Article Excerpts
Welcome Statement Nov/Dec 2019
Welcome to our final issue of 2019! We compiled its contents knowing that what you’re holding will be sitting front and center at our official exhibitors’ booth at Art Basel Miami Beach from December 5 through 9 at the Miami Beach Convention Center and that it’s a unique opportunity for us to bring the New England region’s artists, museums, galleries and cultural organizations to the attention of the art patrons, collectors, and major museum and gallery stakeholders in attendance. It’s equally as important to direct you, our readers, to the artists, exhibitions and ...DISORIENTATED VIEWS: DANIELA RIVERA’S LABORED LANDSCAPES
Daniela Rivera explores labor, landscape and identity in her exhibition “Labored Landscapes (where hand meets ground)” at the Fitchburg Art Museum (FAM), and with this exploration, Rivera presents the interconnectedness apparent in labor, laborer and what she designates as the labored surface — either the physical ground that is toiled, or the ground or surface of a painting. Born in Santiago, Chile, Rivera moved to the Boston area in 2002, received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Boston, in 2006, and has been associate professor of studio art at Wellesley College for the ...STAYING CONTEMPORARY: ARTIST PROGRAM MAINTAINS THE GARDNER’S HERITAGE
With a gala air, the Gardner Museum prepares its sparkling Renzo Piano wing for “In the Company of Artists: 25 Years of Artists-in- Residence.” Laura Owens’s giant gold-and-magenta banner winks with a smiley face on the museum’s façade: “ShowTime.” In the Hostetter Gallery, photographers complete their shots of newly installed works by the seven returning resident artists. Lee Mingwei, creator of the museum’s Living Room, hovers near its door in a floor-length robe of charcoal silk, protecting the artists being interviewed within. In the distance, Lee’s “Sonic Blossom” singers are practicing Schubert’s Lieder with which to surprise gallery guests. ...PORTRAIT PERFECT: A FACE TO FACE REVIEW IN NEW BRITAIN
Artists. We know their work, but we don’t always know their faces. In “For America: Paintings from the National Academy of Design,” on view through January 20 at the New Britain Museum of American Art, over 90 paintings spanning from 1809 to the present featuring the artist’s face in self-portrait form or as portraits by other artists are presented with examples of their representative work, personalizing what the artist makes as art, with who they are as people. The exhibition was organized to highlight the National Academy of Design’s ...CELEBRATED AT BIRTH: WORCESTER EXHIBITION EXPLORES THE ART OF MOTHERHOOD
Anxiety, fear, joy and hope are all possible emotions women experience when anticipating the birth of a child. In the not too distant past, fear of dying was also mingled in mix and is still a possibility. The current “With Child: Otto Dix/Carmen Winant” exhibit at the Worcester Art Museum brings all these joys and fears into focus. Brilliantly researched by guest curator Marcia Lagerwey, the three-part exhibit is a must-see, with the possible exception of children and teens. A bonus exhibit, “Reflections on Pregnancy and Birth,” is alone ...PLANNED ADOLESCENCE: CONNECTING THE DOTS OF CHILDHOOD IN NEWPORT
Exhibition titles are crafted to encapsulate evocative meaning as descriptors of content. Newport Art Museum’s appropriation of Bob Dylan’s song title of “Forever Young” is intended to maximize the sensory impact of a show about childhood and adolescence. “Forever Young: Representations of Childhood and Adolescence,” the museum’s current exhibition, is a massive survey across two buildings and shown in multiple gallery rooms. It is a comprehensive exploration perhaps with too much included, but the museum has a large board of trustees with diverse interests and the show can be seen in ...COMIC RELIEF: THE ART OF THE SUPERHERO AT ADDISON
The notion of what is iconically American may change over time, but two seemingly timeless American icons, actual superheroes made popular by decades at the top of popular culture in comic books, on television shows and feature films, are the leaders of the infamous Justice League — Superman and Wonder Woman. But the intriguing exhibition, “Men of Steel, Women of Wonder,” on view at Addison Gallery of American Art through January 5, invites us to consider and then reconsider these favorites through modern and varied lenses. Organized by the ...HEROIC ARTIFACTS: SCULPTOR JOHN MAGNAN BRINGS MARVEL TO LIFE
