Friday, January 22, 2016

All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ The Vassar Haiti Project is expanding its yearly art sales efforts and will be bringing its event to Washington, D.C., February 5-7. The sale will be at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, near Eastern Market in Southwest Washington. All purchases will be 50% tax-deductible. Receipts support five VHP initiatives in Chermaitre, Haiti: education, health care, reforestation, clean water access, and a women's cooperative. Visit the Website at the link above to learn more.

✦ Saatchi has launched a comprehensive online guide to more than 25,000 galleries around the world. Linking directly to galleries' Websites, the Global Gallery Guide allows viewers to see current, past, and future exhibitions and the galleries' artists and works, and to search by keyword, country, state, or city. Also available is contact information. Galleries receive a free one-month trial and thereafter pay an annual administrative fee of $100 to be included.

✦ Art historians, take note: Art History Teaching Resources, a "peer-populated platform" for art history teachers, recently launched a series to introduce and explore different pedagogical research methods used in art and museum education. 


AHTR on FaceBook and Twitter

✦ On February 4, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Awards of the Women's Caucus for Art will be presented to Tomie Arai, Helene Aylon, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, and arts activist Juana Guzman. The 2016 President's Art & Activism Award will be given to Stephanie Sherman. Event tickets are required; the ceremony will be from 7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

✦ Here's Adam Westbrook's new video essay about Vincent van Gogh, Painting in the Dark: The Struggle for Art in a World Obsessed with Popularity. It's one of several in Westbrook's The "Long Game" series on creativity. The other two are Why Leonardo da Vinci Was No Genius and The Missing Chapter: Our Distorted View of Success and Why We're Unhappy at Work.


✦ Have you ever become emotional while viewing an artwork? If so, Leanne Ogasawara's article "Eyes Swimming in Tears (Stendhal Syndrome)" (3Quarks Daily) may interest you. (The references following the article are worth checking out, too.)

✦ Yesterday I introduced to Escape Into Life readers the artwork of Suzanne Stryk. See January's Artist Watch feature.

✦ Celebrated Spanish artist Francisco de Goya was the subject of an exhibition, "Goya: The Portraits", at London's National Gallery; curated by Xavier Bray, the show concluded January 10.

Forthcoming is a documentary, Goya: Visions of Flesh and Blood (Seventh Art Productions), that uses location footage, Goya's letters, and the artist's masterpieces to create a portrait of the painter and his world.


The film was released in the United Kingdom December 1; its international release is February 9. (See Exhibition on Screen.) A review of the documentary appeared in The Guardian last December.

Exhibition on Screen on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ Tomorrow, a series of winter exhibitions opens at American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center. Two of particular note: "Renee Stout: Tales of the Conjure Woman" and "Impact! The Legacy of the Women's Caucus for Art". The former features local artist Stout's recent work exploring African cultural traditions, using as inspiration her fictitious alter ego "Fatima Mayfield", herbalist and fortune teller. (Stout gives a gallery talk on January 23, 5:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.) The latter celebrates the WCA's Lifetime Achievement Award winners, who include artists, art historians, and curators. (Exhibition curator Leslie King-Hammond and some of the awardees participate in a panel discussion about the WCA on February 6, 6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.)

Following is a video for the Stout exhibition:


Both exhibitions continue through March 13.

✭ In Claremont, California, Pomona College Museum of Art continues its recently opened exhibition "Restoring the Spirit: Celebrating Haitian Art". On view through May 15, the survey, which originated at Figge Art Museum and covers from 1940 to the present, examines Haitian artists' creative efforts and flourishing cultural practices amid historical, political, and economic upheavals. Included are paintings, sequin-covered textiles, sculpture made with reclaimed oil drums, aluminum pans, and other found materials, and works related to Vodou practices and beliefs. Also on view: "The Shake of a Man in Fever: Haiti's February Revolution through the Lens of Danny Lyon", which draws from the museum's permanent collection. Lyon is an award-winning documentary photographer and socio-political activist.

A symposium, "The Crossing/La traversee: Art in Haiti and the U.S.", is planned for March 3-5. National and international scholars and artists will examine the connections between the art and material culture of Haiti and the United States. Painter, sculptor, and installation artist Edouard Duval-Carrie gives the keynote speech.

Pomona College Museum of Art on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ Continuing through May 8 at the Asia Society Museum, New York City, is "Kamakura: Realism and Spirituality in the Sculpture of Japan". More than 30 masterpieces from 1185 to 1333, gathered from private and public collections in North America and Europe, are featured. The first major loan of Kamakura sculpture in the U.S. in more than 30 years, the exhibition explores "the spiritual connection between external form, interior contents, and devotional practice" during the Kamakura period. View a half-dozen images of sculptures in the show. An illustrated catalogue is available.



Asia Society Museum on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ The repurposed encyclopedias of Wendy Wahl remain on view through February 14 at UMass-Dartmouth University Art Gallery, New Bedford, Massachusetts. The solo show, "Wendy Wahl: ConTexts Paper in 2D and 3D", features Wahl's complex 2D repetitive reliefs, created from hundreds of rolled paper strips glued onto wooden panels, and 3D pieces comprising pages cut from bindings and light-enhanced. See the FaceBook event notice of the exhibition. 

UMass Dartmouth Galleries on FaceBook, Twitter, and Vimeo

✭ Visual design and story development are explored in "About Pixar: The Design of Story" at Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York City. Continuing through August 7, the exhibition features original artwork (hand-drawn sketches, paintings, sculptures) from more than 25 years of Pixar Animation Studios' film-making and creative exercises. In addition, more than 650 Pixar artworks may be viewed on touch-screen tables in Cooper Hewitt's Process Lab and Great Hall; they are tagged to link to related objects in the museum's collections. View images of concept art and listen to a conversation with Pixar's John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer, at the exhibition link above.

Exhibition viewers might want to take home Designing with Pixar: 45 Activities to Create Your Own Characters, Worlds, and Stories. (See image below.)


Front Cover of Activities Book

Cooper Hewitt on FaceBook and Twitter

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