Few figures in contemporary art cast a longer shadow than Bruce Nauman. As his recent traveling retrospective showed, for the last three decades he has staked out a range of concepts and practices while the rest of the contemporary-art world seemed to follow in tow. Now, curator Christine Van Assche of the Centre Georges Pompidou has brought together fifty-two of Nauman’s works, offering a specifically European perspective on the artist. Arranged thematically, the show focuses on the artist’s relationship to language—written, oral, and musical—across various media, including sound and video, drawing, and neon. May 24-Sept. 28; travels to Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Dec. 9-March 9, 1998, and later that year to London and Helsinki

— Mark Van de Walle