LAND OF THE SPOTTED EAGLE. WORKS FROM THE LOTHAR SCHIRMER COLLECTION
March 24th – September 1st, 2024
mariangoodman.com
FEATURES
20 Movement With Sculptures
Tatiana Potapova creates sculptures that are aerial and seem to move through gravity. Read about her inspiration.
28 Ecological Installations
Using nature as her muse, Clare Boersch creates installations and collage with a focus on the ecosystem and biodiversity.
38 Sculpting Emotion
Chris Corson began sculpting as a means to express deep emotions. Now he uses his art to help others find their connection to humanity.
©2024 by Vika Visual Arts Association
Icould stare at art all day and get lost in every color, brush stroke, image, line, and more. But what really engrosses me is threedimensional art. I love being able to walk around a piece of art, examine complex textures, and even interact with art. This issue recognizes the beauty in 3-D art.
We interviewed Tatiana Potapova who creates sculptures that mimic top athletes like gymnasts and cyclists. In a skillful way, her pieces seem to move, float and soar. Chris Corson is a sculptor who focuses on the human form. His creations are often based on vulnerability, and through his
creative process Chris has realized that true strength lies in one’s ability to own and let others see this vulnerability. Clare Celeste Boersch began as a collage artist and then transitioned into installation art. Using nature as her muse, Clare brings attention to the importance of biodiversity and our ecosystem.
Enjoy this issue, and don’t forget to support the arts in your community!
Devika Strother, Editor in Chief devika@artdictionmagazinecom
Art Basel’s Latest Collaboration Focuses on Saving the Oceans
Protecting our oceans has been a concern of environmentalists for decades, and as climate change has only rapidly increased, that concern has become more urgent. Enter the environmental organization Parley for the Oceans. Its
initiative to protect oceans, climate, and life against plastic pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss,” and it will play a role at Art Basel Hong Kong this week. Parley, as it is often called for short, entering the art world might seem like it’s come out of the blue, but since its launch in 2012, the organization has worked with over 30
founder Cyrill Gutsch said in an interview that he doesn’t want to sound “preachy,” but at times over a long conversation, he appears to have little room for alternatives. With wide-reaching partners from Dior, Adidas, and Stella McCartney to the UN and the World Bank, Parley for the Oceans has an ambitious remit to end the world’s dependence on plastic, and its latest collaboration, with the mega art fair company Art Basel, is just the latest in these no-small plans.
Launched at Art Basel Miami Beach in December, the organization bills its new “Art for the Oceans” collaboration as a “global fundraising
artists, including the likes of Julian Schnabel, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Holzer, Katharina Grosse, and Doug Aitken. It would seem, then, that joining forces with the world’s most important art fair would be the logical next step.
What’s more, Gutsch, who closed his design firm to create Parley, said the idea for the organization began at Art Basel in Switzerland, when he learned about the work of environmental activist Captain Paul Watson. Their meeting directly spurred “the epiphany that led me to dedicate my whole life to the oceans,” Gutsch has said.
At the Hong Kong fair, Parley will sell its limited-edition, artist-designed tote bags, made from plastic recuperated from nature. A single bag funds the removal of 20 pounds of plastic waste. They will also offer one-hour guided tours of the fair, highlighting artworks that share a connection to the environment and artists who have previously collaborated with Parley. (Tours cost $388HKD, around $49 USD, with proceeds going to the environmental cause.)
In an email, Art Basel Hong Kong director Angelle Siyang-Li said that this collaboration with Parley is a way for the fair to develop both immediate and long-terms plans on how to reduce its carbon footprint. “Sustainability is a pressing issue for art fairs and the entire art world,” she said. “Art Basel is strongly committed to reducing its environmental impact as well as using its platform to encourage wider change across the art world.”
In Miami, Parley also featured artist-designed surfboards, which they chose not to ship to Hong Kong to limit carbon emissions, though they can be sent to any interested takers. For that launch, Schnabel, who has been an early Parley collaborator, exhibited three of his works as part of their partnership with Art Basel, and said at the time he had participated as a way to support “Parley’s work to change the destiny of our planet. Protecting the oceans goes far beyond protecting marine wildlife. Protecting the oceans means protecting humanity.”
Meanwhile, beyond its recent journey into art fairs, Parley also commissions artworks, both limited prints and larger installations, as a way to help fund its advocacy programs, including environmental education, plastic cleanups, recycling, and research
into plastic-alternative materials, like the recuperated marine plastic that its bags are made from. Future plans include large, site-specific installations at the Art Basel fairs and beyond, as well as other programs like creating an artist residency.
But more than raising funds, Gutsch said he sees these first few art fairs as “introductions” into the larger art world, to spur both awareness and future collaborations.
Beyond these art-related ventures, Parley also generates income from its commercial collaborations with brands like Adidas and Dior, as well as via direct donations and grants. However, Gutsch declined to answer questions about how much was raised at its Miami fundraiser in December, or about Parley’s budget, a nonprofit with 200 “core” employees. “We need a lot, into the 10’s of millions of dollars,” Gutsch said.
