“Charline von Heyl’s paintings pull you in at first glance,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA. “Her bold abstractions – ambiguous, powerful and playful – evoke complex sensations and invite multiple viewings. We are delighted to present her first U.S. survey at the ICA and to introduce Boston audiences to her work.”

A wide range of imagery influences von Heyl’s painting. Once the first strokes of paint are applied to canvas, von Heyl lets the work develop according to the process of its making—destroying and creating one gesture after another until something wholly unexpected is forged on the surface. Von Heyl’s collage-based drawings are included alongside her paintings, charting the important visual relationships between the two mediums. Largely black and white, these works on paper combine drawing, painting, woodcut, silkscreen, and lithography, and are defined by a wild overflow of energy. They are sometimes more conventionally legible than the paintings, their source images less transformed.

“Von Heyl typically alternates her time between painting and drawing,” said Porter. “For her, they are two separate modes of making, very much divided into two separate time periods and even two separate studio spaces. Whereas the drawing studio is a free space for experimentation, the painting studio is a place to test the theories.”

Included in the exhibition is Yellow Guitar (2010), a meditation on the still life genre that nods to the work of David Hockney and Juan Gris. In this painting, a still life has been imposed upon the surface of something quite its opposite: a gestural underpainting in charcoal and smudged black spray paint. A grid of thin yellow strokes outlined in black—a device that follows from von Heyl’s drawing experiments—lays itself across another grid, this one painted primarily in solid yellow and white squares, creating an aggressive dissonance. At top, a third grid in black and white unfolds itself. Two recognizable objects surface atop the overlapping grids: a brick red bottle with a yellow label and a wood-handled knife. These items hint that all of the other unidentified shapes might also be objects—just ones we don’t recognize.

Von Heyl describes the sensation she seeks to create in her work: “It is about the feeling that a painting, or any work of art, can give—when you can’t stop looking because there is something that you want to find out, that you want to understand…. Good paintings have this tantalizing quality. And once you turn around, you absolutely cannot recapture them. They leave a hole in the mind, a longing.”

Artist bio

Charline von Heyl was born in Germany in 1960 and studied painting with Jörg Immendorff in Hamburg and Fritz Schwegler in Düsseldorf. She has lived in New York since 1994. Von Heyl’s work has been the subject of solo museum exhibitions at Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2009), the Dallas Museum of Art (2009), and the Vienna Secession (2004). Group exhibitions include Oranges and Sardines: Conversations on Abstract Painting at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2008) and Make Your Own Life: Artists In and Out of Cologne (2006) organized by  the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. A mural by the artist is currently on view at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts. Von Heyl’s works are in the collections of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.

Publication

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue designed in collaboration with the artist. It includes an essay by Jenelle Porter and features an interview between von Heyl and Kaja Silverman, Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Chair of Contemporary Art, Department of the History of Art, University of Pennsylvania.

Charline von Heyl is organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, guest curated by Jenelle Porter, Senior Curator, ICA/Boston.The ICA Philadelphia acknowledges The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for generous exhibition support. We are also grateful for the support of Hilarie & Mitchell Morgan and Mari & Peter Shaw. ICA acknowledges the generous sponsorship of Barbara B. & Theodore R. Aronson for the exhibition catalogue. We are grateful for support by endowment gifts from ICA board members: the Nancy E. & Leonard M. Amoroso Exhibition Endowment Fund; the Dorothy H. & Martin N. Bandier Endowment Fund; the Reinsberg Exhibition Fund; the Josephine M. & Christopher C. Schlank Fund; the B.Z. & Michael H. Schwartz Fund; and the Bryan & Meredith Verona Fund. Additional funding has been provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; The Dietrich Foundation, Inc.; the Overseers Board for the ICA Philadelphia; friends and members of the ICA Philadelphia; and the University of Pennsylvania. General operating support provided, in part, by the Philadelphia Cultural Fund. ICA Philadelphia receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. We are grateful to Friedrich Petzel and the Friedrich Petzel Gallery for their in-kind support.

About the ICA

An influential forum for multi-disciplinary arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art has been at the leading edge of art in Boston for 75 years. Like its iconic building on Boston’s waterfront, the ICA offers new ways of engaging with the world around us. Its exhibitions and programs provide access to contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA, located at 100 Northern Avenue, is open Tuesday and Wednesday, 10 am – 5 pm; Thursday and Friday, 10 am – 9 pm; and Saturday and Sunday, 10 am – 5 pm. Admission is $15 adults, $10 seniors and students, and free for members and children 17 and under. ICA Free Admission for Youth is sponsored by State Street Foundation. Free admission on ICA Free Thursday Nights, 5 – 9 pm. Free admission for families (2 adults + children 12 and under) on last Saturday of the month. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our Web site at www.icaboston.org

As You Like It

until January 29, 2012

The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) continues its 2011/12 Season with the A.R.T./MXAT Institute’s production of William Shakespeare’s comedy AS YOU LIKE IT, directed by David Hammond. Set design is by J. Michael Griggs, costume design by Mallory Frers, lighting design by Margo Caddell, and sound design by Clive Goodwin. The production features the A.R.T. Institute Class of 2012.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” in Shakespeare’s beloved pastoral comedy As You Like It. This classic tale follows Rosalind and her friend Celia’s escape from a deadly conspiracy into nature’s wild, liberating arms. What transpires is an unconventional romance, with everything from wrestling matches to cross-dressing shepherds, culminating in a finale so joyful that spring will seem just around the corner.

