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Boca Raton Museum of Art501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, FL 33432 In Mizner ParkT: 561.392.2500 F: 561.391.6410Email: email@example.com
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The complete silkscreen suites from the collection of Marc Bell will accompany the Warhol on Vinyl exhibition. The show includes the iconic Campbell's Soup Cans, images of Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, and Mao as well as Warhol's Flowers, Dollar Signs, and Camouflage.
Figurative Landscapes: Photographs from the Collection culls 22 iconic images from the museum's permanent collection. Ranging from 1926 through 1996, the artists in this exhibition take the genre of landscape as a starting point; some photographers use the formal elements of landscape as a subject for image making and documentation of place, while others use the genre as a pallet for minimalist themes and even a point of departure for formal experiments with abstraction. The photographic depiction of the vernacular, through the artist sensitivity to light and spatial formation, is foretold in many of these important works. Notable photographers in this exhibition include Lewis Baltz, Manual Alvarez Bravo, Harry Callahan, William Christenberry, Imogen Cunningham, Walker Evans, André Kertész, Joel Meyerowitz, Man Ray, Edward Steichen and Paul Strand.
The faculty of the Museum's Art School presents their annual exhibition at the Museum. From mixed media to photography to figure drawing, the Wolgin Gallery will showcase the creative pursuits of our talented instructors.
Throughout Warhol's long career he produced 60 unique album cover designs for an extremely diverse range of music ranging from Tchaikovsky and Gershwin, Count Basie and Artie Shaw, to the Rolling Stones and the Velvet Underground. This exhibition organized by the Cranbrook Art Museum includes over 100 album covers, designs, and sound.
John Raimondi creates towering outdoor sculptures with geometric forms and organic shapes, united by graceful lines. To date, he has completed more than 100 monumental works for public, corporate, and private collections worldwide. This exhibition features a selection of Raimondi's preparatory drawings in ink, graphite, pastel, and oil stick.
The human figure has captivated Norman Sunshine for much of his artistic career. In decades past he painted grand canvases of quiet moments between multiple figures, capturing the great and small episodes of life.
During a period of convalescence when he could not paint as he once was able to do, Sunshine delved into the digital world of art making and searched for subjects of style and substance. In doing so he was taken with notable women; their poise, their composure, and their self-assurance. Among those who have posed for him are art patron Agnes Gund, philanthropist Nancy Kissinger, and Anne Sutherland Fuchs, former publisher of Vogue, Woman's Day, and Elle.
Dames: Portraits by Norman Sunshine is organized by the Boca Raton Museum of Art and curated by Marisa J. Pascucci. The exhibition is generously underwritten by Dr. Nicole Edeiken and Beatrice Cummings Mayer with additional support provided by the Friends Auxiliary.
One of South Florida's most vibrant artists groups, the Boca Raton Museum Artists' Guild, presents its fall 2015 juried exhibition with works in an array of mediums, each created by local artists.
In the late 1930s, Samuel Rothbort (1882 – 1971) began creating "memory paintings" of his native Walkovisk, a small village in Czarist Russia. Eventually numbering over five hundred, Rothbort's paintings have become lauded as a cultural resource depicting life in a predominantly Jewish village, commonly known as a Shtetl. Their nostalgic sense of wonder and joyous colors have challenged many observers' notions of prewar Eastern European Jewish life.
Memories of the Shtetl features a selection of oil and watercolor paintings by Rothbort. Artistically gifted and largely self-taught, Rothbort's work depicts a reverence for nature and everyday life in a Shtetle. His memory paintings were the subject of a 1961 documentary film "The Ghetto Pillow" (later renamed "Memories of the Shtetle") by Harriet Semegram and provided inspiration for Jerome Robbins' staging of the 1964 musical "Fiddler on the Roof."
On March 31, 1492, an edict issued by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, ordered the expulsion of Jews from their kingdom. Given only three months to flee the country, convert to Catholicism, or be executed without trial, some 200,000 people were abruptly exiled from their homeland. Those who chose to leave were forbidden to carry gold, silver, or coined money out of the kingdom.
Veil of Memory. Prologue: The Last Supper by Terry Berkowitz depicts a forgotten moment as the Jews of Spain paused for a final meal, at the threshold of the unknown, just a few hours before crowding into the tiny 15th century ships that would take them away. Visitors are invited to sit at a wooden table in the shape of a crucifix. Atop the table sit empty bowls, spoons, and glasses partially filled with water. Video projections on nearby walls reveal blue-hued shapes of people lined up to march on their journey with portions of the edict of expulsion layered under image. In the center of the table is a display of the sea in constant motion with sounds of crashing waves, Catalan liturgical music, and the murmurs of people too nervous or afraid to speak aloud.
Rosie Won the War by Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock recalls the seminal moment in the history of the 20th century. With America's engagement in World War II, working women began to dominate the public image at home. Inspired by Norman Rockwell's iconic picture, Rosie the Riveter, Stih and Schnock's series is a homage to women on the home front working "men's jobs" in manufacturing plants while men were fighting the enemy in battlefields abroad.
Rosie Won the War depicts powerful women in life-size portraits wearing working gear. Tools in hand define their current occupation. The images capture this particular moment in history seen through the female eye, set in relation to working women today.
The images depict women positioned provocatively like the "Big Nudes" of Helmut Newton, but with very different expression and self-definition. They stand on maps from the past, recalling the topography of World Word II and forming a link between past and present. The portrait series includes paintings based on digital collages of staged photography, mapping structures, drawings, and text.
Complementary to the photo series is the video Counter Attack. Calling upon the image of Rosie the Riveter with one foot on Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, the video shows women's feet stepping on the Nazi leader's manifesto with spikes on their feet until it is tattered, and then completely destroyed.
The Neighbor Next Door by Shimon Attie presents a visceral interpretation of the experiences of those driven into hiding by the Nazi regime as was the family of Anne Frank in Amsterdam. Attie has created immersive multimedia art that reflects on the relationship between place, memory, and identity. The installation is Attie's re-envisioning of a site-specific work he first presented in Amsterdam in 1995 where he projected films taken in secret by people forced into seclusion by the Nazi occupation onto the street every night for two weeks.
Israeli-born, New York based artist Izhar Patkin fills the Museum's gallery space with spectacular mural-size paintings on tulle fabric.
Grand, labyrinthine, yet surprisingly intimate the space is resplendent with personal narrative, political metaphor, and myth emphasizing memory, loss, love, and exile.
Curated by Kathleen Goncharov, Boca Raton Museum of Art.
In continuing the tradition of the All Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition and showcasing artists living and working in Florida, the Boca Raton Museum of Art is proud to present a selection of paintings by Brenda Hope Zappitell.
Zappitell credits the Boca Raton Museum Art School as an indispensable training ground during her early years, which helped catapult her to national recognition that she enjoys today. Those early years included representational work and collage. However, she soon found imagery to be a crutch and was moved to employ the gestural freedom of Abstract Expressionism.
"My paintings emerge from the emotion I feel in the moment my brush touches a blank surface," said Zappitell. "I am a very physical and spontaneous painter. Moving back and forth with decisive brush strokes and dynamic gestures, I work rapidly to capture that ephemeral feeling in tangible form." The results are large panel compositions with layers of vigorous marks that are innumerable and subtle.
In addition to painting, Zappitell is an accomplished writer and instructor, regularly contributing to Professional Artist Magazine and holding private workshops in Florida and New Mexico.
Some of the most illustrious sights and characters of the 19th and 20th centuries will be within reach this summer as the Boca Raton Museum of Art presents People and Places: Photographs from the Collection. From July 25–August 23, two galleries will be dedicated to prints of some of the most recognizable icons of the modern era, captured by masters of the art. The Museum's permanent photography collection includes more than 1,500 images from several significant photographers, including Henry Fox Talbot, Edward Steichen, Robert Doisneau, Sebastião Selgado, Margaret Bourke-White, and more. Although the collection spans continents and categories, this summer's exhibition pares down the works to showcase subjects of celebrity, including famous locations and stars of the silver screen.
Support for People and Places: Photographs from the Collection is generously provided by the Lisette Model Foundation, Inc.
The Art School's Youth Summer Camp is celebrating the completion of a successful summer of inspiring artistic talent with a special exhibition of camper creation.
The capstone exhibition of the 2015 Youth Summer Camp features the art of students, ages 5 to 12, using a plethora of materials and mediums to create works influenced by the history of art.
Shannon Plumb's solo exhibition of short videos and Super-8 films is inspired by the spirit of slapstick comedy and the physical humor of iconic silent screen legends such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Plumb creates and plays a diverse cast of characters such as Olympic athletes, cowboys, and advertising announcers, employing a low-fi asthetic with long takes and hand-made props and costumes.
As a vital part of the community, the Museum provides visual arts programming to four local aftercare facilities located in Boca Raton and Delray Beach. The year-round program, Meet a Master, Create a Masterpiece Roadshow, affords underserved students at these locations the opportunity to learn about and create art. Inspired by the Museum's permanent collection, these participants have generated works of art with a personal touch. In recognition of their imaginative creations, the Museum is celebrating these unique works with this exhibit.
Helena Rubinstein (1872-1965) was born in Poland and immigrated – via Australia and Paris – to New York at the beginning of World War I. She then opened her first U.S. salon featuring her face cream made from lanolin and revolutionized the cosmetics industry. She sold her corporation to Lehman Brothers in 1928 but repurchased the stock and went on to open her acclaimed spa on Fifth Avenue along with salons across the country, and the manufacturing arm.
A collector of people and art, she commissioned Salvador Dalí to design packaging for her compacts and to paint her portrait. He was not the only one to paint Ms. Rubinstein, and this show includes portraits by Picasso, Man Ray, and Warhol.
Included are paintings by Miró and Chagall, and selections from her fine jewelry and couture clothing collections. Vintage advertisements, photographs of her residences in New York, Paris, and London, and her spas and salons will bring to the fore Ms. Rubinstein as a savvy businessperson and cultural icon.
Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power is organized by the Jewish Museum, New York.
The exhibition is made possible by The Jerome L. Greene Foundation.
Writing about art can be as fun as making it. The Museum's partnership with Hammock Pointe Elementary takes a new twist with a new, fully integrated curriculum-based project for third graders centered on ekphrasis, a technique of writing vivid descriptions of art. On display is the students' portraits and written work.
The next installment of the Boca Raton Museum of Art's Making Connections: Selected Works from the Boca Raton Museum and Private Collections will include the in-focus exhibition: Abstraction on Paper. Delving into the Museum's rich collection of works on paper, and featuring significant loans from generous members of the community, the exhibition presents a variety of media by American and European artists from the 1920s thru the 1950s. Superb works by American Abstract Artists Balcomb Greene, Gertrude Greene, Blanchs Lazzell, George L.K. Morris and John Sennhauser will mix with the Abstract Expressionist style of Mary Abbott, William Baziotes, Franz Kline and Richard Pousette-Dart and other Modernists such as Alexander Calder and Wassily Kandinsky. While all 20 works were created on paper, the media ranges from ink, gouache, pencil, watercolor to etching and drypoint.
Curated by Marisa J Pascucci, Curator of Collections.
This survey of works by the Israeli-born, New York based artist, Izhar Patkin, fills the Museum's gallery space with spectacular mural-size paintings on tulle fabric.
Grand, labyrinthine, yet surprisingly intimate, The Wandering Veil is resplendent with personal narrative, political metaphor, and myth emphasizing memory, loss, love, and exile.
An exploration of the surrealists' interest in magic, arcane learning, and indigenous spirituality, the exhibition includes paintings and works on paper by Kurt Seligmann, André Breton, Matta, Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Yves Tanquy, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Masson, Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington, Wilfredo Lam, and Magritte.
Inspired by the magic-themed library of Mr. Seligmann (1900-1962), the exhibition includes rare books from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries, correspondence, ephemera, music, and film.
Organized by the Herbert Johnson Museum, Cornell University. Curated by Andy Weislogel, Curator of Earlier European and American Art (Johnson Museum) and Laurent Ferri, Curator of the Pre-1800 Collections, Rare Books & Manuscripts, Cornell University, Carl A. Kroch Library.
The Boca Raton Museum of Art presents an exhibition showcasing art created by 35 of the Art School's talented instructors.
Outside the studio, instructors at the Art School are active artists that make a significant contribution to the arts. The exhibition displays a wide range of works in painting, sculpture, ceramics, jewelry making, printmaking, photography, and mixed media. They regularly exhibit in venues across the globe, from California to New York to Asia and are recipients of various awards, fellowships and grants.
