Documented history provides a lens to reinvestigate human behavior and the evolution of social, political and culture movements. Many creatives look to those who came before them for inspiration and perspective on the historical events that informed their work. The upcoming fall exhibitions in Greater Boston merge the past and present with work by contemporary artists in conversation with work by the artists’ influences, like “Abelardo Morell: In the Company of Monet and Constable” at the Clark Museum. Other exhibits reflect on late makers working at the same time with similar themes — “Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston — and some ruminate on how historical ideologies and persecution influence people’s lives today, like “States of Becoming” at the McMullen Museum of Art. From politically charged needlework to art conjuring the spirit world, Greater Boston will host many worthwhile exhibitions this fall.
Through Nov. 24
While some critics of Donald Trump sprint to social media to express their thoughts and frustrations, artist Diana Weymar turned to her grandmother’s unfinished needlework. Starting with “I am a very stable genius” on Jan. 8, 2018, Weymar stitched one outlandish Trump quote every week, garnering support from others after posting her work on Instagram. The needlework evolved into a quote once a day and then became the “Tiny Pricks Project,” the largest textile Trump protest to date with thousands of contributors. Selections from the project will be on display at the Fuller Craft Museum through the presidential election season showing that political resistance can make an impact in many forms.
A sample of the embroidery included in curator Diana Weymar’s collaborative “Tiny Pricks Project” at Fuller Craft Museum. (Courtesy Diana Weymar)Through Dec. 8
Works by 17 contemporary African diasporic artists are on display in “States of Becoming” at the McMullen Museum of Art. Curator and painter Fitsum Shebeshe selected artists across mediums who “conceptualize hybrid cultures by identifying, redefining, and becoming themselves through their work,” according to the exhibition description. The artists with connections to 12 African countries as well as Trinidad and Tobago explore emigration, resettling and community. Nigerian American photographer and video artist Chukwudumebi Gabriel Amadi-Emina, featured in the exhibition, explores Black identity in America through vibrant collage works with photos, illustrations and text. His 2021 diptych “Fade Catcher” displays an anonymous Black man reflecting on the question “Who will survive in America?” Also on view is Kearra Amaya Gopee’s single channel projection “Artifact #3: Terra Nullius,” which ruminates on how trauma and spirituality within Caribbean identity influence self and relationships.
Harvard Arts Museums presents “Made in Germany? Art and Identity in a Global Nation,” an exhibition and accompanying catalog reflecting on intercultural dynamics and national identity explored through German art since 1980. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and an uptick in immigration to Germany starting in 2015, the work investigates what it means to be German — considering race, migration, labor, history and memory. The exhibition features 23 artists across generations and media, including sculptor and performance artist Nevin Aladağ and photographer and illustrator Marc Brandenburg.
The Peabody Essex Museum is located in the heart of Salem, the historic location of witch trials in the late 17th century and a destination for fans of the macabre in October. The museum’s fall exhibition “Conjuring the Spirit World: Art, Magic, and Mediums” looks at art and objects utilized to ‘communicate’ with the deceased during the 19th and 20th-century Spiritualism movement. The show will display paintings, posters, photographs, stage apparatuses, costumes, film and publications explaining the paranormal beliefs circulating about the afterlife. Looking for a 21st-century fantastical experience? PEM will host magic shows from 12-3 p.m. on Saturdays through the run of the exhibition.
“Hugh Hayden: Home Work” marks the Dallas-born, New York-based artist’s first solo exhibition in New England comprised of work from the past decade. Hayden studies African American identity and the complicated feelings existing in intimate spaces through sculpture in five sections: “The Uncanny Home,” “Soul Food,” “Skeletons in the Closet,” “Playing the Field” and “Class Distinction.” His work revolves around spaces that should feel comfortable and safe but have an edge that cannot be circumvented. In “America,” a round table with four chairs is covered in carved spikes so no one can actually use the furniture to gather together. “All of my work is about the American dream, whether it’s a table that’s hard to sit at or a thorny school desk,” said Hayden in this exhibition description. “It’s a dream that is seductive but difficult to inhabit.” The artist will join WBUR’s Arielle Gray for a conversation at CitySpace on Sept. 24. Want more Hayden? The artist’s ongoing outdoor commission “Huff and a Puff” — a slanted version of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond — is also on view at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln.
Providence-based artist Bob Dilworth will present vibrant portraits of his community at his solo exhibition at the Fitchburg Art Museum. His multimedia work has elements reminiscent of Post-Impressionist Vincent van Gogh with layered fabrics and lively colors. “My current work examines the identity of friends and family and explores notions of home, heritage, ancestry and generational change,” he told the Newport Art Museum when his work was exhibited last year. In “Piggyback,” Dilworth paints two joyful children smiling at the viewer among a swirling blue backdrop and decorative floral floor. Dilworth taught at the University of Rhode Island for almost 30 years until his retirement in 2020. Now, he paints in his studio for 10-14 hours a day. He was recently awarded the Rhode Island Pell Award for excellence in the arts.
“Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature” reflects on the artistic career of the late Scottish painter. McEwen spent time studying plants and how light and color informed his renderings of natural objects. He painted on vellum — a translucent paper — without adding a background, so flowers appeared to be floating in space. McEwen worked with individual objects like florals and leaves “as a way of getting as close as possible to what I perceive as the truth, my truth of the time in which I live,” according to the exhibition description. The Davis Museum will present 85 of his watercolor paintings along with works by his 17th- and 18th-century influences Nicolas Robert, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Georg Dionysius Ehret and Claude Aubriet as well as illuminated manuscripts and folio volumes. Contemporary works inspired by McEwen will hang alongside his pieces from the Collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Mellon’s Oak Spring Garden Foundation Collection, the Shirley Sherwood Collection, the McEwen Family Estate Collection and other private collections.