Parley relies on thousands of collaborations with other groups to work toward an “end to the plastic crisis,” which involves plans for building recycling and sorting hubs in three countries where the group has concentrated efforts: the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and the Dominican Republic. Once that goal is achieved there, Parley hopes to duplicate their “end-toend solution” to plastic, built on a strategy that entails: Avoiding plastics/emissions, Intercepting plastic waste and pollutants, and Redesigning materials, methods, and mindset, or AIR. “It works. We’re very efficient… we just need to grow it now,” Gutsch said. The group’s 2023 report counted some 1 million participants in their education programs and cleanups in 57 countries, over 574,000 volunteers in global programs, and over 8.1 million kilograms of debris removed from nature and coastal areas.
“Parley,” in pirate lore, is a French word for a “conference or discussion, especially between opposing sides.” That notion seems to resonate in today’s divisive times, especially when it comes to the immediacy of climate change. Gutsch sees it as a way to describe the group’s method and challenge ahead, to parley—or talk—to art world elites, who aren’t exactly reputed for
“I think we’ll continue to see an ongoing correction in the global art market. This means a general shift away from the experimentalism of yesteryear toward selectivity and regionalism.”
leading environmentally friendly lifestyles.
Patrizia Sandretto Re “The ecological footprint of the top end of the art market remains incredibly high, because of the almost incessant air travel,” Olav Velthuis, a sociologist focusing on the art market at the University of Amsterdam said. Art fairs, too, are relatively high-polluting events, because they are often held in temporary venues, require shipping artwork, and attract jet-setting collectors who fly private—the bread and butter of major fairs.
The 2023 Art Basel and UBS survey of global collecting noted that while 57 percent of high net-worth collectors surveyed were willing to pay premiums for more sustainable purchases, 77 percent said they planned to travel to more fairs or
overseas events than the previous year. “Although most collectors were aware of and concerned over the sustainability of the market, this has not fully filtered down to their actions or resulted in any significant reduction in their plans to travel,” the report concludes. This lack of reduction in private air travel has already sparked protests, including one staged by the UK-founded environmental group Extinction Rebellion on March 9 that involved blocking the roads to Maastricht’s airport during TEFAF. “This segment of the art market is simply not sustainable,” Velthuis said, recommending a radical shift to a more local model. “Members of the art world, including Art Basel, urgently need to discuss on a more fundamental level how the contemporary art world and art market are organized. So far, I don’t see much willingness to engage in that discussion.”
For Gutsch, that is where Parley comes in. Asked if he sees any contradictions in working with a high-polluting milieu, Gutsch had a ready response. Far from the organization being “pure” itself (“we are no saints” and “we are all natural-born hypocrites at this point,” he said), Parley has already collaborated with major corporations and countries with particularly high carbon emissions. Eventually, he says the “ultimate potential” of the Art Basel collaboration, is to “drastically improve” the fair’s footprint.
“Our approach is to be in the room to collaborate,” he said. “Because if I would shy away from polluters or from events that are polluting, I would also have to shy away from governments that are polluting. … I’m actually doing the total opposite.”
He continued, “I am an innovator. We, as an organization, are change-makers. We go to the
battlegrounds, where the most damage is being done, and in that sense, you can call Art Basel a battleground.”
“Somebody who can afford to buy an Andy Warhol, or a Basquiat, or a [Julian] Schnabel, usually has a lot of influence, so they can call up their leadership team, and say: ‘Let’s get out of plastic, let’s get out of fossil fuel,’” Gutsch explained. “We want to increase that group of high-net worth individuals that are exposed to us, because I don’t blame and shame anyone. I want to change them. I love sinners!”
Like many art fairs, Art Basel has begun to take steps toward greater sustainability in recent years, and Siyang-Li, ABHK’s director, said the event is “strongly committed to reducing its environmental impact.” One example is its active membership in the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC), which requires certain commitments from participants, including developing a “Decarbonisation Action Plan,” a regularly updated, step-by-step carbon reduction strategy that includes setting a “near-zero waste target,” measuring emissions, and auditing waste, while guiding against “bad habits and social convention.”
Siyang-Li added, “We understand the immense value of collective effort. That’s why our collaboration with Parley for the Oceans and also with the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC) are central to our strategy. Together, we aim to harness the collective expertise and commitment of the art world to drive meaningful change.”
The Decarbonisation Action Plan is part of the GCC-member goal of reaching a 50-percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030, which “is entirely possible” to do, a spokesperson for the group stated during an interveiw. The GCC has also witnessed positive change in the
arts sector over the last four years, sighting over 1,150 new members, and “rapid progress in climate consciousness,” as well as a “readiness of many to begin to take action on the issues,” according to the spokesperson. The question remains whether that progress will be fast enough.
A key ingredient to these efforts are the artists, whom Gutsch said have a special “convening power.” He asked, “How do you make something like protecting the oceans, and our future, relevant to people that are otherwise so busy? I think the artist has the unique role in society to burst open these bubbles where everybody tends to hide.” Art can empower its viewers to feel a “readiness, an openness, which is something that we need, to create empathy for our cause,” he said. “Empathy is really what this is all about.”
While art fairs might be a key battleground when it comes to climate activism, Gutsch said Art Basel has already shown
“courage” by choosing to collaborate with Parley, and his goal with this collaboration is to address the full-scope of the polluting, highnet-worth lifestyle that convenes around week-long art events like these, by converting collectors, both to reduce their emissions in their personal lifestyles, as well as in their wider social and professional circles.
