Exhibition Status: Past

Tools as Art: Work and Play

Tools as Art: Work and Play

“It’s not just an understanding of the humor and artistry of a particular piece but an appreciation of how the collection fits the general theme of tools in the workplace, tools in life, and tools as art.”

– John Hechinger

Tools transcend: their essential purpose crosses boundaries of all types; their essential forms and functions enduring across eras, geographies, and cultures. The universality and timelessness of tools have won them a special place in the human psyche as both icon and symbol, embedding them firmly in the foundation of human creativity.

The renowned art collection of the late hardware magnate John Hechinger exemplifies this practical and artistic universality. Over his long career, Hechinger devoted much of his energy, playfulness, and passion to this collection, seeking out works from numerous genres and artists of many backgrounds, all of them bound by a common theme: the democracy of the tool.

In Work and Play, curator Sarah Tanguy explores interlocking principles: tools as icons of labor; labor as a component of creativity; creativity as a form of play; and the art of tools as the most incisive expression of their interrelatedness. This exhibition celebrates the virtues inherent in the art of the tool and highlights the astounding breadth of the Hechinger Collection by illuminating this unique, but ubiquitous, idiom.

 

This show is fully booked, for general inquiries please contact travelingexhibitions@artsandartists.org.

Handstitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts

Handstitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts

Quilts are a narrative art; with themes that are political, spiritual, communal, or commemorative, they are infused with history and memory, mapping out intimate stories and legacies through a handcrafted language of design. Handstitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts is an invitation to read quilts as maps, tracing the paths of individual histories that illuminate larger historic events and cultural trends.

Spanning the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, this insightful and engaging exhibition brings together 18 quilts from the collection of the American Folk Art Museum, New York, representing a range of materials, motifs, and techniques—from traditional early-American quilts to more contemporary sculptural assemblages. The quilts in Handstitched Worlds show us how this too-often overlooked medium balances creativity with tradition, individuality with collective zeitgeist. Like a roadmap, these unique works offer a path to a deeper understanding of the American cultural fabric.

Please contact TravelingExhibitions@ArtsandArtists.org for more information.

Mystery and Benevolence: Masonic and Odd Fellows Folk Art

Mystery and Benevolence: Masonic and Odd Fellows Folk Art

Curious and captivating, the over eighty carvings, sculptures, textiles, and regalia revealed in Mystery and Benevolence: Masonic and Odd Fellows Folk Art bring to light the histories, symbolism, and values of the Freemasons and the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows—two fraternal brotherhoods with deep roots in American history. Through arcane and alluring artifacts such as grave markers, serpent-headed staffs, richly embroidered textiles, and ceremonial regalia, Mystery and Benevolence transports us to  the “golden age” of American secret societies, when folk art and decorative art were brought together to confer a sense of legacy, status, and belonging in a newly established country.

Although we may know the mission and values of the Freemasons and Odd Fellows, we still find ourselves asking, “Why were they created, and why do they endure?” The enigmatic objects on view assume a profound and affecting sincerity, even as their highly-charged imagery fascinates, puzzles, and compels.

This show is fully booked, for general inquiries please contact travelingexhibitions@artsandartists.org.

Front Row Center: Icons of Rock, Blues and Soul

Front Row Center: Icons of Rock, Blues, and Soul

“The job, as I see it, is to create a final image that portrays equally the public spectacle of the show and the private style and passion of the musician.”

-Larry Hulst

Front Row Center charts photographer Larry Hulst’s extraordinary path through the pulsing heart of the most exciting live music of the twentieth century, showcasing a unique visual anthology of rock, blues and soul music from 1970-1999. From Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix to David Bowie and Lauryn Hill, this exhibition brings together over 70 images of legendary musicians, many of which have been featured on album art and Rolling Stone spreads. Front Row Center grants viewers an all-access pass to some of the most memorable performances in popular music history.

This traveling exhibition is an adaptation of Thirty Years of Rock & Roll: Photography by Larry Hulst, curated by the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum and later presented at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center as Front Row Center: Icons of Rock, Blues and Soul.

This show is fully booked, for general inquiries please contact travelingexhibitions@artsandartists.org.

Mort Künstler: “The Godfather” of Pulp Fiction Illustrators

Mort Künstler: “The Godfather” of Pulp Fiction Illustrators

"Nobody captured hard-boiled action better than Mort Künstler. His full-throttle, action-packed, in-your-face images represent the very essence of the pulp era.”

