Gallery ListingsAdelson Galleries, New York City “American Works on Paper 1880–1930,” including bravura watercolors by Sargent and Homer, an urban snowstorm by Everett Shinn, a Venetian pastel by Whistler and delicate pencil portraits by the lesser-known Lilian Westcott Hale. Through December 19, 2009. Arcadia Fine Arts, New York City Recent paintings by Daniel Adel, who depicts crumpled paper as sculptural forms, often with pedestals. Strong frames in black add to the old master-style presentation. One painting of a marble wing makes a nice counterpoint. December 10–31, 2009. Danese Gallery, New York City Recent acrylic paintings by Jerry Hirshberg, close-ups of bamboo that combine realism with abstract patterns of light and shadow. Through December 23, 2009. DFN Gallery, New York City “New Landscapes,” a group show featuring Jane Bloodworth-Adams’s tonalist waterways and hills, David Mahler’s reflections of clouds in rippling streams and Mary Reilly’s detailed graphite studies of wildflowers and dunes. December 9, 2009–January 20, 2010. Eleanor Ettinger Gallery, New York City Solo exhibition of oil-on-linen paintings by Paul Oxborough, who has a flair for interplays of natural and artificial light in loosely brushed genre scenes. December 3, 2009–January 3, 2010. Fischbach Gallery, New York City “Leigh Behnke: Through the Looking Glass,” playful optical experiments with carousels, stairwells and portals, often presented in triptych and polytych formats. “Daisy Craddock: Sense of Place,” quiet landscapes with a nubby paint texture that gives vegetation considerable presence. Both artists on view November 19–December 19, 2009. Forum Gallery, New York City Holly Lane creates elaborate carved wooden pieces, more like Victorian curio cabinets and Renaissance altarpieces than modern frames. She embeds small paintings in these architectural furniture pieces, often landscapes with a Romantic or Surrealist feel. November 12–December 23, 2009. Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York City “Randall Exon: Currents,” sensitive paintings of coastal scenes in Ballycastle, County Mayo, Ireland, and the Brandywine River. Exon captures the magical stillness of blue-gray skies, and the signs of human presence—a barn, a figure in a boat—give the images a poignant resonance. October 29–December 5, 2009. Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York City “Forty Years of Photorealism,” a retrospective from an important dealer in this field, representing, among others, Richard Estes and Bernardo Torrens. November 5–December 18, 2009. Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York City New work by Walton Ford, whose monumental watercolors are both an homage to and a commentary on Audubon and the scientific aesthetic of nineteenth-century naturalism. November 12–December 23, 2009. Spanierman Gallery, New York City Picturesque landscapes by Charles Warren Eaton (1857–1937), European and American scenes by a solid, middle-of-the-road artist with a nice sense of tonalist color. December 8, 2009–January 16, 2010. Caldwell Snyder Gallery, St. Helena, California John Gibson, paintings of patterned spheres that look like marbles or paperweights. The bright colors suggest Op Art, but soft backgrounds and plausible space keep these images in the realm of realism. December 10–31, 2009. Frey Norris Gallery, San Francisco “Beyond the Esplanade: Paintings, Drawings and Prints from 1940 to 1965,” works by the Surrealist artist and writer Dorothea Tanning. November 19, 2009–January 31, 2010. John Pence Gallery, San Francisco Recent oil-on-panel paintings by Jacob Pfeiffer, a clever illusionist with a trompe l’oeilist’s weakness for punning titles. His occasional forays into Surrealism are ballasted by fine technique in the tradition of mimetic art. November 20–December 19, 2009. Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe One hundred drawings by John Nava, a contemporary realist best known for his championship of tapestry as a still-viable artform. December 11, 2009–January 11, 2010. Robert Kidd Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan “Bods: Rethinking the Figure,” a group show that mixes interesting contemporary realists and their provocateur colleagues. As usual, Paul Beliveau, Julie Heffernan and Vincent Desiderio are presenting strong work. Through December 19, 2009. MuseumsAkron Art Museum, Akron, Ohio “Familiar Faces: Chuck Close in Ohio Collections,” a gathering of Close’s very human close-up portraits, from his black-and-white, Pop-inflected period to his recent painterly mosaic-style work. September 5, 2009–January 3, 2010. Alexander Hogue Gallery, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma “Personal Interiors,” a joint exhibition by Lani Irwin and Alan Feltus. Feltus’s paintings combine an early Renaissance vocabulary of gestures with modern sensibilities. Irwin uses geometric space in a more esoteric way, developing a rich personal iconography. November 5, 2009–January 7, 2010. Travels to the Katzen Arts Center, American University, Washington, D.C. (January 23–March 14, 2010) and George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia (April 5–May 7, 2010). Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia “Jacob Lawrence and the Urban Experience: Selected Prints 1963–2000,” featuring later work by the formally exciting chronicler of African-American history. The gallery is located in a splendid building by architect Frank Furness. Through December 24, 2009. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago “Playings with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage.” These enchanting collages of watercolor and photographic elements from the 1860s and 1870s, mostly the work of women amateurs, look very fresh today, anticipating the Surrealists, fantasy and mixed-media artists. Forty framed examples and eleven albums are featured. October 10, 2009–January 3, 2010. Travels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (February 2–May 9, 2010). Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Art Museum,” 200 works, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, including Trumbull’s famous scenes from the American Revolution. October 3, 2009–January 10, 2010. Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York “James Tissot: The Life of Christ,” with 125 of the artist’s small-scale, excitingly composed watercolors. This highly successful visual narrative, purchased largely by public subscription for the fledgling museum a century ago, had enormous influence on cinematic iconography. October 23, 2009–January 17, 2010. Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut “Alchemy: Magic, Myth or Science,” an interdisciplinary exploration of alchemy, as precursor of modern chemistry and esoteric philosophy, through art and artifacts. Alchemical prints, often provocatively beautiful creations, with complex diagrams and hybrid mythic symbols, have influenced poets and visual artists for centuries. Through January 3, 2010. Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio “Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889,” a partial re-creation of a significant exhibition, featuring ceramics and carvings as well as paintings, by an avant-garde master whose myth-making is as original as his color palette and compositional strategies. October 4, 2009–January 18, 2010. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. “Sargent and the Sea,” an exhibition of eighty paintings, watercolors and drawings. Best known for his splendid society portraits, Sargent frequently spent his summers painting the sea and sky in Brittany, Normandy and Capri. The results are loose, spirited paint-handling and an atmosphere filled with light. September 12, 2009–January 2, 2010. Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire “Evolution of a Shared Vision: The David and Barbara Stahl Collection,” prints and drawings acquired over the last half century, with works by Dürer, Rembrandt, Hopper, Sloan and Nolde. Through January 3, 2010. Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware “Maxfield Parrish: Illustrated Letters” and “Fantasies and Fairy Tales: Maxfield Parrish and the Art of the Print,” two shows exploring the fertile imagination of this eminent illustrator. Through mid-January, 2010. Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York “America’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City,” in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the publication of William Vance’s two-volume study America’s Rome, tracing the influence of Roman art and ideas. Organized around the Forum, the Colosseum and the Campagna, the show features eighty paintings by, among others, Thomas Cole and George Inness. May 23–December 31, 2009. Frick Collection, New York City “Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection,” also including works by Fragonard, Delacroix, David and Ingres. October 16, 2009–January 10, 2010. Getty Center, Los Angeles “Drawing Life: The Dutch Visual Tradition,” with works from the Getty’s collection, includes genre scenes of peasants, merchant enterprise and ice skaters as well as landscapes, starting in the seventeenth century and continuing through the nineteenth. November 24, 2009–February 28, 2010. Getty Villa, Los Angeles “The Chimera of Arezzo,” the three-headed beast slain by Bellerophon, through five centuries of classical art. The star attraction is an Etruscan bronze presented in partnership with the National Archaeological Museum, Florence. July 16, 2009–February 8, 2010. Guggenheim Museum, New York City A retrospective of works by Wassily Kandinsky, one of the museum’s star attractions. The most spiritual of the great twentieth-century modernists, Kandinsky began with magical illustrations of Russian folktales and drew on icons and hermetic mandalas for his later cosmic compositions. September 18, 2009–January 13, 2010. Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles “Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield.” This eccentric American landscapist is best known for his pantheistic watercolors, with their nervous brushwork and ecstatic interpretations of scruffy countryside. October 4, 2009–January 3, 2010. Travels to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (June 24–September 30, 2010). Huntington Library, San Marino, California “The Color Explosion: Nineteenth-Century Lithography from the Jay T. Last Collection,” with 200 examples, including posters, color-plate children’s book illustrations and advertising prints. The color lithography process, invented in 1790, had an enormous influence on visual culture. Through February 22, 2010. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia “Leonardo da Vinci: Hand of Genius” considers the relatively under-examined subject of the master’s interest in sculpture, with examples of his own work, supplemented by material from his teachers and students. October 6, 2009–February 21, 2010. Travels to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles (March 23–June 20, 2010). Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana “Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World” takes an international perspective, showing how the iconography and Baroque style of artists such as Zurbarán, whose Agnes Dei is on display, sparked the creative vision of Latin American artists. With 70 paintings, striking polychromed processional statues and an emerald-studded crown from Colombia. October 11, 2009–January 3, 2010. John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida “Venice in the Age of Canaletto,” vedute—scenic views of the Grand Tour’s iconic sights—by eighteenth-century Italian artists. Canaletto’s luminous skies and lively urban detail lift his paintings far above the category of tourist souvenir and were much admired by the English Romantics. Through January 10, 2010. Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York “Bold, Cautious and True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era,” a show focusing on the visual culture of the conflict, with works by Frederic Church, Winslow Homer and John Kensett, among others. Through January 24, 2010. Kimbell Art Museum, Forth Worth, Texas “From the Private Collections of Texas: European Art, Ancient to Modern,” with 100 works by, among others, Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Gauguin, van Gogh and Matisse. November 22, 2009–March 21, 2010. Mennello Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida “Regional Dialect: American Scene Painting from the John and Susan Horseman Collection,” exemplifying the early-twentieth-century taste for genre and narrative. November 14, 2009–February 7, 2010. Menil Collection, Houston, Texas “Body in Fragments,” a theme exhibition drawn from the museum’s diverse collections. Examples range from Egyptian and African sculpture to a medieval finger reliquary, to paintings by Picasso and Magritte. August 21, 2009–February 28, 2010. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City “The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry,” a rare chance to see all the illuminated pages of this masterpiece (1405–09), gorgeous in color and encyclopedic in thematic motifs, a sort of luxury visual summa of the late Gothic. September 22, 2009–January 3, 2010. Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, Vermont “The Art of Devotion: Panel Painting in Early Renaissance Italy,” a scholarly examination of the collaborative process of painters, woodworkers, gilders and patrons. September 18–December 13, 2009. Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey “Cézanne and American Modernism,” eighteen paintings by Cézanne and over a hundred by admirers including Arthur Dove, Charles Demuth, Maurice Prendergast and John Marin. The wide range of styles suggests a liberating influence rather than dogmatic devotion. September 13, 2009–January 3, 2010. Travels to the Baltimore Museum of Art (February 14–May 23, 2010) and the Phoenix Art Museum (June 26–September 26, 2010). Morgan Library & Museum, New York City “William Blake’s World: ‘A New Heaven Is Begun,’” drawn from the Morgan’s own holdings of works—drawings, poems, designed books—by the polymath prophet and foremost exemplar of Romantic imagination. September 11, 2009–January 3, 2010. Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, New York “James E. Freeman 1808–1884: An American Painter in Italy,” the first retrospective for this expatriate who worked in Rome. The twenty paintings on display are mostly “fancy pictures,” a now largely forgotten genre of costumed peasants and street urchins. Through January 17, 2010. Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida “Glackens as Illustrator.” One of the Eight, a group of artists associated with the Ashcan School, Glackens combines social observation with graphic energy. September 5, 2009–May 3, 2010. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. “Luis Meléndez: Master of the Spanish Still Life,” thirty paintings—eight on loan from the Prado—by the eighteenth-century artist. Meléndez began with a royal commission to interpret the four seasons and went on to find compositional gold in arrangements of humble foodstuffs. The National Gallery’s acquisition, in 2000, of a Meléndez study of bread and figs was a revelation, sparking this exhibition. May 17–August 23, 2009. Travels to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (September 23, 2009–January 3, 2010) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (January 31–May 9, 2010). New Britain Museum of Art, New Britain, Connecticut “John Haberle: American Master of Illusion,” a major show devoted to the late-nineteenth-century trompe l’oeil artist, accompanied by a catalogue. December 11, 2009–March 14, 2010. Newark Art Museum, Newark, New Jersey “Small but Sublime: Intimate Views by Durand, Bierstadt and Inness,” from a fine collection of Hudson River School paintings. These artists, known for their attention to natural detail, didn’t need epic scale to find remarkable landscapes. Through February 28, 2010. Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California “Gaze: Portraiture after Ingres.” In homage to Ingres’s Comtesse d’Haussonville (1845), on loan from the Frick Collection, 150 works by nineteenth-century and modern painters, including Bonnard, Modigliani and Picasso. October 30, 2009– April 5, 2010. Ogden Museum of Southern Art, University of New Orleans Paintings from 1984–2000 by respected contemporary realist Bo Bartlett, who sometimes leavens his plain-spoken style with intriguing conceptual flourishes. Through January 3, 2010. Onassis Cultural Center, New York City “The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete,” around forty paintings, including early works by El Greco. With the fall of Byzantium, Crete became an influential conduit for the Greek tradition. Cretan icon painters in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were celebrated for their skill in shifting from Western to Eastern idioms, to suit their clients’ needs, and El Greco absorbed these lessons to forge his own style. November 17, 2009–February 27, 2010. Samuel Dorksy Museum of Art, SUNY, New Paltz, New York “The Hudson River to Niagara Falls: 19th Century American Landscape Paintings from the New-York Historical Society,” forty-five paintings, mostly from the Hudson River School, in a show curated by Linda Ferber. Through December 13, 2009. Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington “Michelangelo Public and Private: Drawings from the Sistine Chapel and Other Treasures from the Casa Buonaroti.” Michelangelo burned many of his drawings, to preserve the mystery of his creative process. This selection from the small museum in Florence includes striking examples of his draftsmanship, along with documents and decorative objects. October 15, 2009–January 31, 2010. Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts “Steps Off the Beaten Path: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Rome and Its Environs.” These photographs provide precious evidence of the Eternal City at the height of the Romantic tourist era, before the ambitious building and excavation programs of the twentieth century. The focus on quiet corners, rather than major monuments, captures the city’s textural charm. October 11, 2009– January 3, 2010. Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio “Drawn by New York: Watercolors and Drawings from the New-York Historical Society,” an interesting selection from one of the nation’s oldest collections. November 20, 2009–January 17, 2010. University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan “The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting along the Normandy Coast, 1850–1874.” About 90 works exploring the visual experiments of avant-garde painters, including Monet, Manet, Courbet, and photographers such as the fascinating Gustave Le Gray. The special challenges of light, water and sky are a clear inspiration. October 10, 2009– January 3, 2010. Travels to the Dallas Museum of Art (February 21– May 23, 2010). Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland “Heroes, Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece,” with ancient works illustrating the careers of Odysseus, Herakles, Achilles and Helen, mostly through sculptural fragments and vase paintings, providing visual iconography for some of Western civilization’s seminal narratives. October 11, 2009–January 3, 2010. Travels to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville (January 29–April 25, 2010), the San Diego Museum of Art (May 22–September 10, 2010) and the Onassis Cultural Center in New York City (October 5, 2010–January 3, 2011). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City “Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction.” The line between abstraction and representation is often more fluid that some partisans suggest, and O’Keeffe’s organic forms, even at their most stylized, remain rooted in nature. September 17, 2009–January 17, 2010. Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts “A Strong Impression: William Morris Hunt’s Niagara,” a detailed artistic and cultural examination of the monumental work, with the artist’s studies, along with photographs, books and films. Running concurrently is “William Morris Hunt and the French Tradition,” exploring Hunt’s connections to the Barbizon School. Through January 31, 2010. Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts “Intaglio: Italian Etchings and Engravings,” featuring master prints by the Carraci, Rosa, Tiepolo and Piranesi. Through March 7, 2010. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut “Mrs. Delaney and Her Circle,” an exhibition organized by the British Museum. Mrs. Delaney’s (1700–88) paper-mosaic botanical illustrations, on striking black grounds, are aesthetically compelling; her collages are shown in the context of contemporary natural history artifacts. September 24, 2009–January 3, 2010. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|