Gallery Listings

Alexandre Gallery, New York City

“Recent paintings by Tom Uttech, a veteran landscapist who focuses on the wilderness of upper Wisconsin and Canada. These large-scale paintings of woods and wetlands, inhabited by numinous animals, bring a New World sensibility to Romantic themes. He takes his titles from local tribal names for lakes. September 24–November 14, 2009.

 

Bernarducci Meisel Gallery, New York City

Bernardo Torrens, recent paintings by a master Spanish realist, whose acrylic portraits and figures studies have an uncanny verisimilitude and quiet sympathy for his subjects. His work in grisaille is particularly strong. October 1–31, 2009.

 

DFN Gallery, New York City

New black-and-white drawings by Susan Grossman, whose urban nocturnes, often featuring rain-slicked streets, have a film noir look. October 7–November 7, 2009.

 

Fischbach Gallery, New York City

Fredericka Foster, “Waterway.” Foster fills her compositional space with undulating waves in blues and grays, convincingly realistic and yet suggesting a world beyond form or, as she puts it, “a separate, nonlinear field of consciousness.” October 15–November 14, 2009.

 

Forum Gallery, New York City

A group show under the title “The Platonic Ideal,” arguing that the representational artist works in the space between physical imperfection and abstract ideal. Twentieth-century and contemporary artists on view include the occult portraitist John Graham, the deco classicist Elie Nadelman, Tula Telfair, Alan Magee, Charles Matton, Alan Feltus and William Bailey (with a Balthus-style nude). Through November 22, 2009.

 

Gallery Henoch, New York City

“Still Lifes,” a group show of gallery artists who demonstrate the varied possibilities of the genre. Particularly noteworthy are Steve Smulka’s Field of Vision, adding landscape elements to his usual deft exploration of the transparency and reflective properties of glass, Janet Rickus’s clean, sharply rendered Sam’s Bowl and Olga Antonova’s warm painterly Kettle with Blue Pattern. October 3–31, 2009.

 

George Billis Gallery, New York City

Adam Normandin, acrylic paintings of freight trains and industrial machinery, confronted head-on as geometric shapes. A dusty palette adds realistic textures. Through October 31, 2009.

 

Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York City

New paintings by Harold Reddicliff, who likes to “explore the transformation that occurs when ordinary objects are subjected to extraordinary scrutiny.” Interestingly cropped portraits of cameras, staplers and scales, meticulously rendered. September 24–October 24, 2009.

 

Kent Gallery, New York City

“All in This Together: Dorothea Tanning and Friends,” a celebration of the grande dame of Surrealism, with a selection of her haunting paintings and works by Joseph Cornell, Leonor Fini, Giacometti and Magritte, as well as photographers Irving Penn and Henri Cartier-Bresson. In the twentieth-century race to abstraction, such artists insisted on both mimesis and imagination. September 10–November 28, 2009.

 

Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, New York City

“Drawing Lessons: Early Academic Drawings from the Art Students League,” fifty drawings from one of the seminal teaching institutions, including works by Kenyon Cox, H. Siddons Murray and George Bridgman. October 5–31, 2009.

 

Arden Gallery, Boston

“Seeing Things,” new mixed-media works by Lynda Lowe, who floats boxed depictions of birds, leaves and bowls against rich-colored, speckled grounds. The paintings are decorative in the way of Roman frescoes or Japanese screens but also have a contemplative quality. October 1–31, 2009.

 

John Pence Gallery, San Francisco

Paintings by Travis Schlaht, who studied at the Water Street Atelier and teaches at the Grand Central Academy of Art. Schlaht works in several genres, but his still lifes are particularly strong, ranging from old master-style sideboard compositions in rich tonalities to canvases emphasizing brushy surfaces and a more modernist play of light. October 16–November 14, 2009.

 

Principle Gallery, Alexandria, Virgina

Thomas S. Buechner, a retrospective covering six decades of work by this realist painter, who served as director of the Brooklyn Museum and the Corning Museum of Glass. His Profile in Red and Purple (1949), with its flattened space and vibrant color, suggests a friendly exchange with modernism. Alley Door (2008) combines illusionistic space with painterly color. September 25–October 25, 2009.

 

William Vareika Fine Arts, Newport, Rhode Island

John La Farge was a good painter, but he is best known for the splendid stained-glass windows he created from the 1870s to 1910. This exhibition, with about 150 objects, includes nine windows, along with watercolor sketches for windows and some South Sea landscapes. September 4–November 30, 2009.

 

Museums

Akron 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.

 

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.

 

Chapel Art Center, Saint Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire

“A Figural Presence,” the centerpiece of a serious interdisciplinary exploration of “poetic regard” and the search for humanistic beauty among contemporary artists. The first-rate selection includes portraits, figure studies and genre pictures by Steve Assael, Jacob Collins, Kate Doyle, Raymond Han and Richard Maury. Through November 25, 2009.

 

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.

 

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 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.

 

Getty Museum, Los Angeles

“Capturing Nature’s Beauty: Three Centuries of French Landscapes,” a drawing exhibition featuring works by Poussin, Claude, Fragonard, Seurat and van Gogh. July 29–November 1, 2009.
 
