The best of 2017: 10 cultural exhibitions to see around the world

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  Courtesy State Tretyakov Gallery

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  Courtesy Niki Charitable Art Foundation

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  Courtesy NYUAD

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  Courtesy Museum of Islamic Art, Doha

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  Ira Schrank / Dallas Museum of Art

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  Courtesy Zeitz MOCAA

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  Photo by Laziz Hamani

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  Courtesy National Gallery of Art

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  Courtesy Tate

From the portraits of Cezanne to underground Emirati art, Nick Leech, a feature writer at The National, casts an eye over this year’s cultural highlights.

Postwar – Art Between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945–1965

Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, until March 26

This landmark show, which sets out to overturn traditional, western-centric notions of art history, was curated by the Nigerian polymath and Haus der Kunst director, Okwui Enwezor.

Postwar uses more than 350 works by 218 artists from 65 countries to re-examine the history of postwar Modernism from a global perspective, adding notions of East and West, North and South, coloniser and colonised, Pacific and Atlantic to more conventional art historical concepts such as abstraction, realism, figuration and representation.

Easy-going it isn't. Postwar addresses artistic responses to the Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Cold War, decolonisation and the rise of new nationalisms and liberation movements, but catch it while you still can to be able to say "I was there".

Picture: Roy Lichtenstein, Atomic Burst, 1965

Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932

Royal Academy, London, UK, from February 11 to April 17

Of the many exhibitions that are marking the centenary of the twin revolutions that ended centuries of Tsarist rule and put the Bolsheviks in power, the Royal Academy’s promises to be by far and away the most comprehensive. Featuring works by Kandinsky, Malevich, Chagall and Rodchenko, the show will explore one of the most momentous events in modern history through the kaleidoscopic lens of its revolutionary art.

Picture: Boris Mikailovich Kustodiev, Bolshevik, 1920

The Creative Act: Performance • Process • Presence

Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, from March 8

Following the 2014 exhibition Seeing Through Light: Selections from the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Collection, this second showing of works from the yet-to-be-built museum's permanent collection will feature installations, paintings, photography, sculpture, video and works on paper by more than 18 artists including the Emirati Mohammed Kazem as well as Rasheed Araeen, Anish Kapoor and Niki de Saint Phalle.

Picture: Niki de Saint Phalle, Pirodactyl over New York, 1962

But We Cannot See Them: Tracing a UAE Underground, 1988-2008

The Art Gallery at New York University Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Island, from March 2 to May 25

Building on the work of former Guggenheim Abu Dhabi curator Reem Fadda and recent shows at the Sharjah Art Foundation, will this exhibition help to write the modern art history of the Emirates? But We Cannot See Them focuses on a group of artists who, by operating outside formal art institutions and exhibition venues, represented one of the UAE's first underground art movements and includes works by artists such as Hassan Sharif, Abdullah Al Saadi, Mohammed Kazem and Ebtisam Abdulaziz.

Picture: Etisam Abdulaziz, Untitled 1, 2008

Imperial Threads: Motifs and Artisans from Turkey, Iran and India

Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar, from March 15 to November 4

Focusing on examples and moments of material exchange between the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires between the 16th and 18th centuries, this exhibition of sumptuous carpets, textiles and clothing from Turkey, Iran and India will place the region’s luxury goods trade in its wider cultural and artistic context.

Picture: Knotted Wool Carpet with Dragon Motif, Ottoman, Azerbaijan (Shirvan), 17th - 18th century

The Keir Collection of Islamic Art Gallery

Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, US, from April 18, 2017, to April 28, 2019

A dedicated, 2,200-square-foot exhibition space in the heart of the Dallas Museum of Art, the Keir Collection of Islamic Art Gallery will house a revolving display of 100 objects from one of the world’s most significant private collections of Islamic art.

Assembled by the late Hungarian lawyer, Edmund de Unger, and secured as part of a 15-year loan from the collector’s family, it includes masterpieces such as the Khamsa of Nizami, a lavishly-illustrated Mughal manuscript, as well as rare examples of metalwork, lustre ceramics and rare examples of rock crystal, that have helped to transform the museum into the third-largest collection of Islamic art in the United States.

Picture: Khamsa of Nizami, c. 1585–90, Mughal, work on paper, The Keir Collection of Islamic Art on loan to the Dallas Museum of Art.

Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA)

V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa, from September 23

Housed in a historic grain silo complex that was once the tallest building in sub-Saharan Africa, Cape Town’s Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa has been designed by the London-based Heatherwick Studio as the new home for the African art collection of Jochen Zeitz, the former chief executive of sportswear giant Puma. When it opens, Zeitz MOCAA will be the largest contemporary art museum on the continent and both the collector and the designer hope it will have an effect similar to the Guggenheim Bilbao, creating a new centre of gravity for contemporary African art that not only helps to regenerate the V&A waterfront, but also encourages African artists to practise and exhibit at home.

Picture: Zanele Muholi, Tinashe Wakapila, Harare, Zimbabwe, 2011

The House of Dior: Seventy Years of Haute Couture

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, from August 27 to November 7

As with recent exhibitions about the work of Schiaparelli, Alexander McQueen and the costumes of David Bowie, there is no need to be a fashionista to appreciate this kind of show, but it helps.

In addition to 140 garments from the house of Dior, this show will include sketches, photographs, haute couture toiles and other archival material to tell the 70-year story of one of the most influential names in the history of fashion. Featuring outfits designed by Dior alongside those by Yves Saint Laurent, who took over the house after its founder's unexpected death, as well as Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano and Raf Simons, The House of Dior starts with Dior's epoch-defining New Look collection from 1947 and comes right up to date with the work of its current and first female creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri.

Picture: John Galliano for Christian Dior, Red silk and wool dress, spring−summer 2009 collection

Cézanne Portraits

National Portrait Gallery, London, from October 26, 2017, to February 11, 2018

If any show of 2017 has the words "blockbuster" written all over it, it's Cézanne Portraits at London's National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition, which brings together dozens of portraits by the French Post-Impressionist master for the first time, has already been described as a "once in a lifetime experience" so whether you are planning to see the show in London, Washington, DC or Paris, book early and prepare to queue.

Picture: Paul Cézanne, Boy in a Red Waistcoat, 1888-1890, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.

Fahrelnissa Zeid

Deutsche Bank KunstHalle, Berlin, Germany, from October 20, 2017, to March 25, 2018

Following its premiere at London’s Tate Modern in June, this first major retrospective of the work of the influential Turkish modernist painter Fahrelnissa Zeid (1901-1991) will end the year in Berlin.

Tracing Zeid’s career from its origins in Istanbul and Paris, where she studied, through her experiments with abstraction and her eventual return to figuration, the core of the show will consist of Zeid’s large-scale abstract and geometric works from the 1940s to the 1960s, which have been described as “a synthesis of Islamic, Byzantine, Arab and Persian influences combined with stylistic elements that were developed in Europe during the post-war period”.

Picture: Fahrelnissa Zeid, Untitled, c.1950s, Tate. Presented by Raad Zeid Al-Hussein, 2015.