Curated by Walter O'Neill, Boca Museum Art School Director
The American artist Theresa Ferber Bernstein (1890–2002) made and exhibited her work in every decade of the twentieth century–a truly awesome feat. Working in realist and expressionist styles, she treated the major subjects of her time, including the fight for women's suffrage, the plight of immigrants, World War I, jazz, unemployment, racial discrimination and occasionally explicitly Jewish themes such as a synagogue interior or ritual objects such as a menorah. While her portrait subjects include Albert Einstein, Martha Graham, Judy Garland, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, yet it is her particular sensibility and empathy with those subjects that set her apart from her contemporaries. Theresa Bernstein: A Century in Art features a plethora of paintings along with interviews and related memorabilia spanning this great artist's long and illustrious career.
Organized by Gail Levin, Distinguished Professor Baruch College and the Graduate Center, The City University of New York
Elliott Erwitt is a renowned documentary photographer who melds substance and enchantment into his work. This exhibition features over 80 images hand selected by the artist himself.
Born in Paris, Erwitt and his family fled Europe for the United States at the onset of World War II. Iconic images by Mr. Erwitt include John F. Kennedy, Che Guevara, and Marilyn Monroe with the skirt of her white dress wafting around her legs as she posed over a New York City subway grate. His spectacular sense of humor and joy is evident in his work that captures quotidian life in urban surroundings.
Employing the same highly detailed realism found in his other works, Drury (born, 1980) exploits the oil-paint medium to meticulously render the topography and organic quality of the sitters' flesh, contrasting their physicality with the divine nature that they embody within their respective traditions.
In his paintings every wrinkle and hair follicle is exposed in the face of his sitters. The soft creases in the skin of highlight the tactility of a person's skin, calling attention to the mortal aspect of being. In his portraits, Drury does not acquiesce to expectations of flattery, instead he exploits the power of oil paint to describe their corporeal flaws of his sitters as precisely as possible. He exposes the disconnect between the corporeality of the body and the abstraction of identity, which exists across cultures, religions and societies.
Drury was born in 1980 in Salt Lake City, Utah and relocated to New York in 2001. He received an MFA Cum Laude from the New York Academy of Art in 2007 and his BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2005.
Curated by Marisa J. Pascucci, Boca Raton Museum of Art.
This international assemblage of video installations features artists from Norway, South Africa, Japan, and the United States. The five videos included feature a theme of music, complimented by scheduled piano concerts in the Boca Raton Museum of Art's galleries. Individually, the works explore themes such as aging, solitude, loneliness, and the fragility of nature.
Forever (and again)Shizuka Yokomizo's Forever (and again) juxtaposes four elderly women playing the same Chopin waltz (Op. 69, #2) on the piano with stationary video of their domestic environments.
It Takes Two to TangoThe music in Trine Lise Nedraas' It Takes Two to Tango is imaginary. Bill, an 80-year-old regular dancer at the Rivoli Ballroom in London welcomes the viewer to join him in a dance, to music only he can hear.
Fade to WhiteJanet Biggs' Fade to White features the Baroque aria Amarilli Mia Bella by Giulio Caccini. Countertenor John Kelly sings, interspersed with a schooner trip to the Artic taken by Biggs. His mournful voice parallels the vanishing polar landscape.
Pictures ReframedRobin Rhode and virtuoso pianist Leif Ove Andsnes collaborated on a reinvention of the romantic 1874 masterpiece, Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky. Rhode is known for politically-charged street art and stop-motion videos of people interacting with drawings of everyday objects.
Cat Video Cory Arcangel's deceptively simple Cat Video is a recreation of Arnold Schoenberg's seminal 1909 Drei Klavierstücke, considered to be one of the first atonal piano compositions. Using software in a complex and tedious process, Arcangel has recreated Schoenberg's piano piece through now-ubiquitous videos of cats shared on the Internet.
New York Photographs from the Collection showcases over 90 black and white photographs from the Boca Raton Museum of Art's Permanent Collection dating from 1892 through 1990. The exhibition includes photographer luminaries such as Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans, Andreas Feininger, Lewis Hine, Helen Levitt, Edward Steichen, Brett Weston, Garry Winogrand, and Alfred Stieglitz.
Benn Mitchell, former on-set photographer for Warner Bros. studios and pioneer in realistic photography who retired to Boca Raton, will also be featured with 12 photographs on loan from the artist.
Most of the works in New York Photographs were taken with a Leica, the first small format 35mm camera that made it possible to capture spontaneous moments and became the go-to camera for photojournalists. In recognition of the Leica camera's 100th anniversary, the exhibition will display several of the cameras from the Museum's Permanent Collection along with works by photographers Ilse Bing and Andreas Feininger that feature a Leica camera.
As the state's oldest annual juried competition, the All Florida has introduced the work of thousands of Florida artists working in all media: emerging, mid-career, and established artists. It reinforces the Museum's commitment to Florida artists, provides professional exhibition opportunities for emerging artists, and reveals a provocative glimpse – through Florida artists' eyes – of the state-of-the-art today through approximately 100 paintings, sculpture, photographs, video and installations.
Learn about this year's juror, Trong Gia Nguyen.
The Artists' Guild Biennial Exhibition pays tribute to the level of artistic excellence in the organization that created the Boca Raton Museum over 50 years ago. Held every two years as a companion to the All Florida Exhibition, the professional artist members of the present a wide range of work that portray the pluralistic nature of South Florida's working artist community.
This year's Guild Biennial juror is Sue Archer, a studio artist, national workshop instructor, and national juror for watercolor exhibitions. She has shown her work in Art Festival is Florida since 1985 and has won over 200 state and national awards, including a Florida State Individual Artist Fellowship grant for painting.
Matta's style danced between the lines of Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism, while also synthesizing European, American, and Latin American cultures. He sought to give visual form to the human psyche, representing it as a mysterious, ethereal realm. Through the automatist technique – akin to a visual stream of consciousness where the arm is almost moving faster than the mind can think – Matta achieved his signature biomorphic style that was the depiction of his exploring the unconscious mind through a symbolic language of abstract forms. He also studied magic, astrology, the tarot and the occult writings, which informed his creation of cataclysmic environments in a perpetual state of flux.
This important group of paintings by Matta is on loan to the Boca Museum from the three distinguished private collections: Mr. Louis Toninelli, Mr. Matthew Carone and Ms. Myra Friedman. Roberto Matta, The Freedom of Gesture is generously underwritten by Dr. Nicole Edeiken.
The international exhibition, Afghan Rugs: The Contemporary Art of Central Asia, features over 40 rugs from a private European collection, traveling for the first time to museums in North America. Selected for their exceptional quality and stunning imagery, the rugs in this exhibition represent a unique category in decorative arts. They constitute some of the most powerful visual inventions of the late 20th century and are skillfully crafted with hand-spun and dyed, tightly knotted wool.
These exquisitely woven works of art are designed with thoroughly untraditional motifs. Approximately half of the rugs—some produced well before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979—feature cityscapes, portraits, landscapes, and world maps, framed by tanks and helicopters. Other rugs in the include weapons and fighting scenes made by weavers in Afghanistan, or in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. No matter the central imagery, each rug is traditionally bounded by an intricately framed and detailed border design offering incredible works of art to be enjoyed on the floor as well as the wall.
Curated by Enrico Mascelloni and Annemarie Sawkins, PhD
Knitted and embroidered artworks with a conceptual twist have made Elaine Reichek's artwork the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, The Jewish Museum of New York, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and other international venues.
The Boca Museum of Art presents an elegant exhibition focusing on the period of Reichek's art dating from 1972 to 1995. This body of work addresses the translation, and mis-translation, of artifacts from outside cultures and colonizers. Reichek finds, enlarges, and colors ethnographic and architectural photographs, pairing them with her own hand-knitted interpretations. Photographs of teepees, ceremonial dress, and others are juxtaposed with knitted forms that mimic the images found in them.
The use of knitting and embroidery (often denigrated as simply craft), rather than the usual art materials to produce contemporary art, is central to Reichek's work. As she says, "the meaning of an artwork is always bound up with its media and processes and their history."
As a vital part of the community, the Boca Museum of Art provides visual arts programming to six local aftercare facilities located in Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and Coconut Creek. The year-round program, Meet a Master, Create a Masterpiece Roadshow, affords under-served students at these locations the opportunity to learn about and create art
Inspired by the Museum's permanent collection, these participants have generated works of art with a personal touch. In recognition of their imaginative creations, the Museum is celebrating these unique works with this Outreach Expo.
Each spring, a nationwide high school arts competition is sponsored by the members of the United States House of Representatives. The Congressional Student Art Competition is an opportunity to recognize and encourage the artistic talent in the nation, as well as in each Congressional district.
This exhibition presented the work of high school students residing in the 22nd Congressional District of Florida who have submitted their artwork to the office of Representative Lois Frankel, which is juried and then exhibited at the Boca Museum of Art. The student whose artwork is selected "Best in Show" in each district will travel to Washington D.C. and have his/her original artwork displayed in the nation's Capital building for one year.
Best in Show winner Juan Vazquez(right) with his winning work and Art teacher Barbara Sheffield at the Opening Reception
When the Pop art movement first surfaced in the mid-1950s, artists sought to challenge traditional conceptions of art-making by incorporating consumer culture and everyday objects into their works. Artists during this period transformed icons associated with mass media, comic books, and popular culture into visual expressions that often reflected a growing societal infatuation with consumerism.
The works on view demonstrate conceptions of Pop art as they emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the ways that contemporary artists today have extended and elaborated upon visual representations of mass culture and consumerism. Pop artists and their successors abandoned traditions of "high art" in favor of creating work that is based on conventionalized imagery of commercial graphics. Pop Culture illustrates how the movement's extensive history has influenced artistic production in our present cultural movement.
Works for the exhibition come from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles and is curated by Billie Milam Weisman.
Pop Culture at the Boca Museum of Art is generously underwritten by Dr. Nicole Edeiken.
Support provided by:
Drawing on the Museum's collection of French lithographs and Japanese colored woodblock prints, Fascination is a study of the impact that the "cult of Japan" had on late-nineteenth century French printmaking. French artists Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Chéret, and Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen utilized the Japanese design elements of pattern, flat blocks of color, and diagonal compositions to create some of the most iconic prints from the Art Nouveau period.
Futurism: Concepts and Imaginings features seven Italian artists from the first (1908-1919) and second (1920s-1930s) waves of Futurism, a dynamic movement that glorified the energy and speed of modern life. These artists genuinely believed in modern marvels like locomotives, automobiles, and airplanes, and heralded the death of museums and libraries as outmoded institutions of culture in their paintings, drawings, performances, and poetry.
Giacamo Balla, Alberto Bragaglia, Roberto Crippa, Giulio d'Anna, Gerardo Dottori, Pippo Rizzo, and Lucio Venna are represented by 36 drawings, collages, and paintings from the collection of Commendatore Stefano Acunto and Mrs. Carole Haarmann Acunto. The vibrant colors and striking imagery of the artwork truly expresses the Futurist dedication to depicting energy and motion and are central to understanding the trajectory of artistic movements of Cubism and Divisionism. The subjects of many pieces are circus performers constantly in motion; the perfect milieu for the Futurists to capture.
This portfolio of seven prints feature Pop artist James Rosenquist's characteristic use of varied images assembled to create a dizzying collage. Speaking of the portfolio in 1982 he said:
The questions I hope to raise in this work are: how will our relationship with computer education, the young people's fascination with electronic games, and the need for robots change our lives? People are still animals. In the future, however, will we select hi-tech surroundings, or prefer to live like lambs in a meadow? How will high technology relate to religion? In Eastern philosophy, one can reincarnate into people, animals, and plants. A big question is could it go a step further?
The questions I hope to raise in this work are: how will our relationship with computer education, the young people's fascination with electronic games, and the need for robots change our lives? People are still animals. In the future, however, will we select hi-tech surroundings, or prefer to live like lambs in a meadow? How will high technology relate to religion? In Eastern philosophy, one can reincarnate into people, animals, and plants. A big question is could it go a step further?
Little did Rosenquist know when he created these visual metaphors for the intersection of the electronic with the bucolic, how information technology would soon infiltrate nearly every aspect of life.
A painter, printmaker, and ceramicist who revolutionized western art, Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain in 1881. He settled in Paris in 1904 and became a driving force in the avant-garde Parisian art community. Within the context of this highly creative environment and with the constant threat of war and social uprising, Picasso experimented with a variety of different media that ultimately led to his groundbreaking collage paintings, graphic work, and sculptures.
Picasso's artistic output was practically all dedicated to the depiction of the human form, which he explored in detail at all stages of his prolific career and in diverse styles from realism to abstract figures in exaggerated distortions.
This selection of prints culled from the Boca Museum's collection shows Picasso iconic figural imagery in his favored subjects including an homage to Rembrandt, a self-portrait, the female form, and animal forms such as bulls and mythological beasts. Picasso died on April 8, 1973 at the age of 91, painting nearly to the very end.