Like many others, sculptor John Magnan’s initial foray into the world of Marvel Comics was through the series of movies collectively known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). When he went to see 2011’s “Thor” because of a longstanding interest in Norse mythology, Magnan jokingly admits to developing a bit of a “man crush” on the film’s star, Chris Hemsworth. More importantly, he had a fascination with a particular object: Thor’s hammer. First, a little background: in August 1962, in “Journey into Mystery #83,” Marvel Comics introduced a ...A LEGACY WORTH PRESERVING: AN INVALUABLE SECOND LOOK AT JACK WOLFE
While visiting Bridgewater State University’s Wallace L. Anderson Gallery in mid-September, I discovered Jack Wolfe. His work was being featured in “The Promise of Lincoln” exhibition that ran from August 19 through October 4; upon viewing it, I was immediately intrigued and set out to learn more about this artist. I started by talking to curator Jay Block, the associate director of collections and exhibitions at Bridgewater, who told me that Jack Wolfe was once a promising and highly recognized abstract expressionist painter in the mid-1950s in New York ...TRANSCENDING BURLINGTON: EMBRACING SPIRITUALITY THROUGH CONTEMPORARY ART
In 1912, Wassily Kandinsky wrote a theoretical treatise devoted to spirituality in art, “Concerning the Spiritual in Art.” Early on in this small volume, he states: “When religion, science and morality are shaken . . . when the outer supports threaten to fall, man turns his gaze from externals in on to himself. Literature, music and art are the first and most sensitive spheres in which this spiritual revolution makes itself felt.” These words came to mind recently at the opening of “Transcendent: Spirituality in Contemporary Art,” an ambitious ...SHIPPING NEWS: PEM EXPANSION MODERNIZES MARITIME AGE
I was vacationing in Burlington, Vermont, when the Peabody Essex Museum formally opened their new wing. Always game for an opening, I flew across three states just as fall color was starting to ripen. I traveled with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation since I was wondering if this mania for expansion, which has taken so many museums by storm, had also bewitched one of my favorite museums — already, in my opinion, in full flight without needing an extra wing. I needn’t have feared. As if a portent of good fortune, I arrived thinking ...A STUNNING HOMECOMING: N.C. WYETH’S MASTERFUL PORTLAND RETROSPECTIVE
Boats both rowed and sailed converge on a distinctly Maine island: a hump of rock, with some scrubs of trees but mostly barren, a simple residence located at its central, northernmost point. The sailboats anchor in the turquoise sea; the rowboats dragged up by their mates clutter the drab sand of the shore; and several indistinct figures make their way to the house surrounded by a makeshift maze of stone walls, a muted, impassive sky above. It is a crisp, solemn depiction, the island version of one of life’s few sureties — death. But ...ENGAGING THE PLANET: FRIEL AND HIRST’S HANDS-ON ART AT CHAZAN
From November 21 through December 11, the Chazan Gallery in Providence presents “Of Rock and Air,” a two-person show of artwork by Mary Anne Friel and Leslie Hirst. These artists explore intense process-laden methods of making. Recently, while visiting their respective studios in Pawtucket, each explained their current aesthetics and what they will present at the Chazan Gallery. It was informative to see both artists at the stage of transition from labor-intensive, fabric-oriented processes to making decisions about the technical aspects of presentation for the Chazan space. Hirst is ...AN EERIE FEELING OF FAMILIARITY: JONATHAN MONAGHAN’S FUTURISTIC VISION IN LOWELL
