Category Archives: Exhibitions

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Podcasts, Reviews

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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This week: the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2022 is out—is the market’s recovery as good as it sounds? 

We talk to Melanie Gerlis, art market columnist for The Art Newspaper and the Financial Times, about the sixth edition of the market report, what the headline figures tell us and what we can read between the lines.

As the exhibition Hideouts: The Architecture of Survival, opens at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw—focusing on the spaces in Poland and Ukraine used by Holocaust survivors to escape Nazi persecution—we talk to the artist behind it, Natalia Romik. Though long planned, the show has gained a troubling topicality as the Russian invasion and destruction of Ukraine continues.

And in this episode’s Work of the Week, coinciding with the 150th anniversary of Piet Mondrian’s birth, we discuss his painting Victory Boogie Woogie (1942-44). Caro Verbeek, the co-curator of Mondrian Moves, an exhibition opening this week at the Kunstmuseum den Haag in the Hague, the Netherlands, tells us about the feverish creation and unfinished nature of the Dutch artist’s final work.

Natalia Romik’s exhibition, Hideouts: The Architecture of Survival, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, until 17 July; TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Szczecin, Poland, 4 August-6 November

Mondrian Moves, Kunstmuseum den Haag, the Hague, Netherlands, 2 April-25 September. Mondrian Evolution, Fondation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland, 5 June-9 October; K20, Düsseldorf, Germany, 29 October-10 February 2023

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Exhibits: ‘Woody Guthrie – People Are The Song’ At The Morgan Library, NYC

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The author of more than three thousand folk songs, Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) is one of the most influential songwriters and recording artists in American history. He is an icon of the Depression era and wrote the world’s most famous protest song, “This Land Is Your Land.”

But he was not only a songwriter, and his subject matter extended well beyond labor politics. The full corpus of his creativity—including lyrics, poetry, artwork, and largely unpublished prose writings—encompassed topics such as the environment, love, sex, spirituality, family, and racial justice. Guthrie created a personal philosophy that has impacted generations of Americans and inspired musician-activists from Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen to Ani DiFranco and Chuck D. As Bob Dylan noted of Guthrie, “You could listen to his songs and actually learn how to live.”

Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Tours, Videos, Views

Tours: ‘Marcel Proust’ – Carnavalet Museum, Paris

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The Carnavalet Museum – History of Paris is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Marcel Proust (1871–1922).

Dedicated to the relationship between Marcel Proust and Paris, where he spent most of his life, the exhibition Marcel Proust, a Parisian novel will investigate the city’s place in Proust’s novel.

The first section of the exhibition will explore the world Marcel Proust inhabited in Paris. Having been born and died in Paris, Proust’s life unfurled in the very restricted area encompassed by Parc Monceau, Place de la Concorde, Auteuil, Bois de Boulogne and l’Étoile. Paris was of immense importance in the development of Marcel Proust’s literary vocation, from the time of his earliest writings in the late 1890s with his fellow-pupils at the Lycée Condorcet, to his entry into the city’s high society and encounters with people who would be decisive to his life.

The second part of the exhibition opens on the fictional Paris created by Marcel Proust. Following the architecture of the novel In Search of Lost Time and evoking emblematic places in the city, it offers a journey through the novel and the history of the capital, focusing on the book’s central characters. The city of Paris, represented poetically in the novel, is the setting for the quest of the narrator, the author’s alter ego, until the revelation of his vocation as a writer.

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Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

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Donatello in Florence, the Biennale of Sydney and Eduardo Navarro’s seed installation.

This week, as the Palazzo Strozzi and Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence present a survey of Donatello, one of the greatest of all Italian Renaissance masters, we talk to Arturo Galansino, the Strozzi’s Director General, and Paola D’Agostino, Director of the Bargello museum, about the show. The Biennale of Sydney in Australia has just opened, with the theme of rīvus, meaning stream in Latin. José Roca, the Biennale’s artistic director, and Alessandro Pelizzon, co-founder of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, discuss the Biennale’s concept, bringing rivers and other “aqueous beings”, as Roca and his curatorial colleagues call them, into dialogue with artists, architects, designers, scientists, and communities. What does it mean if you grant rivers and other natural forms rights? And this episode’s Work of the Week also explores nature, ecology and the relationship between humans and natural phenomena. We speak to curator Bárbara Rodriguez Muñoz about The Photosynthetics, an installation by Eduardo Navarro in Rooted Beings, the latest exhibition at London’s Wellcome Collection.

