zweden leads Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, one of his magnificent “trilogy” of final symphonies, that speaks in his most personal voice, continuing to have profound emotional impact – Dec 6 – 8
Renowned blues-rock guitarist, multi-platinum-selling singer/songwriter, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Steve Miller plays Jazz at Lincoln Center – Dec 7 – 8
During the Festival of Carols at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, 110 singers from the Los Angeles Master Chorale will perform holiday favorites – Dec 8 and 15
Head to the Joyce in NYC for brilliant pointe work and hilarious parodying of ballet classics by your favorite men in tights. Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo will feature the always delightful Act II of Swan Lake and Petipa’s The Little Humpbacked Horse – Dec 11 – 30
Verdi’s Attila is at Milan’s La Scala – Dec 11 – Jan 8
The new production of Humperdinck’s exquisite opera Hansel and Gretel at the Royal Opera House in London is the perfect treat for Christmas – Dec 11 – 29
The New York Philharmonic performs Handel’s Messiah – Dec 12 – 15
Trinity Church Wall Street presents its acclaimed performance of Handel’s Messiah conducted by Julian Wachner – Dec 13 – 16
Charles Lloyd & The Marvels: 80th Birthday Celebration is at Jazz at Lincoln Center – Dec 14 – 15
The New York Philharmonic celebrates the season with its annual Holiday Brass – Dec 16
Mark Morris Dance Group’s beloved retro-modern reimagining of The Nutcracker, The Hard Nut, returns to BAM for the holidays, playfully preserving the warm spirit of an essential holiday tradition – Dec 14 – 23
Mozart’s The Magic Flute opens at the Metropolitan Opera – Dec 19 – Jan 5
The 350th Anniversary Inaugural Gala takes pace at Opera National de Paris – Dec 30 – 31
Ring in the New Year with beloved American soprano Renée Fleming, the New York Philharmonic, and Music Director Jaap van Zweden as they sing and dance into 2019 with Broadway and film hits, Viennese waltzes and operetta gems – Dec 31
Visual Arts
Curated by Ferran Barenblit, Jaume Plensa at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona will provide a comprehensive view of Plensa’s work from the 1980s to the present. The artist’s koanic work plays on the yin and yang of various phenomena – how darkness can accentuate light (and vice versa) and how silence can emphasize noise – Dec 1 – April 22
Judy Chicago: A Reckoning at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami is a full-career survey that will bring together works from her early days as a feminist-art pioneer as well as more recent figurative paintings, including Purple Poem and a brand-new site-specific smoke piece – Dec 4 – April 21
Italian Frescos: From Giotto to Tiepolo ($150) is tribute to the excellence of Italian frescoes in a large-format volume, featuring the paintings in extraordinary detail–a prestigious volume for the art lover’s library – Dec 4
The Museum Brandhorst in Munich is hosting an exhibition by Alex Katz. Included in this show will be Katz’s stylized portraits of notables from the New York art world, among them the late dancer Paul Taylor, whom Katz painted as a stark white figure against an all-black background. As part of the show, alongside Katz’s portraits and landscapes, the museum will premiere a new documentary about the artist – Dec 6 – April 22
Street scenes are among the most pervasive subjects in art history, having appeared in everything from ancient Roman frescoes to Romare Bearden paintings. But what value do they have for artists today? That query formed the basis for The Street: Where the World Is Made at MAXXI, Rome. Included will be work by Gimhongsok, Francis Alÿs and Yael Bartana, among others – Dec 7 – April 28
Pinacoteca of Sao Paulo will present Rosana Paulino: The Sewing of Memory. Spanning three rooms on the first floor of Pina Luz and curated by resident curators Valéria Piccoli and Pedro Nery, this is the largest individual exhibit of Paulino’s work at a major museum in the country. Renowned for tackling social issues arising from the position black women occupy in contemporary society, the artist will present over 140 works she produced over the course of twenty-five years – Dec 8 – March 4
No American museum has ever put on a survey of Sri Lankan art before, so Los Angeles County Museum of Art is breaking new ground by bringing together 250 artworks spanning nearly 2,000 years of the country’s history with its exhibition The Jeweled Isle: Art from Sri Lanka. The show will feature precious decorative objects, 19th-century photographs depicting the South Asian country’s scenery and monuments – Dec 9 – June 23
Pedro Figari’s work has rarely been surveyed despite his having long been considered one of the most notable modernists in Latin America. Pedro Figari: African Nostalgias at Museu de Arte de São Paulo will span the full breadth of the Uruguayan artist’s career, with a focus on how his background as a human rights lawyer influenced his paintings – Dec 12 – Feb 10
Oskar Kokoschka at the Kunsthaus Zurich will include around 200 works that cover the full spectrum of his output, from paintings to prints – Dec 14 – March 10
Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is the artist’s first North American retrospective in 25 years will feature around 150 paintings, sculptures, and drawings – Dec 15 – March 31
The Atkinson will show the work of renowned American photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe – Dec 15 – March 23
At NYC’s MET, Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera will begin in the 1940s and extend into the twenty-first century to explore large-scale abstract painting, sculpture, and assemblage through more than fifty works – Dec 17
The sixth edition of the Guangzhou Triennial at the Guangdong Museum of Art, titled “As We May Think: Feedforward,” will investigate ideas related to technology, machines, and humanity. The triennial will include an archival exhibition, curated by Wang Shaoqiang, the director of the Guangdong Museum of Art, as well as a three-part themed exhibition organized by Philipp Ziegler, Angelique Spaninks and Zhang Ga – Dec 21 – March 10
In honor of the 50th anniversary of the death of the pioneering conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea is mounting the most comprehensive exhibition of his work in the Asia-Pacific region to date titled The Essential Duchamp. Comprising some 150 works, many of them sourced from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the show will include the artist’s famous Fountain (1917/50) sculpture and other groundbreaking “readymades” alongside archival materials – Dec 22 – April 7
see other december 2018 events
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