Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of Picasso’s death, Young Picasso in Paris highlights a significant work, Le Moulin de la Galette (ca. November 1900), from the Guggenheim collection. The famous dance hall—formerly a mill engaged in the production of a brown bread, or galette—had also been depicted by such avant-gardists as Ramón Casas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vincent van Gogh.

The Guggenheim Museum releases its schedule of exhibitions for 2023.

In the late 1960s, Eva Hesse sought to make objects that were neither painting nor sculpture, but a hybrid that was all her own. Simultaneously adopting and pushing against the prevailing Minimalist language of repetitive forms and hard edges, her work is imbued with a haptic experience that reflects her keen interest in materiality and incongruity.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents an exhibition devoted to Chilean artist, poet, activist, and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña (b. 1948, Santiago), who has been based in New York for the last forty years.

This spring, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will present an exhibition by pioneering abstractionist artist Sam Gilliam. Between May 25 and Sept. 4, “Sam Gilliam: Full Circle” will pair a series of circular paintings (or tondos) created in 2021 with “Rail” (1977), a landmark painting in the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection.

Alongside the commissions, Works & Process will present performance excerpts and artists discussions of new works prior to their premieres at leading organizations including BAAD!, BAM, Boston Ballet, Federal Hall, Glimmerglass Festival, The Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Ballet. Taking place in the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has successfully completed the public consultation process for the revitalization of its Sculpture Garden. The Hirshhorn is the only Smithsonian museum directly integrated into the National Mall. The revitalization project will connect the 1.5-acre garden on the National Mall with the 4-acre plaza surrounding the museum, which welcomes 1 million visitors annually.

Works & Process will resume its signature behind the scenes Artist-driven programs, uniquely blending performance highlights with insightful artists discussions all prior to premiere.

Drawing from the Guggenheim’s exceptional collection of works by Kandinsky, the exhibition features approximately eighty paintings, watercolors, and woodcuts, as well as a selection of his illustrated books, spanning the artist’s earlier years in Russia and Germany and through his exile in France at the end of his life.

From May 7–October 11, 2021, an exhibition of new and recent works by artist Deana Lawson, winner of the Hugo Boss Prize 2020, will be on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Lawson’s presentation will include large-scale photographs and holograms. In addition, the museum is producing a film exploring Lawson’s practice that will be released in the early fall.

The performing arts series Works & Process announces the addition of 6pm performances at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as a part of New York state’s “Safely Bringing Back the Arts” pilot program. Since March 19, under the guidance of the Department of Health, two concurrent series of performances produced by Works & Process are taking place in the Guggenheim’s iconic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda. These reduced-capacity events are among the first indoor performances the state has permitted since it closed venues due to the pandemic a year ago, reaching a milestone in the recovery of the city’s cultural sector.

In 2015, Michael Conforti retired as director of the Clark Art Institute after some 20 years. The Clark is very different now then what he signed on for. Today, the Clark hosts summer blockbuster shows and is one of the nations foremost research centers. From the beginning, it has had close ties with Williams College where Conforti teaches a graduate course in museum studies. He oversaw the expansion and renovation with architect Tadao Ando. While running the Clark he was on the road and hard to pin down. Now retired, we worked together on an extensive overview of his career, accomplishments, and issues for museums.

Joe Thompson graduated from Williams College in 1981. As founding director of MASS MoCA he has been here ever since. Stepping down in October he will sever ties next summer. Between now and then he will plan the next move. Other than some loose ends his remarkable work here is complete. Magnificently so.

In 1968 the Institute of Contemporary Art was evicted from Newbury Street. Bag and baggage it was mothballed in its failed former home on Soldier's Field Road. Connected to new Mayor Kevin White and Deputy Mayor, Katky Kane, they gave Andrew C. Hyde a long shot at turning things around. The relaunch largely entailed embracing an emerging generation of artists which formed the Studio Coalition in 1969 and Boston Visual Artists Union in 1970.

“The Clark’s upcoming summer season is an ambitious program highlighting new discoveries and new initiatives,” said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark. “We are truly energized by the opportunity to activate our entire campus by sharing exhibitions that will introduce our visitors—and the world—to artists whose work is vibrant, dynamic, and inspiring. This summer’s programs span more than one hundred years of artistic practice and explore a rich array of themes through both historic and contemporary lenses.”

Since the 1960s and Perry T. Rathbone I have interviewed every director of the Museum of Fine Arts. Sitting recently with Matthew Teitelbaum was refreshingly different. We were renewing a relationship that started in 1989 when he was a curator for Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art. In 1993 he returned home to become senior curator at Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario. He became director there before coming to the MFA in 2015 as its eleventh director. While in the thick of staff changes and policy strategies he invites us to evaluate progress over the next five years.

In May the world's foremost architect, Frank Gehry, signed on to design The Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum in North Adams. It is one of 11 projects being developed by visionary museum director Thomas Krens. There is a daunting sticker price of some $300 miliion for construction anticipated to start as early as June, 2018.

In 2013 we interviewed abstract artist Ellsworth Kelly during an exhibition of his relief series in wood at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. A graduate of the Museum School he maintained close times with the city and its museum. He passed away yesterday at his home in Spencertown, New York.

Tom Krens joined the Guggenheim Foundation in 1988 when museums were attempting to transform to business models. Now, for North Adams he is developing Global Contemporary Art Museum. In a new paradigm it is being privately funded as a for profit institution. With reverse momentum he is establishing a business on the model of a fine arts museum.

George McNeil emerged as one of the First Generation Abstract Expressionist and New York School painters during the late thirties. He was shown in the New York Worlds Fair in 1939, and in 1935 he was a member of the W.P.A. and served on the Federal Art project with artists such as Willem de Kooning and James Brooks.

James 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.

Decades ago the sculptor Kahlin Gibran and his wife Jean purchased a shell in Boston's ethnically mixed South End. A meticulous craftsman the home evolved as a museum of his work and collection. Together they wrote a definitive 1974 biography "Kahlil Gibran, His Life and World." Now Jean has published "Love Made Visible: Scenes from a Mostly Happy Marriage" about a complex relationship with her late husband.

After three years with eleven museums on three continents the treasures of the Clark Art Institute are back home safe and sound. They will be seen this summer when the museum reopens after extensive renovation and expansion on July 4. This grand tour of major museums will reap benefits as the Clark requests loans for major exhibitions. Other major museums, however, including the Museum of Fine Arts and the Guggenheim, have loaned works to their satellites and commercial exhibition promoters for cold cash.

There were just 250 works to convey Russia! Nine Hundred Years of Masterpieces and Master Collections at the Guggenheim Museum. This exhibition was interesting in view of efforts to write a history of 19th century art and modernism that does not entirely focus on Paris. The highlight of the exhibition conveyed the brilliant but brief Great Utopia that emerged with the Russian Revolution until the rise of Stalin after the death of Lenin. This review of the 2005 exhibition was posted to Maverick Arts Magazine.

By 1913, as the leader of the Russian movement of Suprematism, Kazimir Malevich pushed abstract art to the limit. During the initial liberation of the Russian Revolution he held a position of authority over the fine arts. That Utopia ended with the rise of Joseph Stalin after which the fine arts retreated to the conservative, agit-prop movement of Social Realism. This review is reposted from 2004 article in Maverick Arts Magazine.