“Out-of-Bounds: Images in the Margins of Medieval Manuscripts.” The medieval imagination was elastic enough to encompass fantastic and hybrid creatures and a wealth of natural detail. These playful addenda to the theologically defined universe are the principle delight of manuscript marginalia. September 1–November 8, 2009.

 

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).

 

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).

 

The Hyde Collection, Glen Falls, New York

“Degas and Music,” twenty-five works by the most classical of the Impressionists, focusing on his response to musical subjects. Curated by Jill DeVonyar and Richard Kendal, who mounted the well-received “Degas and the Dance” exhibition a few years ago. July 12–October 18, 2009.

 

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.

 

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.
 
“Watteau, Music and Theater,” exploring the artist’s refined and evocative scenes connecting the pleasures of love and music, as practiced in the opera, ballet and theater of the early eighteenth century. A number of major loans supplement the Met’s holdings. Watteau’s red-chalk drawings, which seem to breathe with life, are sure to be a highlight. September 22–November 29, 2009.
 
“American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915,” with 100 works emphasizing genre subjects and visual narrative. Artists include Copley, Bingham, Homer, Sargent, Chase, Sloan and Bellows. October 6, 2009–January 24, 2010.

 

James A. Michener Museum, Bucks County, Pennsylvania

“Painting the People: Images of American Life from the Maimon Collection,” American Scene, social realist and regionalist images by artists including the Soyer brothers. July 11–October 18, 2009.

 

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

“Where the Wild Things Are: Original Drawings by Maurice Sendak.” Published in 1963, this modern classic of children’s literature, has just been adapted for the screen by quirky filmmaker Spike Jonze. This exhibition follows Sendak’s original creative process through preliminary drawings, which reveal his debt to German Romantic artists and traditional illustration. October 6–November 1, 2009.
 
“New at the Morgan: Acquisitions since 2004,” a hundred items reflecting a wide range of interests. Highlights include a tiny, lavish sixteenth-century prayer book, a Watteau study for his Cythera paintings, an illustrated letter by van Gogh and visionary landscapist Samuel Palmer’s majestic Oak Tree and Beech, Lullingstone Park (1828). Letters and musical scores (accompanied by recordings at listening kiosks) offer insights into the creative process of writers and composers. Through October 18, 2009.
 
“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 Academy Museum, New York City.

“Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820–2009,” a wide-ranging exhibition featuring portraits, including Eakins’s 1902 Self-Portrait, nudes in paintings, drawings and sculpture (Kenyon Cox, Elihu Vedder, Thomas Dewing and Harriet Frismuth), genre scenes and a selection of contemporary works. Not a masterpiece show but an interesting survey of the vicissitudes of figurative art practice in the United States. July 11–October 18, 2009.

 

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).

“An Antiquity of Imagination: Tullio Lombardo and Venetian High Renaissance Sculpture.” July 4–October 31, 2009.

“Judith Leyster, 16098–1660,” ten works by this exuberant woman painter of the Dutch Golden Age, along with paintings by her probable mentor, Frans Hals. Through November 29, 2009.

“Renaissance to Revolutions: French Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, 1500–1800.” A strong selection of 120 works on paper; artists include Claude, Watteau, Fragonard and David, as well as other lesser-known but skilled draftsmen. October 1, 2009–January 31, 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.

 

Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York

“American Landscapes: Treasures from the Parrish Art Museum.” The light and water of Long Island have attracted artists for well over a century. Works by Samuel Coleman, William Merritt Chase, John Marin, Fairfield Porter and April Gornik are featured in this exhibition. September 27–November 29, 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.

 

Shelburne Museum, Shelburne,Vermont

“Louis Comfort Tiffany: Nature by Design,” seventy-five works, including a complete furniture suite, the music room in the New York City home of the Havemeyers’s, important art patrons of the Gilded Age. A daughter of the family founded the Shelburne Museum, which also has a fine collection of lamps, vessels and jewelry. Through October 25, 2009.

 

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.

 

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

“Shrunken Treasures: Miniaturization in Books and Art,” thirty small-scale objects designed for private meditation, including Korans, tiny ancient gold scrolls inscribed with spells and Books of Hours, from medieval feats of artistry to a prayerbook for Marie de Medici with hand-cut, lace-patterned borders. Through November 8, 2009.
 
“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 suggests, 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

“Prendergast in Italy,” seventy works—oils, watercolors, and monotypes—of Venice, Rome, Siena and Capri, based on Prendergast’s Italian tours of 1898–99 and 1911. Bright scenes of sunny sites and amiable crowds, supplemented by contemporary photographs and guidebooks. July 18–September 20, 2009. Travels to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (October 9, 2009–January 3, 2010) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (February 14–May 9, 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.
 
“Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill.” Walpole (1717–97) made his gothic-revival house at Twickenham a centerpiece of the burgeoning style. This exhibition explores his eccentric personal collections, including books, manuscripts, paintings, armor and curiosities. October 15, 2009–January 3, 2010.