As 2020 approaches, many years since “we were supposed to have flying cars” have past. Popular stories in film and literature like “1984,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and “Back to the Future Part II” take place in a future passed, leaving us laughing at the ridiculous technology that doesn’texist yet. But “The Running Man” and “Blade Runner” both take place in 2019 (the latter starts in November), but the planet isn’t like that either. This leaves us wondering what’s to come, since various predictions were proven incorrect by time. Enter a world unknown, ...PEACE THROUGH UNDERSTANDING: CHINESE BRUSHWORK AT THE BRUCE MUSEUM
Honoring its mission as a community museum, the Bruce Museum continues to offer exhibitions and related programming while undergoing a major renovation in preparation for a celebratory reopening on February 1, 2020. Its Bantle Lecture Gallery is currently featuring the American debut of 15 works on paper — calligraphic writing, drawings and color wash painting — by contemporary Chinese artists who continue to practice and explore traditional methods of Chinese brushwork. The works on view were gifted to the Town of Greenwich as part of the 2019 US-China Art and ...ENCAUSTIC CROSSROADS: ADDRESSING ECOLOGICAL CONCERNS THROUGH WAX AT WSU
One of the highlights of any group exhibition opening reception is the taking of a photograph of all the participants together. When “Crossroads: 4 Perspectives,” opened on October 10 at the Mary Cosgrove Dolphin Gallery at Worcester State University, Patricia Gerkin was in Italy on a short vacation with her husband. A few days later, Debra Claffey would be in New Orleans attending Golden Paint’s Artist Educator Training Program, learning about their paints, grounds and mediums, Donna Hamil Talman in Marseille, France, and only Charyl Weissbach was at her ...COLOR FIELDS REVISITED: FLOOR VAN DE VELDE’S RHYTHMIC LIGHT BOXES AT SNHU
Floor van de Velde got inspiration for her light boxes — featured in her latest exhibition, “Variations on ColorFields,” which opens on November 8 at McIninch Art Gallery on the campus of Southern New Hampshire University, from a Rothko exhibition at the Harvard Art Museum. “The university decided to hang some of Rothko’s panels in a dining room,” she said. “The panels lost the majority of their pigment over the years and they were considered damaged beyond repair. But then the Harvard Museum decided to try to revive the color by using projected light. Most critics ...ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: SOURCE OF DONORS’ WEALTH ROCKS THE ART WORLD
Pittsburgh’s Carnegie family, Maine’s Farnsworths and Arkansas’ Waltons founded museums to enlighten and educate the workers on their railroads and in their steel mills that produced and sold the goods that made their families wealthy, exposing them to the arts. Money from an inheritance earned through the Irish linen trade and investment in mining opportunities by her father, David Stewart, allowed Isabella Stewart Gardner to amass a fabulous art collection that became so large it needed its own museum. Subsequently, the owners of these private collections generously opened their doors to ...JUDY CHICAGO’S ACT OF PRESERVATION: FEMINIST ART ARCHIVES ONLINE AND IN WASHINGTON
On October 17, 80-year-old artist Judy Chicago launched a research portal preserving her archive of feminist art at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. The portal will serve to bridge collections of Chicago’s work located at Penn State University, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. , and Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library. Some background: In an early work, “The Dinner Party,” now based at the Brooklyn Museum, Chicago resurrected renowned women of the past and gave them a seat at the formerly men’s-only table. ...CAPSULE PREVIEWS: November/December 2019
With work ranging from paintings, mixed-media and graphics and sculpture, digital art and photography, the Rockport Art Association & Museum’s Experimental Group holds its 12th group exhibition, “Unexpected No. Twelve,” from November 2 through 17 at the Rockport Art Association and Museum, 12 Main St., Rockport, Massachusetts. “The Experimental Group is a creative forum whose main mission is to increase public awareness and to foster self-expression by bringing artists together to explore and share ideas that cultivate creative freedom.” The exhibition is followed by the Rockport Art Association and Museum’s National Show 2019 which opens on November 23 and continues through January ...