great and mighty things

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is running an outsider art exhibit, Great and Mighty Things, through June 9th.  It includes 200 pieces collected over the last 30 years by long-time Philadelphians Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz.  The show's title comes from one of several selections by the late artist Reverend Howard Finster who combined religious text and imagery (in this case, from Jeremiah 33:3, "Come with me and I will show you great and mighty things").  More here in a review by Sarah Burford with Title Magazine.  Below, a tour by Curator Ann Percy and Curatorial Assistant Cara Zimmerman.

To sleep, perchance to Dream ..

Aye, there's the rub, in Tilda Swinton's  performance art piece, The Maybe, currently running at MoMA with random unannounced appearances throughout the year, each time in a different location in the museum.

The Gothamist carries photos here, reporting she's there today (March 25th), maybe and if you hurry over.

More photos at this link.

Ms. Swinton originally staged The Maybe with artist Cornelia Parker in 1995 at the Serpentine Gallery in London, then continuing solo in Rome and Paris.  MoMA's exhibition is part of an effort to bring back historic performance art.  Chief Curator Klaus Biesenbach and the artist have been discussing MoMA's inclusion of The Maybe since 2005.

*Photo credits/top, posted by the Gothamist/middle, Gothamist, photographer: Jen Chung/bottom, Gothamist, via gallerinaoffduty's Instagram, signage for The Maybe at MoMA/Various views of "The Maybe" with artist Tilda Swinton, currently running randomly at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York City.

saved

 

Arthur Panajian's paintings. 



*Photo credit/CBS New York/photographer: Thomas Schultz/Arthur Panajian paintings found in Thomas Schultz' garage.  (Photostream at CBS link.)

quay brothers

From the Brothers Quay, their 1986 Street Of Crocodiles.  MOMA had a retrospective last year reviewed by Roberta Smith.  Also a slideshow here from that exhibit, a MOMA video interview with the artist/filmmakers, and a video overview with MOMA curators from ThirteenWNET.

 

beyond color

An exclusive Marc Chagall exhibit is currently running in the U.S. at the Dallas Museum of Art.  "Beyond Color" presents lesser known works by the artist, including a centerpiece of costumes he designed for the 1942 Léonide Massine ballet Aleko - with music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. 

The costumes have only been seen  in the U.S. once before - in 1942 when the ballet was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York - and 4 weeks after a Mexico City opening where the audience included famous muralists like Diego Rivera and José Orozco and concluded "with tumultuous applause" and 19 curtain calls.  The hero of the evening, Chagall had also painted the backdrops for the ballet, and in New York, where the ballet was similarly received, art critic Edwin Denby described "a dramatized exhibition of giant paintings... It surpasses anything Chagall has done on the easel scale, and it is a breathtaking experience, of a kind one hardly expects in the theatre."

The exhibit reportedly follows some of Chagall's visual relationships to Mexico and the southwest, also to space and volume.  It includes ceramics, collages, and to a lesser degree, some of his paintings.  The costumes themselves (hand-painted by Chagall) were sewn by seamstresses in Mexico where Chagall traveled in the course of working on the ballet.  They were found in a Mexico City storeroom in the eighties.

Organized by DMA curator Olivier Meslay, and with Musée La Piscine in Roubeaux, France.  The exhibit runs to May 26, 2013.

*Photo credit/Art and Seek/One of Chagall's handpainted costumes for the 1942 Léonide Massine ballet "Aleko," "Costume For A Fish."

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/02/20/4630556/seeing-chagall-in-3d-at-the-dallas.html#storylink=cpy

british library

Visit the British Library's online gallery and the thousands of historic images in online exhibitions.

sixties explosion

Via museumstudiesmacquarie, a photo stream of "Sixties Explosion," the 2012 exhibit from Macquarie University Art Gallery in Sydney, Australia.  Curated by Rhonda Davis, Kate Hargraves and Leonard Janiszewski.

intrigue

A project of Tate- an online exhibit to lose yourself in ... The Gallery Of Lost Art, exploring the stories about loss of works of art...

*Photo credit/wikipedia/"This artwork was stolen from Houghton Hall in 1992. This oil painting — The White Duck by Jean-Baptiste Oudry — was valued at ₤5-million; and it has not re-surfaced."

the event of a thread

Ann Hamilton's installation, the event of a thread, opens at the Park Avenue Armory through January 6th.  Roberta Smith has a review here, replete with photostream and video, detailing the engineering of an immense, billowing white curtain strung throughout the rafters of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall's vast and seemingly cetological interior.  The cords and curtains toss and dance, put into motion by the audience, as individuals are pushed by one another on huge swing planks suspended on long cords from the towering ceiling.  Other visitors choose to perhaps lay beneath the waves of curtain or walk around holding radios wrapped in brown paper to their ears, listening to literature transmissions "murmured" by actors seated somberly at a refectory table and while a writer scribbles on a miked surface, seated off by herself in a corner.  Pigeons are supposed to be released at the end of each day, to fly around the space and then be homed back into their cages.

The work is described as reminiscent of Christo and Jean-Claude's 1972 outdoor land-art piece Valley Curtain.  Ms. Hamilton is also a weaver and has an extensive background in textiles.

parallel universe

 

Georgia O'Keefe paints Hawaii instead of the American southwest.  A Honolulu Museum of Art exhibition exploring Hawaiian revelations by Georgia O'Keefe alongside American photography legend Ansel Adams.  Titled Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: The Hawai‘i Pictures, the show premieres July 18, 2013 and runs through January 12, 2014.

* Photo credit/NewYork Times/1939, Georgia O'Keefe in Hawaii, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.