Art & Object Events

American artist Margaret Kilgallen (1967–2001) died at the young age of thirty-three, just as her work was gaining recognition and prominence. She is known primarily for her association with the Bay Area Mission School—a loosely associated group of artists from the early 1990s—and for her inclusion in the exhibition Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture (2004–6). The AAM’s presentation will be Kilgallen’s first posthumous museum exhibition, and the largest presentation of her work to date since her 2005 show, In the Sweet Bye & Bye, at REDCAT, Los Angeles.

The Yale University Art Gallery is pleased to announce Matthew Barney: Redoubt, an exhibition of the renowned contemporary artist’s latest body of work (2016–19). The exhibition includes an epony­mous two-hour film that traces the story of a wolf hunt in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountain range, intertwining the theme of the hunt with those of mythology and artistic creation. Also featured are four monumental sculptures, more than forty engravings and electroplated copper plates, and an artist-conceived catalogue. This is the artist’s first major exhibition at his alma mater (Barney studied art at Yale, receiving his B.A. in 1989). Matthew Barney: Redoubt will be on view from March 1 to June 16, 2019.

The first comprehensive survey of Sri Lankan art organized by an American museum, The Jeweled Isle: Art from Sri Lanka presents some 250 works addressing nearly two millennia of Sri Lankan history.

This exhibition highlights the essential role of botanicals in achieving the artist’s vision of the exotic. Together with lush displays of tropical plants in the conservatory and gardens, Gauguin: Voyage to Paradise features ten of the artist’s original dramatic woodcut prints and wood engravings, photographs showcasing Tahiti during the time of his travels, historic maps as well as visual materials that shaped his work.

The Female Gaze: Women Surrealists in the Americas and Europe reframes the history of the movement by focusing exclusively on the pivotal role played by female artists as independent from—rather than in relationship to—their male counterparts.

In celebration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Jacopo Tintoretto (1518/1519–1594), the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia with the special cooperation of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, have organized a major exhibition on the Venetian master.

Caravans of Gold draws on recent archaeological discoveries, including rare fragments from major medieval African trading centers like Sijilmasa, Gao, and Tadmekka. These “fragments in time” are seen alongside works of art that invite us to imagine them as they once were. They are the starting point for a new understanding of the medieval past and for seeing the present in a new light.

Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989), one of the most critically acclaimed yet controversial American artists of the late twentieth century, is represented in great depth in the Guggenheim’s collection. In 1993 the museum received a generous gift of approximately two hundred photographs and unique objects from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, creating one of the most comprehensive public repositories in the world of this important artist’s work. In 2019, thirty years after the artist’s death, the Guggenheim will celebrate the sustained legacy of his work with a yearlong exhibition conceived in two sequential parts in the museum’s Mapplethorpe Gallery on Tower Level 4. Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now is organized by Lauren Hinkson, Associate Curator, Collections and Susan Thompson, Associate Curator with Levi Prombaum, Curatorial Assistant, Collections.

“Toulouse-Lautrec and the Stars of Paris” explores the celebrity culture of Lautrec’s time and the artist’s fascination with the personal lives of les stars as well as the roles that they played. With expressive lines and brazen colors, Lautrec depicted the defining gestures, costumes, and expressions of spectacular performers, many of whom were his personal friends and habitués of Montmartre, the focus of Parisian nightlife and a haven for acrobatic dancers and destitute students, reprobate aristocrats and middle-class pleasure-seekers.

Jordan Casteel: Returning the Gaze will feature nearly 30 paintings by Denver-born artist Jordan Casteel, who is now based in Harlem, New York. This presentation represents Casteel’s first major museum exhibition, and provides audiences with a first look at new work by one of the most acclaimed emerging artists working today.