Southwestern Allure: The Art of the Santa Fe Art Colony considers the development of Santa Fe as an art colony through the artists who visited there and helped establish the city as an artistic center, tracing the colony's formative years from approximately 1915 up to 1940. When artists from eastern locales began to settle in the Santa Fe area, they discovered a rich culture and a wealth of picturesque imagery. Southwestern Allure focuses exclusively on the art and artists of the Santa Fe colony, presenting the best of the artists' work and showing the distinct artistic climate of this unique locale and the qualities that distinguish it apart from the rest of the state. The city's draws were the majestic landscape and the multi-cultural environment, which proved a matchless blend of inspiration.
The exhibition presents a thorough picture of which artists went to Santa Fe, what they found compelling about the environment, the work they produced, and the prevailing artistic trends, from Realism to Modernism, which they applied to Southwestern subject matter. Through the works included in the exhibition, a range of styles are presented, encompassing the Santa Fe Old Guard, such as Carlos Vierra, Gerald Cassidy, and Warren Rollins, the Realism of Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, Leon Kroll, and John Sloan, as well as the introduction of the Modernist aesthetic to the Southwest with such artists as Stuart Davis, Andrew Dasburg, and Marsden Hartley, to highlight only a few of the prominent artists.
Southwestern Allure features over 40 outstanding artworks carefully selected from leading public and private collections. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue is organized by the Boca Museum of Art in conjunction with independent curator Dr. Valerie Ann Leeds, a specialist in American art of this period, and will travel to the Mennello Museum of American Art (Orlando), January thru April 2014.
Experience the sights, sounds, smells, and spectacle of the rodeo in an exhibition devoted to an icon of American culture…the cowgirl.
Artist Nancy Davidson brings feminist and popular culture themes to the forefront through colorful sculptures, photographs, videos, and sound. At the heart of the exhibition is a giant inflatable sculpture, Dustup, a suggestive and comically absurd "super-sized" tribute to the women of the Old West and critique of our culture's fascination with everything big. Her larger-than-life cowgirl evokes monumental roadside attractions, carnivals, and tall tales.
Growing up in the 1950s, Davidson was inspired by the "can-do" spirit of the cowgirls she saw in Hollywood movies and musicals. Characters such as Doris Day's Calamity Jane, Butty Hutton's Annie Oakley, and the gun-slinging Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar stood in stark contrast to the conventional the stay-at-home wife. They were individuals, able to transgress what was deemed acceptable for women. Rowdy and unruly, they were more than equal to men – yet sexy and glamorous, no matter the situation.
Davidson celebrates the glamour of the Rhinestone Cowgirl while acknowledging the hard-knock lives of real women in rodeo with a video capturing 62-year-old Jan Youren's final bucking bronco ride after a 47-year career and a sound piece with anecdotes from real life cowgirls. As an artist living in New York City, Davidson had no direct connection to cowgirl culture until a grant from Creative Capital enabled her to travel around the American West and experience it firsthand. This unique body of work is the result of her exploration of the myth and reality of the cowgirl, along with a book to be released in the spring.
What is a hero? What is a superhero? In a series of oversized photographs, Dulce Pinzón seeks to shine a light on the quiet heroes who make sacrifices for the good of others. For the artist, the countless Mexican and Latino immigrant workers in New York City, who every week send a portion of their modest income back to family members in Mexico, seemed like the perfect example of the unnoticed hero.
In her words: "The principle objective of this series is to pay homage to these brave and determined men and women that somehow manage, without the help of any supernatural power, to withstand extreme conditions of labor in order to help their families and communities survive and prosper."
For the exhibition, Pinzón selected 20 workers, dressed them in costumes of popular American and Mexican superheroes that corresponded to their employment, and photographed them going about their usual work day. She identifies each by name along with their hometown, the number of years they have been working in New York City, and the amount of money they send back to their families each week.
Maria Luisa Romero from the state of Puebla works in a laundromat in Brooklyn. She sends home $150 a week.
Investigating the shifting boundaries between seeing and spying - the private act and the public image, Caught on Film explores how cameras have transformed the nature of looking as it easily crosses the line into surveillance and invasion of privacy.
With historical and contemporary photographs, this stimulating exhibition presents some of the camera's most unsettling uses including surveillance, celebrity stalking, and documentation of disaster. Caught on Film poses compelling questions about who is looking at whom and why by photographers such as Gregory Crewdson, Robert Doisneau, and Edward Steichen.
Through December 29, 2013 Grooms Room (in the Collection Galleries)
Creating environments of everyday life to tell stories of people living in modern urban cities, Grooms imbues his figures with exaggerated physical characteristics and actions, which give the work an overall feeling of cartoon-like improvisation.
Grooms Room features works, drawn from the Museum's important collection of American art, and is augmented by generous loans from two private collections, the Steven D. Robinson Family and the Robert B. Mayer Family Collection. The energy and frenzy of Red Grooms' zany art will be sure to delight your eyes and put a smile on your face.
Marilyn Bridges (American, born 1948) obtains her unique perspective by photographing through the open doors of a single-engine plane. As the plane flies hundreds of feet in the air and usually banking, she photographs the city/landscape, simultaneously capturing the identifiable details and revealing the larger complexity achieved from a bird's eye view.
The plane flies (or glides) at a mere altitude of 500 to 1,000 feet, which is dangerously low and often referred to as the stall speed. An art critic who was invited to accompany Bridges on one of her photography flights later described her as "The Indiana Jane of Landscape Photography," as he witnessed her "hanging out of open airplane doors and windows, suspending herself over space, shooting landscapes from above."
These 16 photographs form a portfolio entitled "Heightened Perspectives: Marilyn Bridges." This limited edition portfolio, (numbering 50, with the Boca Museum's edition being 22/50) is a composite sampling of what Bridges terms her Ancient and Contemporary subjects. Each photograph was taken in the 1980s; thereby making the portfolio a visual summary of one decade of her almost 40-year photography career.
Create is a major group exhibition presenting a selection of the most important works created over the past 20 years by artists involved with three pioneering non-profit organizations: Creativity Explored, Creative Growth Art Center and the National Institute for Art and Disabilities Art Center (NIAD). These organizations were founded with the belief that exceptional creativity can emerge in anyone, and they support the work of artists with developmental disabilities through a unique and highly successful approach to group studio practice. The centers offer an experience that is, in many ways, the antithesis of that envisioned by the art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 when he coined the term "outsider art" to identify the work of artists who have no contact with the art world and who are physically and/or mentally isolated.
This major survey exhibition brings well-deserved attention to this compelling work, sharing it with a broad audience and expanding on its impact on a range of renowned international artists. Create sparks critical dialogue concerning the categories of contemporary art practice, especially the notion of "outsider art," and challenges audiences to rethink the limitations of such categories. It is clear why works by these artists have been increasingly recognized as a significant contribution to the field of contemporary art, both nationally and internationally, among artists, curators, critics and collectors, as well as the broader cultural community, and are now in the permanent collections of artists such as Cindy Sherman, Jeremy Deller, Chris Offili and Peter Doig, and in prominent institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Create presents a range of exceptional works in diverse media by twenty artists who have produced artworks at these centers over the past 20 years. Among the artists included are Judith Scott, William Scott, John Patrick McKenzie, Evelyn Reyes and Dan Miller. Each artist has sustained an art-making practice at the highest level for many years, and the range of their work is extraordinary: Judith Scott's visceral sculpture utilizes found materials wrapped in knotted yarn or string; William Scott's humorous paintings incorporate sardonic urban motifs; John Patrick McKenzie's lyrical work employs the repetition of text drawn from pop culture, current events and his immediate surroundings; Evelyn Reyes's pastel drawings feature bold, minimalistic shapes; and Dan Miller's intricate work includes drawings and paintings incorporating layered text.
James Montgomery Untitled, 2007
William Scott, Inner Limits, n.d.
Create is a traveling exhibition curated by Lawrence Rinder, with Matthew Higgs, and organized by the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and ICI (Independent Curators International), New York. The exhibition and accompanying catalog were made possible, in part, by Dr. James B. Pick and Dr. Rosalyn M. Laudati, and the continued support of the BAM/PFA Trustees. Additional support for the tour is made possible in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and the ICI Board of Trustees.
Matthews re-interprets the stark black and grey silhouettes of New York City into a soft creamy white. Skyscrapers, cars, bridges, and water towers float, street grids meander, and pigeons are transformed into doves. Author Salman Rushdie wrote of his works, "the white paintings…are lucid affectionate dreams of New York, like an all-white Oz with a white brick road (Broadway) snaking through a white metropolis that might, if you looked at it through green glasses, look almost like an emerald city."
Similarly, Rossini's subtly evocative photographs could be dreams rather than representations of the sky, sea and land he shoots. Instead of using his camera to freeze time like most photographers, he works like a painter to capture momentary impressions. His oversized prints with their patterns, texture, muted palette, and delicate tonal transitions seem more like canvases than images trapped by a lens. Rossini aims to catch the barely discernible memory of the moment between past and present. He achieves this goal by layering sequential images over abstract fields and distorting and compressing space to create beautiful and mysterious images.
Transitions: Victor Matthews and Paolo Nicola Rossini comes directly from its presentation as a collateral event at the 55th Venice Biennale, curated by Natalie Clifford. The accompanying catalog includes essays by Clifford, Salman Rushdie, Francesco Clemente, and Boca Museum curator, Kathleen Goncharov. The exhibition is presented in conjunction with Space SBH Contemporary Art Gallery.
Transitions Opening Night Reception
An internationally recognized "outsider" artist, Young's art reflect what he saw in the world, from soaring interstate highway overpasses, fleets of trucks, run-down streets, angry protests, funeral processions, teeming life, struggles, and violence. His works also depict fantastical elements such as glowing skies, rescuing boats, saints, and hovering angels. The medium for his art includes found objects such as broken furniture, to construction site trash, to discarded books.
Spanning almost four decades, Young's artwork offers insight into his creative genius and its triumph over a legacy of urban poverty in America.
The capstone exhibition of the 2013 Youth Summer Camp features the art of students, ages 5 to 12, using a plethora of materials and mediums to create works influenced by the history of art.
Works include collaborative paintings, clay sculptures inspired by Claude Monet's Water Lilies; a biplane made of wood papier-mâché; a giraffe made from recycled materials; plaster relief sculptures; character drawings; an oil, pastel and chalk work inspired by Purvis Young; and a figure sculpture in the vein of Alberto Giacometti.
Ongoing Theresa Bernstein: An Early Modernist (Paintings from the Martin and Edith Stein Collections)
This small focus exhibition presents 12 paintings, dated between 1912 and 1930, by the long-neglected modernist New York artist Theresa Bernstein (1885-2002).
Born in Philadelphia, Bernstein was at the heart of the avant-garde from the moment she arrived in New York in 1912. A friend of artists Zorach, O'Keeffe, Stieglitz, and Demuth, Bernstein's technical ability, command of color, and commitment to populist subjects aligned her with the radical Ashcan school early in the 20th century.
The exhibition reveals the modernist development of a woman artist who captured the temperment of her times: New York public places, Coney Island, Carnegie Hall, and scenes of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where she and her artist husband William Meyerowitz, had a summer home.
Organized from the collection of Martin and Edith Stein.
THERESA BERNSTEIN (American, 1890-2002), The Readers, 1914, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 inches. From the Collection of Martin and Edith Stein
Peck finds great interest in desolate areas, and especially the inhabitants' efforts to make it a more hospitable space. Whether photographing in Europe or the United States, people rarely appear in her pictures. Instead, one sees mere traces of their presence: old dirt roads, cattle crossings, abandoned windmills, broken-down cotton trailers, and stunted orchards.
The horizon stretches in a taut line across the middle of her 6 x 15 inch prints, accentuating a sense of limitless space and distance. Wide, empty skies proclaim the preeminence of the land and the futility of human gestures to change it.
The All Florida exhibition is on display at Museum's central galleries through July 14, 2013.
This year's juror, Mark Scala, Chief Curator at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee, selected 149 works for the exhibition by 122 Florida artists. The 62nd All Florida exhibition offers a provocative glimpse of the state-of-the-art today through mediums which include paintings, graphics, drawings, sculptures, installations, photographs, computer-generated images, and videos.
"The artists in this exhibition were selected not just because they were the best to have submitted work or because they seemed particularly reflective of place, but because their art could be shown in a museum or gallery anywhere in the world without there being a question of its aesthetic merit," said Scala.
"Hosting the All Florida is a rigorous but rewarding experience," said Kelli Bodle, Boca Museum Assistant Curator and exhibition curator. "It is an honor to showcase work from across the 65,000 square miles that make up Florida, revealing the artists' response to each unique region and society."