- Michael W. Schantz, Director, The Heckscher Museum of Art

Featuring the work of one of the most prolific illustrators of the twentieth century, Mort Künstler: “The Godfather” of Pulp Fiction Illustrators includes more than 80 original paintings that graced the covers of American publications throughout the 1950s and ‘60s. This exhibition also explores Künstler’s collaboration with Mario Puzo, resulting in the first visual character studies of The Godfather’s Corleone family. Vivid, provocative, and boldly kinetic, this exhibition offers museum visitors an action-packed odyssey through a classic American cultural landscape that has all but vanished.

This exhibition was organized by The Heckscher Museum of Art and curated by Michael W. Schantz and Lisa Chalif.

Bernini and the Roman Baroque: Masterpieces from Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia

Bernini and the Roman Baroque: Masterpieces from Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia

“A rare man and sublime talent, he was born for the glory of Rome with the Divine Disposition to bring light to that century.”

— Domenico Bernini, Life of the Cavalier Gio. Lorenzo Bernini, 1713

The term Baroque connotes an abundance of detail, a sense of irregularity, and a sort of eccentric redundancy—all emblematic of an extraordinary generation of artists who converged in Rome at the dawn of the seventeenth century. This artistic style became a cultural phenomenon, spreading concurrently from Naples to Venice, Vienna to Prague, and Bohemia to St. Petersburg, finally assuming its full global dimensions when it reached the Americas. Bernini and the Roman Baroque: Masterpieces from Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia explores the genesis of this one-of-a-kind artistic movement. Through a selection of 55 works from 40 artists, including 10 works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, this exhibition illuminates Bernini’s influence and explores how it resonated across the Baroque movement.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, artists definitively set aside the Caravaggesque model for a more transversal dialogue between the real and the supernatural, the superfluous and the necessary. After the death of the famous Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, the debate between “naturalists” and “classicists” (respectively, followers of the styles of Caravaggio and Annibale Carracci) originated a new figurative language, namely the “Baroque,” which found in Gian Lorenzo Bernini its undisputed protagonist. Thanks to the masterpieces conserved in Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia, we can trace the spectacular path by which the “Baroque” became a universal vernacular expression.

Bernini and the Roman Baroque comprehensively maps the rich spectrum of genres and pictorial styles that characterize Baroque aesthetics. Its many luminous examples of these diverse categories—not only history painting but also alternative genres such as portraiture, self-portraiture and landscaping, as well as preparatory sketches used for large decorative frescoes—epitomize Baroque’s ultimate goal of elevating the viewer in mind and soul, communicating the moral and spiritual messages of the Catholic Church.

Please contact TravelingExhibitions@ArtsandArtists.org for more information.

Blurring Boundaries: The Women of American Abstract Artists 1936-Present

Blurring Boundaries: The Women of American Abstract Artists, 1936-Present

“The stamp of modern art is clarity: clarity of color, clarity of forms and of composition, clarity of determined dynamic rhythm, in a determined space. Since figuration often veils, obscures or entirely negates purity of plastic expression, the destruction of the particular form for the universal one becomes a prime prerequisite.”

- Perle Fine (1905-1988)

The hierarchy of distilled form, immaculate line, and pure color came close to being the mantra of 1930s modern art—particularly that of American Abstract Artists (AAA), the subject of a new exhibition entitled Blurring Boundaries: The Women of American Abstract Artists, 1936 – Present. From the outset—due as much to their divergent status as abstract artists as to their gender—women of American Abstract Artists were already working on the periphery of the art world. In contrast to the other abstract artist collectives of the period, where equal footing for women was unusual, AAA provided a place of refuge for female artists. Through fifty-six works, Blurring Boundaries explores the artists’ astounding range of styles, including their individual approaches to the guiding principles of abstraction: color, space, light, material, and process.

More than eighty years after its founding, AAA continues to nurture and support a vibrant community of artists with diverse identities and wide-ranging approaches to abstraction. In celebration of this tradition, Blurring Boundaries: The Women of American Abstract Artists traces the extraordinary contributions of the female artists within AAA, from the founders to today’s practicing members. Included are works by historic members Perle Fine, Esphyr Slobodkina, Irene Rice Pereira, Alice Trumbull Mason, and Gertrude Greene, as well as current members such as Ce Roser, Irene Rousseau, Judith Murray, Alice Adams, Merrill Wagner and Katinka Mann.

