Curated

Ad Minoliti–Fantasias Modulares

Grinning triangles, lounging cows, and winking circles populate the vibrant, queer landscapes of Ad Minoliti’s imagined worlds. Trained as a painter, Minoliti draws on the rich legacy of geometric abstraction in her native country, Argentina, where geometry was used as a tool for picturing utopian alternatives. By combining abstraction… Continue reading »

In the Public Eye

Works of art exist in many places beyond museum walls. In the Public Eye explores the sometimes ambivalent relationship between audiences and artworks, especially in a public context. Between 1974 and 2001, the Williams College Museum of Art commissioned the three projects shown in this exhibition — Alice Aycock’s… Continue reading »

Hedera Mutante: Changing Ivy

Hedera mutante (Changing ivy) is about the shifting body of Hedera helix whose metamorphic form and changeable nature has generated curious representations and interpretations from Theophrastus’s 4th century B.C. account up to the present. The small book exhibition includes 16th century herbals including Leonard Fuchs’s New Herbal of… Continue reading »

RAFA ESPARZA: STARING AT THE SUN

Best known as a performance artist, Esparza began his career in visual arts as a painter, yet was unable to relate to the “old master” paintings and drawings that he studied as an undergraduate. He turned instead to performance, making art with his body among the landscapes of Los Angeles. Continue reading »

Extreme Nature

Extreme Nature! presents images of natural subjects—some documentary, some invented, and many a fusion of the two—across four thematic sections: Natural Disaster, Alluring Landscapes, Volatile Atmospheres, and Extremes Imagined. During the 19th century, news outlets detailed natural disasters around the globe, researchers defined modern scientific fields, and authors like Jules… Continue reading »

Other Uses–Ulysses Jenkins

The fifth screening in the Other Uses film series at EMPAC features the work of Ulysses Jenkins, whose videos examine television’s power to shape current events and historical episodes. Ulysses Jenkins is an artist who has given particular consideration to the portrayal of Black men in America. This installment… Continue reading »

Imagining American Union

America has always been in search of a more perfect union. The sheer diversity and size of the country, while a great blessing, is also a constant source of strife: how can so many different people agree on the common good? Who is allowed to craft this myth? How do… Continue reading »

Paragon: Embodying Ideals

The human form becomes a center of inquiry into notions of the ideal in this exhibition. Though typically manifested as physical perfection, the ideal can be embodied by alternative expressive means. In Russell Lee’s photograph of a homesteader, blemishes are reimagined as assets, deep furrows and the rough skin… Continue reading »

The Half-life of Love

This exhibition was curated by Margo Cohen Ristorucci MA ’17. Borrowing its title from the final lines of This Is How You Lose Her — Junot Díaz’s collection of short stories chronicling the fallout of infidelity — The Half-Life of Love explores the melancholic experience of romantic encounter: the heady… Continue reading »

Accession Number

Co-curated by Kerry Bickford MA ’17 and WCMA Director Tina Olsen. Between 1960 and 1962, WCMA acquired 396 works of art, including ancient Egyptian amulets, Chinese Qing dynasty vases, William Morris Hunt’s majestic painting of Niagara Falls, and much, much more. As with all objects that enter the collection, the… Continue reading »

State of Disobedience

Curated by Anna Kate Kelley, MA ’17, State of Disobedience is an exhibition that brings together works in a range of media by Matthew Ronay, Barkley Hendricks, Mary Ellen Mark, Patty Chang, Glenn Ligon, and others. These works speak to the power of art to provoke unexpected and contradictory… Continue reading »

The Space Between

The Space Between, curated by Nina Wexelblatt MA ’16, disperses installations by seven artists in interstitial spaces on the MASS MoCA campus to explore ways we can actively inhabit the state of “just passing through” the nooks and crannies that typically separate exhibitions. Continue reading »

Bibliothecaphilia

Bibliothecaphilia, curated by Allie Foradas MA '15, explores the medium and ethos of libraries: institutions straddling the public and private spheres, the escapism that they offer, their status as storehouses for books, and the way that these objects circulate. Continue reading »

Love to Love You

Curated by Martha Joseph MA '13, Love to Love You, on view at MASS MoCA, explores popular fan culture, devotion, and obsession through recent contemporary art. Continue reading »

Cosmologies

Cosmologies, curated by Elizabeth Rooklidge MA'13, considers a few of the many ways art explores the complex themes of the universe's origins, fate, meaning and physical laws. Continue reading »

Making Room: The Space Between Two and Three Dimensions

Making Room: The Space Between Two and Three Dimensions

Making Room: The Space Between Two and Three Dimensions, curated by Caitlin Condell MA '12 and Alexandra Nemerov MA '12 under the mentorship of Susan Cross MA '94, brings together an international group of young artists who combine two and three dimensional media to explore a liminal territory between the real and imaginary. Continue reading »

Copycat: Reproducing Works of Art

Copycat: Reproducing Works of Art, curated by Alexis Goodin MA '98 and James Pilgrim MA '12, explores the line between innovation and imitation, featuring fifty prints and photographs that are both original works of art and repetitions of drawings, prints, paintings, sculptures, and architecture created by other artists. Continue reading »

Recent Work: Aida Laleian and Steve Levin

Recent Work: Aida Laleian and Steve Levin was curated by Lucie Steinberg MA '12. In this exhibition, Laleian explores the tension that arises between the handmade and the mechanical while Levin's oil paintings create universes in which art and ephemera merge and mingle. Continue reading »