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London
Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends
National Portrait Gallery.
Through May 25.
Born in Italy to American parents, the oil painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) lived an itinerant lifestyle, roaming between Europe and America’s ritziest capitals, and drawing from both continents to create a unique Impressionistic style. This exhibition brings together his portraiture, with a particular emphasis on the artworks that he made for close friends. Works span his entire career, and include photos of authors, actors and members of the leisure classes.
Singapore
Southeast Asian Film Festival
SAM at 8Q.
Through May 3.
“Fundamentally Happy,” a new film about a young man who visits a couple he knows from his youth, hoping to undo past wrongs, will have its world premiere during this festival of movies that hail from and focus on Southeast Asia. The film is an adaptation of a play by the Singaporean playwright Haresh Sharma. The festival includes a number of Singaporean premieres, like “K’na the Dreamweaver” and “Riddles of My Homecoming.”
Madrid
White Fire; Collectionism and Modernity
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.
Through Sept. 14.
The exhibition “White Fire” brings together works from the Kunstmuseum Basel’s modern art collection, featuring leading early 20th-century European art. Artists range across media, and include Munch, Kandinsky, Ernst and Klee. The collection includes a particularly significant range of German masters and traces the shift from Expressionism to post-Expressionism. “Collectionism and Modernity,” also showing at the museum, examines two of the Kunstmuseum Basel’s private collections, the Im Obersteg Collection and the Rudolf Staechelin Collection. The show focuses on how collectors’ tastes and resources affect the art that gets remembered (Chagall and Gauguin are among those on view).
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Tankwa Karoo, South Africa
AfrikaBurn
Stonehenge Farm.
April 27-May 3.
Nearly 10,000 participants will gather in the South African desert to create installations, artworks and performances at this festival, a spin-off of Burning Man, an annual desert rave that takes place in Nevada. The event concludes with a multisite bonfire, where the artworks created throughout are set alight and burned to the ground. Some works will be preserved and transported back to Cape Town where they will serve as public art.
International Arts Guide
A selection of arts events taking place across the world in the coming week.
Moscow
Le Nozze di Figaro
Bolshoi.
Premieres April 25.
Mozart’s comic opera — which features the cast of characters from his opera “The Barber of Seville” — follows Figaro, a valet whose master has designs on Figaro’s fiancée. The production opened in Vienna in 1786, and marked Mozart’s first collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, with whom he also wrote “Don Giovanni” and “Così fan tutte.” Evgeny Pisarev directed this new version and the young British conductor William Lacey will lead the orchestra.
Montpellier, France
Festival International de Claquettes de Montpellier
L’Agora, Cité Internationale de la Danse.
April 22-26.
This four-day tap dance festival kicks off with a revue performance and ends with “Fragments,” a tap show by the Sharon Lavi Company from Barcelona, featuring live string and drums. Events in between include tap dance workshops for participants of all levels and a “Tap Jam” next to the Esplanade Charles de Gaulle.
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Tokyo
Simple Forms: Contemplating Beauty
Mori Art Museum.
April 25-July 5.
After four months of renovations, the museum will reopen with this large group show, featuring work by a diverse array of artists including Picasso, Olafur Eliasson, Man Ray and Anish Kapoor. The exhibition focuses on the use of stripped-down forms and clean lines in art and design across the world, ranging from antiquity to the present day. The museum’s reopening coincides with “Roppongi Art Night” (April 25), a multivenue performance event and art happening that takes place in venues around the Roppongi district of the city. The museum will be open all night for the occasion.
Sydney, Australia
Light Show
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.
Through July 5.
Katie Paterson, James Turrell, Dan Flavin and a number of the world’s other leading light artists are showing in this exhibition. A range of artworks are on view, ranging from compact sculptures to brightly-hued installations that span multiple rooms. Works range from the 1960s to the present day. The exhibition was a popular hit at London’s Hayward Gallery when it showed there in 2013.
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Hamburg, Germany
Enchanted Time: Cézanne, Van Gogh, Bonnard, Manguin. Masterpieces from the Arthur and Hedy Hahnloser-Bühler Collection
Hamburger Kunsthalle.
Through Aug. 16.
From the early years of the 20th-century until the eve of World War II, the Swiss couple Arthur and Hedy Hahnloser-Bühler collected works by France’s leading artistic lights, many of whom they knew personally through their friend, the artist Félix Vallotton. Many of the works they collected are on view, including a number never before seen in Germany. Artists on display include Renoir, Bonnard, Matisse and Cézanne.