“Charles Atlas: About Time” traverses the aforementioned artist’s 50 years of work. Atlas’ art revolves around immersive video art — he created the genre “media-dance” where dance is choreographed specifically for the camera. Atlas was a filmmaker-in-residence at the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, New York, going on to work with performers and choreographers Michael Clark, Yvonne Rainer, Leigh Bowery, Marina Abramović, Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener. While pushing the limits of dance captured through video, Atlas also explores gender, sexuality and queerness from the 1970s to present day. The exhibition features multichannel video installations that immerse visitors in the artist’s vision.
In 1983, a young girl named Erin Blackwell fled a hard home situation, living on the streets in Seattle. The 13-year-old Blackwell ran into photojournalist Mary Ellen Mark who was already working on a story for Life magazine about unhoused runaway teenagers in the city. Mark spent the next 30 years chronicling Blackwell’s life, from having children to struggling with addiction. Blackwell’s story eventually evolved into the 1984 documentary “Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell.” At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, “A Seattle Family” tells Blackwell’s life journey through Mark’s lens and explores how her relationship with Blackwell goes beyond journalist and source.
Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore are praised for perceiving the world differently. Both were prominent figures in 20th-century abstract art, departing from realism and utilizing shape, form, color, line and texture. Called “the mother of American modernism,” O’Keefe often depicted flowers and desert landscapes, and Moore, an English sculptor, found inspiration in mother and child relationships, internal and external forms. Where someone might see a lone tree, O’Keefe sees peculiar, twisting branches in a pinkish red and a desolate yellow backdrop in “Red Tree, Yellow Sky.” Moore explored the intersections between the human reclining figure and landscapes. Stretched-out legs could be seen simply as they are or as rolling hills running through elmwood in “Reclining Figure.” The artists’ works will be presented in tandem in the MFA’s “Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore” exhibition, the first presentation of their art in conversation. The show, organized by the San Diego Museum of Art in collaboration with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and the Henry Moore Foundation, will showcase 90 works by Moore and 60 by O’Keefe as well as recreations of each of their studios for a fuller view of their practices and visions.
Video artist Steina will open her first exhibition in over 10 years at the MIT List Museum on Oct. 26. “Playback” reflects on her nearly five-decade-long career bringing together electronic abstraction and natural elements. The exhibition introduction reads, “The title ‘Playback’ alludes to the capacities of video as a medium, as well as the way her videos and installations emerge from the endless process of playing with and manipulating signals rather than a results-oriented commitment to image or narrative.” Steina began as a trained violinist in Reykjavik, Iceland and Prague, Czech Republic and moved to the U.S. in 1965. In Buffalo, New York, she explored video art and co-founded alternative art space The Electronic Kitchen with her life partner and collaborator Woody Vasulka. “Playback” transports viewers into a natural space with imaging technologies in an artistic expression focused on play.
MASS MoCA’s Building 5 gallery space will transform into a world of bright colors and gender-expansive exploration for Jeffrey Gibson’s “Power Full Because We’re Different.” Following his showing at the 60th Venice Biennale, the American Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee artist developed this exhibition “as an invitation to other Indigenous and non-Indigenous creatives to contribute to a space where difference is intentionally considered and celebrated,” according to the website description. Gibson showcases seven garments in “kaleidoscope patterns” with beads, jingles and other found items. He looked to pieces worn by members of the Ghost Dance — a pacifist, spiritual movement, still active today, created in response to the forced relocation of Indigenous people that led to the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre — for inspiration.
The exhibition also explores the term “two spirit,” a third gender, recognized by Indigenous groups, that exists apart from the binary. Michel Beauchemin, Lori Levy and Gretchen Vogel’s 1992 documentary “Two Spirit People,” which includes found footage from the Bay Area, will give visitors further insight on the term. The video installation “Titled Your Spirit Whispers in My Ear (2024),” edited by Sancia Miala Shiba Nash with a soundtrack by Patrick Coll, includes crowd-sourced videos from Indigenous, queer and two-spirit performers, academics and activists. Some of Gibson’s program collaborators include musician Laura Ortman and Lou Cornum, assistant professor of Native American Studies at NYU. Gibson also painted a new mural — as part of a partnership between MASS MoCA and The Rose Kennedy Greenway — in Dewey Square that will be unveiled in late September.
Nov. 23-Feb. 17
Abelardo Morell traveled to England and France with a tent camera, photographing and reflecting on natural locations like those depicted by 19th-century landscape painters John Constable and Claude Monet. Tent photography allows Morell to layer a landscape with materials found on the ground, like leaves and pebbles, for a textured view of the environment. In the exhibit “In the Company of Monet and Constable,” the Cuban American photographer’s work is shown alongside that of the late European painters for a conversation over historical and contemporary portrayals of landscapes. Morell’s “Poppy Field #2” evokes Monet’s “The Poppy Field near Argenteuil” (1873). The layered photo creates a similar effect to the French painter’s colorful, short brush strokes, capturing the feeling of the scene rather than an exact recreation.
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=66ec04bbd6bc44d686a6b7dda1e54d0d&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wbur.org%2Fnews%2F2024%2F09%2F19%2F2024-fall-art-exhibits-museums-boston-massachusetts&c=16721153677414307727&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2024-09-18 22:36:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.