Chanel Awards $108,000 Prizes to Ten Artists
Ten artists from a wide range of disciplines, from opera to fine art to video game development, have been named among the second group of winners of the Chanel Next Prize, which comes with a no-strings-attached €100,000 ($108,000) purse and two years of mentorship from the brand’s global partners.
The prize, which is awarded every two years, was first established in 2021, though its roots go back a century, according to the global
head of arts and culture at the French fashion house, Yana Peel. “It’s really a prize that’s focused on the new and the next,” Peel said. “Gabrielle Chanel wanted to be part of the future. I love the audacity and the curiosity of giving artists time and space and resources.”
There are no terms attached to the prize. Rather, according to Peel, the artists are meant to continue redefining their respective disciplines. The winners include Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist Tolia Astakhishvili; artist and filmmaker Kantemir Balagov; Oona Doherty a Belfast-born, Marseille-based choreographer who works at the forefront of contemporary dance; game designer Sam Eng, from New York; Ho Tzu Nyen, the artist who represented Singapore at the 2011 Venice Biennale; San Diego–based visual artist and director Fox Maxy; Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother), an American musician, poet and visual artist; Brazilian portraitist Dalton Paula; Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir; and Virginiaborn opera singer and curator Davóne Tines.
These artists’ practices are dissimilar, but Peel said that is entirely by design. “In the spirit of dialogue there is no hierarchy to their disciplines at all. Chanel has never created that kind of separation and that allows the cohort to have these amazing cross-disciplinary transversal conversations.“
The winners were chosen last year at the Royal College of Art by a jury that included venerable figures in the arts including actress Tilda Swinton, artist Cao Fei, and curators Legacy Russell and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Andy Warhol ‘Mao’ Screen Print, Worth $50,000 Taken from Orange Coast College Vault
Orange Coast College officials have asked the public to help it
find a screen print of “Mao,” a 1972 Andy Warhol art piece depicting Chinese Communist Chairman Mao Zedong, which was taken from a campus vault earlier this month, authorities said. Officials became aware that the screen print, which was valued at $50,000 when it was donated to the Orange Coast College Foundation in September 2020, was missing from the vault at the Frank M. Doyle Art Pavilion on March 13, said Doug Bennett, executive director of the foundation.
School officials filed a report with Costa Mesa police Department, which was investigating along with Orange Coast College’s Campus Public Safety, Bennett said. Costa Mesa police spokeswoman Roxi Fyad confirmed the department had taken the report and was investigating.
To access the vault takes a key card and punching a code into a keypad, Bennett said, adding that it appeared no damage had been done to the vault.
At the time of the donation, officials were told the screen print is No. 187 of about 250 that had been made, Bennett said.“We’re just hoping that we can find it,” Bennett said, “that perhaps there’s a misunderstanding or someone took it to hang in their office or something like that.”
“Mao” was inspired by a 1972 visit by then-U.S. President Richard Nixon to China to meet the Communist chairman, “ending years of diplomatic isolation between the two nations,” according to the The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1972 and 1973, Warhol “created 199 silkscreen paintings of ‘Mao’ in five scales,” the museum’s website said.
The original Warhol painting sold for $47.5 million at auction in 2015. Authorities asked that anyone with information on the whereabouts of the missing screen print to call
the college’s Campus Public Safety Office at 714-432-5017 or Costa Mesa police at 714-754-5252
Richard Serra, Minimalist Sculptor, Dies at 85
Richard Serra, the sculptor whose grand steel works defined the Minimalist art movement, has died at 85. The New York Times reported that Serra died on Tuesday at in his home in Orient, New York; the artist’s lawyer said that Serra had been battling pneumonia.
Serra’s sculptures defined a generation of art-making. Working on an unusually large scale, Serra crafted gigantic artworks that enlisted spirals, cubes, and cones of steel. These works loom over viewers, threatening to squash them.
But despite their menacing quality, Serra’s sculptures have enraptured viewers across the globe. They have been seen across the world, in venues ranging from Dia:Beacon in Upstate New York to the deserts of Qatar.
His works, however, have not been without controversy. Tilted Arc (1981), a 120-foot-long bar of Cor-Ten steel that was once set in a plaza in New York’s Financial District, is today remembered as one of the most reviled works of public art in the city’s history. It was ultimately taken away because people hated it so much.
Yet for the most part, critics have spoken hyperbolically of Serra’s work, viewing it as a game-changing oeuvre that succeeded in pushing sculpture into new conceptual realms. He contended with the ways in which an artwork not only exists in space but reorients it, shaping how viewers approach the area around them. Accordingly, his sculptures variously restrict,
warp, and block the spaces viewers inhabit, forcing them to move through galleries in ways they may not normally.
“I think that sculpture, if it has any potential at all, has the potential to create its own place and space, and to work in contradiction to the spaces and places where it is created in this sense,” Serra once said.
Serra’s sculptures defined a generation of art-making. Working on an unusually large scale, Serra crafted gigantic artworks that enlisted spirals, cubes, and cones of steel.
“I am interested in work where the artist is a maker of ‘anti-environment’ which takes its own place or makes its own situation, or divides or declares its own area.” Serra’s work is cold, unforgiving,
and austere. Nearly all of it contains no psychological content, no figural imagery. It seems totally opposed to its viewer, who must accept the power differential between a human and a steel block weighing tons, then either surrender to it or fight back by ignoring these pieces altogether—which is hard to do, given their size.
