Holiday Season Museum Exhibitions Suggestions

Peter Hujar, Ethyl Eichelberger as Nefertiti (II), 1981, Mostly New, from the Permanent Collection, Grey Art Gallery, NYU, September 6, 2022 - December 17, 2022

Dear Friends,

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend!  The Holiday Season is already underway with bushels of bounty that may overwhelm your list of "to-dos."  To help you plan, here are several excellent exhibitions in order of their closing dates, highlighted in red.  Hopefully, these recommendations will help you plan your Museum Holiday Visits with your favorite art companions.

Best wishes for Holiday Season 2022 - 

With love,

Beth

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, PhD, Director, New York Arts Exchange, LLC

Shoes: Anatomy Identity Magic

FIT Museum, September 1 - December 31, 2022

Museum of the City of New York, through January 8, 2023

plus: Food in New York, through September 30, 2023

And many other exciting exhibitions for the holiday season and beyond

Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Ellen Maurice, 1597

The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England

Met Museum, October 10, 2022 - January 8, 2023

Marjorie Strider, Girl with Radish, 1963

New York: 1962 - 1962

The Jewish Museum, July 22, 2022 - January 4, 2023

Kwame Brathwaite, Sikolo Brathwaite, 

African Jazz-Art Society and Studio (AJASS), Harlem, c. 1968,

 Courtesy of the artist and Philip Martin Gallery, LA

Black is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite

New York Historical Society, August 19, 2022 - January 15, 2023

William Michael Harnett, Still Life - Violin and Museum, 1888

Cubism and the Trompe l'Oeil Tradition

Met Museum, October 20, 2022 - January 22, 2023

Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces

New Museum, November 10, 2022 - February 5, 2023

The Little Prince: Taking Flight

The Morgan Library and Museum, October 14, 2022 - February 5, 2023

Mallica "Kapo" Reynolds, Roberta Flack, 1970

Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces

Museum of Modern Art, October 9, 2022 -  February 18, 2023

Earring, 250-200, National Museum of History, Sofia, Bulgaria

Ritual and Memory: The Ancient Balkans and Beyond

NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World 

September 21, 2022 - February 19, 2023

Sumerian, Marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi, (not in the show)

She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia, ca. 3400–2000 B.C.

October 14, 2022 through February 19, 2023

Book of Painted Kosode Patterns, 17th century, Japan, MMA collection

Kimono Style: The John C. Weber Collection - Met Museum, June 7, 2022 - 

February 20, 2023

Meret Oppenheim, Object (Luncheon in Fur), 1936

Meret Oppenheim: My Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, October 30, 2022 - March 4, 2023

Edward Hopper, The Automat, 1927

Edward Hoppers' New York

Whitney Museum of American Art, October 19, 2022 - March 5, 2023

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Why Born a Slave!, 1869

Fictions of Emancipation: Carpeaux Recast, Metropolitan Museum of Art

March 22, 2022 -  March 5, 2023

Metropolitan Museum of Art, July 5, 2022- March 26, 2023

Juan Francisco Elso: Por America

Museo del Barrio, October 27, 2022 - March 26, 2023

Reynier Leyva Novo: Methuselah

Museo del Barrio, October 27, 2022 - March 26, 2023

Misla, El Comedor, 2019

Domesticanx

Museo del Barrio, October 27, 2022 - March 26, 2023

Mayan, Maize God Emerging from a Flower, c. 7th  - 9th centuries

Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Mayan Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 21, 2022 - April 2, 2023

"I'll Have What She's Having": The Jewish Deli

New York Historical Society, November 11, 2022 - April 2, 2023

Nick Cave, Wall Installation in Forothermore, 

Guggenheim, November 18, 2022 - April 10, 2023

Marquee Frederic, Lord Leighton, Flaming June, 1895

Victorian Masterpieces from the Museo de Arte Ponce, Puerto Rico

Met Museum, October 8 - February 2024

Beth's next lecture: Proust and Art on Zoom, November 15 at 5 pm, hosted by Alliance Française de Greenwich and Byram Shubert Library

 

Jacques-Emile Blanche, Portrait of Marcel Proust, 1892

Beth Gersh-Nesic on "Proust and Art"

hosted by the Alliance Française de Greenwich and Byram Shubert Library

at Byram Shubert Library, on Zoom

Please register here

Please just us!

