By Priscilla Frank | The Huffington Post

This article originally appeared here

This Saturday marks the first official day of summer, and whether you’ve been hiding under air conditioned shelter for months or are still praying for a day you can bust out the denim shorts, one thing is for certain: Summer art exhibitions have arrived!

This year’s crop of summer-fresh art shows is as wonderfully diverse, innovative and visually hypnotic as we could hope for. We’re pleased to find an artistic horizon full of group shows and solo exhibitions that diversify the museum experience and poke holes in the singular art historical narrative that’s grown so hopelessly obsolete. This year’s stellar museum shows explore contemporary Latin American art, female modernist photographers, an Indian Cubist painter, and a female painter known to “paint like a man.” There’s also an exhibition dedicated to queer iconography, children’s imaginations and African American paper artworks.

Get ready to wipe the sweat off your forehead and head to your local art viewing establishment, because art lovers know the best way to enjoy a sunny day is getting blasted by AC in the presence of groundbreaking art.

What: Susurrus
Where: The Contemporary, Austin
When: Now until June 28, 2014
Why: Described as “part radio play, part stroll in the park, part lesson in bird dissection, part musical recital,” David Leddy’s unorthodox performance is a play without actors or a stage. (Very loosely) based off “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the piece gives viewers an audio tape and a map, allowing them to experience the unique walking play for themselves

What: Public Intimacy: Art and Other Ordinary Acts in South Africa
Where: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
When: Now until June 29, 2014
Why: The multimedia group exhibition features 25 artists exploring the political and poetic complexities of contemporary South Africa, a country in a singular state of transition. The show coincides with the 20th anniversary of democracy in South Africa.

What: British Folk
Where: Tate Britain
When: Now until August 31, 2014
Why: Folk art has long been neglected by British culture. This exhibition asks why. With artworks including a sculpture of a cockerel made from mutton bones during the Napoleonic wars and votive offerings suspended in bottles of clear liquid, the show makes a good case for the often unacknowledged and humble art form.

What: Made In L.A. 2014
Where: The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
When: Now until September 7, 2014
Why: Los Angeles is becoming a more competitive and alluring cultural center every day and this diverse and delicious group exhibition shows just that. The selection of emerging and under-represented artists range from ceramicists to “quantum painters,” as seen above.

What: M.F. Husain
Where: Victoria and Albert Museum, London
When: Now until July 27, 2014
Why: Maqbool Fida Husain, one of India’s most beloved artists, combines traditional Indian imagery with contemporary European modes of visualization, namely Cubism. The V&A Museum presents a series of eight triptychs made by the artist, combining religious iconography, Indian history and personal memories in what the artist called “a museum without walls.”

What: Go-Betweens: The World Seen through Children
Where: Mori Art Museum, Japan *When: Now until August 31, 2014
Why: The striking group exhibition takes its name, the “go-betweens,” from Jacob A. Riis’ description of immigrant children who served as bridges for parents who sometimes couldn’t speak English. Despite being at the whims of their environment, children continually possess the uncanny ability to traverse boundaries, whether between cultures or between reality and dreams. The show explores how kids, with unconstrained imaginations and no bounds to tradition, hold, in many ways, the maximum potential for new ideas.

What: Sphere of Influence: Pictorialism, Women, and Modernism
Where: New Orleans Museum of Art
When: Now until August 24, 2014
Why: While individual female photographers are just now being written into many of the art historical narratives they helped influence, the networks of women artists remain largely unacknowledged. This exhibition explores a group of female photographers including Eva Watson-Schütze, Gertrude Käsebier, and Anne W. Brigman, who, working at the turn of the century, ushered in an era in photography that privileged the artistic over the mechanical nature of the medium.

What: Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today
Where: Guggenheim Museum, New York
When: Now until October 1, 2014
Why: Featuring 50 works in a range of media, this group exhibition showcases the diverse range of contemporary art emerging from Latin America today. Depicting various creative responses to social inequality, political repression, economic progress, and an array of other cultural realities, the show revels in the complexity of Latin America’s past and present, while posing questions about its future.

What: Magical Realism and Modern Oaxaca: Remembering Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014)
Where: Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California
When: Now until November 30, 2014
Why: The MoLAA presents a vibrant homage to the hyperrealist master Gabriel García Márquez, who passed away in April. His penchant for colorful myths and enchanted histories lives on in artists including Laura Hernández, Rodolfo Morales, and Francisco Toledo.

What: Spiritual Strivings: A Celebration of African American Works on Paper
Where: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
When: June 27 to October 12, 2014
Why: Taking inspiration from W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1903 essay “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” the exhibition depicts the realization of Du Bois’ goal of African Americans becoming “a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.” Expect a stunning batch of the 20th century’s most revolutionary African American artists working on paper.

What: Small
Where: The Drawing Center
When: July 11 to August 24, 2014
Why: The group exhibition features a selection of diminutive artworks, ranging from postage-stamp-sized watercolors to manipulated found objects. The various works explore size in relation to perception, memory, gender roles and the power of imagination. And they’re so tiny!

What: Theresa Bernstein: A Century in Art
Where: Woodmere Art Museum
When: July 26 to October 26, 2014
Why: Beginning in 1910, Bernstein enchanted the world with her expressive portraits of immigrant women and the working class, inhabiting Manhattan sites like Coney Island and Carnegie Hall. For the next 80 years, Bernstein was hailed for “painting like a man.” We hate the phrase, but we love her.

What: Over The Rainbow: Seduction and Identity
Where: Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art
When: June 21 to August 17, 2014
Why: This stunning group exhibition, in collaboration with WorldPride Toronto 2014, riffs off queer tropes including camp, celebrity and rainbows, looking beyond the surface to explore the ways that mainstream and gay culture effect and shape each other. Artists include Attila Richard Lukacs, Keith Haring and Betty Goodwin.

What: Beyond Pop Art: A Tom Wesselmann Retrospective
Where: Denver Art Museum
When: July 13 to September 14, 2014
Why: How much do you really know about the founder of Pop Art, Tom Wesselmann? Well, after this comprehensive and chronological survey of his artistic career, you’ll know quite a lot. From his abstract collages to intense erotic compositions, you’ll see the lesser-known artistic inclinations of Wesselmann as well as his iconic, color-saturated still-lifes.

What: Marsden Hartley: The German Paintings (1913-1915)
Where: LACMA, Los Angeles
When: August 3 to November 30, 2014
Why: Commemorating the centennial of World War I,LACMA presents the vibrant artworks of an American modernist painter’s influential stay in Berlin. The paintings, spanning from 1913-1915, showcase the artist’s melding of military symbols and Native American motifs, while exploring the impact of the war on his work.