It is the kind of art that has become a shorthand for the masculine bravado of many Minimalists. (Asked if he thought his work was feminine, Serra once said, “It’s not feminine.”) For that reason, it was sometimes targeted by feminist critics during the 1970s. Cindy Nemser once claimed that she had tried to interview Serra, and that he declined her request, telling her to “fuck off.” She published word of that in a 1972 essay called “Egomania and the Male Artist.” The artist David Hammons once spoofed the macho quality of Serra’s art with the performance Pissed Off (1981), for which he urinated on one of Serra’s public steel sculptures in New York.
These critiques did little to tarnish Serra’s reputation. He has proven massively influential to generations of artists. He even appeared
in Matthew Barney’s 2002 film Cremaster 3, in which Serra plays The Architect, a God-like figure who can be seen splashing Vaseline against a wall in the Guggenheim Museum.
Richard Serra was born on November 2, 1938, in San Francisco. Some Minimalists have discussed their artistic styles as being rooted in experiences formative to their development. In Serra’s case, many have divined a possible connection between his sculptures formed from industrial materials and the ships that he could see from the windows of his family’s home. When Serra was 5, he visited the shipyard where his father worked; that, too, has become crucial to Serra lore.
He attended the University of California, Santa Barbara as an undergraduate, finishing with a degree in English literature, and then attended Yale University’s graduate art program, having already taken art history courses there. At Yale, he played a trick on Robert Rauschenberg in which he gave the artist a box that secretly contained a chicken, which proceeded to make noise and defecate once let loose. Serra was ejected from the program for two weeks.
“They told me I wasn’t ‘polite to guests,‘“ Serra recalled. “How can they kick you out of art school?” Serra had set out to become a painter, then became disillusioned with the medium, which at the time was still associated with Abstract Expressionism and transcendence. Serra, wanting nothing to do with any of that, ended up moving in a less traditional route upon graduation from Yale in 1964, working with composer Philip Glass and staging a show composed solely of animals, only some of which were still alive. His art of the late ’60s has been aligned with a movement known
as Process art, which shifted the focus away from the completed art object, toward the means by which it was created. Verb List (1967–68) is a crucial artwork of that movement: it features, in carefully scrawled cursive, 54 verbs, ending with “to continue.” There were also pieces such as Splashing (1968), for which Serra threw molten lead against a wall of New York’s Leo Castelli Gallery. In 1969, Jasper Johns invited Serra to do a “splashing” work in his New York studio, as sure a sign as any that Serra’s star had fully ascended.
“They told me I wasn’t ‘polite to guests,‘“ Serra recalled. “How can they kick you out of art school?”
go on to wed Clara Weyergraf in 1981, and would remain married to her until his death.) Serra’s documentation of Jonas’s early works appears in her current Museum of Modern Art retrospective.
But for many, Serra’s big artistic breakthrough was his “Prop” sculptures of the late ’60s, for which he delicately placed lead sheets against steel poles. So tenuous were these balancing acts that they threatened to come apart entirely at the slightest disturbance. These works differed greatly from Abstract Expressionist painting, which its makers believed to be imbued with all sorts of lofty ideas about the state of humanity. By contrast, Serra’s art seemed to be all about surfaces—they were conceptually driven, their content existing in the form of ideas that were appended to these objects. “Where else would content come from if not from the experience of perceiving the work,” Serra once said.
Serra’s art in mediums other than sculpture remains lesser-known but has been hugely important as well. His 1968 film Hand Catching Lead, a nearly-three-minute shot of his hand performing the titular action, has been acclaimed, as has his 1973 video Television Delivers People, made with Carlota Fay Schoolman, which was broadcast on TV. The latter work features a seven-minute scrolling text that attempts to invert the capitalist power dynamic that guides TV. “You are the product of t.v.,” it bitterly claims.
He also produced a range of prints and drawings over the years, and even shot documentation of early performances by Joan Jonas, with whom Serra fell in love, causing his marriage to the artist Nancy Graves to unravel. (Serra was married to Graves from 1965 to 1970; he would
During the ’70s, Serra started to inset his works within landscapes and urban spaces. In 1971, he created his first rolled steel work, and from there would continue to rely on the material for works such as Circuit, staged at the 1977 edition of the Documenta art festival in Kassel, Germany. When it was installed in the German city of Bochum two years later, locals were not happy.
Their ire would prove no match for what Serra would experience when Tilted Arc was installed in Manhattan’s Foley Federal Plaza. The work was commissioned by a government body, and its perceived ugliness led 1,300 government workers to sign a petition calling for its removal. Serra said such a massive thing could not be taken away—it was meant to be permanent.
But the public was not persuaded, and the case even made it to court. A judge ruled that the piece would have to go—it made it impossible to fully surveil the government buildings it partially concealed. Serra then sued the United States General Services Office, claiming that his right to free speech had been violated. His claim was denied, and the sculpture was finally hauled away in 1989. The Wall Street Journal’s story about the removal bore the headline “Good Riddance.” Today, the sculpture resides in storage.
Although the Tilted Arc debacle has continued to follow any discussion of Serra’s art, it did not keep him from sculpting increasingly large steel works. Installing these works has not always been a safe endeavor. In 1971, a Serra sculpture weighing more than 5,000 pounds fell on an installer at the Walker Art Center, killing him. And in 1988, two workers were pinned for several minutes beneath a 32-ton Serra sculpture that they had been deinstalling.