Mark Scala has served as Chief Curator at the Frist Center since 2000. There, he has overseen a diverse array of exhibitions from exploring folklore and science fiction (Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination), to figure painting (Paint Made Flesh), to Asian photography (Whispering Wind: Recent Chinese Photography). Before coming to the Frist Center, Scala was curator at the Art Museum of Western Virginia, where he worked for ten years. He received his MA in art history in 1988 and MFA in painting in 1979, both from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Dessins: 100 Years of French Drawings moves beyond the pencil, with over 40 works demonstrating a variety of techniques and materials from pen and ink, pastel, charcoal, crayon, and even touches of watercolor. Featuring important loans from the collection of Mr. Samuel Blatt and the Museum's own collection, the exhibition presents a wide-ranging cross-section of stunning mid-19th- through early 20th-century works from artists such as Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Matisse, Jules Pascin, Picasso, Pissarro, Redon, Seurat, Claude- Émile Schuffenecker, and Vuillard.
The exhibition also marks the beginning of a renewed look and interpretation of the Boca Museum of Art's second-floor galleries; as it moves to intermixing in-focus exhibitions with the important collection of paintings, sculpture and works on paper from its permanent collection.
Featured in the exhibition are interactive touchscreen displays that illustrate a timeline of American fashion and recognize the nearly 600 designers who have been members of the CFDA over the last five decades. Each living designer selected to participate in the exhibition has chosen a single object or ensemble that best represents his or her impact on the fashion world.
Among the designers included in the exhibition are Geoffrey Beene, Michael Kors, Coach, Donna Karan, Norma Kamali, Francisco Costa / Calvin Klein, Vera Wang, Kenneth Cole, Diane von Furstenberg, and Thakoon.
The exhibition is a testament to changing notions of style, beauty, and the artistry of its documentation – from Rene Bouché's drawings of private, in-store fashion shows typical of the 1940s to Helmut Newton's highly-dramatic, gritty, and defiantly sexualized fashion shoots of the 1980s. The Museum's assemblage artists and eras provide an insightful study of the rich history of fashion design, and serves as the perfect complement to exhibition, IMPACT: 50 Years of the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Hear curator Marisa Pascucci discuss Draw and Shoot on Arts Radio Network:
Purses are adorned with roving eyes or water spouts. A burka is refashioned to be sheer with a spinning propeller that could allow an imaginary occupant to escape her repression. A hoodie is reinterpreted as a feminist Victorian headdress. A soccer shirt is transformed into a dress with bonnet and copper mesh sleeves reminiscent of medieval chainmail.
Culkin uses the craftsmanship and formal properties of garment-making such as hand-stitching, pattern-making, sensuous fabrics, along with formal properties of color, form, pattern, decoration shape, and texture. Common to her work are elements which are vaguely threatening, such as steel wool and broken glass, along with prosaic and fragile materials such as cardboard for jewelry that could melt in the first rain. Culkin's work disrobes fashion, subverting its more restraining elements in favor of an idiosyncratic expression of female empowerment.
Bruce Davidson (American, 1904-1971), Brooklyn Gang [Couple by Cigarette Machine], 1959, vintage geletin silver print, 8 ½ x 13 inches, Permanent Collection 2007.5.57. Bequest of Isadore and Kelly Friedman
The modern term for such activity is "networking." For artists who are prone or susceptible to new sources of inspiration, networking can create meaningful repercussions to the content or character of their own work. What would have happened to Brassai if his friend André Kertész had not convinced him to try his hand at photography? What if Berenice Abbott had not crossed paths with Eugène Atget and his photographs of Paris? Would she ever have produced her monumental series, Changing New York?
Cameraderie illustrates a chronology of acquaintances and affiliations which occurred throughout the history of photography. These relationships are revealed as the rudimentary infrastructure upon which more extended patterns of photographic activity developed. Beginning and ending with a William F.H. Talbot photograph from 1843, Cameraderie presents a circuit of images to demonstrate the connections between photographers from different countries and eras, as well as the continuity and diversity of the Boca Raton Museum's comprehensive collection.
September 11, 2012 - February 3, 2013 Politics NOT as Usual: Quilts with Something to Say
Celebrating quilting as a medium for both art and social change, Politics NOT as Usual: Quilts with Something to Say highlights two centuries of women who wouldn't take "no" for an answer; women who used quilting as a venue to cast their votes, comment on the political landscape, and participate in national life.
Organized by the American Folk Art Museum in New York City, the collection demonstrates quilts as one of the most eloquent and consistent reflections of American life from the colonial period to the present.
From quilts expressing Union pride following the Civil War, promoting presidential candidates, anger at being denied the right to vote, to a call for Hawaiian independence, Politics NOT as Usual offers visitors a unique and personal context to our country's past.
The exhibition marks the first opportunity for viewers to see the 9/11 National Tribute Quilt outside of the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. The art piece incorporates quilt blocks from five hundred people in fifty states as well as Canada, Spain, Denmark, and Australia to acknowledge the loss of thousands of lives on that infamous day. The four central panels form a montage of the twin towers of the World Trade Center against the New York City skyline.
Politics NOT as Usual is organized by Stacy Hollander, Chief Curator at the American Folk Art Museum. Sponsored in part at the Boca Raton Museum of Art by Marleen Forkas and the Schmidt Family Foundation.
Hear curator Marisa Pascucci discuss Politics NOT as Usual on Arts Radio Network:
STEEL QUILTERS (organized and assembled), National Tribute Quilt, 2002, cotton and mixed media, 8 x 30 feet. Courtesy American Folk Art Museum, New York. Gift of the Steel Quilters: Kathy S. Crawford, Amber M. Dalley, Jian X. Li, and Dorothy L. Simback with the help of countless others in tribute to the victims of the September 11, 2001 attack on America
JESSIE B. TELFAIR (1913-1986), Freedom Quilt, 1983, cotton with pencil, 74 x 68 inches. Courtesy American Folk Art Museum, New York. Gift of Judith Alexander in loving memory of her sister, Rebecca Alexander, 2004.9.1
Grover Cleveland Quilt, 1884-1890, cotton with cotton appliqué and embroidery, 61 x 75 inches. Courtesy American Folk Art Museum, New York
The exhibition in Boca Raton, presented by FMSbonds, Inc., explores the 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, focusing on striking graphics, creative storytelling, and player interactivity. During its stay in South Florida, the Boca Raton Museum of Art also offers a variety of associated programs and educational opportunities for visitors of all ages and interests.
The exhibition highlights some of the best games for 20 gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the Playstation 3. It features 80 video games presented through still images, video footage, and interactive kiosks. In addition, the galleries include video interviews with developers and artists, historic game consoles, and large prints of in-game screen shots. Five featured games, one from each era, are available in the exhibition galleries to play, allowing visitors to experience the medium's unique appeal of interactivity. The playable games – Pac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst, and Flower – show how players connect with the virtual worlds and highlight innovative new techniques that set the standard for many subsequent games.
A companion book, The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man to Mass Effect, written by curator Chris Melissinos, with more than 100 composite images of featured games by Patrick O'Rourke, is available for purchase in the Museum Store. The book, published by Welcome Books in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, examines each of the 80 featured games, providing a behind-the-scenes look at their development and innovation, and commentary on the relevance of each in the history of video games.
The Art of Video Games is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum with generous support from the Entertainment Software Association Foundation; Sheila Duignan and Mike Wilkins; Shelby and Frederick Gans; Mark Lamia; Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk; Rose Family Foundation; Betty and Lloyd Schermer; and Neil Young. Promotional support is provided by the Entertainment Consumers Association. The C.F. Foundation in Atlanta supports the museum's traveling exhibition program, Treasures to Go.
Preview the installation as displayed in Washington D.C. by at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Flickr page here.
Follow the Boca Raton Museum of Art's Facebook exhibition feature here, which includes information on the exhibition's highlighted games with images, videos, trivia and more.
Presenting sponsor:
Exhibition partners:
Einstein famously proclaimed that "God does not play dice with the universe" but in Zansky's absurd tragic-comic world, games of chance are constantly being played. Quantum Physics posits the existence of infinite yet skewed parallel universes, so in Zansky's view, slapstick comedians join theoreticians of Western Civilization and prehistoric creatures to ponder the inscrutability of the universe. The use of optics, illusion, and movie characters is particularly fitting, as Zansky has had a long career as a scenic artist for film and television.
Like many video games such as the Panzer Dragoon series and Mass Effect, his work includes apocalyptic visions, fantastic landscapes, and human and animal hybrids.
July 28, 2012 - October 30, 2012 Group Youth Summer Camp Exhibition
The Art School's Youth Summer Camp is celebrating the completion of another year inspiring artistic talent with a special exhibition of camper creations.
Eighteen art projects are on display in the Museum Auditorium, showcasing both camper creativity and an appreciation for art history. Artworks range from a collection of self-portraits; assemblage created by recycled materials; a Claes Oldenburg-inspired giant banana split; a Louise Nevelson-esque relief sculpture; and flowers designed in oil pastel and watercolor in the vein of Georgia O'Keeffe.
July 18, 2012 - October 7, 2012 Big Art: Miniature Golf
Bring along your lucky putter or use ours in this fully-playable miniature golf course. Designed by artists from across the United States, Big Art: Miniature Golf is a unique exhibition that explores the fusion between art, design and play.
Visitors will see – and play on – a diverse selection of artist-created miniature golf holes, ranging from an orbit around the Sun and into a black hole, playing inside an enormous golf hole cup, to the world's smallest version of the world's largest miniature golf course.
Each hole offers a one-of-a-kind experience for all visitors - be they golf lovers, art lovers, or both. Big Art: Miniature Golf promises a singular survey of some of the most whimsical and playful American artists working today.
Putters and golf balls provided at gallery entrance.
Holes and the Artists
"A Hole" Cynthia Chang and Misha Kahn(Duluth, Minnesota)
"Spiral Ramps" Aphidoidea (Andrew Hernandez, Paulina Bouyer, Jackie Muñoz, Jesus Eduardo (eddie) Magaña)(Los Angeles, California)
"Chasm" Alex Heffesse(Brooklyn, New York)
"Hard to Swallow" Jeane Cooper(Boca Raton, Florida)
"In or Out" Francisca Pisfil(Miami, Florida)
"The Life Hole" Jeff Whipple (Jacksonville, Florida)
"Golf in the Swamp with John Muir"Charles Falarara and Sri Prabha(Miami, Florida)"Tiger Woods"Scott Mazariegos & John Larsen(Portland, Oregon)"Toward the Black Hole"Steven Gutierrez(Chardon, Ohio)"Trapped in Paradise"Robert Reed(Honolulu, Hawaii)"World's Smallest Version of the World's Largest Miniature Golf Course"Erika Nelson(Lucas, Kansas)
ROBERT BEAUCHAMP (American, born Denver, Colorado, 1923‐1994), Birds, Undated, lithograph, 18 x 26 inches, Permanent Collection 1999.057.071, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Bienes
If chasing birdies on the mini golf links isn't your style, there's plenty to be found at the complementary exhibit, A Little Birdie Told Me.
A gallery of birdies (of the avian variety) has been drawn from the Museum's permanent collections, showcasing American, European, Native American, and Pre-Columbian representations of our fine feathered friends. Noted artists featured include Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Philip Pearlstein, Man Ray, James Rosenquist, and Ben Shahn.
Through October 7 GLASS ACT: The Contemporary Art Glass Movement Turns 50
This survey of contemporary studio glass will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary in 2012 of the Studio Glass Movement in America.
Studio glass describes one-of-a-kind fine art glass pieces made in individual studios rather than glass factories. This movement started in the early 1960s, when Harvey Littleton – today considered the father of the studio glass movement - built his own glass-making furnaces in a freestanding studio.
Glass Act showcases art glass representative of the full breadth of this defining period in contemporary glassmaking. This exhibition demonstrates the different ways in which glass is used as a medium for contemporary art. The display focuses on unique objects that explore ideas by the leading glass artists today including Howard Ben Tré, Dale Chihuly, Dan Dailey, Kyohei Fujita, Harvey Littleton, Concetta Mason, Danny Perkins, Christopher Ries and others.
DAN DAILEY (American, 1947- ), Circus Vessel Series, Avian Aerialists, 1999, blown glass with fabricated metal, 27 x 24 x 13 inches. Courtesy of Habatat Gallery
With generous support from:
HARVEY K. LITTLETON (American, 1922- ), Ruby Orange Mobile Arc, 1982, internally decorated, hot-drawn glass, cut and polished, 14 3/4 x 18 1/2 x 2 1/4 inches. Museum Permanent Collection 2008.8.2A, B. Gift of the Estate of George Epstein
Portraits from the Permanent Collection (in the Auditorium)
September 6, 2011 - July 29, 2012
From the pensive gaze of Georgia O'Keeffe in profile to the powerful punch of Muhammed Ali's fist, some of the most iconic images of artists and celebrities are part of the Museum's collection of portraiture. There's something about a portrait that can be irresistible and quite revealing. Portraiture captures a single moment, giving us insight into someone's personality.ARNOLD NEWMAN (American, 1918-2006), Georgia O'Keeffe, Painter, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, 1968, gelatin silver print. Permanent Collection 1993.180. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Steinman
This exhibition presents more than 50 images in all media: painting, drawing, prints and photography, exploring the intimate as well as very public faces of artists, celebrities, politicians, and everyday people worldwide.