Dear Friends,

You do not have to read, or have read, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927) to understand this lecture. I will try to give you a quick intro to the text and the author, presenting artwork as illustrations. I will place the novel within the period of art history contemporary to its story. Then I will go into how the writer uses art to describe characters, places and taste. And, finally, I will describe Proust's meditation on art, time and "truth," which concerned the avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century.

I hope you will join me - and please bring questions/comments for our Q and A.

Warm wishes,

Beth

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, PhD

Director/owner

New York Arts Exchange, LLC

A Book to Honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October) created by artist Wilhelmina Grant-Cooper

Dear friends,

As we close out October 2022, we also end a month that is dedicated to breast cancer awareness. In 2017, I curated Bosom Bodies: An Exhibition in Honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October) at the SIA Gallery in Peekskill, NY (thank you, Nadine Gordon-Taylor!) of artworks that honor the beauty of the female breast and the need to address breast cancer every day: through education, proactive examinations, support for survivors, and more research for better treatment.  

Wilhelmina Obatola Grant-Cooper

My inspiration came from the brilliant artist Wilhelmina Obatola Grant-Cooper, who survived breast cancer twice, and founded SISTAAH (Survivors Inspiring Sisters Through Art and Advocacy for Health). This past year she dedicated her energies to a beautiful project, pairing teenage girls with breast-cancer survivors in recent years ("The Covid Era"). The title of the book Uplifting Cancer Survivors in the Covid Era: Expressions of Kindness and Inspiration Between Aunties and Nieces says it all. The exchanges here in letters accompanied by Wilhelmina's magnificent collages and photographs of the bracelets the teens (the "nieces") made for women they didn't know (their "aunties") are absolutely gorgeous. If ever you worry about the future of this planet, read these letters for reassurance that kindness and love remain in abundant supply. You just have to know where to look. 

So, give yourself and others the joy of reading these heartwarming letters and support SISTAAH too. 

And congratulations to Wilhelmina for receiving an excellent review in the Manhattan Times two weeks ago. Here is the link to the review.

You can order the book directly from the SISTAAH website (and receive a signed copy too!)

Or from Amazon (in print and for Kindle)

Wishing you all excellent health and great happiness, always - 

Love,

Beth 

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, PhD

Director/owner

New York Arts Exchange, LLC

Autumn in New York - Outstanding Fall 2022 Exhibitions

Book of Painted Kosode Patterns, 17th century, Japan, MMA collection

Kimono Style: The John C. Weber Collection - Met Museum, June 7, 2022 - February 20, 2023

Marquee Frederic, Lord Leighton, Flaming June, 1895

Victorian Masterpieces from the Museo de Arte Ponce, Puerto Rico

Met Museum, October 8 - February 2024

Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Ellen Maurice, 1597

The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England

Met Museum, October 10, 2022 - January 8, 2023

William Michael Harnett, Still Life - Violin and Museum, 1888

Cubism and the Trompe l'Oeil Tradition

Met Museum, October 20, 2022 - January 22, 2023

Nick Cave, Wall Installation in Forothermore, Guggenheim, November 18, 2022 - April 10, 2023

Meret Oppenheim, Object (Luncheon in Fur), 1936

Meret Oppenheim: My Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, October 30, 2022 - March 4, 2023

Shoes: Anatomy Identity Magic

FIT Museum, September 1 - December 31, 2022

Earring, 250-200, National Museum of History, Sofia, Bulgaria

Ritual and Memory: The Ancient Balkans and Beyond

NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World 

September 21, 2022 - February 19, 2023

Aubrey Beardsley, "Artist's Bookplate," 

from Aubrey Beardsley, A Book of Fifty Drawings,

London: Leonard Smithers, 1897

The Goliers Club, September 8 - November 12, 2022

Irina Adams, Kurt Cobain, 2022

Portraits in Scents, Olfactory Art Keller

25B Henry Street, NYC

September 8 - October 15, 2022

Peter Hujar, Ethyl Eichelberger as Nefertiti (II), 1981

Mostly New, from the Permanent Collection, Grey Art Gallery, NYU

September 6, 2022 - December 17, 2022

Autumn in New York - Fall 2022 Beth's Lectures

Dear Friends,

Please join me for these lectures this fall -

Sandra Smith

Beth Gersh-Nesic interviews award-winning translator Sandra Smith

on "Translating Irène Némirovsky"

hosted by Alliance Française Fédération - 

Tuesday, October 11, 2022 - at 7 pm. 

 on Zoom, no charge  

Please register here.

