Vernacular photographs are the lifeblood of affirmative self (re)presentation. For African-Americans, whose relationship with photography has always been complicated—stemming from, among other things, the difficulty with which photographic technology registers melanated skin (see Shirley cards)—portraits are not only personal, but political. Until October 8, the exhibition, African American Portraits: Photographs from the 1940s and 1950s will be on view at The Met Fifth Avenue.
Art News
The creation of each Guggenheim exhibition involves many people, and all of them bring different kinds of technical expertise to the installation process. For two decades, Derek DeLuco, Senior Technician and Mount Maker at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, has made mounts for the art on view at the museum—an undertaking that requires patience, ingenuity, and a good eye. In this video, he describes some the of mounts created for the Giacometti exhibition and explains that the mount should not be a distraction when viewing the art.
Inspired by a 1989 Guerrilla Girls poster stating, “You’re seeing less than half the picture without the vision of women artists and artists of color,” a new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum helps viewers get woke. It examines major works, new acquisitions, and rediscoveries in the Museum’s collection through an intersectional feminist lens. Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection highlights over fifty artists who use their art to advocate for race, gender, and class equality.
Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker discuss the classical marble sculptures Dying Gaul and Gaul killing himself and his wife (The Ludovisi Gaul). Both are 1st or 2nd century C.E. Roman copies of Third Century B.C.E. Hellenistic bronzes that commemorate Pergamon's victory over the Gauls, and were likely made for the Sanctuary of Athena at Pergamon. Though held in separate museums in Rome (Musei Capitolini and Palazzo Altemps, Museo Nazionale Romano, respectively), they are believed to be companion pieces.
Currently at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM), Empresses of China’s Forbidden City is the first ever international exhibition to explore female power and influence during China’s last dynasty.
The ecofeminist visions of artist Ana Mendieta and writer Rebecca Solnit guide this exhibition of works concerned with how the body relates to the earth. Drawn primarily from the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s (MCA) permanent collection, a body measured against the earth shows how Land Art and the reclamation of and interest in the body found in Feminist Art intersect and converse.
Now at the Portland Art Museum, APEX: Avantika Bawa features new work by the Portland-based artist. The APEX series celebrates Northwest-based artists and is curated by Grace Kook-Anderson, the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art. Bawa is known for her architecturally inspired modernist abstractions. Fascinated by Portland's Veterans Memorial Coliseum, she has created an ongoing series of drawings, prints, and large panel paintings illustrating the Coliseum’s grids, lines, colors, and mass.
Tom Kalin of the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury responds to American Policy, a series of pastel drawings by Cheyenne/Arapaho artist Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds and discusses language-based artwork.
An Incomplete History of Protest: Works from the Whitney's Collection, 1960–2017 is on view through August 27, 2018.
Who was Artemisia Gentileschi and how does she portray herself in this rare self-portrait? Letizia Treves, the James and Sarah Sassoon Curator of Later Italian, Spanish, and French 17th-century Paintings at the National Gallery, UK, explores the life story of the most celebrated female artist of the 17th century, and why her 'Self Portrait' is such an important acquisition to our collection.
Two hundred years after Audubon traveled across America, tracking native bird species for his magnum opus, The Birds of America (1827–39), Italian artist Hitnes has retraced Audubon's steps, creating an updated documentation of the birds Audubon painted. His homage to Audubon, The Image Hunter: On the Trail of John James Audubon, is now on display at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston.
