Photo: Anita M. Harris

I was privileged to  preview  the stunning new Whitney Museum in New York City, which has moved from its Marcel Breuer-designed building on Madison Avenue at 78th Street to 99 Gansevoort St. Scheduled to open to the public on May 1, the  225,000 sq.ft. glass-and steel building designed by architect Renzo Piano is located in the old meat packing district, a stone’s throw from the Hudson River.

It has already attracted a  number of restaurants and upscale  shops, says friend and New York arts writer Terry Trucco.

Trucco was wowed by the current exhibit–“America is Hard to See”– which is comprised of more than 400 works from the Whitney’s own collection (now numbering 22,000 works by some 3,000 artists). 

The exhibit spans the entire building, occupying both interior and exterior spaces. It’s organized into a series of 23 “chapters”, each titled after an individual work.

It begins on the glass-enclosed first floor, with an introduction to the Whitney’s early history. (The museum was founded by sculptor and arts patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1931.)  The exhibit then moves to the eighth floor, and proceeds down to the 5th and, finally to the third, with work from a different period on each floor.

According to a Whitney brochure: The exhibition reexamines the history of art in the United States from 1900 to the present. It elaborates the themes, ideas, beliefs and passions that have galvanized American artists in their struggle to work within and against established conventions, often directly engaging their political and social contexts. Numerous pieces that have rarely, if ever, been shown appear alongside beloved icons in a conscious attempt to unsettle assumptions about the American art canon.

The title, “America Is Hard to See,”  comes from a Robert Frost Poem and a political documentary by Emile de Antonio.The show constitutes “a kind of collective memory–representing a range of individual sometimes conflicting attitudes toward what American art might be or mean or do at any given moment.”

I very-much liked the numerous “surprises” in the show: elevators opening onto vibrant wallways;

statues looking at paintings; 

guards willing to pose near sculpture of guards;

whimsical works amidst the profound,

and elevator interiors that are commissioned artworks by the late Richard Artschwager.

But I was blown away by the architectural and design elements of the structure–making the museum itself a work of art.

Inside,  I loved the airy, expansive galleries,

creative placement of work,

and

from windows, views of the Hudson river, New Jersey and New York city scapes.

Looking down–installations of outdoor galleries by artists such as Mary Hellman.

And, on the the outside–looking up– wonderful shapes, against the sky.

Throughout, there was an air of festivity, with helpful guards who clearly enjoyed their new workspace, and in the first floor cafe,  staffers  taking part in a celebration of their own.

The Whitney opens to the public on May 1. “America is Hard to See” runs through September 27, 2015.

–Anita M. Harris

Anita M Harris, a writer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA, reported on the arts and other topics for national public television. Currently, she is managing director of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations firm. She is also the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity, and Ithaca Diaries, (Cambridge Common Press, 2014) .

c.  Anita M. Harris 2015

Last winter, New York’s Metropolitan Opera announced a 2014-15 season that would include its first production of a John Adams’ 1991 work, The Death of Klinghoffer.   The opera portrays the October, 1985 hijacking of a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, by members of the Palestine Liberation Front who were seeking the release of 50 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.   A vacationing American Jew, the wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer, was shot by the hijackers.  His body was thrown overboard.

Controversy and protests began almost immediately after the season announcement.   The opera’s libretto, by Alice Goodman, is the source of much complaint and has been cherry-picked for lines deemed offensive and anti-Semitic.   Goodman’s text — poetic, often obscure, and perhaps ambivalent in its meaning — begins with alternating choruses that express the feelings of “Exiled Palestinians” and then “Exiled Jews.”   Besides the Klinghoffers, the other four named roles are those of the hijackers.  (Other characters have generic names, e.g., The Captain.)   By identifying the Palestinians and giving them voice, the charges go, Goodman humanizes and elevates them, while placing their politics at center stage.   Protesters even objected to the title of the opera, asking why it was called The Death of Klinghoffer and not The Murder of Klinghoffer.

These objections were accompanied by repeated calls for cancellation, as well as for a general boycott of the Met.  By spring, General Manager Peter Gelb had acquiesced to at least one demand, calling off a high-definition transmission that would have played in movie theaters around the world.    The summer’s Gaza incursion (by Israel) raised the temperature even higher:  the protesters were certain that the eight scheduled performances of Klinghoffer would provoke further incidents of anti-Semitism, in addition to those that had been reported in Europe throughout those fraught months.