 

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic

Andrea Mantegna, Judith and her Maidservant, 1490s

Beth Gersh-Nesic on "Judith and Hanukah"

Wednesday, October 26 - at 10:30 am

hosted by Learning in Retirement

Temple Beth El, Stamford, CT

in person, $10 

Please register here

Otto Wegener, Marcel Proust, c. 1895

Beth Gersh-Nesic on "Proust and Art"

Tuesday, November 15, 2022 at 5 pm

hosted by the Alliance Française de Greenwich and Byram Shubert Library

Byram Shubert Library, 21 Mead Ave, Greenwich, CT

on Zoom, no charge

Please register here

Looking forward to seeing you there - 

With love and warm wishes for Fall 2022 and 5783

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, PhD

Director and owner

New York Arts Exchange, LLC

Honoring Those Who Perished on 9/11/01 and after; Michael Richards Remembered

 

Remembering Michael Rolando Richards, 

Who Perished on September 11, 2001 

in the World Trade Center Attack

The Tar Baby vs. St. Sebastian, 1999

Michael Richards (August 2, 1963 - September 11, 2001)

It is a very sad week. We lost a formidable monarch, Queen Elizabeth II and ended an era in history.  Today we remember the victims of 9/11 - those who perished on that day and those who died from exposure to the toxic air and ash in the aftermath.  I will honor the memory of Queen Elizabeth II in another post. Today, we honor those we lost 21 years ago today.  Here is an updated version of a post from September 11, 2013:

Sculptor Michael Rolando Richards died in the attack on September 11, 2001. At the time, he was enjoying a fellowship with World Views, an artist-in-residence program sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. He had been hard at work on his project, The Tuskegee Airmen, dedicated to the memory of the African-American air force who were segregated during World War II.

Michael Richards (American, 1963-2001). Free Fall, 1997.

 Fiberglass and resin with iron oxide. 72 x 24 x 19 in. (182.9 x 61 x 48.3 cm). 

Contemporary Art. Anonymous gift in honor of Michael Richards. 

Image courtesy Brooklyn Museum

Michael had attended an opening at the Grey Art Gallery on September 10, 2001 and then decided to head for his WTC studio on the 92nd floor in Manhattan to work.  Living in Rosedale, Queens at the time, he skipped the long commute home in favor of staying overnight in order to continue working into the wee hours of the morning. When the planes struck at 8:45 a.m., he might have been getting ready to go to work at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, where he was a freelance preparator.

Winged, 1999

That Richards was killed by an airplane piercing the body of a tall, trim tower seems eerily coincidental and almost mystical. Richards' well-known sculpture Tar Baby vs. St. Sebastian,1999, features the artist's own tall, trim body as the full-length male figure standing straight and lifted off the floor by a slender pole. The gold resin body, clad in a military uniform, bears numerous small airplanes driven into the torso, their noses piercing the surface like the arrows buried into St. Sebastian's flesh as he became a martyr to his Christian faith.

Michael Richards Retrospective on Governor's Island, Summer 2016

Michael Richards' faith was in humankind. He truly believed that our better angels would prevail - even in the face of political turmoil, bigotry, racism and injustice.  Curator Jorge Daniel Veneciano, who organized Richards' exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1996, pointed out that the artist's reference to flight worked on two levels: the flight away from repression and the flight toward redemption.

In Free Fall, his 1997 sculpture of a male figure carrying a parachute pack on his back, the artist seems to speak of that dual experience. Here a Tuskegee Airman prepares for flight, focused on the mission and his survival. He willingly accepts the risk while he relies on his experience, skill and a parachute (a metaphor for community of support?) to see him through. And yet, there is exhaustion in these faces and bodies.  Their patriotism may take them physically into the skies, but their souls remain grounded in despair. When will tolerance replace hatred and war?

