As always Manhattan is a treasure trove of art and culture. Here are some unique and ground-breaking major museum exhibitions in Manhattan that are currently on view and worthy of your consideration. You’ll find links to the museum websites so you can learn more about them.
“The New Woman of the 1920s” at The Met
The 1920’s is remembered as a tumultuous period of time due to such events as the impact of World War I. It is also described as the “Roaring Twenties” in the U.S. the period is sometimes referred to as the “Golden Age Twenties” in Europe .
You may not know something else happened during this time and that is women stood at the forefront of experimentation with photography. The Metropolitan Museum wants you to know these women “produced invaluable visual testimony that reflects both their personal experiences and the extraordinary social and political transformations of the era.”
“The New Woman of the 1920s” is a groundbreaking exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, through October 3, 2021. This exhibition explores the work of the diverse “new” women “who embraced photography as a mode of professional and artistic expression from the 1920s through the 1950s”.
Innovative work in studio portraiture, fashion and advertising, artistic experimentation, street photography, ethnography, and photojournalism are included.
The exhibition takes a global perspective and includes more than 120 female photographers from over 20 countries. Among the photographers featured are Berenice Abbott, Ilse Bing, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Florestine Perrault Collins, Imogen Cunningham, Madame d’Ora, Florence Henri, Elizaveta Ignatovich, Consuelo Kanaga, Germaine Krull, Dorothea Lange, Dora Maar, Tina Modotti, Niu Weiyu, Tsuneko Sasamoto, Gerda Taro, and Homai Vyarawalla.
This exhibition seeks “to reevaluate the history of photography and advance new and more inclusive conversations on the contributions of female photographers”.
“Cézanne Drawing” at MoMA
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) wrote, “Drawing is merely the configuration of what you see.” He believed his practice of drawing taught him “to see well.” Although best known as a painter, Cézanne made drawings almost daily on individual sheets and in sketchbooks. Many of his drawings were created from direct observation and the subjects included such objects that were closest to him — his wife and son, items on his kitchen table, and clocks and lamps that adorn domestic life.
On paper, Cezanne also rendered the iconic motifs for which he is most recognized — vibrant still lifes, prismatic landscapes, and carefully choreographed bathers. In his drawings he used repeated parallel or perpendicular strokes — hatching and crosshatching — to model surfaces and create a sense of volume with a fresh immediacy.
“Cézanne Drawing” an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, NY, through September 25, 2021, brings together more than 250 rarely shown works in pencil and watercolor from across the artist’s career. Also shown are key paintings. When viewed all together they reveal how drawing shaped Cézanne’s transformative modern vision.
“Cézanne Drawing” offers the opportunity to see through Cézanne’s eyes. “In their preoccupation with the passing of time, their wonder at the natural world, their investigations of the bounds of color, and their daring approach to the human figure, Cézanne’s drawings speak eloquently both to their own time and to our moment.”
“Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019” at the Whitney
For more than 70 years visual artists have explored the materials, methods, and strategies of craft. A vast array of traditional forms such as weaving, sewing, and pottery have been joined by textiles, thread, clay, beads, and glass, to name a few.
Drawn primarily from the Whitney Museum of American Art’s collection, “Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019” runs through February, 2022. It includes more than 80 works by more than 60 artists, including Ruth Asawa, Eva Hesse, Mike Kelley, Liza Lou, Ree Morton, Howardena Pindell, Robert Rauschenberg, Elaine Reichek, and Lenore Tawney. It also features new acquisitions by Shan Goshorn, Kahlil Robert Irving, Simone Leigh, Jordan Nassar, and Erin Jane Nelson.
Artists who worked in the craft mediums have been credited for challenging the power structures that determine artistic value. This exhibition illuminates that fact and provides “new perspectives on subjects that have been central to artists”. We become aware of “how abstraction, popular culture, feminist and queer aesthetics, and recent explorations of identity and relationships arise from these art forms… that craft-informed techniques of making carry their own kind of knowledge, one that is crucial to a more complete understanding of the history and potential of art.”
“The Nature of Color” at American Museum of Natural History
Have you ever wondered about how color carries information in nature? It is extraordinary to learn where and how organisms use it to find food, warn off predators, and conceal or reveal themselves?
We humans are all affected by color. Different colors can signal a wide range of symbolic meanings and reactions across different cultures — from prosperity and luck to warnings about danger.
This exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History runs through December 5, 2021. It explains what color is, how it works, and the reasons why different colors effect us the way they do. You’ll also find a myriad fascinating facts such as where the colors in diamonds and rainbows come from. It’s a wonderful educational exhibition for adults and children alike.
Updates
“The Healing Power of Color” 2022
A certain color has the ability to soothe your frazzled nerves, agitate a hostile adversary, motivate and empower you to take action, and also to bring healing energy when you need it. As Wassily Kandinsky proclaimed, “Color provokes a psychic vibration. Color hides a power still unknown but real, which acts on every part of the human body.”
On The Healing Power of ART & ARTISTS website, which is an initiative of Manhattan Arts International, you’ll find an extensive artist and art presentation that provides a wealth of information about color. “Dozens of Facts About the Healing Power of Color” Read the article.
In 2019 and in 2022 The Healing Power of ART & ARTISTS presented “The Healing Power of Color” online art exhibitions. We plan to make this an annual event. View some art from these exhibitions.
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