By Dorri Olds
Off the Wall: Part 1—Thirty Performative
Actions
Now–September 19, 2010
This first installation in a two-part exhibition focuses on actions using the body in live performance, in front of the camera, or in relation to a photographic or printed surface. Each action displaces the site of the artwork from an object to the body, acting in relation to, or directly onto, the physical space of the gallery. The wall and floor become the stage for these actions—walking on the wall, slamming doors, slapping hands against the wall, gathering sawdust up from the studio floor, walking on a painting, striding and crawling around a small cylindrical space, writing or drawing on the wall and floor, or performing a striptease behind a transparent plane. Whitney Museum of Art 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
Fish Form: Lamps by Frank Gehry
Now–October 31, 2010
As part of a design competition sponsored by the Formica Company, internationally renowned architect Frank Gehry created a series of lamps based on the form of a fish which had become something of a personal icon for him. A selection of Gehry’s colorful and luminous lamps will be on view in this exhibition that will also explore the significance of fish imagery in the architect’s work. The Jewish Museum 1109 5th Avenue at 92nd Street
Lee Friedlander: America by Car
September 4–November 28, 2010
Driving across most of the country’s fifty states in an ordinary rental car, master photographer Lee Friedlander (b. 1934) applied the brilliantly simple conceit of deploying the sideview mirror, rearview mirror, the windshield, and the side windows as picture frames within which to record reflections of this country’s eccentricities and obsessions at the beginning of the 21st century. Friedlander’s method allows for fascinating effects in foreshortening, and wonderfully telling juxtapositions in which steering wheels, dashboards, and leatherette bump up against roadside bars, motels, churches, monuments, suspension bridges, essential American landscapes, and often Friedlander’s own image. Whitney Museum of Art 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism S
September 12, 2010—January 30, 2011
Feminist challenges to creative and institutional limits have been widely influential in art since the 1960s. Much of the feminist movement aimed to overcome the male-dominated modes of heroic and formalist painting. By embodying a distinctive coupling of Jewish and feminist content, the thirty works in the exhibition emphasize the social and cultural dimension of creative self-expression. The Jewish Museum 1109 5th Avenue at 92nd Street
Drop-in Art Workshop
September 12–June 12, 2011
Kick off the New Year by creating a handmade holiday treasure in their inaugural Drop-In Art Workshop for the fall season. Children, accompanied by a parent or guardian, can paint, draw, sculpt, or craft a work of art with the guidance of our museum educators. Sundays 1:00–4:00 pm Ages 3 and up The Jewish Museum 1109 5th Avenue at 92nd Street
Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings
September 24–January 2, 2011
Between 1961 and 1968, at the height of the Pop art movement, Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) created about fifty large, highly finished, black-and-white drawings, which represent an essential contribution to the history of modern drawing. Not only was their imagery, culled from consumer culture, entirely new – baked potatoes, ads for foot medication and BB guns—but so was their treatment, inspired by the rudimentary character of cheaply printed commercial drawings. Conceived independently from Lichtenstein’s paintings, these drawings recast tawdry illustrations from packaging, newspaper ads, and comic books into works of striking visual intensity, echoing the clean-edge aesthetic of sixties geometric abstraction.The Morgan Library & Museum 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street
Degas—Drawings and Sketchbooks
September 24–January 23, 2011
This selection of more than 20 drawings by Edgar Degas (1834–1917) captures his dynamic and varied use of drawing and includes some of the most quintessential subjects depicted by the artist. From his earliest drawings of scenes from contemporary life and portraits of himself, family members, and friends, to his later intensive studies of dancers and performers, this collection is rich in examples of the artist’s use of drawing throughout his career.
The Morgan Library & Museum225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street
Chaos & Classicism—Art in France, Italy, and Germany
October 1, 2010–January 9, 2011
Following the chaos of World War I, a move emerged towards figuration, clean lines, and modeled form, and away from the two-dimensional abstracted spaces, fragmented compositions, and splintered bodies of the avant-gardes—particularly Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism—that dominated the opening years of the 20th century. After the horrors visited upon humanity in the Western hemisphere by new machine-age warfare, a desire reasserted itself to represent the body whole and intact. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street
Abstract Expressionist New York
October 3–April 25, 2011
This exhibition comprises approximately 300 works in a variety of mediums by more than 30 artists, including Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Arshile Gorky, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, David Smith, Joan Mitchell, and Mark Rothko. This wide-ranging presentation of paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs underscores the achievements of a generation that catapulted New York City to the center of the international art world during the 1950s, and left as its legacy some of the twentieth century’s greatest masterpieces. Museum of Modern Art 11 West 53rd Street
The Spanish Manner: Drawings from Ribera to Goya
October 5–January 9, 2011
The greatest Spanish draftsmen from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century—Ribera, Murillo, and Goya, among them—created works of dazzling idiosyncrasy. These diverse drawings, which may be broadly characterized as possessing a specifically “Spanish manner,” will be the subject of an exclusive exhibition. The presentation will feature more than 50 of the finest Spanish drawings from public and private collections. The Frick Collection 1 East 70th Street
Dorri Olds (DorriOlds.com) is a web designer, social media consultant and member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.