Director David Hammond made the following notes to the production: “For Elizabethan audiences, keenly aware of newly booming towns and an increasingly impoverished countryside, of factionalism and corruption in government, of rapid economic change, shifts in power, and disparities in wealth, the theater — which in a very short time had become a major part of London life — was itself a green world offering rejuvenation. Shakespeare clearly knew this. He took care to make his Arden the kind of green world his audience wanted, as they would have liked it to be. Remarkably, the play retains its restorative power today, as if audiences continued to need the same sort of renewal.”

A.R.T./MXAT Institute faculty member David Hammond is a former resident director for the American Conservatory Theatre and the Yale Repertory Theatre and was Artistic Director of PlayMakers Repertory Company for fourteen seasons. He has coached Shakespeare texts for the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the American Shakespeare Festival, the Denver Center Theatre Company, the Atlantic Theatre Company, and the New York University Graduate Acting Program at Tisch School of the Arts. He has taught on the faculties of the Juilliard School, the Yale School of Drama, the American Conservatory Theatre Advanced Training Program, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has also traveled extensively as a cultural specialist for the United States Information Service, directing and teaching in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. He is currently Professor of Theatre Studies and Arts Division Chair at Guilford College. Most recently Hammond directed Hamlet for the inaugural production of Empirical Rogue, an independent New York-based company comprised of Institute alumni. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the Carnegie-Mellon University School of Drama.

The American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) is one of the country’s most celebrated theaters and the winner of numerous awards, including the Tony Award, the Pulitzer Prize and Elliot Norton and I.R.N.E. Awards. In May of 2003 it was named one of the top three regional theaters in the country by Time magazine. The A.R.T. was founded by Robert Brustein in 1980, who served as Artistic Director until 2002, when he was succeeded by Robert Woodruff. In 2008, Diane Paulus became the A.R.T.’s Artistic Director. During its 31-year history, the A.R.T. has welcomed many major American and international theater artists, presenting a diverse repertoire that includes premieres of American plays, bold reinterpretations of classical texts and provocative new music theater productions. The A.R.T. has performed throughout the U.S. and worldwide in 21 cities in 16 countries on four continents.

Since becoming Artistic Director, Diane Paulus has programmed innovative work that has enhanced the A.R.T.’s core mission to expand the boundaries of theater. Productions such as Sleep No More, The Donkey Show, Gatz, The Blue Flower, Prometheus Bound and Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera have immersed audiences in original theatrical experiences. The A.R.T.’s club theater, OBERON, which Paulus calls a “second stage for the 21st century,” has become an incubator for local artists and has also attracted national attention for its groundbreaking model for programming. Through all of its work, the A.R.T. is committed to building a community of artists, technicians, educators, staff and audience, all of who are integral to the A.R.T.’s mission to expand the boundaries of theater.

The balance of the A.R.T.’s 2011-12 Season includes the world premiere of Wild Swans by Jung Chang, adapted by Alexandra Wood and directed by Sacha Wares (Loeb Drama Center • February 11 – March11); the world premiere of FUTURITY: A Musical by The Lisps, with music and lyrics by César Alvarez with The Lisps; book by Molly Rice and César Alvarez; directed by Sarah Benson (Oberon • March 16 – April 15); and WOODY SEZ, with words and music by Woody Guthrie, devised by David M. Lutken with Nick Corley (Loeb Drama Center • May 5 – May 26).

The Loeb Drama Center, located at 64 Brattle Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, is accessible to persons with special needs and to those requiring wheelchair seating or first-floor restrooms. Deaf and hard-of-hearing patrons can also reach the theater by calling the toll-free N.E. Telephone Relay Center at 1-800-439-2370 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 1-800-439-2370 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

For further information call 617-547-8300 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 617-547-8300 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or visit americanrepertorytheater.org

MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON, TO OPEN TWO NEW GALLERIES IN DECEMBER
FOR PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURE FROM INDIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

Gems of Rajput Painting to Debut as Inaugural Exhibition in Asian Paintings Gallery

BOSTON, MA (December 2, 2011)—Two new galleries are set to open at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), this month. One will celebrate rare sculptural works from India and neighboring countries (South Asia) and Southeast Asia. The other will showcase rotations of the rich painting traditions of India, Korea, the Himalayas, and Persia beginning with an important collection of Indian works in the exhibition Gems of Rajput Painting. The two new galleries will reflect a broad range of cultures—from Iran to the west and Indonesia to the east, and from the Himalayas to the north and Sri Lanka to the south—reinforcing the global nature of the MFA’s encyclopedic collection. Highlights include important Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain works, such as a rare 5th-century painted fragment featuring Buddha’s half-brother, Nanda, from the caves in Ajanta, a UNESCO World Heritage site in central India—the only known work to have left Ajanta—and an elaborately carved 11th-century sculpture of the elephant-headed Hindu god of good fortune, Ganesh. The new galleries are located on Level 1 near the Museum’s Huntington Avenue Entrance.

South and Southeast Asian Sculpture Gallery (opening December 15)

Some 120 works in the South Asian and Southeast Asian Sculpture Gallery will highlight the artistic traditions of India and the surrounding South Asian countries of Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, as well as Southeast Asia, which includes Indonesia, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. In addition, the gallery will emphasize the important cultural exchange that took place between the two geographic regions during the course of two millennia. Many of the objects on view have recently been conserved and will be displayed in new cases and on new mounts to enhance their presentation.

“This gallery presents South and Southeast Asian art from a new angle, one that previously hasn’t been explored at the MFA. It combines objects from across a vast region, illuminating the long history of artistic exchange that connected communities on both sides of the Indian Ocean. Today we constantly hear people talking about staying connected to one another. In the new installation, we’ll see an earlier age of connections, expressed through art,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA.

