Northeast
BOSTON "Samurai! Armor From the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Collection." More than 140 objects, including armored horses carrying combat-ready samurai in full regalia, reveal the culture of these Japanese warriors, who date to the 12th century. April 14 to Aug. 4. Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue; (617) 267-9300; mfa.org.
BRUNSWICK, ME. "Maurice Prendergast: By the Sea." A lifelong fascination with the seaside is demonstrated in more than 100 works in many media inspired by New England beaches. June 29 to Oct. 13. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 9400 College Station; (207) 725-3275; bowdoin.edu/art-museum.
PORTLAND, ME. "Shangaa: Art of Tanzania." More than 150 objects, from the 19th century to today, showcase the traditional arts of Tanzania, illustrating how its art channels healing energy, embodies authority, addresses the spiritual and celebrates life. June 8 to Aug. 25. Portland Museum of Art, 7 Congress Square; (207) 775-6148; portlandmuseum.org.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. "Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion." A celebration of sharp dressers, this exhibit mixes drawings, garments, photographs and paintings to illustrate the many ways men have fashioned a unique style, from the elegance of Beau Brummell (1778-1840) to today's revolutionaries. April 28 to Aug. 18. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 224 Benefit Street; (401) 454-6500; risdmuseum.org.
WATERVILLE, ME. "The Lunder Collection: A Gift of Art to Colby College." The unveiling of 280 of more than 500 works of American art donated in 2007, including paintings by masters like Sargent, Cassatt, Homer, Hopper, O'Keeffe and Whistler. July 13 to June 8, 2014. Colby College Museum of Art, 5600 Mayflower Hill Drive; (207) 859-5600; colby.edu/academics_cs/museum.
Mid-Atlantic
BROOKLYN "John Singer Sargent Watercolors." Rarely shown works from the plentiful Sargent collections at the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston are joined for the first time to explain Sargent's methods, materials, techniques and mastery of the medium. April 5 to July 28. Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway; (718) 638-5000; brooklynmuseum.org.
NEWARK "The Art of Translation: The Simon Ottenberg Gift of Modern and Contemporary Nigerian Art." Works by 13 artists who between the 1940s and 2000 drew on traditional aesthetics to examine their country's changing social and political landscape, all drawn from a large gift to the museum by a pioneering scholar of modern Nigerian art. May 15 to Aug. 11. Newark Museum, 49 Washington Street; (973) 596-6550; newarkmuseum.org.
NEW YORK "James Turrell." Part of a contemporaneous, three-museum examination of the artist's career — the others are the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — this exhibit includes a major new project that will fill the museum's rotunda with shifting artificial and natural light. June 21 to Sept. 25. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue; (212) 423-3500; guggenheim.org.
NEW YORK "Robert Irwin: Scrim Veil — Black Rectangle — Natural Light." An installation made specifically and only for the fourth floor of the Whitney Museum's Breuer building, but not seen since 1977, resurfaces — possibly for the last time — before returning to storage as the Whitney moves downtown. June 27 to Sept. 1. Whitney Museum, 945 Madison Avenue; (212) 570-3600; whitney.org.
PHILADELPHIA "Great and Mighty Things: Outsider Art From the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection." A large show of drawings, paintings, and sculptures, made from 1930 to 2010 by 27 self-taught artists who use unconventional materials in innovative ways — all part of a promised gift to the museum. Through June 9. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway; (215) 763-8100; philamuseum.org.
WASHINGTON "Albrecht Dürer: Master Drawings, Watercolors and Prints from the Albertina." Nearly 120 of the artist's most exquisite watercolors, drawings, engravings and woodcuts have been borrowed from Vienna's premier drawing collection. March 24 to June 9. National Gallery of Art, National Mall between Third and Seventh Streets at Constitution Avenue N.W.; (202) 737-4215; nga.gov.
WASHINGTON "Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928-1945." About 40 paintings provide an in-depth look at Braque's range in this genre, from intimate interior scenes to large-scale canvases to personal interpretations of daily life. June 8 to Sept. 1. Phillips Collection, 1600 21st Street NW; (202) 387-2151; phillipscollection.org.
Midwest
CHICAGO "Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity." This exhibition of about 80 major paintings by Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir and others examines the role of fashion in their works from 1860 to 1880, which brought the rise of department stores, fashion magazines, and serious interest in fashion as a means of expression. June 26 to Sept. 22. Art Institute of Chicago, 111 South Michigan Avenue; (312) 443-3600; artic.edu/aic.
CLEVELAND "The Forty-Part Motet." In the sound artist Janet Cardiff's best-known work, 40 strategically placed loudspeakers carry 40 individually recorded voices singing a 16th-century sacred motet, allowing visitors to experience both the sum and the parts of a choral work. May 4 to June 9. Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Boulevard; (216) 421-7350; clevelandart.org.
DETROIT "Shirin Neshat." In eight video installations and two photographic series, Ms. Neshat explores identity, gender and power, while managing to embrace both her Islamic tradition and Western sense of individuality. April 7 to July 7. Detroit Institute of Arts, 5200 Woodward Avenue; (31 3) 833-7900; dia.org.
DES MOINES "Transparencies: Contemporary Art and a History of Glass." Artists from around the world explore glass as both medium and subject matter in objects like chandeliers, mirrors, drinking vessels and light bulbs. Through May 22. Des Moines Art Center, 4700 Grand Avenue; (515) 277-4405; desmoinesartcenter.org.