Despite the evident danger of installing Serra works, many have not shown any fear of getting up-close to them. A number for epic steel works from the past couple decades have seduced viewers with their wavy, curved surfaces. In some cases, viewers can even walk into corridors created by these steel forms, which do not always offer pleasant experiences for claustrophobics.
Among Serra’s late-career triumphs is Equal (2015), an installation composed for 40-ton box-like forms that are balanced in twos, one atop the other. The work is currently afforded a gallery of its own at the Museum of Modern Art, which owns it.
Serra’s various accolades include the Venice Biennale’s lifetime achievement award, and he has received such major shows as a MoMA survey held in 2007.
Almost all of the sculptures, drawings, prints, paintings, and more that Serra has done are crafted in shades of black. When critic Deborah Solomon asked Serra if he thought of trying another color, he mentioned he had a pink painting that he relegated to his closet. He toyed with green and purple, too. Then, he told Solomon, “For a week, I considered chartreuse seriously.”
Marian Goodman Gallery Adds Australian Indigenous Artist Daniel Boyd to Roster
Marian Goodman Gallery now represents Daniel Boyd, a rising Indigenous Australian artist. Boyd is one of the few Indigenous Australian artists represented by a major blue-chip gallery outside his home country.
The gallery mounted a solo show for the Sydney-based artist earlier this year, and will include works by him in its booth at Art Basel in Switzerland this June. An exhibition at the gallery’s Paris space is also forthcoming.
Boyd has steadily been building his reputation as one of the country’s most closely watched artists. His work was included in the main exhibition of the 2015 Venice Biennale, organized by Okwui Enwezor, as well as the 2016 Sydney Biennale and the 2015 Kochi-Muziris Biennale.He also was the subject of major solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (in 2022) and the Gropius Bau in Berlin (2023).
Born in Gimuy/Cairns on the northeast coast of the country, Boyd has heritage that spans several Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations including Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Bundjalung, Yuggera and ni-Vanuatu.
Boyd is best known for his portraits and landscapes that build on the Indigenous Australian tradition of dot paintings, which began to receive greater attention in the international art world after artists from Western and Central Australia rose to fame. Boyd’s paintings, however, also aim to depart from this tradition, moving it toward Gestalt theories of perception and away from narrative storytelling.
“Daniel is the most highly regarded contemporary artist of Australia from his generation,” Philipp Kaiser, the gallery’s president and partner, told ARTnews in an emailed interview. “As much as his work deals with specific historical concerns, it also expands on larger pressing issues that are relevant globally.”
Revolutions: Art From The Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960
March 22–April 20, 2025
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
In honor of its 50th-anniversary season, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden presents “Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960,” a major survey of artwork made during a transformative period characterized by new currents in science and philosophy, and ever-increasing mechanization. “Revolutions” captures shifting cultural landscapes through a largely chronological presentation. In its first rotation, the installation presents 208 artworks in the museum’s permanent collection by 117 artists—including Francis Bacon, Jean Dubuffet, Lee Krasner, Wifredo Lam, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe and Jackson Pollock—made during 100 turbulent and energetic years.
Also included are contemporary works by 19 artists, such as Torkwase Dyson, Rashid Johnson, Annette Lemieux, Dyani White Hawk and Flora Yukhnovich, whose practices demonstrate how many revolutionary ideas and approaches that arose during these 100 years remain critical. Organized by Hirshhorn Associate Curator Marina Isgro and Assistant Curator Betsy Johnson, “Revolutions” will fill the Museum’s second-floor outer-circle galleries from March 22, 2024, to April 20, 2025.
The exhibit spotlights the rush of art historical movements and genres that characterized the arc of Modernism and the ascendancy of abstraction, notably through the work of artists interested in engaging the mind, not just the eye. This breadth was evident in Joseph Hirshhorn’s founding gifts to the Museum. An industrial-
ist, collector, and philanthropist, Hirshhorn donated nearly 6,000 works—including a significant number of sculptures—in anticipation of the Museum’s opening on October 4, 1974, and 6,400 more upon his death in 1981. Together these gifts constitute one of the most important collections of postwar American and European art in the world. Today, the Hirshhorn collection comprises more than 13,130 artworks. “Revolutions” takes a primarily chronological approach to historical movements, pausing occasionally to introduce contemporary works that serve as throughlines.
Designed by Paris-based exhibition specialists Studio Adrien Gardère,“Revolutions” will be accompanied by free public programs, including an artist talk on March 22, and a 50th-birthday celebration on October 4.
Bonnard’s Worlds
March 2–June 2, 2024
The Phillips Collection presents Bonnard’s Worlds, the first major exhibition on French artist
Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) in Washington, DC, in 20 years. Co-organized by The Phillips Collection and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, Bonnard’s Worlds brings together 60 of the artist’s celebrated paintings throughout his career from museums and private collections across the world, including several rarely seen by the public.
Governed neither by chronology nor geography but by measures of intimacy, Bonnard’s Worlds examines the larger domains in which Bonnard lived to the most private interior spaces of his dwellings and his thoughts. The Phillips Collection’s presentation echoes the personal spaces depicted in Bonnard’s paintings, encouraging guests to explore the sensory realms of the artist’s experiences. Bonnard’s Worlds is on view from March 2–June 2, 2024.
