Fine Arts
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The Clark Changes Winter Admission Policies
Update on Programming
By: - Dec 22nd, 2014Traditionally the Clark Art Institute offered free admission during the off-season. This was particulaerly attractive for local residents with the opportunity to view the collection and special exhibitions. The museum also staged some wonderful Clark After Dark parties. We used to say never miss a Clark party. Particularly on a bleak winter night. Now less costs more.
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The Heart Is Not a Metaphor at MoMA
Made Readymades by Robert Gober
By: - Dec 19th, 2014The merry Dada prankster Marcel Duchamp changed the definitions of art with his Found Objects, Ready Mades and Assisted Readymades. The Robert Gober show at MoMA requires a new category, Made Readymades.
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Kara Walker Afterword
Outtakes of Giant Sugar Sphinx at Sikkema Jenkins
By: - Dec 19th, 2014At the age of 28 Kara Walker won a genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Now middle aged she has enjoyed success with work focusing on ante bellum slavery and more recently the triangle trade in slaves, molasses and rum. Our critique about her show at Sikkema Jenkins Gallery has more to do with marginal execution than its polemical subject matter.
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ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow at Guggenheim Museum, NY
Otto Piene an Artist and Mensch
By: - Dec 17th, 2014The Guggenheim Museum in New York will close the ZERO exhibition on January 7, 2015. It is a comprehensive survey, highlighting more than 40 artists from 10 countries in Europe, South America and Japan. They were members of major artist groups and developments post WWII during the 1950s - 1960s.The second part of this article is dedicated to Otto Piene at CAVS/ MIT - and all who came to work or knew him and The Center.
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Cubism for the Holidays
School of Paris Museum and Gallery Exhibitions
By: - Dec 17th, 2014The School of Paris, particularly Picasso and Matisse, with sidebars on Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Fernand Leger are the heart and soul of museum and gallery exhibitions during the busy holiday season. These show provide invlauable insights to the issues of cubism and abstract art in the 20th century.
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Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs
At MoMA through February 4
By: - Dec 15th, 2014During the busy holiday season The Museum of Modern Art is featuring the blockbuster exhibition of the artist’s triumphant and inventive last works Henri Matisse: The Cutouts. The exhibition drew some 500,000 visitors last summer to London’s Tate Modern.
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Perry T. Rathbone and The Boston Raphael
A Biography by His Daughter Belinda
By: - Dec 12th, 2014The Boston Raphael by Belinda Rathbone is the first book to focus on the Museum of Fine Arts since the two volume official centennial history by Walter Muir Whitehill in 1970. She writes about the scandal that brought disgrace to her father's brilliant career. This attempt to rehabilitate his reputation also provides a rich and compelling overview of the era in which he was the paradigm of a successful museum director.
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The British Invade Portland, Maine
Museum Hosts the Berger Collection from Denver
By: - Nov 29th, 2014anything over 255 chars will be deleted.
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Peter Dean: Life on the Edge of the World
The Figurative Expressionist Comes Full Circle
By: - Nov 22nd, 2014Peter Dean was a major force in the New York City art scene during the 1960s, 70s and 80s. He co-founded two distinct socially conscious art groups, showed in major galleries, and exhibited at the US Pavilion at the 41st Venice Biennale. A current exhibition in Chelsea gives us a rare and thrilling look into Dean's world.
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James Turrell at Mass MoCA
Light Years for Planned Installation
By: - Nov 21st, 2014James Turrell is best known for developing Roden Crater in Arizona as an epic scaled celestial observatory and light work. The project is incomplete and not accessible to visitors. But it is the heart and soul of work that is world renowned. In 2013 there was a touring retrospective of his work. The approximate scale of that exhibition, some 32,000 square feet, will be used for a 25-year-long Turrell installation at Mass MoCA.
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Laurie Anderson’s Mass MoCA Project
Part of Phase Three Museum Expansion
By: - Nov 20th, 2014Mass MoCA a kunsthalle or non collecting museum established a new paradigm when it opened 25-year-long, large scale installations of works by Sol LeWitt and Anselm Kiefer. Now six more A list artists are planned including space for multi media performance artist Laurie Anderson. During the recent media event to announce these ambitious projects we spoke with Anderson about her ongoing relationship with MoCA and the Berkshires.
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Figurative Expressionist Artist Jay Milder
Unblotting the Rainbow
By: - Nov 20th, 2014Jay Milder came of age during the Second Generation of the New York School as one of the seminal Figurative Expressionist painters and one of the SoHo loft pioneers. Today Milder's influence on painting is widespread and he has been cited as influence of both Neo-Expressionism in the United States and the graffiti art movement in Brazil.
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Mass MoCA Launches Confluence Campaign
Some $13.56 of $30 Million Matched to States $25.4 Million
By: - Nov 18th, 2014Yesterday's lively press conference at Mass MoCA, announcing the $54.4 million Confluence Campaign, was preempted by a news leak of an embargoed press release by Geoff Edgers of the Washington Post. While that story provided a tantalizing overview the press conference covered many of the complex and exciting details. This updates our prior reports with more to follow.