Donatello: The Renaissance, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence, 19 March-31 July. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, 2 September-8 January 2023. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London will stage its variation of the exhibition in 2023

The Biennale of Sydney: Rīvus continues until 13 June. And José and Alessandro will take part in a panel discussion on 10 May titled Reclaiming Rivers’ Rights. Find out more at biennaleofsydney.art

Rooted Beings, Wellcome Collection, London, 24 March-29 August

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Profiles, Videos, Views

Views: Jennifer Packer – ‘The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing’ (Whitney)

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Join Jane Panetta, the Nancy and Fred Poses Curator and Director of the Collection, as she discusses key works from Jennifer Packer’s exhibition of paintings and drawings.

Jennifer Packer is an American painter living and working in New York City. In 2020, she won the Hermitage Greenfield Prize and the Rome Prize. Packer won the Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome 2020-2021. 

Jennifer Packer: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing was initiated by Serpentine and curated by Melissa Blanchflower, Curator, Exhibitions and Public Art with Natalia Grabowska, Assistant Curator. The presentation at the Whitney is organized by Rujeko Hockley, Arnhold Associate Curator, and Jane Panetta, Nancy and Fred Poses Curator and Director of the Collection, with Ambika Trasi, Curatorial Assistant.

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Artists: Thao Nguyen Phan – ‘My Reflections On The History Of Vietnam’ (Tate)

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Step inside the studio of artist Thao Nguyen Phan and discover her mesmerising, poetic work. Through video, paintings and sculpture, Phan explores the historical and ecological issues facing her homeland Vietnam, while speaking to broader ideas around tradition, ideology, ritual and environmental change.

Her recent projects have expanded on ‘the beauty and suffering’ of the Mekong River, which runs through Tibet, China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia before meeting the sea on the coast of Vietnam. Phan’s latest moving image work First Rain, Brise Soleil continues this exploration of the Mekong, proposing a new way of being that draws on indigenous knowledge and respect for the ecosystem.

You can see Phan’s artworks on display at Tate St Ives until 2 May 2022 https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate…

Art, Arts & Literature, Exhibitions, Museums, Reviews, Tours, Videos

Morgan Library: ‘Holbein – Capturing Character’

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Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543) was among the most skilled, versatile, and inventive artists of the early 1500s. He created captivating portraits of courtiers, merchants, scholars, and statesmen in Basel, Switzerland, and later in England, and served as a court painter to Tudor King Henry VIII (1491–1547). Enriched by inscriptions, insignia, and evocative attributes, his portraits comprise eloquent visual statements of personal identity and illuminate the Renaissance culture of erudition, self-fashioning, luxury, and wit. February 11 through May 15, 2022

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Museum Exhibit Tours: Jacques Louis David – ‘Radical Draftsman’

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Join Perrin Stein, Curator, in the Department of Drawings and Prints, for a virtual tour of Jacques Louis David: Radical Draftsman, the first exhibition devoted to works on paper by the celebrated French artist.

David navigated vast artistic and political divides throughout his life—from his birth in Paris in 1748 to his death in exile in Brussels in 1825—and his iconic works captured the aspirations and suffering of a nation, while addressing timeless themes that continue to resonate today. Through the lens of his preparatory studies, the exhibition looks beyond his public successes to chart the moments of inspiration and the progress of ideas.

Visitors will follow the artist’s process as he gave form to the neoclassical style and created major canvases that shaped the public’s perceptions of historical events in the years before, during, and after the French Revolution. Organized chronologically, the exhibition will feature more than eighty drawings and oil sketches—including rarely loaned or newly discovered works—drawn from the collections of The Met and dozens of institutional and private lenders.

Learn more about the exhibition: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions…

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Art Exhibits: Australian Painter Jeffrey Smart

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‘Suddenly I will see something that seizes me – a shape, a combination of shapes, a play of light or shadows, and I send up a prayer because I know I have seen a picture.’

JEFFREY SMART The year 2021 marks one hundred years since the birth of acclaimed Australian artist Jeffrey Smart. This major exhibition celebrates and commemorates this significant centenary. One of Australia’s most celebrated artists, Smart sought inspiration from the world around him – looking to the environment of urban and industrial modernity – which he transformed through his imaginative sense of theatre and intimate understanding of geometry and composition.

These potent and intriguing images have become emblematic of 20th and 21st century urban experience. Building on the foundational work already undertaken on Smart, this exhibition will bring fresh perspectives to his artistic contribution so that his remarkable legacy will be kept alive in the present. Curators: Dr Deborah Hart, Henry Dalrymple Head of Australian Art and Dr Rebecca Edwards, Sid & Fiona Myer Curator of Ceramics and Design