ANDY WARHOL (American, born Pittsburg, PA, 1928-1987), Muhammad Ali, 1979, silkscreen on Strathmore Bristol paper, edition no. 3/150, 4 panels, 40 x 30 inches each. Permanent Collection 1991.246. Gift of Dr. Richard Golden
61st ANNUAL ALL FLORIDA JURIED COMPETITION AND EXHIBITION
May 30 - July 8, 2012
As the state's oldest annual juried competition, the All Florida has introduced the work of thousands of Florida artists working in all media – emerging, under recognized, and established younger and mid-career artists. It reinforces the Museum's commitment to Florida artists, provides professional exhibition opportunities for emerging artists, and reveals a provocative glimpse – through Florida artists' eyes – of the state-of-the-art today through approximately 100 paintings, sculpture, photographs, video and installations. This year's juror is Valerie Cassel Oliver, senior curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Prior to Houston, Cassel Oliver was director of the Visiting Artists Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1995-2000) and program specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts (1988-1995). In 1999, she was part of a team of curators that organized the 2000 Biennial for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Cassel Oliver will select this year's All Florida and its award winners from more than 1500 entries.Best in Show went to Vanessa Diaz for her sculpture, The Offering. Merit Awards were given to four artists; Charles Corda for Portrait of an Art Dealer, Beatrice McClelland for Vanishing Environment, Art Siegel for 7th Avenue Local, and Stephanie Jaffe Werner for White Dog Topiary.
In conjunction with the 61st Annual All Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition, this juried exhibition presented works by professional artist members of the Museum Auxiliary Guild.First Place went to Estelle Lavin's watercolor, Southern Comfort II; Second Place to Jane McIntyre's Graphite on paper, Jeffery II; Third Place to Allan Pierce's photograph, Store Fronts with Living Spaces. The Judges Recognition award went to Hanne Niederhausen's assemblage, Mellow Meal. Honorable mention was awarded to Jerome Glickman's pastel on paper, Wood Nymph.
Will Barnet (American, born in 1911 -), The Great Grandmother, 1984, oil on canvas, 46 ½ x 28 ½. From the collection of Mr. and Mrs. John O. Zipperer, Jr.
WILL BARNET AT 100: Eight Decades of Painting and Printmaking
March 27 - May 20, 2012
To mark the 100th birthday of pioneering painter, printmaker, and educator Will Barnet (born May 25, 1911), this exhibition of nearly fifty works explores the momentous evolution of Barnet's art from realism to abstraction during one of the most distinguished careers in American art. Barnet's paintings, drawings, and prints are in major museums around the world — and at the age of 100, he is still creating the works of a true American master.
Barnet's career as an artist and America's foremost printmaker has evolved from 1930s social realism to 1940s cubism to 1950s geometric abstraction, and since 1961, figurative realism. "I have lived through a lot of difficult periods: abstract expressionism, minimalism and so on," Barnet said, in thinking back. Barnet's highly original work builds upon the foundation of his Indian Space abstract works of the 1950s, based upon Native American-inspired organic and geometric pictograph forms within a flat, seamless space. In the 1960s, Barnet's work shifted from abstraction to figurative work, when he created his most iconic and beloved works.
This exhibition of more than 50 works demonstrates Barnet's continuous capacity for reinvention and new perspectives, even today in his 100th year. Will Barnet At 100 is organized by The Harmon-Meek Gallery, Naples, Florida, which has represented Barnet since 1973.
MUTED IMPRINTS: An Installation by MISAKO INAOKA
Misako Inaoka is known for her kinetic sculpture and site-specific installations. The artist's desire to carefully construct miniature environments that evoke wilderness, but are grounded in technology, comes from a long-standing interest in, as she says, "the boundary between what we call natural and artificial." Born in Kyoto, Japan in 1977, Inaoka lives and works in San Francisco, California.
Expect to walk among birds twittering in tree branches, a deer shyly glancing up at you, and fantastical worlds tucked behind an ordinary wall. Expect also to find bizarre combinations of animal and machine, both endearing and unsettling. An incremental tilt of a small bird's head when you near it, or a flash of light and color glimpsed through a peephole in an otherwise unobtrusive wall, signals the viewer that they should move in, as close as possible, to delight in the invented creatures and landscapes of Inaoka's imagination. The relationship between the viewer and Inaoka's artwork is one of discovery. The viewer's presence brings the exhibition to life, literally.
AN ARTISTIC DISCOVERY: The Congressional Student Art Competition
April 11 - May 20, 2012
Each spring, An Artistic Discovery, a nation-wide high school arts competition sponsored by the members of the U.S. House of Representatives, recognizes and encourages the artistic talent in the nation as well as in each congressional district. The Museum's exhibition, which presents the work of hundreds of students, invites all high school students in Florida's 19th Congressional District to submit work to be juried and exhibited. The student whose work is selected Best in Show travels to Washington D.C. where their artwork is displayed in the halls of Congress.
PATRIZIA ZELANO (Italian, born in Brescia 1964- ) Attesa Silente #3 Oblio [Quiet Wait #3 Oblivion], 2009, Archival digital print on dibond and plexiglass, 23.6 x 35.4 inches, Courtesy of the artist
January 18 - March 18, 2012Natura Morta (Still Life) presents eighteen color photographs by one of Italy's most interesting and controversial photographers working today. Featured are works from three portfolios: Attesa silente (Quiet Wait), Cenci (Rags), and In Carne ed Ossa (In Flesh and Bone).
Zelano's mysterious and compelling images address the symbolic power and emotional force of their subject matter, both real and imagined. In different ways, each of Patrizia Zelano's photographs underscores the interconnectedness of nature and humanity, while evoking the psychological, political, ethical, and ecological ramifications of our tendencies to conceive of them as separate entities. Images of stored hay bales: Attesa Silente (Quiet Wait); bales of used American clothing: Cenci (Rags); and recycled slaughterhouse waste such as heads, hooves, intestines and bones from cattle, sheep, and pigs: In Carne ed Ossa (In Flesh and Blood) each record the consumption and discard of society and the confrontation between man and nature. Patrizia Zelano was born in 1964 and she lives and works in Verucchio (Rimini), Italy. Since 2001, her photography has won numerous awards throughout Europe and she has been featured in several publications.
MARTIN SCHOELLER: Close UpJanuary 18 - March 18, 2012
Hollywood stars such as Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, politicians such as Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, sports icons Kobe Bryant and Andre Agassi, pop-idols such as Chris Rock and even it-girl Paris Hilton show that they are not afraid of "opening up" for Martin Schoeller and his camera. This exhibition presents 48 arresting large-format color images – many of which are Schoeller's most famous celebrity portraits. The images challenge the viewer to question topics such as self-representation, celebrity, photographic honesty, as well as the impressive explanatory power of portrait photography. Furthermore, the portrayed provoke the observer to compare the individuals' appearance as communicated through the media with the viewer's own impressions and experiences.
New York-based photographer Schoeller worked as an assistant for Annie Leibovitz in the 1990s and began working for the New Yorker in 1999, where he gained recognition for his inspired photographic contributions to feature articles. His most famous work, and the subject of this exhibition, was developed when he began as a portrait photographer. In his close-up, "de-famed" portraits of celebrities, politicians, and unknown but intriguing faces, using the same lighting from the same angle, Schoeller achieves a unity of expression that brings out the personality and individuality of his subjects. It is in these portraits that the truth within his subjects, their surface and inner expressions, is most clearly revealed. This exhibition is organized by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions.
Sponsored in part by:
FRANK WESTON BENSON (1862-1951), Red and Gold, 1915, oil on canvas, 31 x 39 inches. Courtesy of The Butler Institute of American Art
AMERICAN TREASURES: Masterworks From the Butler Institute of American Art
December 13, 2011 - March 18, 2012
American Treasures presents a selection of significant and noteworthy examples of American art and artists from the nineteenth to the late twentieth centuries. On loan from the Butler Institute of American Art, the collection showcases two centuries of American art and the many styles and genres found therein. The exhibition comprises 36 works representing a virtual who's who of American masters: Milton Avery, Cecilia Beaux, George Bellows, Frank Weston Benson, Albert Bierstadt, Charles Ephraim Burchfield. Thomas Cole, John Steuart Curry, Arthur G. Dove, Thomas Eakins, Lyonel Feininger, Janet Fish, Adolph Gottlieb, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, Martin Johnson Heade, Robert Henri, Victor Higgins. Edward Hopper, George Inness, Jacob Lawrence, Jack Levine, Gari Melchers, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Georgia O'Keeffe, William McGregor Paxton, Jackson Pollock, Edward Redfield, Theodore Robinson, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Joseph Henry Sharp, John Sloan, Andy Warhol, Worthington Whittredge, and Andrew Wyeth.
The Butler Institute of American Art, located in Youngstown, Ohio, opened in 1919 as the first museum dedicated exclusively to American art. It is recognized nationally and internationally as one of America's finest art museums, with holdings now exceeding 20,000 individual works, including important masterpieces spanning four centuries.
OUTSIDER VISIONS: Self-Taught Southern Artists of the 20th Century
September 21, 2011 through January 8, 2012
Regarded as among the most intriguing areas within 20th-century art, the work of self-taught artists continues to elude categorization. Loosely characterized as work by artists without formal artistic training, the genre of self-taught art (sometimes called folk art or outsider art) covers a diverse array of artistic media, styles, and themes. The artists come from both rural and urban communities, and from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Among their subject matter: politics, social commentary, UFOs, daily life, sex, and personal obsessions.
A veritable feast of more than 75 captivating works by self-taught artists, this exhibition were presented for the first time in South Florida, rare and fascinating works from the collection of Ted and Ann Oliver, who have spent more than 30 years studying, collecting, and writing about southern contemporary folk art. The exhibition presented a selection of works by some of the key figures in the Outsider world including Alpha Andrews, Rudolph Bostic, Jerry Coker, Howard Finster, Sybil Gibson, Alyne Harris, Lonnie Holley, Clementine Hunter, Anderson Johnson, S.L. Jones, Eric Legge, Woodie Long, Charlie Lucas, Willie Massey, Mario Mesa, R. A. Miller, J.B. Murray, Jeff Payne, Mary Proctor, Bernice Sims, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Willie Tarver, Annie Tolliver, Mose Tolliver, Myrtice West, Purvis Young, and others.
Federico Uribe is represented by Now Contemporary Gallery, Wynwood, Miami, Florida.
September 21 through December 4, 2011
Colombian conceptual artist Federico Uribe is known for his fascinating transformation of everyday objects into art. Uribe creates sculptures which are not sculpted but constructed and woven in all kinds of ways, curious and unpredictable, intricate and compulsive. Individual works and whole-room installations are made entirely out of common everyday objects like thousands of shoes, colored pencils and shoe laces. Born in Bogota, Colombia 1962, he lives and works in Miami. Uribe studied art at the University of Los Andes in Bogota and in 1988 left for New York to study under Luis Camnitzer, before moving to Miami. He has received international recognition with exhibits in New York City, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Germany. For the Museum, he created a site specific walk-in environment filling an entire 5000-square-foot gallery.
December 4, 2011 through January 8, 2012
A selection of Uribe's found object sculptures from the exhibition, The World According to Federico Uribe was re-installed.
Winners announced at the Exhibition Opening:
Best In Show: Bonnie Wolsky of Coral Gables for Tangled Palms
Merit Awards:
Virginia Fifield of Hollywood for Contemplations of Life, Death and BeautyRussell Levine of Boynton Beach for Eyes of My SoulNoelle Mason of Tampa for Ground Control (Mexicali/Calexico)
60th ANNUAL ALL FLORIDA JURIED COMPETITION AND EXHIBITION
June 28 through September 11, 2011
As the state's oldest annual juried competition, over the years, the Museum's All Florida has introduced the work of thousands of Florida artists working in all media – emerging, under recognized, and established younger and mid-career artists.
The 60th All Florida Juried Exhibition reinforces the Museum's commitment to Florida artists, provides professional exhibition opportunities for emerging artists, and reveals a provocative glimpse – through Florida artists' eyes – of the state-of-the-art today through approximately 100 paintings, sculpture, photography, video and installations. The juror was distinguished independent curator, writer, and American art scholar Dr. Valerie Leeds, who selected 101 artworks from more than 1800 entries by 600 artists.
