With the sudden outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic early last year, many of the world's cultural activities were impacted with such force that anticipated openings, or re-openings, of major institutions had to be postponed from their originally scheduled 2020 dates.

The Art Newspaper has published an overview of 18 high-profile cultural projects that are now aiming to open to the public this year — while uncertainty over the further development of the pandemic in the coming months remains.

The list contains a number of museum projects that were previously due to open in 2020, including the $1-billion Grand Egyptian Museum complex by Heneghan Peng in Cairo, the Renzo Piano-designed Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles and his GES-2 art center in Moscow, Oslo's new Munch Museum by estudio Herreros, and the controversial Humboldt Forum in Berlin.

Other anticipated openings this year include the new Frank Gehry-designed galleries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and his aluminum-clad tower for the Luma Arles art complex in France, Herzog & de Meuron's M+ museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong, the Bourse de Commerce-Pinault Collection in Paris by Tadao Ando, and the temporary Frick Madison inside Marcel Breuer's famed Brutalist building while the Frick Collection's original home undergoes a two-year renovation by Selldorf Architects.