In late September, opening night of the Met season featured fancy dress inside and demonstrations outside.   New York synagogue bulletins urged members to express their displeasure by writing to Mr. Gelb.  The New York Times reported that some individuals had gone further, actually finding ways to reach the performers themselves through threatening messages to their managers.  On October 20, the night of the production opening, protesters sat in a row of wheelchairs positioned opposite Lincoln Center Plaza.

Art, specifically opera, suddenly mattered.  It had become the center of a nasty, noisy, public debate.  Some music journalists reveled in the attention and in the moment of relevance for a 400-year-old form.  I, however, was incensed by the assault, and embarrassed by the willful ignorance of those who ranted while freely admitting that they had never seen the work in question.

That I love opera is often difficult to explain to those who don’t care for the sound of trained classical singing, let alone those who find it a ridiculous mode of expression.  It is improbable, but also compelling and, on the best nights, transporting.

Well-meaning friends, good people who don’t care about opera or opera-going, suddenly wanted my personal take on the argument, a ruling on the allegations of inherent anti-Semitism in Klinghoffer.   I was frustrated by their questions and by my inability to respond.   Were I to answer, I am sure that I would confound their expectations and might even offend my questioners.

I have been looking forward to seeing Klinghoffer for months now.    I’m no fan of Minimalism in music; I actively dislike the monotonous work of Philip Glass.    Although I haven’t studied the music in depth, I find that Adams offers greater texture and variety — more to intrigue the ear.  A few years ago, his Nixon in China made a deep and lasting impression on me.   Why wouldn’t I be curious to hear the next work in the line, an opera that many deem even more successful as music-drama?

Again, my friends don’t care about this.  Most aren’t really even concerned with the politics of art, only with the question of possible anti-Semitism which, in this case, is probably closer to insufficient focus on Jewish characters or inadequately expressed sympathy for their point of view.

I am not apolitical in the least, but my politics are my own, my taste in music is my own, and the terms of my Jewish identity are my own, too.   I am often inclined to choose art over strict tribal allegiance.   Richard Wagner was, by all accounts, a reprehensible man who wrote glorious music.  Many other arguably great composers were probable or certain anti-Semites.  Of this, there is nothing to be said, no dilemmas or choices to weigh.  These were the commonly-held opinions of the day.  Over time, the art has outshone and overshadowed the failings of the artists, patrons, and societies.

I doubt that The Death of Klinghoffer is “anti-Semitic,” if such a thing can be said of music itself.  It may dramatize conflicting points of view, which is usually desirable in the context of theater.    I haven’t seen the opera yet but, once I have, there might be more to say.  (Check this space in a few weeks.)   For now, I hope to be moved:  to me, that is an essential part of watching live performance.   I may feel inclined to anger, not because I expect to find the representation to be unfair, but because the acts themselves were cruel and senseless, and because music and drama can heighten emotion.    But whatever my response, I will have seen and judged Klinghoffer for its success as a work of lyric theater – my own passion – and not as an affirmation of anyone else’s politics.

Rachel Yurman ©2014

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, based in Cambridge, MA. 

The Cambridge Art Association’s 70TH exhibition year, opened Friday, September 12, with the 70th Fall Salon, CAA announced in a press release, yesterday.

The salon  runs through September 26, 2014, in both the Kathryn Schultz Gallery (25 R Lowell St)   and
University Place Galleries (125 Mt. Auburn St). Awards were presented on Friday, September 12.

CAA Event Calendar

The opening  honored the memory of longtime member and supporter Mary Schein, whose husband, Edgar Schein, has provided longtime sponsorship and support of the Fall Salon. The 70th Fall
Salon features artwork in a range of media from 144 Cambridge Art Association Artist Members.

Of the prizewinners, who were each awarded $250, Edgar Shein writes:
Jim Kociuba (Cambridge, MA) – November Rain, oil on canvas
This painting captures the style, color and content of what I always thought Mary appreciated—gentle
colors, a simple natural beautiful theme of the receding stream, and a softness of style we associated with some of the paintings of Vuillard and Redon both of whom Mary loved. I have to admit after looking them up on Google that much of their work was anything but gentle and soft, but when they did achieve it, it had a special quality that always attracted us greatly.

