Museum of Modern Art

Zombie Modernism is Modernism without the authoritative stance of self-consciousness. There is no one home.

Jeffrey Gibson’s POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT is a newly commissioned immersive installation that will occupy MASS MoCA’s signature Building 5 gallery and follows Gibson’s highly celebrated United States representation at the 60th edition of La Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition opens on November 3.

Darrel Ellis & Miguel Ferrando, delves into the intertwined lives and artistic journeys of two figures who were more than just friends—they were creative soulmates. Though their careers spanned only a handful of years (Ellis died of AIDS in 1992 at 34, and Ferrando in 1996, at 38 ), their work, showcased side-by-side, offers a rare glimpse into a  unique artistic creative partnership from the 1980s.

Bert Stern’s children, Trista and Bret, comment on the exhibition, “We are thrilled to bring our father’s iconic 1962 shoot with Marilyn Monroe back to vivid life at the beautiful Sohn Fine Art Gallery. Marilyn was our dad’s dream girl, a unique mix of actress, model and ‘American goddess’ (as he called her) that he never encountered before or after. He told us, ‘Stars die, but light goes on forever.’ Through the magic of photography, Marilyn Monroe is still reaching us with her light today.”

The vibrant anti art movement Dada fizzled in Paris in 1922. A number of its exponents, artists and writers, regrouped with the launch of Surrealism just two years later. It broke out in Paris with competing manifestos published by Andre Breton and Yvan Goll. They each led rival factions but the more aggressive Breton prevailed. It proved to be the ,most popular and sustained movement of modernism. There are numerous current exhibitions celebrating its legacy.

Sarah Ganz Blythe, a highly respected curator, educator, and scholar with more than 25 years of museum experience, will be the new Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums, interim Provost John Manning announced Wednesday. Ganz Blythe is joining Harvard from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum, where she is currently deputy director, exhibitions, education, and programs.

Mark Morrisroe, who died at 30, was the most innovative of the artists shown as the Boston School at the ICA in an exhibition curated by Lea Gangitano. Since his premature death his reputation has continued to grow. This is his fifth solo with Clamp Gallery. His work has been acquired by numerous museums.

For under a million dollars, MFA curator Kenworth Moffett, presented Jackson Pollock's Lavender Mist to the acquisitions committee. In an epic pratfall the trustees under orders from the new director, Merrill Rueppel, turned it down. In a matter of weeks it was acquired by the National Gallery. The MFA later acquired two works by the abstract expressionist artist. Several years ago a Pollock, now owned by the Norton Museum, sold for $200 million.

STRIP-TOWER (2023) expands on Gerhard Richter's continued exploration of painting, photography, digital reproduction and abstraction and self-scrutinising approach that have occupied his practice for over six decades.

For over 30 years, Yinka Shonibare CBE has used Western art history and literature to explore contemporary culture and national identities. Suspended States is the artist’s first London solo exhibition in over 20 years. It showcases new works, interrogating how systems of power affect sites of refuge, debates on public statues, the ecological impact of colonialisation and the legacy of imperialism on conflict and consequential attempts at peace.

Prominently located at the western entrance to the Williams College campus and the town, the new Williams College Museum of Art is conceived to serve the College, the local community, and visitors to the Berkshires through a cluster of four program areas. While slightly set apart like pavilions, the better to accommodate their multiple uses, the program areas are unified through their materials, their openness to the natural setting, their organization around a central gathering place, and a distinctive overarching roof that shelters them all.

On the cusp of WWII David Smith created a series of fifteen, dinner plate scaled, bronze relief sculptures. A gift from his estate fourteen bronzes and one on extended loan have been donated to the Harvard Art Museums. There is irony that Medals of Dishonor are displayed on a campus engulfed in responses to inappropriate remarks by its President, Dr Claudine Gay, before Congress. Under pressure she has resigned. Because of war, and atrocities on both sides in Israel and Gaza, both Jewish and Islamic students proclaim that they do not feel safe on college campuses.

