Reviews of Recent Museum and Gallery Shows
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston September 13, 2019–May 3, 2021 by Shannon Bewley and Chahrazad Zahi The portraits of Lucian Freud (1922–2011) dominated the discourse of the figurative genre of painting throughout the twentieth century, specifically in the Anglo-American realm.1 As a member of the influential group of figurative artists in the 1970s, known as the […]
The work of photographer David Levinthal is notorious for its “moral indeterminacy.”[1] For decades, Levinthal has photographed dolls, toys, and collectibles, using playthings to depict controversial themes. In 1996, Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art cancelled a planned exhibition of Levinthal’s “Blackface” (1995–98), a series of large-format Polaroid photographs depicting racist memorabilia. While the cancelled show […]
Makryiannis Wing of the Gennadius Library, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Athens, Greece September 10, – November 2, 2019 Housed in the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Nora Okka’s “Spolia: Transcripts of the Stones of the Little Metropolis” (Fig. 1) brings new life to the relief sculpture […]
Hauser & Wirth, New York City October 29, – October 26, 2018 “My gesture is addressed to the human body, ‘that complete erogenous zone,’ to its most vague and ephemeral sensations. I want to exalt the ephemeral in the folds of our body, in the traces of our passage.” – Alina Szapocznikow, March 1972 [1] So […]
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston September 13, 2019 – May 3, 2021 Extreme times call for extreme heroines. -Betye Saar At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, visitors are drawn into the third level of the Art of the Americas Wing by a number of converging speech bubbles featuring provocative statements by radical women thinkers […]
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston February 14 – May 19, 2019 The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s exhibition, Botticelli: Heroines + Heroes, brings together paintings by the Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445-1510), showing how Roman and early Christian figures were depicted as role models in his own time. Paintings and drawings created by the artist […]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York September 22 – January 13, 2019 The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition is the first significant attempt in the United States to explore the legacy of Armenian artistic and cultural productions.[1] The exhibition includes works from between the fourth and seventeenth centuries, presenting a complex history that reaches […]
Installation of Under a Dismal Boston Skyline, courtesy of Boston University Art Galleries. Photo by Evan Fiveash Smith. Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery, Boston University Art Galleries, Boston, MA September 14, 2018 – October 26, 2018 Upon entrance to the exhibition “Under a Dismal Boston Skyline,” on view September 14 – October 28, […]
Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA September 7, 2018 – January 6, 2019 Hey drink, drink, drink, everybody pour me another- Lil Jon, “Drink” from Party Animals Nunc Est Bibendum (now is the time for drinking)- Horace, Odes Never has the “party animal” been so at home in the world of art. Currently on view at […]
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Nov 13, 2017 – Feb 12, 2018 The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s wide-ranging exhibition “Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer” examines the artistic production and development of the Renaissance master through his drawings. The exhibit is a result of the recent scholarly interest in drawings and their importance within the […]