“Photo Revolution: Andy Warhol to Cindy Sherman,” at the Worcester Art Museum through February 15, explores the evolution of photography at the hands of the baby boom generation. The exhibition brackets the time frame after WWII but before smartphones and illustrates forces that have shaped popular culture, resulting in currently different standards in contemporary art. Curator Nancy Kathryn Burns invites audiences into this show, which is a roaming look at our cultural climate when photography quickly insinuated itself into daily life, and in the process, eventually achieving equal footing among painting and sculpture as an art form. The exhibition catalogue opens with a quote from Marcel Duchamp responding to Alfred Stieglitz’s question, “Can a photograph have the significance of art?” Duchamp wrote, in part, “I would like to see it make people despise painting until something else … [Read more...] about IMAGE IS EVERYTHING: IT’S A MOD MOD WORLD AT WAM’S PHOTO REVOLUTION
Worcester Art Museum
MONET’S WATERLOO BRIDGE: VISION AND PROCESS AT WORCESTER ART MUSEUM
Having a single work by a master on display in your museum can be a major attraction in its own right. Have nine of them — especially from a single series — and you’ve got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and event. That’s the case with “Monet’s Waterloo Bridge: Vision and Process,” which features nine paintings created from 1899 through 1901 by French Impressionist Claude Monet at the Savoy Hotel in London and completed back at his studio in Giverny that are on display through April 28 at the Worcester Art Museum. Local residents who have long had the honor of having a 1903 work from the series on permanent display at WAM have been basking in the limelight of having themselves surrounded by a strong representation of the series, much in the way Monet saw them when he created them in two rooms at the Savoy. The unique coupling is possible through loans from the Milwaukee Art … [Read more...] about MONET’S WATERLOO BRIDGE: VISION AND PROCESS AT WORCESTER ART MUSEUM
Everything’s Purrfect in Worcester
WAM Exhibit is the Cat's Meow by Brian Goslow “Meow: A Cat-inspired Exhibition” is the kind of show many museums have been presenting of late that utilizes a theme aimed at attracting a larger cross-section of potential visitors — and with rare exception, who doesn’t like cats? While my wife wondered why the Worcester Art Museum didn’t try to secure Roy Lichtenstein’s “Laughing Cat,” early Andy Warhol feline favorites “25 Cats Named Sam and One Blue Pussy,” “So Happy” or “So Meow,” or one of John Singer Sargent’s portraits featuring a cat-as-prop, and while others have wished the show was larger and louder, I’m pleased with the museum’s decision to utilize works from its vaults that have given me an expanded appreciation for genres I hadn’t previously paid much attention to. My favorite aspect of the show was the collection of 10 Will Barnet color lithographs and … [Read more...] about Everything’s Purrfect in Worcester
Capsule Preview
Worcester Art Museum Community Day this Saturday, Nov. 14 In our November/December 2015 issue, J. Fatima Martins previews the recently-opened “Hassan Hajjaj: My Rock Stars” exhibition at the Worcester Art Museum, for which artscope is proud to be a media partner. “This Saturday, November 14, Hajjaj will be at the museum to make portrait-photographs of visitors while they are engaged in dance and movement within staged areas decorated with his uniquely designed Afro-Arabic textile patterns and furniture during WAM’s Community Day: Global Art and Music,” Martins writes. “To help guide children, families and playful adults along the metamodern path, Helmut, WAM’s canine mascot, has temporarily changed his identity to Helmut Hajjaj, adopting the artist’s colorful fashion sensibility.” Urban violinist and singer Marques Toliver, who is featured in the exhibit, will be performing, … [Read more...] about Capsule Preview