Such connections are evident in a display of sculptures of Hindu and Buddhist goddesses at the entrance of the gallery. Two 11th-century bronze statues (approximately 3 feet tall) greet visitors—the Great Goddess of Hinduism from India shown with curving, sinuous gestures, and a more restrained and formally posed Cambodian Buddhist deity—which reflect the different yet related conventions for depicting female figures. Juxtapositions of this kind appear throughout the gallery, organized chronologically, to encourage comparisons between works in pairs and groups. Among the other sculptures on view are an 11th–12th-century stele representing Buddha’s enlightenment surrounded by carvings of the eight major events in his life, and a two-sided slab depicting him bathing in Nairanjana River on one side, complemented by a richly decorated stupa carved on the other side a century later. Also on display are a variety of objects relating to pilgrimage sites commemorating events in the life of Buddha, including sculptures from India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Java, and Tibet.

Works of art in the South Asia and Southeast Asia Sculpture Gallery are celebrated not only for their distinct cultural identity, but also as reflections of 2,000 years of important exchange. By the 4th century, people from the two geographic areas were frequently traveling in both directions. Trade flourished as merchants from India went to Southeast Asia for spices and exotic woods, and their counterparts in Indonesia, Cambodia, and neighboring countries went to India to acquire textiles and materials such as limestone, sandstone, and marble. The spread of Buddhism and Hinduism—both of which originated in South Asia—was furthered by missionaries, monks, and pilgrims and made unique to a particular area when combined with existing religious practices. Through the exchange of ideas, aesthetics, and goods, as well as iconography, language, and customs, the works of art of one region began to reflect the cross-cultural influences of the other.

“The MFA’s collections of South and Southeast Asian art are among the best in the world, in part because they were begun at a time when few other institutions were collecting. The Chinese, Japanese, and Korean collections are also outstanding, and one by one the MFA will be renovating these galleries over the coming years,” said Jane Portal the Matsutaro Shoriki Chair, Art of Asia, Oceania, and Africa.

Gems of Rajput Painting to Debut in Asian Paintings Gallery (opening December 10)

Gems of Rajput Painting, on view December 10, 2011, through September 3, 2012, is presented with generous support from the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Exhibition Fund. It is the inaugural rotation in the Asian Paintings Gallery. (Upcoming rotations will feature works from Korea, Persia, and the Himalayan region.) The exhibition draws from the Museum’s holdings of some 1,200 Indian paintings and drawings ranging in date from the 12th to the 21st centuries. This specific type of painting was commissioned during the 16th to 19th centuries by rulers (Rajputs or “sons of kings”) who shared a common elite culture centered on Hindu worship, Sanskrit poetry, and the fierce pride of warrior clans. The 35 paintings and manuscript illustrations included in the exhibition represent the height of the artistic traditions developed at workshops associated with the many Rajput courts in Rajasthan, Central India, and the foothills of the Himalayas. Rajput paintings often illustrate poetic texts and are small in size—generally kept in a portfolio-like format rather than bound or hung on the wall. They were usually painted on paper in watercolor (gouache), often brightly hued with gold accents. Although burnished to create a very smooth, hard surface, these paintings have a textural quality because, during finishing, the artists sometimes used tiny drops of white pigment to represent pearls or even bits of beetle wing to evoke jewels. This exquisite type of Indian painting, one of the strengths of the MFA’s Indian collection, was discovered only in the past 100 years by Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877–1947), who was the MFA’s first curator of Indian art and the first such curator in the United States.

“Rajput painting is one of the great traditions of Indian art, and yet for unfamiliar viewers, the exaggerated bodies, incredibly bold colors, and use of multiple perspectives can be dizzying. Thematic groupings in this exhibition are designed to give visitors a way into the material, illuminating the conventions Rajput artists followed and played with in their work,” said Laura Weinstein, the MFA’s Ananda Coomaraswamy Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art, who organized the exhibition and the South and Southeast Asian Sculpture Gallery.

Gems of Rajput Painting is divided into four themes of particular interest to Rajput painters: romance, devotion, heroism, and courtly life. The artists looked to love poetry for romantic inspiration, especially texts that drew upon amorous relationships—heartfelt and even heartbreaking—between courtly men and women, such as Dipak raga (Rajasthan, India, court of Kota, about 1740, attributed to the family of Nainsukh), in which a couple’s passion prompts objects all around them to burst into flame. Ragamala paintings such as this illustrate the mood of particular modes of North Indian classical music (ragas), very often in the form of romantic scenarios. Another example of romantic love is seen in The hour of cowdust (Pahari region of India, about 1810–15), where the god Krishna, as a youth, was a mischievous cowherd who stole the hearts (and sometimes the clothes) of local milkmaids. Hindu gods also figure prominently in Rajput paintings as symbols of spiritual purity, or as sometimes meddlesome deities. Two notable devotional works in the exhibitions are Devagandhari Ragini (Pahari region of India, court of Bahu-Jammu, about 1700–10), which shows two courtly ladies flanking a representation of the god Shiva in the form of a garlanded lingam (phallic symbol), and Maharana Jawan Singh of Mewar worshipping an icon (Rajasthan, India, court of Mewar, about 1830), a painting that is both a depiction of worship and an icon to be worshipped, showing the ruler of the Rajputs of Mewar before a form of Krishna.

