All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Spotlights

✦ Save the Date! March 3, from 6:00 p.m. to midnight, RabbitHoleStudio in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn hosts a one-night-only multi-sensory photo exhibition and performance event that features selections from photographer Tal Shpantzer's gorgeous Petal Portraits series, a Butoh dance performance by Vangeline inspired by the series, and a related presentation of PETALES by Euphorium Brooklyn.

✦ The Smithsonian Museums are planning a "special edition" for women and girls of color during Museum Day Live, scheduled for Saturday, March 12. To find out if a museum near you is among the hundreds participating in the annual event, check the interactive map.

Smithsonian Museum Day Live on FaceBook

✦ A coffee shop is not just a coffee shop anymore, at least on a certain New York City corner: Visit the Starbucks in Chelsea, home to numerous upscale galleries, and take a look at what's on the walls. If you find something you like, you, too, could become the owner of a work by an emerging artist. Sales proceeds go to the artists and the nonprofit Free Arts, which offers educational arts and mentoring programs to underserved children. The sourcing manager is Lara Behnert, who collaborates with Uprise Art in rotating the work on the Starbucks walls. (Might something similar be available to showcase poets' work?)

Press Release and Images

✦ The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas is the depository for the Edward Ruscha papers and art collection. That collection, which includes notebooks, sketches, photographic material, publicity and exhibition material, and final editions of artist books, prints, films, and commissioned works, recently opened for research. A selection of objects in the collection may be seen by visitors to the center. Read the "That Was Then, This Is Now" post on the center's blog.

Edward Ruscha at Gagosian Gallery

Edward Ruscha Catalogue Raisonne

✦ The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., recently uploaded this film for its exhibition "Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World", continuing through March 20. Narrated by Liev Screiber, the film includes on-location footage at archaeological sites in Greece (Delphi, Corinth, Olympia). An exhibition catalogue is available. 

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ A terrific reason to visit Boston: Last week, Cambridge's Harvard Art Museums opened "Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia".  On view through September 18, the survey of the last 40 years of contemporary Indigenous art examines how the concept of time—"everywhen"—finds expression in Indigenous artistic, social, historical, and philosophical life. More than 70 works from private and public collections in Australia and the United States, some being exhibited for the first time outside Australia, are complemented with historical objects from Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Some of the marvelous artists whose work is included are Rover Thomas, Emily Kam Kngwarray, Judy Watson, Doreen Reid Nkamarra, Paddy Nyununy Bedford, Vernon Ah Kee, and Christian Thompson. A series of gallery and artist talks are scheduled.

Tommy Watson, Wipu Rockhole, 2004

Synthetic Polymer Paint on Canvas

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Purchase Funds from Aboriginal Collection Benefactors' Group 2004, 256.2004

© Tommy Watson. Courtesy of Yanda Aboriginal Art

Here's a timelapse video of the installation of Ah Kee's "Wall":

Ah Kee Wall Timelapse from Harvard Art Museums on Vimeo.

A 228-page catalogue with 122 color images and 2 black-and-white illustrations will be available. (It is expected March 24, 2016.) Including scholarly essays, the catalogue (distributed for HAM by Yale University Press) is organized around four themes: ancestral transformation, ritualized performance, seasonality, and remembrance. Its editor is Stephen Gilchrist, associate lecturer in art history, University of Sydney, and Australian Studies Visiting Curator, Harvard Art Museums.

Read "A New View of Bark Paintings" in the museums' magazine (December 23, 2015); "From Down Under to Cambridge" (December 18, 2015); and "Bringing Aboriginal Art to the Harvard Art Museums" (January 14, 2014).

Also see an interview with Stephen Gilchrist, "NYU Sydney's Stephen Gilchrist: 'Indigenous people have a lot to teach Australians'."

Harvard Art Museums on FaceBook, Twitter, and Vimeo

✭ New York City's Galerie LeLong is presenting "Ana Mendieta: Experimental and Interactive Films" through March 26. Of 15 films in the exhibition, nine are seen for the first time. The show includes large-scale projections, video, archival materials, and a sound-based work. LeLong represents the Ana Mendieta Estate.

✭ Works by postwar artists including Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, and H.C. Westermann, part of a group called the "Monster Roster", Chicago's first artistic movement, appear through June 12 in "Monster Roster: Existentialist Art in Postwar Chicago" at the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago. The exhibition of approximately five dozen paintings, sculptures, and works on paper examines the history, aesthetics, and styles of individual members of the group as well as Monster Roster's influence on American art.

A catalogue with color images of all the works in the show is available.

Catalogue Cover Art

Several related exhibitions and installations, one including Monster Roster printmaking, are in adjacent galleries.

Smart Museum on FaceBook

✭ Works on paper by Brice Marden are showcased in "Brice Marden: Prints from 1986 to 1998" at Barbara Krakow Gallery, Boston, through March 12. You'll find thumbnails and descriptions for works in the show at the exhibition link above.

Barbara Krakow Gallery on FaceBook

Notable Exhibition Abroad

✭ April 21, 2016, marks the bicentenary of Charlotte Bronte, who would be 200 on that date. There's perhaps no better way to observe it than with "Charlotte Great & Small". At the Bronte Parsonage Haworth, in Yorkshire, the exhibition opened this month and continues through the end of the year. Displayed are items of clothing, miniature books, locks of hair, and a love letter loaned by the British Library. Marvelous works by artists Ligia Bouton, Serena Partridge, Tamar Stone, and The Knitting Witch, made especially for the bicentenary, are installed throughout Haworth. 

The video below is about The Bronte Bed by Tamar Stone. Learn more about Stone's Bronte project at her site The Bed Work.

The Bronte Bed v010116 (1280x720HD) from Tamar Stone on Vimeo.

The celebrations include the March 22 publication in the United States of the short story anthology Reader, I Married Him, inspired by Jane Eyre and edited by Tracy Chevalier. (The anthology, with a different cover, will be published April 7 in the United Kingdom.) Contributors include Helen Dunmore, Emma Donoghue, Audrey Niffenegger, and Francine Prose. Read the Foreword by Chevalier. 

Anthology Cover Art (U.S. Cover)

Also worth noting is the Bronte Quilt Challenge: "Splendid Shreds of Silk and Satin: A Celebration of Charlotte Bronte in Quilts", on exhibit April 16 - June 11 at Bankfield Museum, Halifax, Yorkshire. Three members of Totley Brook Quilters (Sheffield) have created a new version of a Bronte quilt, which is to be shown alongside the original.