“The sculptures and installations, with their broad mix of materials and techniques,” featured in Rhonda Smith’s “Undiscovered Country” exhibition that has its opening reception as part of SoWa Boston’s First Friday activities on November 1, and continues through December 1 at the Kingston Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave. No. 43, Boston, Massachusetts, “represent both disappearance and appearance — experiences that are simultaneously deeply satisfying and fragile.” In the shadow of recent global warming caused events, through her art, Smith explores the question of whether humans will eventually disappear, and nature survive, using a lifetime of influences — sea tales, myths, poems, industrial and natural elements, medieval imagery, photographs and contemporary statistics — in “shaping, molding, and assembling materials” to give form to her ideas.
A Professor of Fine Arts at the Lesley School of Art and Design and Mass College of Art & Design, Cuban-born, Boston-based Santiago Hernandez creates modern and postmodern architecture inspired paintings under the influence of the work of architects that include Frank Lloyd Wright, Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid, and Rem Koolhaas. Through his own background as a musician, Hernandez uses architectural imagery “to bring out their essential rhythms and their underlying geometric and abstract qualities,” having always been fascinated by the connections between musical and visual structure. Through his new exhibition, “Archiometries,” which opens with a reception on November 7 and remains on view through December 19 at the Nesto Gallery at Milton Academy’s Art and Media Center, 170 Centre St., Milton, Massachusetts, Hernandez feels that he has been able “to synthesize his studies in architecture, design, painting, and music in work that is large in scale and vibrant in color.”
“Anita Kunz: Original Sisters, Portraits of Tenacity and Courage,” opens November 9 at the Norman Rockwell Museum, 9 Glendale Road Route 183, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. For over 45 years, the Canadian-born Kunz’s illustrations have been featured in many of the world’s national and international publications due to her extraordinary ability to convey “complex social and political commentary with visual ingenuity and economy using arresting imagery” through “her vivid and richly colored portraiture that evokes the context, emotional presence, and wider significance of the subjects she depicts.” She has donated 39 or her works to the Rockwell Museum’s permanent collection. “One of the most exciting aspects of this project has been uncovering the hidden lineages and linkages that connect women across culture and time. Bringing so many of these portraits together in a beautiful museum space will give audiences a chance to make new connections and celebrate women’s history as our collective history,” Kunz said. “One of the lessons I learned early on is that art has the power to move people. Every one of the Original Sisters has inspired and sustained me as an artist, and I hope audiences feel excited and energized by these women and their stories.”
C.A. Stigliano grabbed our attention last summer when his striking tattooed marionette-like “Galatea” sculpture took home first prize in the Danforth Annual Juried Exhibition. That work, and several of his other thought-provoking woodcarvings made over the past five years, are on view in “We Are Not Okay” through December 13 at the Hammond Hall Art Gallery at Fitchburg State University, 160 Pearl St., Fitchburg, Massachusetts. “This show, about the state of things in this country, in this culture, worries me,” Stigliano confessed in his artist statement, and noted, “The past five years have been a nightmare of disease and deception. We live in a culture that profits from anger and fear. If a person or a class or a tribe can be made angry enough, or fearful enough, they can be sold anything.” The carved female nude “Galatea” features 65 images taken from works of art that represent or refer to violence against women. “I find hope in the angry voices of women who will not be forced back into the narrow choices of a century ago, and who refuse to sit quietly while their children go out into an unsafe world, and I find hope in those children, in the generations that have followed mine. So many of them look beyond their own welfare and so many are blessed with the will and the strength and the courage to fight.”
Having noticed that many of the artworks submitted for their open call exhibitions had elements of plants and animals in them, Worcester State University gallery director Stacey Parker decided to give them their own show. “Flora and Fauna,” on view through December 14 at the Mary Cosgrove Dolphin Gallery, Ghosh Science and Technology Center, 486 Chandler St., Worcester, Massachusetts, “focuses on our relationship with the natural world.” The show, juried by fiber artist Alice Dillon, and Rachael Drinker, a teacher and naturalist at the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in nearby Boylston, selected a show that “aims for visitors to reconnect with nature, and, perhaps with a long-lost sense of innocence, child-like wonder, and environmental consciousness.”