Images of heroism and epic confrontations between good and evil were also favored by Rajput artists. The exhibition showcases the dramatic Battle between Arjuna and Karna (Rajasthan, India, court of Kota, about 1740), the central confrontation of the Mahabharata, a Sanskrit epic where the blue-skinned Krishna serves as a charioteer on what will be the winning side. Similarly, The victory of Kali (Pahari region, India, court of Guler, about 1780) features the great goddess Devi, who created a frightening creature named Kali to defeat demonic foes. The exhibition’s final theme, courtly life, is expressed in images that reinforce the ideals of kingship, convey political messages, and show whimsical scenes of royal leisure. Included among them is Krishna celebrates Holi with Radha and the gopis (Rajasthan, India, court of Kishangarh, about 1740, attributed to Nihal Chand), which depicts Krishna (wearing a halo that associates him with Rajput royalty) and his lover Radha celebrating the festival of Holi on the terrace of a palace, as though they were royals from the Kishangarh court. A 21st-century take on the Rajput vision of court life is reflected in Horse with Gold Head Dress (Rajasthan, India, Udaipur, 2007), one of two works in the show by contemporary artist Raja Ram Sharma, whose used traditional Rajput techniques to create these paintings.

In addition, the exhibition features two silver ewers and matching goblets, made by Grish Chunder Dutt in 1885–90. They show how imagery characteristic of Rajput painting continued on and was transformed during the country’s colonial period (19th century through the mid 20th century). One ewer is decorated with an image of the Ganges pouring down from heaven, a story sacred to Hindus and appearing often in Rajput paintings. Its pair depicts the river Hugli, a branch of the Ganges River near Calcutta, as it looked when that city was a major hub of the British East India Company.

SOUTH ASIAN COLLECTION (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka)

The South Asian collection. comprising some 5,000 objects, is the third largest in the Museum’s Department of the Art of Asia, Oceania, and Africa, after Japanese and Chinese. The first Indian objects arrived at the Museum around 1900, but focused collecting in the area did not begin until about 1910, when Denman Waldo Ross, a Harvard professor of design and long-time supporter of the Museum, began to give objects to the MFA from his eclectic collection. Many of the Museum’s finest Indian sculptures, including the Yakshi figure from Sanchi, were originally in Ross’ collection. In 1914, Ross facilitated the MFA’s purchase of the private collection of Victor Goloubew, a Russian-born Orientalist living in Paris, who in his youth compiled one of the world’s greatest collections of Mughal and Persian manuscript pages. Ross continued his generosity with the 1917 purchase of the private collection of Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy. Ross immediately donated the collection — which consisted primarily of Rajput paintings, including a number of celebrated masterpieces — to the MFA, and arranged for Coomaraswamy to become the Museum’s first Curator for Indian Art in 1917.

Since these early years the MFA has continued to acquire important works of Indian painting and sculpture. In the 1960s, collector John Goelet donated many Indian paintings, ranging from a page from the earliest known illustrated Bhagavata Purana to a famous study of the personal harem of the Mughal emperor. Additions to the sculpture collection include a North Indian sandstone sculpture of Ganesh with his wives and an exquisite Pala period sculpture of Avalokitesvara, which will be on view in the new South and Southeast Asian Sculpture Gallery.

SOUTHEAST ASIAN COLLECTION (Indonesia, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam)

Approximately 700 stone and bronze sculptures, ceramics, metalwork and jewelry from Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, and Vietnam enable the Museum to show the full range of the diverse cultures of Southeast Asia. As with the Indian collection, many important works came to the museum through Denman Waldo Ross. Later in the 20th century the collections growth was fueled by scholar Jan Fontein, who served as curator and then as the Director of the MFA.

The Classical Javanese stone sculptures from the 9th through the 15th centuries are among the finest in the West. Of particular note is a monumental statue of Bhairava or Mahakala from Eastern Java acquired for the Museum in the 1970s. This powerfully forbidding sculpture is one of the most important Javanese works in America today. Other sculptural masterpieces in the collection include a recently acquired 10th-century sculpture from Cambodia of a standing goddess, and an architectural fragment from an 11th-century Cambodian temple, with two celestial figures posing playfully on its sides.

Among the extensive collection of decorative arts is an 11th-century ceremonial dagger from Cambodia or Thailand, the only known dated and inscribed dagger from this period. The Museum’s Vietnamese ceramic collection of some 250 objects is another highlight; it is among the most comprehensive such collections and continues to expand.

PROGRAMMING

A variety of special programs will be presented by the MFA to complement the exhibition Gems of Rajput Painting and the Museum’s new galleries for South Asian and Southeast Asian sculpture. For more information or to buy tickets, please go to www.mfa.org/programs. Upcoming courses and gallery talks include:

Semester Course

A Visual Journey through India: Past and Present
February 1–April 11 (except February 22), 1–2:30 p.m.
Remis Auditorium
Tickets for 10-session course: $200 for MFA members, seniors, and students; $250 for non members
Tickets for individual sessions: $25 for MFA members, seniors, and students; $30 for non members
Participants will explore Indian art and culture through the lens of epic stories, religious rituals, sacred space, and contemporary literature and film. This 10 session course brings to life the MFA’s new galleries for Asian Paintings and for the Museum’s collections of art from South Asia and Southeast Asia, enriching the experience of those who have traveled to India or who want to learn more about Indian culture.

Looking Together Courses

A Journey through the South and Southeast Asian Galleries
Led by Laura Weinstein, Ananda Coomaraswamy Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art and Harleen Singh, Helaine and Alvin Allen Assistant Professor of Literature and Women’s Studies, Brandeis University
Six Wednesdays, February 15–April 11 (except February 22, March 28, and April 4), 10:30 a.m.–noon
Tickets: $150 for MFA members, seniors, and students; $185 for non members
This six-part course, which supplements the semester course “A Visual Journey through India” (see above), will offer an examination of Indian objects in the galleries with curator Laura Weinstein. The last session expands the discussion to Indian cinema.