Susan Burgess (Cambridge, MA) – Maine Retreat, oil on canvas
This painting is a wonderful reminder of the summers Mary and I spent in Maine. We divided our time
between Bethel, where I worked, and the ocean that she loved, having grown up in Carmel, California. The two coasts are totally different, with the young California coast plunging steeply into the sea, while the geologically much older Maine coast gently eases into the ocean as this painting so elegantly shows. Our favorite places were Boothbay Harbor and Rockland where we spent several summers at the grand old Samoset Hotel. The peaceful and calming and eternal vista of this painting could be seen over and over again all along the coast.

Upcoming exhibits: 

• Time Travelers – a small group show with work by Stephen Martin, Conny Goelz-Schmitt, and Lorraine Sullivan October 2–30, 2014. Opening reception, Thursday, October 2, 6-8pm at Kathryn Schultz Gallery
• 70th Members Prize Show, juried by Al Miner (Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)October 10 – November 15, 2014. Opening reception: Friday, October 10, 6-8pm at University Place Gallery
• Motion Envisioned – a small group show with work by Bea Grayson, Bob Hesse, and Ruth LieberherrNovember 4-29, 2014. Opening reception, Saturday, November 15, 1-3pm at Kathryn Schultz Gallery
• PLATINUM – Northeast Open Show, juried by Alise Upitis (Assistant Curator, MIT List Visual Art Center)December 4, 2014 – January 16, 2015. Opening reception Friday, December 5, 6-8pm at the Kathryn Schultz Gallery and University Place Gallery.

–Anita M. Harris
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm based in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA. 

Anita Harris is a communications consultant and the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Femninine Identity (2014) and the forthcoming Ithaca Diaries, Coming of Age in the 1960s. (Spring, 2015).

When I checked out Yuvee, Inc.’s newly launched “map of the Web” for visual arts in the greater Boston area, I was pleased to find links to the various museums and galleries laid out on a single page that showed museums’ geographic relationship to one another–and leading to brief summaries of each museum’s collection, its Twitter, Pinterest, and other social sites, as well as its address and phone number.

But I was more than pleased–actually, I was  amazed to find a section devoted to public art –including small galleries and installations– some of which are in quite out-of the way places. For example, one link, to the City of Cambridge’s public art tour,   took me to a mesmorizing video installation I’d first discovered after attending a Yoga class at the youth center  on Huron Avenue.

The video, by The Cantabridgians”, by Michael Oatman, includes 23 1-minute portraits of Cambridge Residents posed with objects in locations of their choice, designed to provide a sense of them in their particular neighborhoods.

Other links from  Web Hub’s map of the “public”  visual arts go to the City of Boston Public Art sites and the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

The Boston Art Map, accessible at maps.webhub.mobi/boston-art, is one of the first sites brought to “life” by newly launched “Yuvee, Inc.,” under the auspices of “WebHub” and “A Social Atlas of the Web.”   According to Yuvee founder Tim Higginson, WebHub is focused on enabling the next generation of Web experience for the “cross device”‘ lifestyle in which individuals use smartphones to access the web.

“An atlas is a collection of geographic maps, which help people find their way from A to B, learn and explore what is in an area and see connections between places, Higginson explains.  “Maps” of the Web do the same thing for people who are using the Internet. They give people an Instant, organized way to find and explore a whole of resources and the ability to switch easily among maps on different topics. At http://WebHub. mobi, “anyone can make a map of the Web on any topic,  and share the map with others.

According to Higginson, the map concept is ” a vast improvement” over traditional search engines, which deliver long, linear lists with items separated from the others, and require individual searches and sifting through pages of results. Such lists do not convey interrelationships and structure among items. Other resources, such as Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook and Youtube tend to focus on single types of information. In contrast, he explains , “maps” of the Web can pull all these relevant items together in a structure, organized and annotated way, in a single URL that is always available from anyone’s smartphone, tablet, laptop, pc or other Web-enabled device.

The maps are independent of browser and OS, do not require downloads, syncing, re-doing searches, typing urls, or even knowing a  know a URL on a topic covered by a map to get an in-depth experience of the Web on that topic. What is more, Higginson says, “WebHub is free and respects its users’ privacy. “We hope this Boston Art ‘map of the Web’ gives people a richer, faster, easier way to learn about and enjoy all the incredible things that are going on in the visual arts in and around Boston..and that people enjoy all the other maps available at www..webhub.mobi.”

