Art Intelligence
In the Galleries At the MuseumsRI Selects: In the Galleries & Museums
Now - July 30
Berenice Abbott: Portraits and Places According to Sylvia Beach, legendary owner of Shakespeare & Company bookstore in between-the-wars Paris, “To be ‘done’ by Man Ray or Berenice Abbott meant you rated as somebody.” Janet Flanner, who for decades was Paris correspondent for The New Yorker, “done” by Abbott (above). Later, Abbott’s photographs of New York helped further Lewis Mumford’s then-radical urban-design ideas.
Joie de Livres @ Salisbury Wines
Salisbury, CT
Now - February 2011
Petah Coyne’s monumental sculptures have a nightmarish beauty; they’re often coagulations of materials such as fake flowers, dead fish, horsehair, taxidemy birds, and other untraditional materials bound together with and often obscured by layers of wax. Her MASS MoCA show, Everything that Rises Must Converge, features contrasting works, primarily in black and white, that rise from the floor like eruptions or hang from the ceiling like giant, macabre chandeliers, making full use of soaring Building 4. Also included are Coyne’s blurred photos of children and Buddhist monks, which have the air of ghostly X-rays.
MASS MoCA
North Adams, MA
Now - June 18
Following Maggie Mailer’s successful stint painting in the galleries during public hours, Berkshire Museum has chosen multidisciplinary artist Ven Voisey as its second artist in residence. While the sound of Mailer’s brushstrokes could hardly startle a visitor, Voisey is known for work that moves or makes noise—often both. You may find Ven at work in the galleries on Fridays from noon to 4 p.m. and on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., if he’s not mining the Museum’s storage vaults for inspirational artworks and artifacts. In July, about a month after his residency is over, Vosiey will give a free presentation on his experience in the galleries and its impact on his work. The Museum will also exhibit the work he produced during his residency.
Berkshire Museum
Pittsfield, MA
Now - August 1
Wei Dong (Chinese, b. 1968), Kite Flying, 1995; ink and color on paper. Gift of Red Rock Studio, Hong Kong, A Williams Alumnus
One of the most notable developments in contemporary Chinese art is a shift from the Mao-ordained Social Realist style supporting the Cultural Revolution agenda to a return to traditional, ancient styles with a modern, Western twist after Mao’s death. This change is evident in Traditions and Transition: Recent Chinese Art from the Collection, an exhibition of work created from the late 20th century to the present day by eleven artists working in China. This show of 25 paintings and sculptures marks a recent gift to the museum of Chinese art.
Williams College Museum of Art
Williamstown, MA
Now - August 7
It’s practically perverse to paint the preening peacock and ignore the purples, blues, and other vibrant colors for which this graceful bird is known. And yet Marilyn Kalish manages to capture their luminescent essence in her soaring golden panels, on display in Mysterious Life of Peacocks.
Vault Gallery
Great Barrington, MA
Now - August 8
One can’t help but wonder what Herman Melville would have thought of Tristin Lowe’s Mocha Dick, a life-size (52 feet long, ten feet high) white sperm whale made of industrial wool felt, complete with lifelike gashes, scars, and barnacles, beached on the floor of the museum’s largest gallery. This landlocked leviathan is modeled after a whale that terrorized ships near Mocha Island in the South Pacific Ocean, whose flesh was described as being “white as wool,” and who was the inspiration for Melville’s 1851 novel, Moby-Dick.
Williams College Museum of Art
Williamstown, MA
Now - October 31
Spanish-born Chicagoan Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s inverted, half-scale model of Mies van der Rohe’s uncompleted project, 50x50 House (1951) a spare, square glass-walled structure complete with upside-down furniture and a cup and saucer dashed on the ceiling-cum-floor— weaves together modernist architecture, early sci-fi literature, and the auteur Sergei Eisenstein in a mysterious narrative installed in the immense gallery known as Building 5. Also on view: the artist’s2006 film Always After (The Glass House), a sort-of prelude to Gravity… about the end of utopian transparency, created at Crown Hall, van der Rohe’s 1950 School of Architecture building on the Illinois Institute of Technology campus in Chicago.
MASS MoCA
North Adams, MA
Now - February 27, 2011
Starting from the building’s industrial trappings of brick walls, steel beams, wooden columns, and encrusted paint, seven artists working with humble materials such as paper, plastic, rope and fishing line, transform the second- and third-floor galleries with a series of immersive, site-specific installations that create a diversity of visceral, spatial, and perceptual experiences. Included in Material World, which is curated by Susan Cross, are Michael Beutler, Orly Genger, Tobias Putrih, Alyson Shotz, Dan Steinhilber, and the collaborative team of Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen.
MASS MoCA
North Adams, MA
Ongoing
Over 300 period pieces—mostly mid-century Modernist and 19th-century works—presented salon style, ever-changing week to week.
Terenchin Fine Art
Hudson, NY
Ongoing
Linda Filly (“Long Shoe,” above) and Ramon Lascano, both artists who work exclusively with paper, have a new show opening.
Paper Trail
Rhinebeck, NY
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