The Silk Road
Led by Martha Wright, adjunct instructor
Four Tuesdays, January 31–February 28 (except February 21), 2–3:30 p.m.
Tickets: $100 for MFA members, seniors, and students; $125 for non members
This four-part course offers a journey along the Silk Road—the network of trade routes across Asia and connecting to Europe and north Africa—through an exploration of its art and culture.

Peaceful and Wrathful: Love, Anger, and Equanimity in Asian Religiosity
Led by Asha Kaufman, adjunct instructor
Four Thursdays, February 2–23, 6:30–8 p.m.
Tickets: $100 for MFA members, seniors, and students; $125 for non members
This course examines the imagery in Tibet, India, China, and Japan and the ways in which it narrates and ritualizes religion.

Gallery Talks

These one-hour gallery talks are free with Museum admission and start in the Sharf Visitor Center.

• Wednesday, December 28, 6–7p.m., “The MFA’s New South and Southeast Asian Gallery: An Introduction,” led by Laura Weinstein, Ananda Coomaraswamy Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art. Made possible by The Lowell Institute.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), is recognized for the quality and scope of its encyclopedic collection, which includes an estimated 450,000 objects. The Museum’s collection is made up of: Art of the Americas; Art of Europe; Contemporary Art; Art of Asia, Oceania, and Africa; Art of the Ancient World; Prints, Drawings, and Photographs; Textile and Fashion Arts; and Musical Instruments. Open seven days a week, the MFA’s hours are Saturday through Tuesday, 10 a.m. – 4:45 p.m.; Wednesday through Friday, 10 a.m. – 9:45 p.m. Admission (which includes two visits in a 10-day period) is $22 for adults and $20 for seniors and students age 18 and older, and includes entry to all galleries and special exhibitions. Admission is free for University Members and children 6 and younger. Youths 17 years of age and younger are admitted for free during non-school hours. On school days until 3 p.m., admission for youths 7–17 is $10. Wednesday nights after 4 p.m., admission is by voluntary contribution (suggested donation $22). The Museum is closed on New Year’s Day, Patriots’ Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. For more information, visit www.mfa.org or call 617.267.9300.  

PEM PRESENTS BOLD EXHIBITION OF NATIVE AMERICAN ART 

Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art

On view January 14 through April 29, 2012

SALEM, MA –– This winter, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) presents, Shapeshifting, one of the largest Native American Art exhibitions to open in North America in more than 30 years. Nearly 80 works from public and private collections worldwide offer a far-reaching exploration of Native American art as a continuum, juxtaposing historic and contemporary artworks. Through constellations of objects created in a range of media — ­­­­sculpture, painting, ceramics, textiles, photography, drawing, film, video and monumental installation — visual and conceptual connections are drawn between generations of Native people, art traditions and cultures. The exhibition opens to the public on Saturday, January 14, 2012.

“Typically arranged chronologically, geographically, or by medium, exhibitions of Native Art have almost exclusively focused on either historical or contemporary works, with very little mixing of the two,” says Karen Kramer Russell, exhibition curator and PEM’s curator of Native American Art and Culture. “Shapeshifting will prompt visitors to see the links and continuities within the vast panorama of Native American art, and to consider it with fresh eyes. Our intention is to shift how Native Art is exhibited and discussed.”

Spanning vast cultural, historical, intellectual, and aesthetic terrain, Shapeshifting offers a new approach to Native American art by exploring the conceptual underpinnings and artistic intent of contemporary and historic artworks alike.

“We have been especially fortunate to have the wise counsel, creativity, and expertise of a stellar group of advisors, authors, and artists from a wide range of disciplines and experiences, including many from Native American and other cultures,” said Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, The James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes Chief Curator at PEM.

Shapeshifting is organized into four thematic sections: Changing, Knowing, Locating, and Voicing. Two monumental contemporary installations that compellingly address familiar icons and materials–– Kent Monkman’s 2007 Théâtre de Cristal and Brian Jungen’s 2002 Cetology—begin and end visitors’ journey through the exhibition.

CHANGING | Expanding the imagination

Native artists have continuously embraced innovation, adapting new ideas and expanding their means of expression. Nicholas Galanin’s 2006 video work, Tsu Heidei Shugatutaan (We Will Again Open This Container of Wisdom That Has Been Left in Our Care), powerfully conveys the artist’s ability to overlay his experiences as a Native American in contemporary society with the cultural traditions of his Tlingit and Aleut ancestry. His two-part videobegins with a non-Native break dancer in an empty industrial space performing modern dance moves to the chant and drum of a traditional Tlingit song. The second portion is a perfect inversion: a Tlingit dancer in full ceremonial garb performs a traditional dance to the beat of electro-bass techno against the backdrop of Tlingit carving motifs.

KNOWING | Expressing worldview

The second gallery illustrates the strikingly different ways in which artists imagine, understand and express their experience in the world, especially as influenced by culture and unique personal vision. It is intended to counter the perception that Native people share a single monolithic worldview.

The upper portion of a Yup’ik ceremonial mask from the early 1900s depicts walaunuk, the movement of bubbles rising to the surface of water. Among the Yup’ik of Alaska, bubbles are considered to be visible manifestations of breath and underwater life. A seal, for example, must willingly give up its life to a hunter and, when doing so, the animal’s soul retreats to its bladder. In reciprocity for this sacrifice, Yup’ik men inflate seal bladders during a five-day winter festival. At the close of the festival, the seal bladders are deflated under the ice, returning the animal’s spirit back to the water.