I note that it’s possible to advertise on WebHub, which, Higginson says, is its business model.

–Anita M. Harris New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations and marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.

At the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem through September 1.

The Peabody Essex Museum’s major summer exhibition, Turner & the Sea is, in the broadest sense, about the maritime painting tradition.  It is also about the evolution of this great artist’s particular vision of earthly elements, and the extent to which that vision influenced – and was influenced by – others.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), a star of the academic system and a rebel against its constraints, was an artist who annoyed contemporary critics even while inspiring champions like John Ruskin.  Ruskin’s Modern Painters (1843), which became a classic of Victorian literature in its own right, helped to place Turner in the Pantheon of British painters.

Concentrating on sea paintings, the PEM show includes a number of major canvases, several on loan from UK institutions, a roomful of astonishing watercolors, and a handful of works by such influencers as Claude Lorrain and admirers like Constable, Sargent, and others.   Grand picture postcards like Venice:  The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore (1834) and monumental historical works like The Battle of Trafalgar (1805), paired with De Loutherberg’s Lord Howe’s Action (1793), provide a pleasing degree of “ooh” and “aah.”

Turner, inducted into the Royal Academy at a youthful 26, is associated with the age of Romanticism, with its penchant for “the sublime” and its dual consciousness of the terror and fragility of the natural world.   The Venice and Trafalgar paintings – one all glassy beauty and the other complete turmoil at sea — are appropriate touchstones of the academic as well as the romantic.  Turner, however, is an artist who seems to have mastered convention in order, eventually, to flout and override it.

His early devotion to watercolor, his spectacular abilities in that supposedly lesser medium, are apparent in an array of sketches and studies from the Liber Studiorum (1807-16) that greet us in one of the first galleries.  Looking at his later works in oils, the light and transparent underpainting suggest the remarkable, even triumphant, adaptation of watercolor technique.

We have the chance to see how others – 17th-century Dutch painters like Ruysdale and Willem van de Velde the Elder — approached the seascape and maritime subjects, applying restrained palettes and exquisite control to create moody works of great precision and detail.  In an essay on Turner in Looking at Pictures, Kenneth Clark discusses the difficulty of capturing the constant movement of waves.   Whether in the stylization of Chinese painting or Japanese prints, the almost algorithmic precision of DaVinci, or these Dutch seascapes, one is conscious of an attempt to regulate, to govern the ungovernable.   

Turner was, in his own right, a commander of the seas, to say nothing of notoriously difficult water-based media.  The watercolor and gouache Pembroke Castle (first exhibited in 1806) sets detailed renderings of the daily catch — mussels and fish scattered on the sand – against a majestic expanse of sky.   There is virtuosity here, but also a sense of freedom and a suggestion of the infinite that takes us far beyond the limits of the Dutch horizon.  

Motion defines Turner as light does the Impressionists.  His depiction of moving water, along with the even more evanescent steam and fire, set his work apart.   Flicking paint with the aplomb and seemingly random motions of an abstract expressionist, Turner was an action painter no less than Jackson Pollock.

The principal subject of Clark’s chapter, Snowstorm – Steamboat off a Harbor’s Mouth, is actually on loan for this exhibition.  In this 1842 work, a ship is nearly engulfed by steam, snow, mist, and foam.  Clark hints that Snowstorm may reflect the painter’s mental state.  He says, curiously, that “no one ever saw him at work,” as though there was some chicanery or secret amanuensis that history has kept hidden from us.    But the mystery of Turner’s painting is really the miracle of perception – not how he painted, but how we see.That mere flecks of color can suggest so much to the eye and brain, and that we can translate them so readily, is what astonishes.  

The late paintings have, of course, confounded many viewers.  Here, the PEM show offers a response in the form of Turner’s late watercolors.  Washes of color with a few figurative dashes, their simplicity seems to offer a key to the minimalism and near-abstraction of the late paintings.  They also bring us full circle, back to the medium that so inspired this artist and was the initial proving ground for his technique.   

The exhibition feels substantial yet doesn’t overwhelm, and its efforts to contextualize Turner through the work of others are instructive.   It makes its points deftly and without overstatement – that, and a rare chance to see this range of work, should point the way to Salem before the summer’s end.