“The Phillips Collection, an early champion of Bonnard in the United States, is delighted to present this landmark exhibition. Bonnard’s sensuously colored, expressive paintings have long held a special place at the Phillips, where they have and continue to serve as an inspiration to generations of
artists. We can’t help but be seduced by his quiet, intimate paintings, which invite us to find beauty in the details of our everyday lives,” says Vradenburg Director & CEO Jonathan P. Binstock. “The intimate setting of the Phillips creates a special ambiance to linger with Bonnard. Our founder Duncan Phillips aptly declared, ‘With us Bonnard is at home.’ We’re immensely excited for guests to experience the joy of looking at Bonnard’s pictures in a space where he was welcomed and felt at home.”
As a painter, Bonnard did not develop along a linear path, nor did he fit within a given movement or style. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist group of avant-garde painters
Les Nabis, Bonnard is known for the decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color, which served as a vehicle for emotional expression. Bonnard was a contemporary and close friend of Claude Monet and Henri Matisse and is viewed as a bridge between Impressionism and Modernism. He often suggested the world beyond the edge of the frame by painting scenes in which people and objects appear on the periphery of the composition. In this way, Bonnard activated his surfaces with dynamic all-over patterns of color that sought to capture the immediacy of what he called the “first sensation.” He created a mobile vision that flows organically from one scene to the next, in which viewers are reminded of where the artist has been—both physically and
Bonnard also explored spaces devoted to social encounters, from the dining room to the parlor, where a sense of stillness is punctuated by an intensity of feeling.
stylistically—and how he would return to those moments.
Representing the full breadth of Bonnard’s long career, the exhibition features views of the
places Bonnard lived in Paris, Normandy, and the French Riviera, painted between the 1890s and the 1940s. Moving from the landscape to the garden, paintings from Bonnard’s decorative beginnings prelude his poetic and increasingly expressionist vision of nature. In this presentation, scenes depicting terraces near his dwellings give way to verdant landscapes inspired by his daily walks. In several of the painted interiors, Bonnard includes a view of the outdoor world through a window or door, suggesting the symbiotic relationship between his internal and external worlds.
Bonnard also explored spaces devoted to social encounters, from the dining room to the parlor, where a sense of stillness is punctuated by an intensity of feeling. Most private are the images of the artist’s bedroom and bath, often featuring Bonnard’s longtime partner and muse, Marthe de Méligny Bonnard, with whom Bonnard lived for most of 50 years. In these carefully constructed compositions, Marthe is seen sleeping, at her toilette, or bathing; the artist’s presence implied. A series of paintings of her in the bathtub from 1936–1946 are featured in the exhibition, which are some of Bonnard’s most celebrated depictions of the subject.
“The Phillips Collection has been a leader in the presentation of Bonnard’s work, including a recent exhibition drawn from the collection of Roger and the late Vicki Sant that explored the artist’s relationship with the Nabi. Bonnard’s Worlds draws us into the artist’s expressive artistic language through which he translates his sentient responses to the world,” says Phillips Chief Curator Elsa Smithgall. “Like a moving picture, his compositions unfold before your eyes, surprising and awakening you with each new detail. The poetry of Bonnard’s worlds calls forth its interior sounds.”
Bonnard would revisit his paintings and subjects over the years, deriving compositions from his imagination and memories. He began working on Young Women
MAGE: Pierre Bonnard, Dining Room on the Garden, 1935, Oil on canvas, 50 x 53 1/4 in., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By gift © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
in the Garden in 1921 but did not finish it until 1946. The painting shows two women, identified as Marthe de Méligny and Renée Monchaty, a young woman who was the subject of many of Bonnard’s paintings during their affair. Bonnard married Marthe in August 1925, and less than a month later, Renée Monchaty took her own life. Bonnard retouched Young Women in the Garden after Marthe’s death in 1942, revisiting the composition and his relationships with Marthe and Renée, whose smiling face is turned toward the viewer (and to the painter), as he neared the end of his life. Bonnard’s contemplations on his private existence are also reflected in a group of self-portraits that conclude the exhibition. Later self-portraits, depicting the artist through mirrors in his bath or dressing room, are powerful renderings of the artist’s psyche. Museum founder Duncan Phillips was an early advocate of Bonnard, having bought his first two paintings by Bonnard in 1925, Woman with Dog (1922) and Early Spring (1908), and hosting the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in 1930. This launched a major collection that grew to over 30 works by the 1950s and what now stands as one of the largest, most diverse collections of Bonnard’s work in a museum outside of France.
The Phillips’s promised gift of The Nabi Collection of Vicki and Roger Sant, which includes 13 works by Bonnard, will further expand the museum’s holdings. Bonnard’s sensibility and personal expressiveness embody Phillips’s vision of his museum as an “intimate” collection that promotes art’s “restorative” power.
The exhibition is co-organized by The Phillips Collection and the Kimbell Art Museum and curated by Elsa Smithgall, Chief Curator of The Phillips Collection, and George Shackelford, Deputy Director of the Kimbell Art Museum.
Made possible by major support from The Exhibitions Endowment Fund, Roger Sant and Doris Matsui, and a lead contribution from The Richard C. von Hess Foundation
Presented with generous support from the Ednah Root Foundation, The Marion F. Goldin Charitable Fund, and Dina and George Perry
Support for this exhibition is provided by The Kristina and Will Catto Foundation, Anne and Gus Edwards, Martha R. Johnston and Robert Coonrod, Paul Killian and Carole Goodson, The Robert Lehman Foundation, Ken and Dorothy Woodcock, and Alan and Irene Wurtzel.