LOCATING | Exploring identity and place

As in many cultures, the haunting question of ‘where is home?’ is undeniably formative. The third section of the exhibition considers the importance of family, community, land, and place in the cultivation of Native individual and tribal identity.

Kevin Pourier’s 2008 Sitting Bull Spoon revives the creative use of buffalo horn by 19^th-century Lakota people. While wild buffalo populations have been largely decimated and few contemporary artists work in this medium, Pourier has taken the traditional practice of buffalo horn carving and has created something quite modern. An image of the legendary Hunkpapa Lakota leader, Sitting Bull, is painstaking rendered by incising, buffing, and inlaying minerals. Sitting Bull’s signature monarch butterfly is shown fastened to his hat, while the motif flutters across the surface of the horn in bas-relief. For Lakota artist Pourier, the image of Sitting Bull represents Lakota strength and cultural endurance, while butterflies symbolize love and family.

VOICING | Engaging the individual

The fourth thematic section of the exhibition focuses on the artist as an individual engaged in the process of self-expression while interacting with the rest of the world. Luiseño artist Fritz Scholder (1937-2005) has been called “the most influential, prolific, and controversial figures in the history of Native art.”² Through his Monster Indian series which he started in 1967, Scholder provided a dramatic counterpoint to the prevailing romantic depictions of Native life. Scholder depicts a Plains warrior wearing stereotypical Native American garb but renders the work in a Pop art color palate dominated by citrus and bubblegum tones in brushstrokes influenced by one of his teachers, painter, Wayne Thibaud. Far from a placid sunset-infused portrait, this image is fueled by the political radicalism of the 1960s, brimming with energy and immediacy that can barely be contained by the picture frame.

OPENING DAY CELEBRATION | SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2012 | 10 AM – 5PM

Celebrate the opening of Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art with a day of performances, panel discussions, film, art activities, exhibition tours, and more. Details available at: www.pem.org/calendar

ATRIUM ALIVE WEEKEND FESTIVAL: SHAPESHIFTING | FEBRUARY 18 & 19, 2012 | 10 AM – 5 PM

Explore PEM’s newest exhibition with a weekend of interactive and engaging programming. Song and dance, weaving demonstrations, artist lectures, art making and more. Visit www.pem.org/calendar for details.

Exhibition to be accompanied by ICA-produced video featuring artist interview and installation footage

On the occasion of its 75^th anniversary this fall, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) has commissioned Brooklyn-based artist Swoon to create the fifth installation of the Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall. Extending from the elevator atrium to the lobby and soaring forty feet up to the ceiling, Swoon’s new installation is the largest to occupy the Fineberg Art Wall.  The work, titled Anthropocene Extinction, is composed of streams of intricately cut paper which connect key sculptural elements within the installation—including a 200-pound, suspended bamboo sculpture. Swoon is on view at the ICA from Sept. 3, 2011 to Dec. 30, 2012.  

“The opening of Swoon kicks off a dynamic line-up of fall exhibitions and performances celebrating 75 years of contemporary art in Boston,” said Jill Medvedow, director of the ICA. “Swoon is one of the foremost artists practicing street and activist art today. Her work offers an elegant aesthetic vision combined with ingenuity, artistic experimentation, and an infectious spirit of possibility.”

“Whether on a city street or in a museum gallery, Swoon is highly responsive to the aesthetic possibilities of her environment,” said Pedro Alonzo, adjunct curator at the ICA. “Although her artistic process is extremely labor-intensive, Swoon’s preference for natural and recycled materials lends her work an ephemeral quality. The power of her work is a result not only of its scale and environment, but of the tension created between its complexity and impermanence.”

In both her art and her own life, Swoon is deeply engaged with social issues and humanitarian projects.  Anthropocene Extinction looks at the effects of industrialized society on people and the environment, and includes a portrait of one of the last Australian Aboriginals to have experienced traditional nomadic culture.  The term “anthropocene” refers to the “age of man” and was recently coined by geologists to describe the outsized influence of man on the natural environment.

Working alone or in collaboration, Swoon’s work is often about forming a community in order to practice what she refers to as a “real world” engagement. Her latest endeavor, the Konbit Shelter Project, is a sustainable building project assisting Haitians who lost their homes in the devastating 2010 earthquake. During the 2009 Venice Biennale, Swoon and a crew of other artists and friends sailed boats made of reclaimed materials through the canals of Venice—creating new purpose out of what was cast aside.

Artist bio
Caledonia Curry (b. 1977), known as Swoon, is widely considered a leader in the genre of street art. She is best known for her intricately cut, life-sized portraits found on streets and abandoned buildings in cities around the world. Often found in beautiful states of decay, her wheat-pasted installations are populated by realistically rendered people going about everyday activities in a cityscape of her own invention. Swoon’s prints and paper cutouts take inspiration from the German Expressionists of the early twentieth century as well as Indonesian shadow puppetry. Her work belongs to the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum, and has appeared in exhibitions at Deitch Projects (2008) and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2008), amongst others.
 
ICA-produced documentary on Swoon
Featuring in-depth interviews with the artist and Adjunct Curator Pedro Alonzo, this new video chronicles the installation of Swoon’s new installation at the ICA and offers the opportunity to see her creative process at work. Produced by Branka Bogdanov, ICA director of film and media.
  visit our Web site at www.icaboston.org.