–c. Rachel Yurman, 2014

Turner & the Sea was produced by the National Maritime Museum, part of Royal Museums Greenwich, London. Supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch and The Lynch Foundation, and The Manton Foundation provided generous support.

The East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum also provided support.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations and marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.

Warren Croce preparing to hide artwork.

Belmont artist  Warren Croce,   , winner of the Cambridge Art Association‘s 2014 National Prize for Best Mixed Media Piece,  is promoting his work by hiding a piece each month in a Boston area business–and  offering residents clues to find the work–which finders may then keep.

Croce’s first “hunt” began in February; the third will start next week. Typical clues, available on Croce’  Facebook page  or via his newsletter ,  include maps of the general vicinity and a photo from inside the business where the art is hidden, according to a recent media release. The only “payment“  is to post on Croce’s Facebook page. 

In February, Croce gave away “Three Wise Monkeys: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, “ a series of acrylic monkey faces sprayed on board with newspaper clippings strategically pasted over their eyes, ears, and mouths, found at L‘Aroma Café in West Newton, MA. His second giveaway was a  triptych of face, found at the Bourbon Coffee in Cambridge. 

“I like giving art away,” Croce says. ” I love the joy people get from finding a piece of my artwork. Hey, you only get back from this life what you put into it.”

Trey Klein, who found the  piece at L’Aroma Cafe, said “This was a fun game and these pieces are awesome.”

Llan Levy, who found the piece at Bourbon Coffee in Porter Square,  called the hunt  “Food for the soul.”

Some “hunters”  have posted  photo series or chronological poem-like accounts of their searches on Croce’s Facebook page.

Croce’s winning Cambridge Art Associate piece, called “There is nothin’ like a dame,”  is comprised of twelve 1950‘s album covers glued onto board with a Madmen-esque figure painted over them in acrylic, pastel, and gel.  The exhibition runs until June 26. 

–Anita M. Harris
Anita Harris is an author, photographer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA.
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group,  an award-winning PR and marketing firm in Kendall Square.

The 2014 Whitney Biennial was  excoriated as “BS” by the Huffington Post, Even the BBC called the show “confounding and exasperating.”  It points out that the  the 77th edition of the Whitney Biennial begins with a question, asked at the very start of the text that greets visitors: “What is contemporary art in the United States now?” After seeing the work of 103 artists and groups on display here, a BBC critic suggests, “you might not be any closer to answering that enquiry.”

Because I had only a few hours to spare,   friends told me not to bother with anything but the exhibits on the fourth floor. But when I arrived at the museum, a tour of the third floor was about to start so I hopped on board. I’m glad I did.

Docent Janice Lieberman explained that the third floor exhibit, curated by Stuart Comer, Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at the Museum of Modern Art, was meant to show transitions, the blurring of boundaries, changing concepts of internal and external, of gender and sexuality, of political and geographical economy and environment, and the interplay of images and text embodied in art. “What’s an artist, what is art is up for grabs,” she said. “We’re living in a strange time–the disappearing plane off Maylasia, for example, and the shipwreck off Korea.”  She pointed out that it’s a time of transition for the Whitney itself, because the current Breuer Building, built in 1966, will close this summer, and the museum will move to a new highrise at the tip of Manhattan,”

Lieberman explained all of the above in the hallway off the elevator of the 3rd floor, where work by Ken Okiishi is displayed on screens resembling large ipods–on which the artist superimposed digital images on old video,then smeared the screen with what looked to me like finger paint. As Okiishi explained to Interview Magazine:  “I had already been making straight video works, and then I asked, ‘What if I move even further outside of the screen and work on top of the screen?” According to Lieberman, museum visitors often take photos of this work. thus further blurring boundaries by becoming a part of the work. I dutifully took a photo (top left) but to be honest, was not blown away by these. .   The New England Puritan in me was boggled by photos of Zackary Drucker and Rhys Ernst, a man and a woman who “fell for each other,” as they each switched gender.  Disconcerting and meant to be. I could have lived without the photo of their bare behinds, each with a band aid covering the site of a hormone injection. 

“Meh” to Canopy Canopy Canopy: .com–the work of a collaborative group interested in the history of objects and collections: showing original wooden stand, a reproduction, though others in my tour group were quite impressed by the 3-d printed version o the same.