A Matter of Style: Modernism in California Art
February 23–August 3, 2024
Hilbert Museum
The early 20th century witnessed a transformative shift in the art world as modernism swept across various artistic movements. In California, a unique fusion of regional identity and modernist influences gave rise to what is now known as California Scene painting. This art movement emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, reflecting the dynamic interplay between local landscapes, social realities, and the avant-garde principles of modernism.
The debut of the “A MATTER OF STYLE: Modernism in California
Art” exhibition as part of the Hilbert Museum’s expansion grand opening lineup creates a unique opportunity for visitors to experience this artistic shift.
Rooted in realism, the movement sought to capture the diverse landscapes and everyday life in California, from urban scenes to rural settings, many of which resonate with today’s museum visitors.
California’s diverse landscapes, ranging from the majestic coastline to arid deserts and fertile valleys, are featured as key subjects by California Scene painters. They moved beyond traditional pastoral scenes to depict the changing face of the Golden State, capturing the effects of industrialization and urbanization. The bustling streets of Los Angeles, the agricultural richness of the Central Valley, and the unique coastal vistas all found their way onto these artists’ canvases.
The California Scene movement was driven by a group of pioneering artists who sought to break free from the constraints of academic traditions and explore new ways of expressing
their artistic visions. Among the notable figures on view in this exhibition are Stanton MacDonald-Wright, Susan Hertel, Helen Lundeberg, Lorser Feitelson, Agnes Pelton, Rex Brandt, Keith Crown, Conrad Buff, Millard Sheets, Edward Reep, Karl Kasten and others.
The coming of modernism to California art represented a seismic shift in the region’s artistic landscape. The artists mentioned, along with many others, challenged traditional norms, experimented with new techniques, and contributed to the formation of a diverse and vibrant modernist movement. Their collective efforts not only transformed California’s art scene but also left an indelible mark on the broader trajectory of American modernism.
Off-Center: New Mexico Art, 1970-2000
June 8, 202–May 4, 2025
Nevada Museum of Art
The New Mexico Museum of Art presents a landmark exhibition, Off-Center: New Mexico Art, 19702000, a survey of the last three
decades of the twentieth century, a pivotal time in which numerous artists relocated to New Mexico, drawn by its distinctive climate and landscape, its rich diversity of cultures, and its strong reputation as a center for the visual arts. Scheduled from June 8, 2024, to May 4, 2025, at the New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary, Off-Center explores the depth and complexity of this period through a series of relevant and topical themes.
During this time, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Taos continued to be important destinations for contemporary artists, but other communities developed in cities and towns infrequently identified with the visual arts such as Galisteo, Gallup, Las Cruces, Roswell, and Silver City. The exhibition will undergo five partial rotations over the course of the year to capture as much of the thematic breadth and as many of the influential artists as possible. With over 125 artists on view, Off-Center presents a compelling range of artistic approaches and a diverse range of experiences that will be organized into three major thematic groupings: Place, Spectacle, and Identity.
Off-Center takes place on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Department of Cultural Affairs. The Department of Cultural Affairs represents New Mexico’s dedication to preserving and celebrating the cultural integrity and diversity of our state. The Department oversees a broad range of New Mexico’s arts and cultural heritage agencies. These include 15 divisions representing a variety of programs and services such as the New Mexico Museum of Art.
Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature
February 23–June 9, 2024
The Morgan
Creator of unforgettable animal characters like Peter Rabbit, Mr. Jeremy Fisher, and Mrs. TiggyWinkle, the beloved children’s book author and illustrator Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) rooted her fiction in the natural world. Childhood summers spent in Scotland and the English Lake District nourished Potter’s love of nature, while her famous menagerie of pets inspired her picture letters and published tales. Her study of botany and mycology established an abiding interest in the life sciences, a passion she would bring to rural life at Hill Top Farm in Cumbria, England. There, she enjoyed a second act as a sheep breeder and land conservationist, ultimately bequeathing four thousand acres of farmland to the National Trust.
“Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature” brings together artwork, books, manuscripts, and artifacts from several institutions in the United Kingdom, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Trust, and the Armitt Museum and Library. Paired with the Morgan’s exceptional collection of her picture letters, these objects trace how Potter’s innovative blend of scientific observation and imagi-
native storytelling shaped some of the world’s most popular children’s books.
The famed children’s author and illustrator Beatrix Potter lived exactly as one might expect. She reached an international audience from her home in the fairytale landscape of the English Lake District, where she traversed her sheep farm in clogs, penned heartfelt letters to children, and investigated the miniature worlds beneath her feet through a magnifying glass attached to a wooden walking stick. But her oeuvre isn’t limited to books such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901) or Benjamin Bunny (1903), as the Morgan Library’s Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature exhibition makes exceedingly clear, inviting visitors to gain new appreciation for her enduring stories, steadfast dedication, and endless curiosity.