Burble's Gradient, 2005, Peter Wasilewski, pigmented inkjet photograph

 

RIPPLE EFFECT, THE ART OF H₂O

ON VIEW IN PEM’S INTERACTIVE ART & NATURE CENTER

 JUNE 18, 2011 – APRIL 2012

SALEM, MA –– This summer, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) dives into the dynamic, varied and beautiful world of water to present Ripple Effect, The Art of H₂O. Inspired by natural phenomena such as fog, snowflakes and geysers, the 16 artists featured in Ripple Effect explore water in its liquid, gas and solid states as a rich source for creative expression. The exhibition presents artworks in a variety of mediums, including blown glass, photography, clay and sound, and challenges visitors to consider this life-sustaining substance often taken for granted. On view in PEM’s interactive Art & Nature Center, Ripple Effect opens to the public on Saturday, June 18.

“Not a moment goes by that we don’t encounter water. It surrounds us in the air we breathe and fills every cell in our bodies, yet we rarely take notice of it — except when we don’t have enough of it or encounter too much of it,” says Jane Winchell, curator of Ripple Effect and PEM’s Sarah Fraser Robbins Director of the Art & Nature Center. “Ripple Effect invites visitors to experience water as a unique artistic medium and to consider its remarkable physical properties, which also make life possible.”

Water is the only natural substance on earth that exists in three forms — liquid, solid and gas. Ripple Effect is organized around these physical states and features artworks, media elements and hands-on stations that let visitors explore the art and science of water.

Liquid

Compelled by water’s movement, moods and life-giving properties, many artists who work with it focus on the liquid state. New England-based artist Janet Fredericks makes drawings directly in bodies of water, recording what she calls “the language of flowing water.” For her work Tracings, New Haven River, Fredericks placed a large drape of watercolor paper in the bed of the New Haven River to capture the network of shadows, currents and play of light with lithography crayons. At the nearby interactive Water Shadows station, visitors investigate the effects of light and shadow in water as they generate their own wave patterns.

Solid

Artists in Ripple Effect also work with myriad forms of ice, ranging from intricate snowflakes to towering glaciers. Norwegian musician and composer Terje Isungset responds to the sounds natural ice produces by crafting instruments made of glacial ice. In Ripple Effect, visitors watch a video of Isungset at work and listen to the haunting and utterly unique sounds produced by his ice horn and percussion instruments.

Gas

Being invisible, water vapor is a challenging artistic medium. But water vapor in transition to liquid — in the form of clouds, fog, mist or steam — has captured artists’ imagination. In Ned Kahn’s Sea of Clouds, visitors interact with an undulating pool of ultrasonic fog. When air currents are altered through touch and motion, mesmerizing fog patterns morph and transition from liquid to vapor and back again. Visitors can further investigate water vapor at the nearby Fog Chamber interactive, where they can make ephemeral clouds out of thin air.

Ripple Effect is supported by ECHO (Education through Cultural and Historical Organizations), the Art & Nature Committee and the East India Marine Associates (EIMA) of the Peabody Essex Museum.

SPECIAL EVENT

Splish, Splash –– Opening day of Ripple Effect, The Art of H₂O

Saturday, June 18, 2011 | 10 am – 4 pm

Enjoy a wet and wonderful day at PEM in celebration of Ripple Effect, The Art of H₂O, opening in the interactive Art & Nature Center! Participate in a bubble show, play with water, listen to water-inspired tales, meet artists and create your own water-based art. All activities FREE with admission.

HOURS: Open Tuesday–Sunday, 10 am–5 pm. Closed Mondays (except holidays) and Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.

ADMISSION: Adults $15; seniors $13; students $11. Additional admission to Yin Yu Tang: $5. Members, youth 16 and under and residents of Salem enjoy free general admission and free admission to Yin Yu Tang.

INFO: Call 866-745-1876 or visit website at www.pem.org.

Born in 1950, London, United Kingdom
Lives and works in London

Anthony Gormley is a British sculptor known for his figurative work, including full-length iron casts of his own body. These sculptures explore the experience of living in a human body, both in terms of internal properties of the body such as consciousness and identity, and external relationships between the body and its environment. Early in his career, Gormley experimented with diverse materials, including bread, wood, glass, and clothing, often leaving impressions of his body in these materials. Since he first cast his own body in the early 1980s, he has worked extensively with multiplications of his casts. Gormley has populated cities and coasts with his altered replicas, found innovative ways of placing his forms in architectural spaces, and abstracted his forms beyond recognition. His work adds a new conceptual richness to the tradition of the human form in sculpture.

Reflection II is comprised of two 1,600-lb iron casts of the sculptor’s 6-foot-3-inch body facing each other on either side of an expansive glass wall next to the entrance of the museum. One figure stands outside while the other confronts his counterpart from the inside. Their arrangement transitions the viewer from the outdoor sculpture park to the indoor galleries, echoing the deCordova’s mission of combining outdoor sculpture with the indoor museum experience. The repeated images cause momentary confusion; are the sculptures doubles or reflections? This placement plays with the concept of internal / external, both in terms of the architectural space (indoor versus outdoor), and the identities of the figures, the sculptor and the viewer (self versus other). The architectural barrier of the building defines the sculpture, making it an image of alienation.

The ridged nude male figures are traces of the artist, but they transcend his likeness and identity. They are not self-portraits. Gormley separates himself from his casts by purposely leaving evidence of their molten formation. Their iron surface has a rough texture and is cast in hues of charcoal grey and rusty orange, with ridges running down their sides like long veins, and four round nubs on each that are vestiges of the casting. The casting process also plays with interior versus exterior distinctions, as the sculptor is first covered with plaster, and then lets the plaster harden before separating himself from the mold. Iron is poured into the hard shell, forming the interior figure—a generalized form of the artist at a specific time. The resulting sculptures for Reflection II are uncannily still and tense, standing with feet apart and arms at their sides, their blank gazes fixed only on the other. The close placement of the mirrored figures and their focused stare force the viewer into the position of the outsider. Ultimately, the sculpture brings attention back to the viewer’s own body and navigation through space. This sculpture belongs to a series of three, including an artist’s proof, and the deCordova’s acquisition is the only one in a public collection.