In collaboration with curator/designer Martina Salisbury, The Friends of Beattie-Powers Place presents Moments in Time :: Pictures 1965-2023. The intimate salon installation offers a rare opportunity to view a selection of over 60 of Gerard Malanga’s photographs, including portraits of some of the most illustrious artists, musicians, literary figures, and cultural icons of the last six decades.  ?

Near the 60th anniversary of the movement’s founding, this exhibition highlights the contributions of four pioneering Japanese artists—Shigeko Kubota (1937–2015), Yoko Ono (b. 1933), Takako Saito (b. 1929), and Mieko Shiomi (b. 1938)—and contextualizes their role within Fluxus and the broader artistic movements of the 1960s and beyond.  

Trembling Earth features seventy-five objects, ranging from brilliantly hued landscapes and three stunning self-portraits, to an extensive selection of his innovative prints and drawings. The exhibition includes more than thirty works from MUNCH’s world-renowned collection, major pieces from other museums in the USA and Europe, and nearly forty paintings, prints, and drawings from private collections, many of which are rarely exhibited. The Clark is the only American venue for this stunning exhibition.

Pablo Picasso was the most famous and influential artist of the 20th Century. The marking of fifty years from his death has created numerous global exhibitions. Critics have waded in with evaluations that acknowledge the work but deplore the man. Simply put it begs the question. Was Pablo Picasso and asshole?

Now 82, at long last the Native American artist, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, is the subject of a retrospective at a major New York Museum. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Memory Map will be on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from April 19 to August 13, 202

After more than a year of bargaining, the Whitney Museum Union of Local 2110 UAW have reached a tentative agreement with the Museum on a first union contract. Union members are in the process of voting on the contract.

The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts presents Please Stay Home, an exhibition featuring the work of Darrel Ellis, Leslie Hewitt, and Wardell Milan. An additional contextual installation will include photographs by the artist’s father, Thomas Ellis, and close friend, artist Allen Frame. Centered on a less recognized body of Ellis’s work and featuring new commissions by Hewitt and Milan,

In 1936 Henry Luce bought Life Magazine and transformed it into a publication where pictures told the story. At his command to convey a narrow white supremacist fantasy of America's global dominance he employed the legendary photo journalists of his generation. Luce also published Time Magazine, Fortune Magazine and later Sports Illustrated. With a weekly circulation in the millions Life initially had a cover price of ten cents which at that time got you a cup of coffee. LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts captures its essence with an engaging but ultimately disappointing exhibition.

Unionized employees of MASS MoCA voted by a 96% vote to engage in a one-day work stoppage on August 19, 2022. Employees will be picketing the Museum all day and asking visitors to express support for a fair contract for staff.

Mary Ann Unger died at the age of 53 in 1998 after 14 years of battling cancer. As a member of the Guerrilla Girls, formed in 1985, she fought for equity for women in the art world. While she received grants and commissions, the exhibition organized by Horace Ballard for the Williams College Museum of Art, makes a compelling case for reconsideration of her work.

Through September 18 the Clark Art Institute is presenting the blockbuster exhibition Rodin in the United States: Confronting the Modern. More documentary than retrospective it tells the tale of Rodin in America and his great collectors. All but one of the 50 sculptures and 25 drawings are loans from American museums and private collections. This is the must see exhibition of summer in the Berkshires.

Out of the blue I got a call from Ira Kaufman in Israel. The name was vaguely familiar but didn’t click until he said “It’s me from The Brata Gallery.” Then it all locked in. By phone and e mail we recalled the Downtown scene in New York in the 1960s as well as the Figurative Expressionist and Rhino Horn movements.

The Rodin exhibition explores changing perceptions of the sculptor’s work, beginning with the first acquisition made by an American institution—the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1893—and Rodin’s controversial debut at Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition in the same year. The exhibition examines the collecting frenzy of the early twentieth century, promoted by noted philanthropist Katherine Seney Simpson, avant-garde performer Loïe Fuller, and collector Alma de Bretteville Spreckels