KANSAS CITY, MO. "Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Masterpieces of Modern Mexico from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection." More than 100 works, made from 1910 to 2005, track Mexico's art traditions from the figurative to the surreal, the abstract and the conceptual. May 25 to Aug. 18. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak Street; (816) 751-1278; nelson-atkins.org.
MINNEAPOLIS "More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness." Is seeing disbelieving? Some 30 contemporary artists, including Ai Weiwei and Vik Muniz, examine in many media the ways deception, play, memory, power, simulation, and new technologies cast into doubt once-established beliefs and shift the experience of reality. Through June 9. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2400 Third Avenue South; (888) 642-2787; artsmia.org.
MINNEAPOLIS "Abraham Cruzvillegas: The Autoconstrucción Suites." At the forefront of Mexico's new wave conceptual art movement, Mr. Cruzvillegas in the last decade has created "self-construction" works made from found objects, shown along with recent video and performance works. March 23 to Sept. 22. Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Avenue; (612) 375-7600; walkerart.org.
South
ATLANTA "Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting." About 140 works, arranged chronologically and in pairs, illustrate themes in the work of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. including maternity, Mexican identity and portraiture. Through May 12. High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree Street N.E.; (404) 733-4444; high.org.
FORT WORTH "Wari: Lords of the Ancient Andes." This groundbreaking exhibition reveals the culture of the Waris, who predate the Incas by centuries and are today considered Peru's first empire, through a wide-ranging display of sculptures, textiles, ceramics and other artifacts. June 16 to Sept. 8. Kimbell Art Museum, 3333 Camp Bowie Boulevard; (817) 332-8451; kimbellart.org.
HOUSTON "Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible." Rediscovered after being the subject of Robert Gober's installation in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, Bess, an eccentric, disturbed artist who died in 1977, has his first museum retrospective in more than 20 years. It includes 48 of his paintings and an expanded Gober installation. April 19 to Aug. 18. The Menil Collection, 1533 Sul Ross Street; (713) 525-9400; menil.org.
HOUSTON "James Turrell." This exhibit of his light-based installations, all but one shown for the first time, allows visitors to test their perception, study illusion and see how light shapes space. June 9 to Sept. 22. Museum of Fine Arts, 1001 Bissonnet; (713) 639-7300; mfah.org.
RALEIGH, N.C. "0 to 60: The Experience of Time through Contemporary Art." A multimedia, indoor and outdoor exhibition explores how time is used as form, content and material in art, and how art is used to represent, evoke, manipulate or transform time in the work of 32 artists including Bill Viola, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Tara Donovan. March 24 to Aug. 11. North Carolina Museum of Art, 2110 Blue Ridge Road; (919) 839-6262; ncartmuseum.org.
RICHMOND, VA. "Pop Art and Beyond: Tom Wesselmann." In his first major North American retrospective, this master of the pop nude is also shown as innovative in his use of materials and techniques. April 6 to July 28. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 200 N Boulevard; (804) 340-1400; vmfa.museum.
West
LOS ANGELES "Sicily: Art and Invention Between Greece and Rome." More than 150 masterpieces of ancient art celebrate the culture of this island crossroads between the fifth and third centuries B.C., when its art, architecture, theater, poetry, philosophy and science left an imprint on Greece and Rome. April 3 to Aug. 19. Getty Museum Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway; (310) 440-7300; getty.edu.
LOS ANGELES "Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940-1990." This exhibit of drawings, photographs, models, films, animations, oral histories, and ephemera is intended to reveal the city's underappreciated malls, freeways, corporate towers, modernist homes and other buildings as a design lab that had a global impact. April 9 to July 21. Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive; (310) 440-7300; getty.edu.
LOS ANGELES "James Turrell: A Retrospective." From his early geometric light projections and drawings to installations exploring sensory deprivation and holograms, plus his massive Roden Crater, this show covers his entire career. May 26 to April 6, 2014. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard; (323) 857-6000; lacma.org.
SAN DIEGO "Piranesi, Rome and the Arts of Design." The artist's renowned prints are shown with modern-day interpretations in video, photography and new digital modeling, which enable Piranesi's renderings — of a vase, a candelabrum, a teapot, an altar, a fireplace — to be seen in 3-D. The never-before-crafted objects illustrate his innovative designs. March 30 to July 7. San Diego Museum of Art. 1450 El Prado; (619) 232-7931; sdmart.org.
SAN FRANCISCO "Richard Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years, 1953-1966." The first in-depth look at this period, when Diebenkorn explored both abstract landscapes and a dramatic representational style, presents 100 artworks, many rarely or never on public view. June 22 to Sept. 29. de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive; (415) 750-3600; deyoung.famsf.org.
SEATTLE "Future Beauty: Thirty Years of Japanese Fashion." Japan's unique fashion aesthetic, which focuses on textures and structural forms, light and shade, often using high-tech fabrics and inspired by outrageous, youth-driven street fashion, is shown through about 80 costumes, plus accessories and documentary videos and photographs, borrowed from the Kyoto Costume Institute. June 27 to Sept. 8. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Avenue; (206) 654-3100; seattleartmuseum.org.