Beatrix Potter was born in 1866 to a well-off family in London, where the author lived for most of her young life. She had few friends as she navigated the stifling social constraints of upper-class British life and instead found solace in the natural world. Potter owned at
Mrs. Rabbit pours tea for Peter Rabbit while her other children watch. (1902–1907) (© Victoria and Albert Museum; image courtesy Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd.)
least 92 pets over the course of her lifetime, including a pair of salamanders (Sally and Mander), a bat, a frog, at least three lizards, a snake, a duck, mice, a family of snails, and, of course, bunnies (Benjamin and Peter were real rabbits). She intently studied their behavior and sketched them.
Without the pressure to earn a living or marry into wealth, Potter was free to dedicate herself entirely to her passions. She drew relentlessly as a child and adolescent. In her 20s and 30s, Potter emerged as a mycologist and naturalist. Detailed depictions of fungi such as “Anainta crocea, ‘Organe Grisette’, and Amanita muscaria. ‘Fly Agaric’” (1897) exemplify her scientific prowess.
Morgan Library curator Philip Palmer didn’t know about Potter’s expertise in mushrooms when he began working on the show, which started at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and traveled to Nashville’s Frisk Museum and Atlanta’s High Museum before arriving in NYC. But he said his favorite book had always been The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher (1906), the story of a dapper frog who embarks on a journey to prepare a gourmet dinner for his friends, loses his clothes, and evades the mouth of a large trout.
“I asked for it to be read to me over and over again as a child,” Palmer told Hyperallergic. “There was something funny to me about Jeremy Fisher wearing these nice clothes — his waistcoat — but his house is full of mud and water and when he’s serving roasted grasshopper at the end to his friends, they’re a little turned off by the food. I love that combination of real animal instincts with polite human society.”
The second portion of the exhibition is dedicated to Potter’s 28 children’s books, the majority of which were published between 1902 and 1913. Many were based on her correspondences with children, which are displayed alongside finalized illustrations. The show features the eight-page letter to Noel Moore, the son of Potter’s former governess, that spawned The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901). Others include a series of miniature notes written in the voices of Potter characters such as the mischievous Squirrel Nutkin.
“She just wanted to delight kids,” Palmer said.
In 1905, Potter purchased Hilltop Farm in the Lake District, where she had vacationed since the age of 16. The animals she encountered in
her new home — while staving off a pervasive rat problem — inspired new stories, including The Tale of Samuel Whiskers (1908), The Tale of Tom Kitten (1907), and The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (1908). The Morgan reconstructed a room from her house in the center of its gallery, where children can read the Hilltop Tales on a cozy seat by a makeshift window. Potter insisted her books remain affordable and small enough to fit into kids’ hands.
One standout illustration is a small drawing of Little Pig Robinson, who is tricked into boarding a boat where he is scheduled to be served for dinner. He looks wistfully toward the open sea. Palmer noted that his fascination with Mr. Jeremy Fisher stemmed from the thrill of the frog’s near misses with death, the same type of excitement that drives stories such as The Tale of Little Pig Robinson (1930) and The Tale of Peter Rabbit, who plays chicken with the formidable Mr. McGregor.
“We might lump her in with other [artists whose] works are seen as kind of having cutesy animal characters. But I think that sells her work so short,” said Palmer, explaining that Potter’s characters are not only anatomically accurate, but follow their “true biological instincts” toward mischief, often with near-devastating consequences. Squirrel Nutkin, for example, loses half his tail and Tom Kitten is almost baked into a pastry. Palmer thinks these protagonists’ rebelliousness — a trait echoed in myths across centuries and cultures — is what makes their stories so appealing, even to children a hundred years on.
The latter part of Drawn to Nature delves into Potter’s final chapter. In 1913, she married local lawyer William Heelis and dedicated the rest of her life to farming Herdwick sheep, a thousand-year-old breed facing extinction. Potter became an
active community member and bequeathed her land to the National Trust with the stipulation that her flocks be maintained, an attempt to keep both human farming traditions and the natural world alive. She published only a few more books but continued telling children stories through letters until her death in 1943.
In listing his favorite works, Palmer drew attention to an expertly crafted watercolor of a mushroom, which Potter painted just before penning the tale of Peter Rabbit in her letter to Noel Moore. “In a two-day period, she painted this extremely rare mushroom in Scotland that her naturalist friend had never found himself,” Palmer said. “And then the next day she writes one of the most famous stories ever written for children. What an incredible two days, right?”
Gary Simmons: Public Enemy
February 23–June 9, 2024
Pérez Art Museum Miami
Gary Simmons: Public Enemy is the first comprehensive career survey of the work of multidisciplinary artist Gary Simmons (b. 1964, New York; lives in Los Angeles). The most in-depth presentation of Simmons’s work to date, the exhibition covers thirty years of the artist’s career, encompassing approximately seventy works.
Since the late 1980s Simmons has played a key role in situating questions of race, class, and gender identity at the center of contemporary art discourse. Notable for his early application of conceptual artistic strategies, Simmons exposes and analyzes histories of racism inscribed in US visual culture. Over the course of his career, Simmons has revealed traces of these histories in the fields of sports, cinema, literature, music, and architecture
and urbanism, while drawing heavily on popular genres such as hiphop, horror, and science fiction. Guided by an internal logic, his approach is cool, analytical, and unflinching in its interrogation of intense historical narratives, yet the results consistently deliver a strong emotional charge.
In this timely exhibition—accompanied by a major exhibition catalogue and slate of related programs—visitors will gain a holistic understanding of the complex and profoundly moving work of this groundbreaking and influential artist.
Bare Earth
