Museum of Modern Art

In 1936 Henry Luce bought Life Magazine and transformed it into a publication where pictures told the story. At his command to convey a narrow white supremacist fantasy of America's global dominance he employed the legendary photo journalists of his generation. Luce also published Time Magazine, Fortune Magazine and later Sports Illustrated. With a weekly circulation in the millions Life initially had a cover price of ten cents which at that time got you a cup of coffee. LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts captures its essence with an engaging but ultimately disappointing exhibition.

Unionized employees of MASS MoCA voted by a 96% vote to engage in a one-day work stoppage on August 19, 2022. Employees will be picketing the Museum all day and asking visitors to express support for a fair contract for staff.

Mary Ann Unger died at the age of 53 in 1998 after 14 years of battling cancer. As a member of the Guerrilla Girls, formed in 1985, she fought for equity for women in the art world. While she received grants and commissions, the exhibition organized by Horace Ballard for the Williams College Museum of Art, makes a compelling case for reconsideration of her work.

Through September 18 the Clark Art Institute is presenting the blockbuster exhibition Rodin in the United States: Confronting the Modern. More documentary than retrospective it tells the tale of Rodin in America and his great collectors. All but one of the 50 sculptures and 25 drawings are loans from American museums and private collections. This is the must see exhibition of summer in the Berkshires.

Out of the blue I got a call from Ira Kaufman in Israel. The name was vaguely familiar but didn’t click until he said “It’s me from The Brata Gallery.” Then it all locked in. By phone and e mail we recalled the Downtown scene in New York in the 1960s as well as the Figurative Expressionist and Rhino Horn movements.

The Rodin exhibition explores changing perceptions of the sculptor’s work, beginning with the first acquisition made by an American institution—the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1893—and Rodin’s controversial debut at Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition in the same year. The exhibition examines the collecting frenzy of the early twentieth century, promoted by noted philanthropist Katherine Seney Simpson, avant-garde performer Loïe Fuller, and collector Alma de Bretteville Spreckels

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA)  presents Frantz Zéphirin: Selected Works, an exhibition of ten paintings by the renowned Haitian artist, whose work is also featured in the 2022 Venice Biennale. Tomm El-Saieh, a Haitian-born artist and curator who lives and works in Miami, organized the display for WCMA. El-Saieh’s work is the subject of Tomm El-Saieh: Imaginary City, a year-long solo exhibition at the Clark Art Institute.

SO-IL architects selected to design the first stand-alone building for the Williams College Museum of Art. New facility for teaching, collections, exhibitions and programs will transform the museum’s engagement with the campus, the Williamstown community and the Berkshires cultural region.

Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the National Gallery of Art, Washington and Tate Modern, London, Philip Guston Now is the first retrospective of the artist’s work in nearly two decades. The exhibition features 73 paintings and 27 drawings from public and private collections, including both well-known and rarely seen works. Among the highlights are paintings from the 1930s that are rarely on public view; a reunion of paintings from Guston’s groundbreaking Marlborough Gallery show in 1970; a striking array of small panel paintings made from 1968 to 1972 as the artist developed his new vocabulary of hooded heads, books, bricks and shoes; and a powerful selection of large, often apocalyptic paintings of the later 1970s that form Guston’s last major artistic statement.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents an exhibition devoted to Chilean artist, poet, activist, and filmmaker Cecilia Vicuña (b. 1948, Santiago), who has been based in New York for the last forty years.

This spring, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden will present an exhibition by pioneering abstractionist artist Sam Gilliam. Between May 25 and Sept. 4, “Sam Gilliam: Full Circle” will pair a series of circular paintings (or tondos) created in 2021 with “Rail” (1977), a landmark painting in the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection.

The  Carrie Chen Gallery  presents The buildings, piled so casually from March 5 – April 3, 2022. This exhibition unites Anton Ginzburg’s abstract paintings with Christina Kruse’s fantastic imaginary worlds and layered constructions under the poetic title taken from the late poet laureate John Ashbery of Hudson, NY.

When Bill Wadsworth sent images and asked what I thought the response was to post Ukrainian Writer and Artist Julia Kissina. Calling attention to this artist in exile could not have been more timely and relevant. It evoked significant reader responses and raised basic questions. This second posting addresses that interest. Many have asked where they may view the work and there was a query from a curator regarding a possible exhibition.

In its first major exhibition on contemporary Asian art, A Spirit of Gift, A Place of Sharing is a campus-wide exhibition opening May 30 at Hancock Shaker Village. The exhibition features three artists—Yusuke Asai of Japan, Kimsooja of Korea, and Pinaree Sanpitak of Thailand – who explore links between 19th century Shaker art and contemporary Asian art.

The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has successfully completed the public consultation process for the revitalization of its Sculpture Garden. The Hirshhorn is the only Smithsonian museum directly integrated into the National Mall. The revitalization project will connect the 1.5-acre garden on the National Mall with the 4-acre plaza surrounding the museum, which welcomes 1 million visitors annually.

Ric Haynes is an artist, arts therapist, humanist, and a storyteller. His life has brought him on journeys, both voluntary, and involuntary. Those experiences along with a vivid memory have given Haynes all of the source material he needs to tell his stories.

On the occasion of the 55th anniversary of the Black Panther Party's founding, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), has launched "Black Power in Print," an online project in tandem with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Comprising recently digitized materials and new interviews between artists and scholars, the archive highlights the Black Power movement’s legacy in visual culture and its resonance today.

The Rose Art Museum named Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds (b. 1954, Cheyenne/Arapaho) its 2021-2022 Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence. Since 2002, the Perlmutter Residency has been part of the Rose Art Museum’s longstanding tradition of promoting artists of extraordinary talent whose works address contemporary issues of vital urgency.

In Otto Zitko’s work, space determines form and content. The central design element is the seemingly endless line running across large-format picture panels, sheets, or walls, which is applied with paint rollers or thick oil pens. Behind the supposedly purely expressive character of his works lies a complex structure of self-organization, the sounding out of physiological movement in space, and different levels of consciousness and energy.

HallSpace is pleased to present monotypes and shaped, multi-panel paintings by Rob Roy in "Dispatches from America."  The Dorchester based gallery exhibition continues to September 4

In this new book of color photographs, all shot in 1981, Allen Frame attempts to revisit a zeitgeist that had given rise to an aesthetic that was distinctly New York. The distinctiveness was related to a circle of friends, many – though not all of them - gay men, who were making art at a specific moment in New York’s history.  FEVER is Frame’s personal documentary of that time, before the deepening tragedy of AIDS that would claim the lives of many of the young artists pictured in this book.

Artist Carrie Mae Weems will join students from Williams College, Bennington College, and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts for an online public conversation at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 1. Some 500 individuals may register for the Zoom lecture which will later be available on YouTube.

The works featured are inspired by Andy Moerlein’s fascination with ancient practice of collecting and displaying unusual and often awkward stones. Brought indoors and placed on pedestals, these stones (Scholars Rocks, Viewing Stones) are transformed into icons of personal or imagined journeys. These rocks have influenced philosophers and artists for thousands of years.

For more than five decades artist Hunt Slonem has been painting and reimagining his obsessive motifs:  butterflies, birds, bunnies, and portraits of Abraham Lincoln, whom he refers to as his Marilyn. Repetition plays a huge role in his work. Excess and extravagance define his life and art.

MASS MoCA and the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center (BCRC) at MCLA are launching In Session, a series of four panel discussions on anti-racist work in museums, streamed live on MASS MocA's YouTube channel and Facebook page beginning on Thursday, December 10, at 6pm EST with upcoming dates to be announced soon.