Michael Richards, Are You Down?, Franconia Sculpture Park, 2000

Richards' life hardly touched Tuskegee, Alabama. Born in Brooklyn on August 2, 1963 to a Costa Rican mother and Jamaican father, Michael Richards lived in Kingston, Jamaica during his childhood. He graduated with honors from Excelsior High School and then returned to New York to pursue his undergraduate degree at Queens College, which he completed with distinction in 1985. He went on to earn a Master's Degree in Arts from New York University in 1991. While at NYU, Richards worked as a preparator at the university's Grey Art Gallery.

In 1993, Richards participated in the highly-coveted Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, followed by an Artists-in-the-Marketplace Program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in 1994.

From 1995 to 1996, he participated in the Artist-in-Residence program at the Studio Museum of Harlem and The Space Program, run by The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

In 2000, Richards received the Franconia Sculpture Park/Jerome Fellowship. Today, his project for the part Are You Down? is on display in this Minnesota park and has become the Michael Richards Memorial. It consists of three airmen (cast from Richards' body) sitting in a circle surrounding a target, facing outward. Originally created in fiberglass, Franconia hopes to raise enough money to cast the work in bronze in order to preserve the work in perpetuity.  A film about the project can be found here. 

The Tuskegee Airmen series highlights a squadron of African-American pilots in World War II--formally called the 332nd Fighter Group in the U.S. Army Air Corps--who were segregated from the other Army units. Despite this racist slight, the squadron excelled in its service to this country. Some sources have said that no airmen lost their lives on a mission during the war. This assertion has been challenged since 2006. However, in Richards' day, the reputation of the Tuskegee Airmen remained almost mythic--as Richards' works tend to be.

The name Tuskegee also brings up the association with the notorious syphilis experiment conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service from 1932 to 1972. Infecting African-American sharecroppers, the scientists wanted to observe this horribly destructive disease. Another example of racism in the United States, this experiment withheld penicillin (which became available in 1929) from its subjects. During the course of this experiment the wives and children of the subjects were infected, too.

Clearly, Tuskegee resonated with Michael Richards for a number reasons.

At the time of his death, Richards was working on Fallen Angel, a life-size piece based on his own torso that was meant to be positioned on the floor. Wings were attached to the back with one wing broken off and left on the floor. Today it serves as a metaphor for the artist’s life and death.

Executive Director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in 2001, Liz Thompson noted that "He was so promising. He was on a tear." So true.

Today, we remember him for all that he was and all that he was meant to be. And we mourn the loss of a great artist and equally wonderful friend. A memorial was held at the Studio Museum of Harlem on September 23, 2001.   

Click on this link to see photos of "Art You Down?," a retrospective, North Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, April 21 - October 10, 2021.  Videos about Michael Richards and a curators' tour are also on this website page. Please scroll down to find this recordings.

Other Exhibitions:

• Governor's Island, Summer 2016
• Grey Art Gallery, New York University , New York
• Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
• Aldrich Contemporary Museum, Ridgefield, CT
• Studio Museum of Harlem, New York
• Bronx Museum of Arts, New York
• Miami Art Center, Miami, Florida
• Franconia Sculpture Park, Franconia, Minnesota
• Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, New York
• North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC
• Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL
• The Debeyard Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Artists' Space, New York

We still miss you, Michael.

Last Call - Winslow Homer, at the Met through Sunday, July 31st.

 

Winslow Homer, Snap the Whip, 1872

Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH

Info in Wikipedia

Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents

Metropolitan Museum of Art

April 11-July 31, 2022

Exhibition Page

Tour on on Met Website and YouTube

Winslow Homer, Nor'Easter, Maine, 1895 

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Info on Met website

Dear Friends,

If you have time, please visit the Winslow Homer exhibition this weekend before it closes on Sunday.  Fridays and Saturdays are late nights for the Met and very comfortable indeed - I highly recommend spending summer evenings at the Met.

Winslow Homer, Gulf Stream, 1899, reworked in 1901 or 1906?

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Info on Met website

Winslow Homer in the Met Collection, Spring 1982

PDF

Hoping you are all well and enjoying!

Warm wishes,

Beth

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, PhD

Director/owner

New York Arts Exchange, LLC

www.nyarts-exchange.com