An awe-inspiring celebration of this intergenerational group of artists—one that is both comprehensive and long overdue—Blurring Boundaries highlights the indelible ways in which the women of AAA have, for more than eighty years, shifted and shaped the frontiers of American abstraction.

Please contact TravelingExhibitions@ArtsandArtists.org for more information.

Urban Mapping: Public Space through the Lens of Contemporary Iranian Artists

Urban Mapping: Public Space Through the Lens of Contemporary Iranian Artists

By turning our gaze to public and private spaces, Urban Mapping: Public Space Through the Lens of Contemporary Iranian Artists shines a light on depths of the Iranian experience normally hidden from the outside world. In Iran, the tumult of modern history has coincided with an explosion in urbanization. Comprising 40 photographs and four video installations, the exhibition features the work of 10 essential voices in contemporary Iranian art who explore the notion of urban space as a nexus of social communication and political transformation: a place where personal and collective identity converge.

Curated by Gohar Dashti and toured by IA&A, Urban Mapping portrays the streets, squares, alleys, and private spaces of the city where particular and collective identity mingle, evolve, and are expressed in the shadow of oppressive forces. The result is a nuanced chronicle of urban life in Iran, where physical sites and urban environments become corollaries for shared experience—as well as unique access points to the inner lives and evolving collective consciousness of its citizens.

Please contact TravelingExhibitions@ArtsandArtists.org for more information.

Post Secret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God

PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God

“There are two kinds of secrets: those we keep from others, and the ones we hide from ourselves.”

– Frank Warren, founder and curator of PostSecret

“Warren’s archive of conscience-clearing confessions have arrived at his doorstep on everything from coffee cups and Rubik’s Cubes to funeral announcements, sonograms and naked Polaroids.”

– Carolin Vesely, WhatsOnWinnipeg

Following the success and popularity of the first PostSecret exhibition, International Arts & Artists presented PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God, a second exhibition of Frank Warren’s project, this one focusing exclusively on the subject of faith.

 

Frank Warren began the PostSecret Project in 2004 when, on a whim, he began handing out blank, self-addressed postcards to strangers, inviting them to “Send Frank a secret.” The only requirements were that the secret be truthful and not previously disclosed to anyone. The results were, to Frank, revelatory: the unsigned postcards, many of them embellished with drawings, prints, or magazine cut-outs, are funny, profound, disturbing; sometimes all at once. Warren’s unique public confessional appeals to our need for contrition and to our perennial curiosity about our fellow humans. He now receives over 1,000 anonymous secrets a week, and the blog he created to showcase them draws six million visitors a month.

 

PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death, and God featured more than 270 confessional postcards, unveiling a myriad of private thoughts, doubts, and feelings concerning spirituality and religion. This exhibition was inspired by a recent installation, All Faiths Beautiful: From Atheism to Zoroastrianism, Respect for Diversity of Belief, at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. Expressing the spirit of this new exhibition, museum director Rebecca Hoffberger states: “Whereas much has been made of interfaith discussion (surely meritorious) the deeper reality is that faith is never a monolithic thing, but rather a more personal, individualistic phenomenon.”

 

Visit the website at http://www.postsecretcommunity.com/lifedeathgod/

Carl Milles

C-Miles_sculptures

Carl Milles: Sculpture

“Carl Milles [is] acknowledged as the greatest Swedish sculptor of the 20th century.”

– Adam Dutkiewicz, Adelaide Metropolitan

“Milles mastered many forms of sculpting—from his first rough-hewed works influenced by Rodin, to later classical figures influenced by Greek and Roman sculpture and finally totally modern works.”

– Priscilla Fleming Vayda, San Gabriel Valley Newspapers

A Carl Milles retrospective of more than 40 sculptures, this exhibition traveled to venues in Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Russia, and Italy, among others. International Arts & Artists presented this extraordinary exhibition to venues in the U.S. and Canada.

A highly sought-after sculptor in Sweden and abroad, Milles was a dominant figure in the Swedish art world during the first half of the 20th century.

“Carl Milles may be described as a traditional as well as an innovative artist. In his choice of motifs he was traditional. Ancient Greek, Roman and Christian mythology as well as Swedish history were often his sources of inspiration. His art was always figurative and often narrative. The innovation was to be found in his personal interpretation of the motifs and that he, especially in his later years, raised up the sculptures, and with the aid of hidden steel constructions had them appear to be floating in the air.”
—Excerpt from www.millesgarden.se)