March diary: this month's must-see events and exhibitions

This month there are shows for every taste, from classic paintings to innovative digital works, spanning disciplines, styles and eras and including solo shows on Picasso, Keith Haring, Sondra Perry and Ryan Schneider. To help curate your diary, the It’s Nice That team has selected five in the UK and five elsewhere around the world, for you to explore and enjoy.

Somewhere in Between
8 March – 27 August 2018
Wellcome Collection, London 

Four accomplished contemporary artists have collaborated with scientists to explore aspects that are vital to human life but difficult to visualise, like our senses, our food sources or our sexual health, for the Wellcome Collection’s newest exhibition. Italian filmmaker Martina Amati, filmmaker and all-round creative Daria Martin, visual artist Maria McKinney and award-winning artist John Walter have produced immersive installations that integrate scientific research surrounding physiology, genetics and neuroscience with issues ranging from synesthesia to HIV. The result is four intriguing, immersive installations that attempt to visualise life’s physical reality, abstract concepts and ideas that lie “somewhere in between”.

Sondra Perry: Typhoon coming on
Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London
6 March — 20 May, 2018

The Serpentine Sackler Gallery will reopen on 6 March to house the first European solo exhibition of Sondra Perry, an American artist “who explores the intersection of black identity, digital culture and power structures through video, media, installation and performance”. She employs digital tools such as blue screen technology, 3D avatars and found footage from the internet, using technology to reflect “on these modes of representation and the abstraction of black identity in art and media,” says The Serpentine. “I’m interested in thinking about how blackness shifts, morphs and embodies technology to combat oppression and surveillance throughout the diaspora,” says Sondra. “Blackness is agile.”

Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy
8 March – 9 September 2018
Tate Modern, London

The first ever solo show of Pablo Picasso at Tate Modern, Love, Fame Tragedy will present over 100 paintings, sculptures and drawings as well as family photographs providing a glimpse into the renowned artist’s personal life. Three of his extraordinary paintings featuring his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter will be exhibited together for the first time since they were created over a period of just five days in March 1932. The exhibition attempts to strip away the myths around Picasso to "reveal the man and the artist in his full complexity and richness”.

Dyspla International Moving Image Festival
14 – 18 March
The Crypt Gallery, London

Arts organisation Dyspla is hosting its first film festival, screening work by dyslexic and neurodivergent filmmakers. The films will be screened simultaneously on a loop throughout the festival, and audiences will be given a radio transmitter upon entry, for them to be able to seek out the films as they tap into each transmission. By moving away from the traditional film festival format, Dyspla hopes to “blur the lines with art gallery space in order to create a performative experience” changing how the audience interacts with the work.

Designers select designers
8 March – 28 April 2018
Aram Gallery, London

Marking the 15th anniversary of Zeev Aram’s gallery, Aram Gallery is bringing back its successful show that invites established designers to exhibit again, and nominate an emerging designer to show with them. It never fails to spotlight exciting up-and-comers, not to mention celebrating the work of renowned experts. Exhibitors include: Bethan Laura Wood, Gitta Gschwendtner, Industrial Facility, Ineke Hans, Jasper Morrison, Martino Gamper, Max Lamb, Michael Anastassiades, Michael Marriott, Pearson Lloyd, Peter Marigold, Ptolemy Mann, Sebastian Bergne, Shin Azumi and Thomas Heatherwick.

Ryan Schneider: No Filter Eden
2 March – 14 April 2018
V1 Gallery, Copenhagen

Ryan Schneider is the latest artist to be showcasing his work at Copenhagen’s V1 contemporary art gallery. Ryan’s large-scale oil paintings often depict people in edenic settings, lounging naked in front of beautiful, idyllic landscapes of deep purples, blues and greens. This paradise is often interrupted by a phone screen as the figures snap their Instagram-friendly surroundings. Enjoying its first solo exhibition at V1, Ryan’s work is a much-needed reminder that we often see the world through our camera phones.

Zoe Leonard: Survey
2 March — 10 June, 2018
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

This March the Whitney Museum of American Art continues its longstanding relationship with artist Zoe Leonard in Zoe Leonard: Survey, the first large-scale overview of the artist’s work in an American museum. Her practice spans photography and sculpture, discussing themes “including the history of photography, gender and sexuality, loss and mourning, migration, displacement, and the urban landscape,” explains the gallery. Zoe’s work has already been acquired for the gallery’s collection but Survey acts as an opportunity to see her career in full where the vastness of the work “asks the viewer to reengage with how to see”.

Manika Nagare: Tracing the Colours
17 March – 13 May 2018
Pola Museum of Art, Tokyo

As part of the Pola Museum’s 15th anniversary, Japanese artist Manika Nagare is taking over the institution’s Atrium Gallery. Known for her vibrant use of colour and flowing style, Nagare has interpreted and reimagined a series of well-known classics that are exhibited in the museum such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Nude in the Water, Vincent van Gogh’s Clumps of Grass and Claude Monet’s Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas.

Arielle Bobb-Willis: Ever-Lucis
4 March – 1 April 2018
Medium Tings Gallery, Brooklyn, New York

A solo show of 23-year old New York-born and raised photographer Arielle Bobb-Willis, whose vibrant and abstract work we featured recently on It’s Nice That. “Colour,” she told us, “is super important to me because for so long my life was in fact very grey…very black and white. It’s me accepting the light playfulness in my life right now.”

Keith Haring
16 March – 24 June 2018
Albertina, Vienna, Austria

Marking the artist’s 60th birthday, the Albertina is curating a comprehensive retrospective of Keith Haring, bringing together 100 works from international museums and private collections. It begins with his early subway drawings and explores his iconic stick figures and instantly recognisable style, showing how his roots in street art translated to a style that conveyed messages of justice and change to a wide audience.