Featuring artists who relocated to cities throughout the United States from 12 countries in Africa — Ethiopia, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Liberia, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tunisia and Zimbabwe — and one in the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago — whose painting, photography, sculpture, installation and video works “express the different ways in which identity is remade and reimagined,” there’s plenty to learn on how life here looks with fresh eyes in the “States of Becoming” exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, 2101 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Massachusetts, through December 8. “Although practicing in a wide variety of mediums, these artists are united in the important questions their works probe about the role of relocation in reimagining hybrid identities and a sense of belonging,” said Nancy Netzer, Inaugural Robert L. and Judith T. Winston Director of the McMullen Museum of Art, and a BC professor of art history. “Such questions are fundamental to the liberal arts education at Boston College and, especially, to the pedagogy and research of our faculty in African and African Diaspora Studies. We look forward to engaging the community in productive dialogue sparked by these inspired works of art.”
“Slant Dazzle,” an exhibition of works by Pell Lucy, an international collective of artists that came together during the pandemic under the guidance of Boston-based visual artist Deborah Barlow, is on view through December 13 at Bristol Community College’s Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery, Jackson Arts Center, 777 Elsbree St., Fall River, Massachusetts. Taking Emily Dickinson’s famous poem, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” as a starting point, each collective artist chose a piece that responded to the idea of truth revealed indirectly. “The result is a collection of works that invite us to reflect on the broader themes found in Dickinson’s writing. The works do not need to overtly illustrate the poem’s ideas to be meaningful; rather, they embody the same nuanced approach to truth and understanding that Dickinson herself championed. Through this exhibition, we are offered a chance to engage with these ideas in a way that is both thoughtful and profound, revealing the beauty in complexity and the power of art to touch the depths of human experience.” The show has its artist reception on Thursday, November 6 from 6-8 p.m.
Rarely seen works by Varujan Boghosian, one of New England’s most beloved artists who passed away in 2020, can be seen in “Material Poetry” through December 22 at the Cahoon Museum of American Art, 4676 Falmouth Road (Route 28), Cotuit, Massachusetts. Featuring collages and mixed media compositions from throughout his career, Boghosian’s daughter, Heidi, further enhanced the exhibition with works from her own personal collection. Legendary for his ability to turn “castaway objects into art,” Boghosian was always on the lookout for new materials in and around Provincetown or at flea markets and yard sales near his home in Hanover, New Hampshire. And once he got all those new finds home? “With a poet’s mind, he juxtaposed unrelated items and playfully pushed the boundaries of dream and reality,” the show’s announcement stated. Reflecting on his artistic process, Boghosian once said, “I don’t make anything, I find everything.” Rest assured, if you attend this show, you will see something that will become one of your all-time favorite works.
Paintings of domestic interiors, still-lifes, and landscapes by Gail Spaien and Lynne Drexler “that beautifully illustrate both artists’ shared connection with Maine’s stunning natural landscape and coastal life” are on display in “Light in Every Room” at Moss Galleries, 1 Fore St., Portland, Maine, through January 4, 2025. “Though separated by a generation, Spaien and Drexler (who died in 1999) draw upon a lineage of artists inspired by the intricate relationship between the outside world and the intimate spaces of a home.” Drexler spent her final years on Monhegan Island, drawing creative inspiration from the natural surroundings and classical music; through her paintings, Maine-based Spaien, who had a successful 2023 exhibition at London’staymour grahne projects gallery, “celebrates the beauty of domestic life, the natural world, and the importance of craft in building a kinder, gentler existence.”
