As Dia de Los Muertos approaches at the end of October, art and cultural museums alike prepare to celebrate the holiday through an array of exhibits and public programs. A traditional Mexican holiday to honor and remember the dead, learning about and celebrating this day offers a unique opportunity to blend culture, art, and history while engaging with visitors in a very personal way. Here are six museums that are connecting with their communities by celebrating Dia de los Muertos.
Art News
The Salon Art + Design will showcase fine and decorative art from an international assortment of exhibitors at its sixth annual show from November 9 through November 13, 2017, at the Park Avenue Armory, where designers will create more than 50 galleries with art in various environments, suggesting that beautiful pieces are more than simple collector's items.
Executive Director Jill Bokor recently spoke about the upcoming show and what she hopes visitors will take away from the experience.
Blood, guts, and gore are the name of the game at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, where It's Alive! Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Art from the Kirk Hammett Collection is currently on display. Perhaps better known to his fans as the lead guitarist from the heavy metal band Metallica, Kirk Hammett has also spent the past thirty years amassing a massive collection of classic science fiction and horror movies.
Launched in 2014, Miami's Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) has already outgrown its current location in the historic Moore Building, a former furniture showroom built in typical Art Deco style in 1921. As of December 1, the ICA moves into a new home built by Madrid-based architects Aranguren & Gallegos Arquitectos. Former Philadelphia Eagles owner turned philanthropist Norman Braman and his wife, Irma, fully funded the design and construction of the new building.
By now, we've all seen the devastation Harvey wrought on the city of Houston. Entire neighborhoods once inundated with water are now rapidly filling with moldy detritus pulled from homes and businesses.
Among the city's 6.4 million residents, a vibrant group of working artists live in Houston, and in Harvey's aftermath, many of those artists found their homes, workshops, and archives destroyed.
Currently on display at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston is an exhibit dedicated to painter Dana Schutz. The eponymous show explores the last fifteen years of Schultz's meteoric rise to fame, including twenty-one works painted between 2002 and 2017.
This fall, the Morgan Library will be exhibiting some of its most bejeweled medieval books in the show Magnificent Gems: Medieval Treasure Bindings. The exhibition, which is running September 2017 through January 2018, will include a dazzling collection of treasure bindings adorned with sapphires, diamonds, emeralds, pearls, and garnets and other precious stones.
John Tenniel judged the images produced from electrotype printing plates of his illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to be so poorly rendered that he convinced the book’s author, Lewis Carroll, to recall entire first edition. Carroll’s diary entry for July 20, 1865 states as much: “Called on [publisher] Macmillan, and showed him Tenniel’s letter about the fairy-tale -- he is entirely dissatisfied with the printing of the pictures, and I suppose we shall have to do it all again.” (R.L. Green, ed., The Diaries (London: 1953), p.234).
On December 5, one of the world’s best private collections of English Bibles will hit the auction block at Sotheby’s New York. It is the collection of Dr. Charles Caldwell Ryrie, described by the auction house as a “renowned theologian and the editor of a bestselling study Bible.” Ryrie’s collection is comprehensive--including papyrus fragments, illuminated manuscripts, and two leaves from the Gutenberg Bible, alongside many early printed editions.
The Charles Dickens Museum in London reported that it discovered an original portrait of Catherine Dickens, wife of Charles Dickens. In a curious twist, the painting was discovered by X-ray beneath the portrait many believed to be the original. As it turns out, the original painting was extensively overpainted, perhaps after a botched attempt to clean it.