Antony Gormley studied archaeology, anthropology and the history of art at Trinity College, Cambridge. After three years in India, he trained to be a sculptor at Central School of Art, Goldsmith’s College and the Slade School of Art. He received the Turner prize in 1994. Gormley has completed major installations in England and abroad. Another Place, his permanent installation of 100 iron cast figures, populates two miles of Crosby Beach in England. Event Horizon, an installation of 27 to 31 casts, was installed in London in 2007, and is in New York City from March through August, 2010. The natural and urban locations provide completely different experiences of man’s integration with the environment.

 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

May 3-June 19, 2011

La Serenissima, or the Most Serene Republic of Venice, existed for over a millennium from the late seventh century to 1797. At the height of its power in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was the center of an empire extending from mainland Italy to the eastern Mediterranean. The head of state was a Doge who was elected for life by the nobility.

Books, called commissioni, are presentation copies of contracts of Venetian noblemen elected to oversee the Serenissima’s provinces for usually sixteen months, or to be lifelong administrators of the city of Venice. From the mid-1400s until the fall of the Republic, office-holders had their commissioni elaborately written, illuminated and bound by hand. Commemorating service to the state, personal achievement, and taste, these manuscripts were objects of privilege, power, and beauty.

Isabella Stewart Gardner’s commissioni not only reflect her passion for Venice—as seen in her Venetian-style palace and its art from the Serenissima—but also her love of books. She started to collect rare volumes in the mid-1880s before she began to buy art, encouraged by Charles Eliot Norton, Harvard’s first professor of art history and an expert book collector. Mrs. Gardner acquired three of the commissioni displayed along with fourteen other Venetian manuscripts from Norton. He sold them to Gardner because he believed that she alone would appreciate the books’ artistic and historical value as a collection.

Italian (Venice), Upper cover of the commissione of Doge Giovanni II Cornaro to Giovanni Bollani as Podestà of Chioggia, 1718. Repoussé and chased, height 22 cm x width 18 cm x depth 3.5 cm (closed).

The commissioni are displayed in the Long Gallery where Mrs. Gardner kept them and her other most prized books. Her collection enables us to admire the evolution over three centuries of Venetian book-decoration, illuminating the past glory of the Serenissima.

The following commissioni are displayed in the exhibition:

Illumination

• Doge Cristoforo Moro to Domenico Diedo as Procurator of St. Mark, 1464
• Doge Francesco Donato to Vincenzo Gritti as Lieutenant of Udine, 1546
• Doge Giovanni Bembo to Francesco Contarini as Procurator de citra, 1615.

Binding

• Doge Francesco Donato to Girolamo Morosini as Captain of Brescia, 1547
• Commissione of a member of the Fradello family (?), around 1580-2
• Commissione of an unknown Venetian nobleman, mid-seventeenth century
• Doge Giovanni II Cornaro to Giovanni Bollani as Podestà of Chioggia, 1718.

This exhibition was made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and curated by Anne-Marie Eze, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. She would like to thank for their scholarly assistance: Lilian Armstrong, Matteo Casini, Carlo Corsato, Frederick Ilchman, Hope Mayo, Laura Nuvoloni, Dorit Raines, and Helena Szépe.

http://www.gardnermuseum.org/collection/special_exhibitions/current_exhibitions/illuminating_the_serenissima?filter=exhibitions:3679

The cast of Passing Strange. Photo by Andrew Brilliant/ Brilliant Pictures

May 1 – May 22, 2011
Press Opening Monday, May 2 @ 7:30pm

This 2008 Tony Award-winning modern Broadway musical, whose title was born from the illustrious Moor’s lines in Shakespeare’s Othello, takes audiences on a pilgrimage led by a Narrator who shares his life through song. This soulful journey follows a young man from a comfortable, suburban neighborhood in Los Angeles, to the coffeehouses of an Amsterdam paradise, and finally to the riotous art houses of West Berlin, as he searches for his artistic and personal voice – what he calls “the real.” Experience one man’s personal story through this uniquely passionate musical.

Run Time: Two Hours and 15 minutes including one intermission.

Winner of the 2008 Tony Award for Best Book.

Passing Strange
book and lyrics by Stew
music by Stew and Heidi Rodewald
created in collaboration with Annie Dorsen
directed by Kate Warner**
musical direction by Todd C. Gordon
choreography by Kelli Edwards
Charles Mosesian Theater

Eric Levenson***, scenic design
Gail Astrid Buckley***, costume design
Karen Parsons, lighting design
Aaron Mack, sound design
Julien Winter Tremblay*, stage manager

featuring Cheo Bourne* as Youth, Cliff Odle as Narrator, and Maurice E. Parent* as Franklin/Joop/ Mr. Venus

Cast (in alphabetical order):

Cheo Bourne*, Youth
De’Lon Grant*, Terry/Christophe/Hugo
Eve Kagan*, Sherry/Mariana/Sudabey
Cliff Odle, Narrator
Maurice E. Parent*, Franklin/Joop/Mr. Venus
Cheryl Singleton*, Mother
Kami Rushell Smith*, Edwina/Renata/Desi

Band
Brian Grochowski, Bass and Guitar
Erik Puslys, Guitar
Cliff Odle, Bass and Vocal
Jen Lowe, Conductor and Percussion

http://www.newrep.org/passing_strange.php