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Mass MoCA’s Phase Three Renovations
Major Artists Chosen for Long-term Installations
By: - Nov 16th, 2014On November 17 Mass MoCA announces plans for the renovation and programming of 130,000 square feet of industrial space as the final phase of development for its North Adams campus. Planned to open in 2016 the museum must match a state grant for $25.4 million. Works from the estates of Robert Rauchenberg and Louise Bourgeoise will be on view in addition to installations by Laurie Anderson, Jenny Holzer, James Turrell and Gunnar Schoenbeck.
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Water & Earth : A Call to Protect Fragile Ecosystems
At Gallery 51 in North Adams, MA
By: - Nov 15th, 2014The exhibition's curators, Julia Morgan-Leamon and Sarah Sutro, have brought together ten national and international artists, who are committed in their work to affect the environment and preserve our ecology by producing works that are mindful and attempt to encourage the visitor to live with care. The individual works are beautifully made and thoughtfully presented. It is a cohesive exhibition, well worth seeing - at Gallery 51, North Adams, MA, until November 30th, open daily from 10 am to 6 pm.
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The Getty Center Cost $1.3 Billion
Destination for 1.3 Million Annual Visitors
By: - Nov 14th, 2014Recently we were among the 1.3 million annual visitors to the Getty Center in California. The Richard Meier designed complex opened in 1997 at a cost of some $1.3 billion. While spectacular in scale and cliff top site the museum is oddly generic displaying a thin permanent collection with a handful of very expensive acquisitions through some curatorial hanky panky.
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Abstract Expressionist Arshile Gorky
Exploring Boston/ Watertown Armenian Heritage
By: - Nov 11th, 2014Arshile Gorky painted several portraits of himself with his mother. They were based on a precious photograph. She died during the Armenian Genocide. The child emigrated to America and grew up in the Boston/ Watertown Armenian community. The artist, Martin Mugar, discusses family tradition and his Armenian heritage as it relates to the early years and art education of the seminal abstract expressionist.
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Framing the Rose
De Gustibus
By: - Nov 06th, 2014When not installing exhibitions Rose Art Museum preparator, the artist Roger Kizik, was encouraged by director Carl Belz and then Joe Ketner to design and create hand crafted frames for singular works in the collection. One of the most successful of these was for a painting from Marsden Hartley's German series. While viewing the Hartley exhibition at the LA Couunty Museum of Art we were furious to find the painting reframed generically. Kizik responds to this issue.
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Marsden Hartley: The German Paintings 1913 to 1915
LA County Museum of Art to November 30
By: - Nov 05th, 2014Arriving in Paris in 1912, Marsden Hartley, then 35, met two German officers and joined them in Berlin. From 1913 to 1915, and his return to the States, Hartley created a brilliant series of works inspired by and on equal footing with Europe's leading modernists. These works are now on view at the LA County Museum of Art.
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Poetic Whimsy Spoken in Form and Motion
Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde To Iconic
By: - Nov 05th, 2014Alexander Calder's brilliant abstract works revolutionized modern sculpture and made him one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. This wonderful exhibition brings together 40 of the artist's mobiles (kinetic) and stabiles ( stationary) to explore how Alexander Calder introduced the visual vocabulary into American cultural vernacular. At this once in a generation show, the power of his poetic mastery of elegant form, balance and motion is underscored by his infectious personality of delight and whimsy.
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James Hampton at the Smithsonian
The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nation's Millennium
By: - Nov 04th, 2014James Hampton is considered one of the great American folk artist. For 14 years, Hampton created the Throne using various shimmering metallic foils, old furniture, pieces of cardboard, old light bulbs, shards of mirror and old desk blotters. He had pinned it together with tacks, glue, and tape.
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LA Museums
A Week on the Run
By: - Oct 31st, 2014Enduring fits of road rage during a week in LA we made daily visits to great museums. This is an initial report which will continue.
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Hampton's the Throne of the Third Heaven.
By: - Oct 30th, 2014It's hard to uncover Hampton's intuitions or thoughts processes that went into making of the Throne.
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Shadows
Warhol at LA Moca through February 2
By: - Oct 30th, 2014Edge to edge LA MoCA is showing the 102 silk screen paintings comprising Andy Warhol's 1978-79 series Shadows. Viewing this dense installation, on view through February 2, entailed no heavy lifting. Andy called the series "Disco Decor."
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Modern Spirit: The Art of George Morrison
Heard Museum Phoenix to January 12
By: - Oct 28th, 2014The Modern Spirit: The Arts of George Morrison is a five venue traveling exhibition which is on view at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona through January 12. Morrison (1919-2000) left the Chippewa people of Lake Superior to study at the Arts Student League in 1943. He enjoyed success in New York with numerous gallery and national museum exhibitions. In 1970 he returned to teach in Minnesota where he primarily lived and worked for the remainder of his life. As an abstract artist Morrison defies narrow definitions of American Indian Art. His life and work did much to expand that.
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