In the post-Civil War United States, artists were commissioned to create works to fill its public spaces with artworks that showed how to best use and celebrate what would become landmark historical venues like the Boston Public Library and the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, through murals and sculptures. “The Dance of Life: Figure and Imagination in American Art, 1876–1917” at the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., New Haven, Connecticut, through January 5, 2025, features over 100 studies created for large commissions at civic institutions nationwide by artists that includeEdwin Austin Abbey, Edwin Blashfield, Daniel Chester French, Violet Oakley, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and John Singer Sargent, whose final versions would enhance (and in some instances, still enhance) libraries, universities, courthouses, museums, state capitals, train stations and parks throughout the country, using the human figure to communicate with their audiences about community, memory and identity.
Four new shows recently opened at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, 10 Vernon St., Brattleboro, Vermont. “Desire Lines,” co-curated by BMAC Director of Exhibitions Sarah Freeman and Curator Emerita Mara Williams, features six artists for whom drawing is an essential component of their work. James Siena, Dana Piazza, Tara Geer, Nandini Chirimar, Maggie Nowinski, and Alex Callender use graphite, watercolor, crayon, ink and ink wash, collage, acrylic and charcoal to explore, reflect and communicate with their physical and interior worlds. The show runs through February 9, as does photographer Susan Mikula’s “Island” which documents a 30-acre shelf of bedrock that forces the Connecticut River to make an abrupt eastward hitch in Bellows Falls. Also on view: Adrienne Elise Tarver’s multimedia, site-specific installation, “Roots, Water, Air” examines the nuanced and often obscured dimensions of Black female identity; and collage artists Felipe Baeza, Ori Gersht, Simonette Quamina, and Maika’i Tubbs present “The Noise of Us,” compositions “that are physically, visually, and conceptually layered, challenging the traditional approach to collage.” If you’re ever looking for a unique New England art wanderlust trip, the museum is located in Union Station, a stop on Amtrak’s Vermonter train route between Essex Junction and Washington, D.C.
Pairing hard-to-forget installations and sculpture, “Hugh Hayden: Home Work,” on exhibit through June 1, 2025 at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, 415 South St., Waltham, Massachusetts, is the first New England show by the Dallas native and it’s a thorough look at his career of exploring the American dream through the unique perspective of its individual parts. “Hayden’s unique, meticulously crafted sculptures and moving installations evoke poignant reflections and visceral responses pertaining to the human condition within a complex, volatile, and often threatening world,” said Dr. Gannit Ankori, Henry and Lois Foster Director and Chief Curator of the Rose Art Museum and Professor of Fine Arts and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University, who co-curated the show with Dr. Sarah Montross, Chief Curator of the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. “Alongside its universal significance, his art resonates with cultural specificity, responding to the artist’s communities, cultural histories, and identities. The works are brilliantly multifaceted, alluding to myriad topics, including American history and culture, fairy tales, vernacular architecture, education, ecology, surrealism, race, and gender.”
The New Bedford Whaling Museum, 18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, Massachusetts, has opened up its huge collection — and that of its predecessor, the Old Dartmouth Historical Society — for two shows intended to provide historical context to the region with the hope of inspiring re-evaluation of the past and how new discoveries can foster discussions that heal centuries-long wounds. “Up from the Depths: Natural Selections from Our Collections” and “Complicated Legacies: Museum History, White Supremacy and Sculpture” utilize works that once were amongst the museum’s proudest offerings that, upon deeper historical view, carry a regrettable past. This re-examination begins with a bust of Jonathan Bourne by John Gutzon Borglum, the artist behind Mount Rushmore. The museum notes, “Borglum’s involvement with the Ku Klux Klan and his racist ideologies complicate his legacy. This sculpture, commissioned in 1915, was displayed prominently until 2020” and recontextualizes this piece “to foster discussions about the decisions museums make regarding their displays and how they confront their histories. This exhibition is a chance to examine these challenging questions and engage with the ongoing conversation about historical and social justice.” Both shows remain on view through September 7, 2025.