Sponsored in part by:
ART FOR THE PEOPLE: 20th Century Social Realism
April 26 through September 11, 2011
The history of American 20th century painting reveals a changing America through the competing forces of tradition and innovation in painting and printmaking. This exhibition represents a selection of more than 100 paintings, drawings and prints representative of American art between the 1920s and 1960s.This sampling of American art between the World Wars introduces works by well-known artists such as John Sloan and Raphael Soyer, and works by under-appreciated talents such as Vaclav Vytlacil and Richard Florsheim, as well as a canon of fascinating unknowns.
As this exhibition traces the evolution of American art from the 1920s into the 1960s, it includes examples of American urban and rural scene painting, and political and social realism. Social realism became an important art movement during the Great Depression in the United States in the 1930s. As an American artistic movement it is closely related to American scene painting and to Regionalism. American Social Realism includes the works of such artists as those from the Ashcan School, and Reginald Marsh and John Sloan. It also extends to the art of photography as exemplified by the works of Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White, Lewis Hine, Edward Steichen, Berenice Abbott and Aaron Siskind. Together, these works capture the essence of a dynamic period of artistic vitality in American art.
This exhibition has been organized by the Boca Raton Museum of Art.
RICHARD FLORSHEIM (American, born in Chicago, IL, 1916-1979), Poles in a Landscape, 1936, egg tempera on paper board, 14 1/2 x 21 1/4 inches. Museum Permanent Collection 1999.104, Gift of the Richard A. Florsheim Art Fund
ARTURO RODRIGUEZ (American, born in Cuba 1956-), Sub Rosa, 1994, oil on linen, 94 x 68 inches.Permanent Collection 2002.117. Gift of the artist
Latin American Art from the Museum's Collection
October 12, 2010 - August 28, 2011
Twentieth-century and contemporary Latin American art is international in nature, and its leading figures have achieved international stature. This sampling of Latin American art from the Museum's collections introduces the work of several major Latin American artists whose works reflect the interaction of politics, society and art, a dialogue between avant-garde movements and "indigenist" thinking, and the search for cultural -identity.
Twenty works by many of the most important 20th century Latin American artists range from the traditional figurative sculpture of Francisco Zúñiga, to the the modernism of Rufino Tamayo and Matta, the contemporary abstraction of Enrique Castro-Cid and Carlos Cruz-Diez, and the poetic realism of Julio Larraz.
This exhibition is organized by the Boca Raton Museum of Art.
ROBERT VICKREY (American, 1926-2011 ), Sea Breeze, 1985, egg tempera on board, 20 x 30 inches. Museum Permanent Collection 1993.340. Gift of the artist
Robert Vickrey: The Magic of Realism
April 26 - June 19, 2011
Robert Vickrey was a crucial figure in the mid-twentieth-century renaissance of egg tempera, one of the oldest, most versatile, and most durable painting mediums. This exhibition presents approximately 70 works from Vickrey's 60-year career as the living master of tempera painting. Using the same labor-intensive techniques practiced by Renaissance artists Giotto and Botticelli, Vickrey became America's leading modern master of this centuries-old medium and is unquestionably egg tempera's most innovative practitioner. An acknowledged master of this traditional medium, he used egg tempera in original and idiosyncratic ways in paintings which capture the same quietude and mystery as those of American realists Edward Hopper, George Tooker and Andrew Wyeth.Robert Vickrey mixed egg yolks with ground pigments to create realist images that incorporate symbols and subjects from his personal observations. Vickrey's subjects are distinctly contemporary figures placed in almost surreal landscapes defined by exaggerated shadows and light. His egg tempera works are included in more than 80 American art museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, the Corcoran Gallery, and the National Academy of Design. This exhibition is organized with the assistance of Harmon-Meek Gallery, Naples, Florida. Accompanying the exhibition are four publications which include "Robert Vickrey: The Magic of Realism," published by Hudson Hills Press, a 224-page, 170-color-plate volume authored by Dr. Philip Eliasoph, professor of art history, Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut.
PABLO PICASSO (Spanish, born in Málaga, 1881-1973), Faune dévoilant une dormeuse (Jupiter et Antiope, d'après Rembrandt),[Faun Revealing a Sleeping Woman (Jupiter and Antiope, after Rembrandt)], 1936, etching with aquatint on paper, 12 3/8 x 16 3/8 inches. Permanent Collection
Romanticism to Modernism: Graphic Masterpieces from Piranesi to Picasso
October 12, 2010 - June 19, 2011
Fine prints have, since their origin in the 15th century, been admired for their great artistic diversity and technical virtuosity. This exhibition presents 65 exceptional works by prominent masters of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century's, including masterworks by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Italian, 1720-1788), Francisco de Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828), and Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), each of whom is celebrated for his pioneering experiments in graphic art.
The exhibition opens with a selection of brilliant works by Piranesi, the highly influential Italian precursor of the romantic style, whose brooding and atmospheric series Carceri (Prisons), 1749-1760, is one of the great icons of the 18th century. In addition, 21 notable graphic works by Picasso, including etchings from the Vollard Suite created between 1930 and 1937, The 347 Series of 1968, and Picasso's Series 156 completed in 1971 as well as etchings from Goya's The Disasters of War (1810-20) and various lithographs, etchings, woodcuts and pochoirs by James McNeil Whistler (American, 1834-1903), John Taylor Arms (American, 1887-1953), Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906), Pierre Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919), Georges Rouault (French, 1871-1958), Paul Gauguin (French, 1848- 1903), George Braque (French, 1882-1963), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864-1901), Fernand Léger (French, 1881-1955), Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983), Marc Chagall (Russian, 1887-1985), and George Braque (French, 1881-1955).
Keira Knightley wore this costume as Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, in The Duchess (2008), Costume Design by Michael O'Connor, Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Costume Design
Heath Ledger wore this costume as Giacomo Casanova in Casanova (2005), Costume Design by Jenny Beavan
CUT! Costume and the Cinema
January 19 - April 17, 2011
Cut! Costume and the Cinema explores the intersection of fashion and film with forty-three extraordinary costumes worn by luminous film stars: Sandra Bullock, Johnnie Depp, Robert Downey Jr., Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman,Heath Ledger, Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Smith, Kate Winslet, Renée Zellweger and others. Visitors to the Museum will be transported from Elizabethan England (Angelica Huston, Ever After) to 17th-century Virginia (Colin Farrell, The New World) to the 18th-century England of the aristocracy (Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes, The Duchess) to opulent 19th-century Paris, (Emmy Rossum, The Phantom of the Opera) to the story of Peter Pan (Kate Winslet, Finding Neverland), and the newly released adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, Sherlock Holmes) into the 20th century – to colonial Shanghai (Natasha Richardson, The White Countess) and Virginia Woolf's England (Vanessa Redgrave, Mrs. Dalloway) to the forests of Belarus in World War II (Daniel Craig, Defiance).
Cut! Costume and the Cinema reveals the integral role of fashion design in creating unforgettable screen characters. Costumes set the scene, providing information about where and when the drama is taking place, and introducing characters by giving clues about their status, age, class and wealth as well as their position in the story. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Venetian upper class 18th-century silk brocade coat of Heath Ledger (Casanova) versus the distressed leather jacket worn by Daniel Craig (Defiance) while hiding from the Nazis in World War II. Costumes created for period films must not only stand the test of time, but also the test of scrutiny. When a camera zooms in for a close-up every hand-created detail must look authentic and perfectly executed. This exhibition allows us to get closer to the stories portrayed on screen and to appreciate the quality of the costumes up close, sometimes only fleetingly glanced on the screen.
Cut! Costume and the Cinema is presented by Exhibits Development Group in cooperation with Cosprop Ltd., London, England.
Interview with Executive Director, George Bolge and Cosprop Ltd Co-Curator, Nancy Lawson
GEORGE GARDNER SYMONS, Southern California Coast, oil on canvas, 40 1/4 x 50 inches, courtesy of The Irvine Museum
California Impressionism: Paintings from The Irvine Museum
Starting with the late 1880s and continuing into the early part of the twentieth century, California's majestic landscape was the inspiration for many American artists. They set out to capture California's vivid colors and intense sunshine in a distinctive style that has come to be called California Impressionism or California plein air painting after the French term for "in the open air." Venturing out into nature, these artists often depicted California as a colorful, sunlit garden of wildflowers or a tranquil retreat.
As a regional variant of American Impressionism, the California plein air style is a composite of traditional American landscape painting and influences from French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. With the turn of the century, when Impressionism had only recently become an accepted American style, Southern California experienced an influx of young artists, most of whom had been trained in that style and had never known any other. The period from 1900 to 1915 marks the flowering of California Impressionism. It is part of the continuum of American art's passion with landscape, a lineage that began long before the early years of the American republic.
This exhibition presents masterpieces of California Impressionism from the Irvine Museum, arguably the most important collection of West Coast American Impressionism. The Irvine Museum is the only museum in California dedicated to the preservation and display of California Impressionism or plein-air painting. The colorful collection of more than 60 California Impressionist paintings presents the work of more than forty-four artists. Among the well-known artists featured in the exhibition are William Wendt, Guy Rose, Dona Schuster, Granville Redmond and Alson Clark.
Valerio Adami , Finlandia, circa 1987, acrylic on canvas, 79 x 105 inches. Courtesy of Fondo Adami, Fondazione Europea del Disegno
Valerio Adami
October 12 - January 9, 2011
Valerio Adami (Italian, born in Bologna, 1935- ) is recognized internationally as an important European artist who first came to international prominence in the 1960s with Nouvelle Figuration, the French intellectual version of Pop art. Adami's work is steeped in political, social and moral mythologies. This exhibition presents a retrospective of more than four decades of work with 23 important paintings from the 1960s to his most recent paintings. Adami's images embrace themes that have preoccupied the artist for more than 50 years: literature, travels, poetry, music, politics and painting. After more than half a century of working creatively, Adami has evolved his own iconography, an ingenious pictorial language that embraces both past and present, in which strange creatures keep company with famous faces from history: the French Revolutionary politician Robespierre, the author James Joyce and the composer Gustav Mahler. His famous pop art colors and flat forms with their thick black contours evoke the appearance of cartoons. Yet his everyday imagery plays a fundamental role in conveying his many social, philosophical and literary references. Here we see Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Claudel, Derrida in works which develop like poems or reminiscences of a lifetime: hotel rooms, sights of the East, home life, scenes of theater and the street. With retrospectives held in Paris at the Centre Georges Pompidou (1985), in Valencia, Spain (1990), Sienna, Italy (1994),Tel Aviv (1997), Buenos Aires (1998), Athens (Frissiras Museum 2004) and Milan (2008), this exhibition marks an important look at the artist's work. This exhibition has been organized by the Boca Raton Museum of Art from the collection of the Adami Foundation (Fondo Adami, Fondazione Europea del Disegno). Accompanying the exhibition, the Museum will publish a fully-illustrated 222-page catalogue with essays by important critics and writers Dore Ashton, Italo Calvino, Carlos Fuentes, Alain Jouffroy, Octavio Paz, and Antonio Tabucchi.
ROBERT COTTINGHAM, Southern Star, 2009, silkscreen on canvas, 79 x 79 inches. Courtesy of American Image Atelier
Robert Cottingham: Twenty Ways to See a Star
October 12 - January 2, 2010
Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Robert Cottingham (American, born in Brooklyn 1935- ), the great photorealist painter of America's signs and building facades, would return to the image of the star – in billboard marquees and electrified commercial signs. Using letter forms, words and parts of words in his paintings, his images underline the artist's fascination with everyday commonplace objects which evoke an essence of the American spirit. This exhibition debuts a series of 20 iconic Star silkscreens on canvas by Cottingham, based on color variations of one of his most recognizable images.Cottingham established himself in the early 1970s as one of the first generation photorealists with such renowned artists as Richard Estes and Chuck Close. Abstraction and realism are skillfully wedded in Cottingham's shimmering paintings depicting the vanishing objects and icons of American culture, such as commercial neon signs, which were the inspiration behind Cottingham's star paintings and prints. Cottingham worked on this three-year project with master printer Gary Lichtenstein and Michael McKenzie of American Image Atelier in New York, to produce this new series of monumental Star paintings silkscreened onto canvas. This exhibition is organized in conjunction with Rosenbaum Contemporary Gallery, Gallery Center, Boca Raton.
Sponsored in part by:
Wyland: Art and Conservation
October 11 - November 7, 2010
Known simply by one name, artist Wyland (American born in Detroit, Michigan, 1956) garnered global attention for painting large, outdoor murals of whales and other ocean life. Over the last twenty-five years his artwork has earned accolades for the artist as a leading advocate for marine resource conservation. An accomplished painter, sculptor, photographer, writer, and scuba diver, his work captures the raw power and beauty of the undersea universe.
Sponsored by:
59th Annual All Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition
June 22 - August 8, 2010
As the state's oldest annual juried competition, over the years, the Museum's All Florida has introduced the work of thousands of Florida artists working in all media - emerging, under recognized and established younger and mid-career artists.
The contest and exhibition drew 1398 submissions from artists around the state. This year's juror, Linda Norden, selected 92 artworks – paintings, sculpture, photography, videos and installations – by 81 artists.
Best in Show went to Kerry Phillips of Miami for Chairs Found and Fixed, an installation on display in the front of the Museum. Merit Awards were given to three artists - Roberta Schofield for her body of work, Running and War; Noelle Mason for Nothing Much Happened Today: for Eric and Dylan and Melissa Marrero for her body of work, Measurements, Breaking It and Orange.
Boca Museum Artists Guild: Biennial Members Exhibition
A juried exhibition for professional artist members of this Museum affiliate organization held every two years during the companion competition - the All Florida. A range of work is always represented which describes the pluralistic nature of artists working in South Florida. The exhibition of the Boca Raton Museum Artists Guild, a professional working artists organization, pays tribute to the level of artistic excellence existing in this state and showcases its membership's depth of talent.
This year's juror, Dr. Carol Damian, selected 50 artworks for the exhibition. First Place went to Francene Levinson's Rising sculpture, Second Place to Lorraine Bader's Empress Cixi collage, Third Place to Jerome Glickman's Rebirth of Creative Self painting, Juror's Recognition to Hanne Niederhausen's Gutenberg's Notebook sculptural frottage and Honorable Mention to Sally Cooper's La Mer triptych painting.
ALFRED WERTHEIMER (American, 1929-), Going Home, 1956
Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer
Through June 13, 2010
In 1956, a twenty-one-year-old Elvis Presley was at the beginning of his remarkable career. Up-and-coming photographer Alfred Wertheimer (American, 1929- ) was asked by Presley's new label, RCA Victor, to photograph the "Hillbilly Cat" rising star from Mississippi. Wertheimer traveled with Elvis Presley, capturing the unguarded moments in Elvis's life during that crucial year, a year that took him from Tupelo, Mississippi to the silver screen, and to the verge of international stardom and his crowning as "The King of Rock 'n' Roll." These Wertheimer classic images represent the only candid photos of Elvis ever taken. Shortly after, "the Colonel" restricted access to the young singer. From backstage to onstage, from piano benches to Harleys, from on-the-road to screaming fans, Elvis at 21 presents forty large-format photographs that chronicle with cinematic luminosity, a remarkable time when Elvis could sit alone at a drugstore lunch counter.
Elvis at 21: Photographs by Alfred Werthheimer was developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, Govinda Gallery, and the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, and is made possible through the generous support of History™.
©Alfred Wertheimer, All rights reserved.
STANLEY BOXER (American, 1926-2000), Plumagesoftempts, 1988, oil and mixed media on canvas, 60 x 44 inches. Courtesy of the estate of the artist
Rememberingstanleyboxer: A Retrospective 1946-2000
New York native Stanley Boxer (1926-2000) is best known for his large scale abstract paintings which have a rich sculptural quality produced by thick, impasto brushwork. This retrospective exhibition featured 50 paintings and 13 sculptures dating from 1946 through 2000. Boxer's paintings were championed by American modernist critic Clement Greenberg (1906-1994), famous for his insistence that painters should eliminate subject matter in their work, aiming instead for the purity of abstraction. Boxer studied at the Art Students League and began exhibiting in New York in 1953. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1975, and elected to the National Academy of Design in 1993, Boxer became one of America's most eminent mid-century abstract painters, with works now held by every major museum in America including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the San Francisco Museum of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C.
Rememberingstanleyboxer: A Retrospective 1946-2000 was curated by Elizabeth Stevens, former Director of Exhibitions, Salander O'Reilly Galleries, New York City. Accompanying catalogue is written by Carl Belz, Director Emeritus, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, and Contributing Editor of Art New England magazine. Rememberingstanleyboxer also travelled to The University of Richmond Museums, Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, Richmond, Virginia, and the Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, Connecticut.
M.C. ESCHER (Dutch, 1898-1972), Reptiles, 1943, Bool #327, lithograph, 13 1/8 x 15 1/8 inches. Courtesy of The Walker Collection. All M. C. Escher's works and text © The M. C. Escher Company, Baarn, The Netherlands. All rights reserved. M. C. Escher ® is a registered trademark
Marc Bell Presents: The Magical World of M.C. Escher
Through April 11, 2010 (Special Exhibition)
The unforgettable visual puzzles and impossible structures of the Dutch artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) have earned Escher worldwide acclaim. Printmaker, draftsman, book illustrator and muralist M.C. Escher became one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, and his graphic works are recognized worldwide. This retrospective exhibition was one of the most comprehensive and important exhibitions of Escher's work ever shown in the United States. It presented hundreds of rare original artworks - including the artist's original drawings, watercolors, prints, wood blocks, studio furniture, tool cabinet and memorabilia - from the M.C. Escher Family Collection, previously on loan to The Hague Museum.
This exhibition was organized by the Boca Raton Museum of Art in conjunction with Walker Fine Art/Rock J. Walker, and will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue. This exhibition is made possible through the generosity of Marc Bell.
MARY CASSATT, The Lamp [La Lampe], 1890, drypoint, soft-ground, and aquatint, 12 ¾ x 10 inches. Courtesy of Adelson Galle
Mary Cassatt: Works on Paper
One of the greatest and most popular of the Impressionists, the American artist Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) created some of her most inventive and appealing images in the print medium. She was captivated by the challenges and artistic possibilities of making prints. These works were a central part of her discipline as a draughtsman, allowing her to focus on the essentials of gesture, form and expression. Cassatt's output as a printmaker was quite small and her prints are praised for being among her most radically innovative works.
This exhibition presented 41 major prints and drawings that have rarely been shown - etchings, color aquatints, counterproofs and drawings, which reveal the range of the artist's creative process and add to our understanding of her innovative approach to art, and her significant contributions to modern printmaking. Organized by Adelson Galleries, New York for the Boca Raton Museum of Art. Accompanying Mary Cassatt: Works on Paper is a fully-illustrated, descriptive catalogue with essays by Warren Adelson, Pamela A. Ivinski, and Barbara Stern Shapiro, which tell the story of these rare works and explore Cassatt's virtuosity as a printmaker.
ENRIQUE MARTINEZ CELAYA, The Imitator, 2007, watercolor on paper, 33 1/2 x 24 1/2 inches. Collection of Martin Brest
An Unfinished Conversation: Collecting Enrique Martinez Celaya
Through January 10, 2010
Drawn from the private collection of filmmaker Martin Brest, this exhibition of 19 enigmatic works by Enrique Martínez Celaya revealed the artist's complex cross-disciplinary approach to art-making while it explored themes such as Memory, Witness, Voyage, Exile, Isolation, Loneliness, and Coming of Age as threaded throughout the artist's body of work. Dated between 2001 and 2007, the works by Martínez Celaya represent in many ways an unfinished conversation.Born in Cuba in 1964, Martinez Celaya immigrated to Madrid as a child. He went on to earn his B.A. at Cornell in Ithaca, New York before going on to study Quantum Electronics at University of California at Berkeley. He returned to painting, earning his MFA at University of California at Santa Barbara in 1994. Martinez Celeya currently resides in Delray Beach, Florida and Los Angeles, California.
STEPHEN ALTHOUSE, Rake I, 2003, pigmented digital print, 42 x 31 inches. Courtesy of the artist
Stephen Althouse: Tools and Shrouds
Through November 8, 2009
This exhibition debuted a series of 27 large format black and white photographs by Stephen Althouse completed during the last decade. Althouse transforms familiar objects into symbols of human experience and spiritual striving.
Born in Washington, DC in 1948, Althouse's childhood in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania has been an influence on his art. The product of a Quaker education, Althouse received his MFA in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, and studied at Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia. The sculptural tradition of making and manipulating subject matter is carried over into his photography, and is further explored in these enigmatic and powerful images.
CLYDE BUTCHER (American, born in Kansas City, Missouri, 1944 -), Loxahatchee River 1, Jonathan Dickinson State Park, Florida, 1991, gelatin silver print, edition #33/50. Courtesy of Venice Gallery & Studio
Clyde Butcher: Wilderness Visions
Clyde Butcher's compelling black and white photographs chronicle some of America's most beautiful and complex ecosystems. For more than thirty years, self-taught photographer Butcher (American, born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1944- ) has been preserving the untouched landscape on film, and for twenty of those years he has concentrated on Florida. The exquisite beauty of his work draws the viewer into a relationship with nature. His images are captured with 8 x 10 inch, 11 x 14 inch, and 16 x 20 inch view cameras. The large format allows him to express in elaborate detail, the textures that distinguish the beauty of the landscape. This exhibition presented work from the last twenty-five years ranging from the forests of the Pacific Northwest, to the rocky country of Utah and Colorado, to the woodlands of the Chesapeake region and the wetlands of Florida.
GARY T. ERBE, Take Five, 1981-82, oil on canvas, 64 x 54 inches, collection of Richard Manoogian
Gary T. Erbe: Forty Year Retrospective
Well-known fool-the-eye painter Gary T. Erbe is a self-taught artist from New Jersey, whose works depict pop culture from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. This exhibition showcases more than fifty of his trompe l'oeil paintings drawn from private and public collections. Gary Erbe (born in Union City, NJ in 1944- ) is internationally recognized for his realistic style of painting and has exhibited throughout the United States.
Trompe l'oeil (to fool the eye) is illusionist painting that dates back to ancient Rome, 17th-century Dutch painting, and 19th-century American painting. Erbe works in a painstaking technique building up layers of thin color glazes to achieve the illusion of real depth and volume in each painting. As exercises in virtuosity, many works take up to a year to complete. This forty-year retrospective presented Erbe's best works, including his collage paintings meticulously recorded from Erbe's own constructed and arranged tableaux.
Gary T. Erbe: Forty Year Retrospective was organized by the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, and traveled to The Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, Albuquerque, New Mexico and New York City's Salmagundi Club.
DONNA TORRES, I have the time. So look up at the flowers and the sky, 2007, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches
58th Annual All Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition
Through August 30, 2009
As the state's oldest annual juried competition, the Museum's All Florida has introduced the works of thousands of Florida artists - emerging, under-recognized, and established younger and mid-career artists - in all media. The 58th Annual All Florida Juried Exhibition reinforces the Museum's commitment to Florida artists, provides professional exhibition opportunities for up-and-coming artists, and reveals a provocative glimpse - through Florida artists' eyes - of the state of the art today.
2009's juror was Roy Slade, Director Emeritus of Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he served as Director from 1977 to 1995. He has nearly thirty years experience as an artist, arts administrator and educator, and is an outspoken advocate of the arts, lecturing and writing about contemporary art and art museums.
60 artworks were presented - paintings, sculpture, photography and installations - by 48 artists from across the state, selected from 1260 entries.
PAUL JENKINS (American, 1923- ), A Sound of Surf, 1970, watercolor on paper, 48 x 35 inches. Permanent Collection. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Martin Lipton
Expanding Boundaries: Lyrical Abstraction Selections from the Permanent Collection
In the long and rich evolution of abstraction in the 20th century, Lyrical Abstraction arose in the 1960s and 70s, following the challenge of Minimalism and Conceptual art. Many artists began moving away from geometric, hard-edge, and minimal styles, toward more lyrical, sensuous, romantic abstractions worked in a loose gestural style. These "lyrical abstractionists" sought to expand the boundaries of abstract painting, and to revive and reinvigorate a painterly "tradition" in American art. At the same time, these artists sought to reinstate the primacy of line and color as formal elements in works composed according to aesthetic principles - rather than as the visual representation of sociopolitical realities or philosophical theories.
Characterized by intuitive and loose paint handling, spontaneous expression, illusionist space, acrylic staining, process, occasional imagery, and other painterly techniques, the abstract works included in this exhibition sing with rich fluid color and quiet energy. Works by the following artists associated with Lyrical Abstraction will be included: Natvar Bhavsar, Stanley Boxer, Lamar Briggs, Dan Christensen, David Diao, Friedel Dzubas, Sam Francis, Dorothy Gillespie, Cleve Gray, Paul Jenkins, Ronnie Landfield, Pat Lipsky, Joan Mitchell, Robert Natkin, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, Garry Rich, John Seery, Jeff Way and Larry Zox.
David Maxwell (American, 1941-2006), T.Y. Saurus triptych, 1999, casein tempera on panels, 28 x 71 ½ inches. Courtesy of Uptown Gallery, New York City
David Maxwell: To The Point
Through July 19, 2009
Once you've seen a David Maxwell painting close up, you'll never look at painting the same way again. Often called a "contemporary Seurat," Maxwell (American, born in Chicago 1941-2006) painted the contemporary world in a meticulous pointillist technique. Thousands of perfect little dots come together to depict South Florida cityscapes and construction sites which Maxwell first photographed, as an aid to developing his compositions. Maxwell's mundane everyday images and his technique of transferring his images from photographs have caused his work to be associated with Photorealism. But, his technique of painting small circular dots, slightly larger than pinheads, makes his works unique precisionist masterpieces. Self taught, Maxwell began painting while working fulltime in concrete construction. For almost three decades, he was one of South Florida's most acclaimed artists, consistently winning national awards. This exhibition presented fourteen unforgettable paintings.
Cleve Gray (American, 1918-2004), Death of the Eagle, 1977, acrylic on canvas, 70 x 72 inches. From the St. Bernard's School Collection, New York, NY. Courtesy of the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY
Cleve Gray: Man and Nature
Through May 31, 2009
This retrospective of noted American painter Cleve Gray (1918-2004) illustrated the full evolution of his practice as he developed his signature gestural, color-based abstraction between 1970 and 2000. Gray's painting style, first influenced by the abstract-expressionist movement, gathered strength as he became interested in Chinese masters and spontaneous expression. By the 1970s, Gray's work had evolved to incorporate risk and accidental effects as well as thinly spread layers of pigment. The inspirations for these abstract works range from Greek sculpture to Hawaiian waterfalls, and oriental calligraphy. As guest curator, Karen Wilkin writes in her catalogue essay: "Throughout this evolution, man and nature struggle for dominance; Gray treads the boundaries between painting conceived as evidence of the artist's will and as evidence of his unwilled responses to the natural world, between painting as a product of 'culture' and as an equivalent for forces beyond our control."
Curated by Karen Wilkin, art historian and critic, and organized by the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York.
ANDREW STEVOVICH (Austrian, 1948 - ),Woman in Booth with Laptop, 2006, oil on linen, 10 x 10 inches. Courtesy of Adelson Galleries
Andrew Stevovich: The Truth About Lola
Through May 31, 2009Andrew Stevovich may consider himself an abstract painter more concerned with meticulous composition than narrative, but don't tell that to the highly figurative characters who appear on his canvases. His deadpan narrative paintings, with their frozen moments of social interactions, are set in the contemporary world, though their crisp design, brilliant color and meticulous surfaces recall the early Italian Renaissance masters from Giotto to Botticelli. However, this exhibition of more than fifty paintings and drawings explores another facet of Stevovich's work: his relationship and inspiration drawn from twentieth-century German Expressionism. Lurking behind his figures' shifty gazes are nightclubs, neon, card games, and cocktails, all captured with an air of alienated decadence that link Stevovich directly to the tradition of artists like George Grosz and Max Beckman, known for their jaundiced looks at café society. Stevovich, born in Austria in 1948, moved with his family to Washington, D.C., as a young child, where he would spend time at the National Gallery of Art, inspired by both Renaissance and 20th century expressionism.
Andrew Stevovich: The Truth About Lola was organized by the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York. The exhibition and catalogue were made possible by Adelson Galleries.
JOHN HENRY, Meridian, 2003, red painted steel, 22 x 25 x 15 feet. Courtesy of the artist
Drawing In Space: The Peninsula Project, Sculpture by John Henry
The Award-winning sculptor John Henry, known throughout the world for his large-scale steel sculpture, brought his work to the Boca Raton Museum of Art and The Art School on Palmetto Road, as a part of his unprecedented, seven-city exhibition throughout the state of Florida.
One of Henry's most impressive steel sculptures, Meridian, measuring over 20 feet tall is on display at The Art School on Palmetto Road. With some of the largest public works of art in some of the greatest American cities, John Henry has made his mark on the nation's landscape. This exhibit focused on his major works that have become significant landmarks in cities across the U.S.
This exhibition made possible thanks to the support of:Arison Arts FoundationBob & Terry EdwardsDavid & Diane McDonald
Duane Hanson, Man on Mower, 1995, autobody filler, polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories. Collection of Mrs. Duane Hanson. © Estate of Duane Hanson/Licensed by VAGA/New York, NY
Duane Hanson: Sculpture and Photographs 1978-1995
Through April 26, 2009
This exhibition presented never exhibited working photographs by sculptor Duane Hanson (1925-1996). Hanson's small-scale color photographs were created as studies for his iconic hyperrealist sculptures.Although Hanson began making hyper realistic sculptures in 1967, he introduced an instant camera into his artistic process in 1977. His focus was everyday people - construction workers, shoppers, tourists, high school students. Like photographic sketches for his remarkably lifelike figurative works, these images reveal the thinking, slight changes in poses or prop placement, and the shifting refinements which Hanson brought to the creation of his sculptures. Although intended as visual assists during the making of his sculpture, the photographs in vertical or horizontal grids, or as multi-snapshot series, add an eerie dimension to Hanson's now-famous sculpture, while bringing into question the relationship between photography, sculpture, art and life.This exhibition was organized with the assistance of the artists' wife Wesla Hanson.
RABARAMA (Italian, 1969- ), Evoluzioni (Evolution), 2006, painted bronze, edition 2/8, height 11 inches. Courtesy of Vecchiato Art Galleries, Padua, Italy
Rabarama in The Park
Through April 12, 2009
The haunting sculptures of Italian artist Rabarama capture the viewer's imagination with their silent, frozen postures. Her human figures are both clothed and naked, covered with multicolored patterns, arabesques, numbers, letters, mazes and puzzles. Like sequence symbols of a genetic code, Rabarama's patterns and puzzles stem from the artist's fascination with genetics, the molecular metamorphosis of ever changing life, and the process of transformation. These figures ask the viewer to reflect on the nature of the individual, and on life as a labyrinth or journey, which is written on each of us. Rabarama, whose real name is Paola Epifani, studied at the Academia di Belle Arti, Venice, and today, lives and works in Padua, Italy. Over the last decade, Rabarama's sculpture has been drawing crowds internationally in Milan, Rome, Paris, Beijing, Shanghai, Venice, Amentea (Calabria), Caracas, and Geneva.
Four monumental figures were featured throughout Mizner Park, while ten works were installed in the Museum's street-front window gallery and the outdoor sculpture garden. All works were on loan from Vecchiato Art Galleries, Padua, Italy.
RALPH GOINGS (American, 1928- ), Red Menu, 1981, watercolor on paper, 9 1/8 x 13 5/8 inches. Boca Raton Museum of Art Permanent Collection, bequest of Isadore and Kelly Friedman
Shock of the Real: Photorealism Revisited
Through March 8, 2009
This major exhibition surveyed photorealism over several decades, demonstrating the unique style, varied individual approaches, technical finesse, and expanse of subject matter through 71 dramatic works by 29 highly acclaimed artists. Photorealism is renowned for its stunning, painted renditions of everyday images recorded by a photograph. Photorealists create artworks in a highly photographic style, with added personal expression. Quintessentially American, many of the works in Shock of the Real focus on typical aspects of our urban and suburban landscapes: trucks, motorcycles, cars, and roadside eateries. Popularity of the movement is due to the exceptional technical skill of these artists, which allows viewers to explore the link between the photographic image and the artistic concept of painting.
Shock of The Real was guest-curated by Dr. Valerie Ann Leeds, a noted specialist in American art. The sponsorship of this exhibition Shock of the Real was made possible by the generosity of Mrs. Beatrice Cummings Mayer.
BENN MITCHELL, Girl Eating Ice Cream, 1948, Chromogenic print, 20 x 16 inches. Courtesy of the artist
Color Me New York: Photographs by Benn Mitchell
The exhibition honors Benn Mitchell as a forerunner in realistic photography, documenting life in New York City during the 1930s through the 1950s. Mitchell (born in New York City 1926 - ) sold his first photograph to LIFE magazine at the age of 16. Just one year later he became a portrait photographer in Hollywood for Warner Brothers' studios, capturing classic images of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, among others. In 1948, Mitchell started his own commercial studio in New York City, the beginning of a career lasting over five decades. This exhibition presents 16 color images shot in the streets of New York City between 1947 and 1980, which capture Benn Mitchell's acute observations, and his award-winning eye for both the artistic and the incidental. Mitchell now lives with his wife Esther in Boca Raton.
JAMES DAUGHERTY, Untitled, from Modernist Heroic Figures, circa 1930-40, watercolor and pencil on paper, 12 X 13 inches
American Modernism 1920-1950: Selections from the Permanent Collection
Through January 18, 2009
American Modernism presents the competing forces of tradition and innovation during a pivotal era in American history, when artists struggled to define what was quintessentially American. Offering glimpses into a changing America are rarely seen gems from the collection by social realists, regionalists, figurative modernists and early abstractionists. This sampling of American art between the World Wars presents more than 40 paintings, drawings and prints by well-known artists such as John Sloan and Raphael Soyer along with works by under-appreciated talents such as Vaclav Vytlacil and Richard Florsheim.
JOSÉ CLEMETE OROZCO, Autoretrato [Self Portrait], 1937, oil on canvas, 31 x 26 inches, Permanent Collection, gift of Mrs. Jeanne Wechsler in memory of A.F. Wechsler
José Clemente Orozco: The Graphic Work
Through December 7, 2008
One of the most influential Mexican artists of his time, José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), was a muralist as well as a remarkable draftsman. Orozco, along with Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros formed the celebrated triumvirate of Mexican muralists. As the most dedicated printmaker of these three "giants," Orozco completed 30 lithographs and 17 etchings during his career. All 47 of Orozco's graphic works are exhibited - from the mural-inspired works of the late 1920s to the increasingly loose and expressive style from the mid-to-late 1930s. These images reveal Orozco's great compositional elegance, impeccable craftsmanship and a combination of clarity and simplicity of idea. In these graphic works, we see his expressive symbolism most strongly, as a biting critique of Spanish colonialism and an affirmation of man's fortitude, compassion and dignity.
CARLOS ALFONZO (Cuban, 1950-1991), Afraid of Clowns, 1986, oil on canvas, 71 1/8 X 95 1/8 inches, courtesy of the Nassau County Museum of Art
Visiones: 20th Century Selections from the Nassau County Museum of Art
Visiones explores the depth and richness of the themes and issues found in contemporary Latin art. The exhibition of thirty six works by mid-20th century masters and influential contemporary artists presents a broad spectrum of investigating how Latin American and Caribbean artists respond to personal, economic, social, and political issues of the human condition. With increasing globalization, mobility, exile, and migration in the Americas, Latin American art today is not defined by cultural, geographical, or national boundaries. The exhibition of painting, sculpture, photography, and installation works, will explore how art and artists preserve their identities within a global landscape. This exhibition was organized by the Boca Raton Museum of Art from the collections of the Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York. The educational programming for Visiones was made possible by the generosity of the MetLife Foundation.
BOB ADELMAN, James Rosenquist examining his work through a reductive lens, executed 1980, printed 2008, archival inkjet print, 19 x 12 inches. Courtesy of the artist. ©Bob Adelman
I Shot Warhol, Wesselmann, Lichtenstein, Rosenquist, and Indiana: Photographs by Bob Adelman and William John Kennedy
Through September 7, 2008
Many Pop artists' lives have been intimately entwined with photography. In the 1960s, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist and Robert Indiana gained international attention as key leaders of the Pop art movement, which championed the use of popular culture and mass-produced objects as artistic subject matter.
This exhibition presented more than 60 images of these American artists, photographed at the height of their careers by two photographers whose lives crossed paths with many of the greatest artists of their day, Bob Adelman and William John Kennedy.
Ernest Trova, Study/Falling Man (Horizontal Circle Figure), 1986, stainless steel, edition number 3/8, 30-1/4 x 18-1/2 x 16 inches. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Steinman Permanent Collection 1993.315
Ernest Trova Retrospective
April 11 through June 3, 2007
Forty years of paintings, graphics, assemblages and sculptures by American artist Ernest Trova (born in St. Louis 1927- ) reveal the artist's infinite variations on the theme of universal man's journey through life, from the apocalyptic expressionism of his visceral paintings from the late 1950s-60s to his part classical-part futuristic figure of Falling Man.
Trova's figures function as metaphorical signs of rational man and his journey through life. These works embrace with quiet dignity and infinite variations and adaptations, the artist's lifelong investigation of man's movement through life, both individual and collective.
Reginald Marsh, Panel of Figure Sketches - Twelve Women, 1949, oil on masonite board, 18 x 17 inches. Bequest of Isadore and Kelly Friedman
Selections from the Isadore and Kelly Friedman Bequest
Longtime Museum patron and collector Isadore Friedman bequeathed a stellar collection of more than 150 modernist works to the Museum including paintings and sculptures by 20th-century masters Dubuffet, Leger, Lichtenstein, Marsh and Rivers; as well as important photographs by Atget, Steichen, Steiglitz, Cartier-Bresson, Helmut Newton and Irving Penn.
The Isadore and Kelly Friedman Bequest is the largest gift of American and European art ever presented to the Museum. This memorial exhibition provides a unique opportunity to appreciate Isadore Friedman's remarkable legacy to the Museum and the community.