At one point, when we were standing in front of a workbench amidst sand, tools and other objects, Lieberman said, frankly, “I don’t get this,” I’m not sure if it was she or someone in our group who suggested it was a reference to environmental change. Soon after that, Lieberman warned us that the exhibit gets “stranger and stranger.”

“The American Dream,”  for example, is a collection of paintings by Keith Mayerson, who, Lieberman explained, is a psychoanalyst’s son whose dreams were  to show his work in the Whitney–and  to come out as gay. As described on the Whitney Website, “The salon-style installation includes images of Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull, Abraham Lincoln, and others, and links these stories to those of the nation and of Mayerson.  Paintings of Superman and popular musicians such as Marvin Gaye and the Beatles are juxtaposed with depictions of the artist as a child with his family…and of Mayerson with his husband, Andrew Madrid.”  The beautifully composed paintings, with striking brush strokes, hang close together on walls from floor to ceiling. More power to Meyerson and his dream, I say. I  also say that it was not MY dream to look up and see a large painting of  actor James  Dean, in the nude, masturbating.

Less vibrant, less provocative, are hats, placed on the floor as islands on a piece of cloth, meant,  to show that New York City is no longer the center of the art world–and that the US is now part of the Pacific Rim. .Another set of three attached hats  is used in performance art to show, when worn by  three people, what it’s like to try to move anything politically, Lieberman explained.

I found the painting, drawing and tapestry of 89-year-old Lebanese poet Etel Adnan quite inspiring. Adnan, who now lives in California,”  makes “accordion-fold books, or leporellos, that meld visual and verbal observation, fusing the artist’s parallel practices in painting and writing as she transcribes poems and records unfolding landscapes and urban spaces,” .according to the Whitney writeup.

Before we entered the last room in the 3rd floor exhibit, Lieberman said that, at first, she’d found its contents shocking. ” I couldn’t believe I’d ever actually show it to people,”  filled as it was, with images conveying violence and sex.  In fact, she added, the museum  considered putting a warning sign in front of the doorway. Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard, “goes to the extreme to show the extreme.It’s an example of an artist going to the top to jolt you.” Then, she shrugged. “People love it,” she said. And in we went. The large room  was crowded with museum visitors and mannequins standing or sprawled on couches and chairs, amidst mobiles, hanging art, and stuff strewn all over the place–so chaotically that I couldn’t focus.  When I heard someone exclaim to a friend,  “Look at this,”  I did so. She was holding up a pair of stuffed, beachball sized gonads hanging at either end of a long string.

I decided it was time to leave, thanked Lieberman for her frankness and humor, and asked if I could quote her in this piece. “Yes,” she replied. Then she  suggested mentioning that, in “real life”, she’s a psychoanalyst –clearly the perfect qualification for guiding people through this show.

Incidentally, I did also visit the fourth floor, curated by Michelle Grabner, an artist and Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Grabner’s stated goal was to “develop a curriculum that presents identifiable themes… that are currently established in the textures of contemporary aesthetic, political, and economic realities.” She prioritized “contemporary abstract painting by women; materiality and affect theory; and art as strategy—in other words, conceptual practices oriented toward criticality.”

I found the work she chose more accessible and understandable but far less provocative than the work shown on the third floor. I liked Sheila Hicks “Pillar of Inquiry.” The work of the 80-year-old Nebraska artist melds the weaver’s craft and fine art. (Photo, left,by Bill Orcut)t. Was also struck by Sterling Ruby’s large, colorful ceramic vessels filled with remnants of earlier works that he had deemed failures or which had accidentally blown up during firing” As explained on the Whitney Website, the finished works contain notions of archaeological excavation, reanimating his own objects exhumed from the past into new, living forms.  I did wonder if the docent leading the fourth-floor tour I was kidding when she told us Grabner wanted to award “best-in-how” to a “12×12″or so z-shaped- sculpture coated to look like foam rubber– on a pedastal, with a string pulled through it.

I was sorry to miss Grabner’s selections of women’s abstract expressionists–and also the second exhibit floor, chosen  by Anthony Elms, Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.

Donna De Salvo, Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs at the Whitney, noted: “Together, the 103 participants offer one of the broadest and most diverse takes on art in the United States that the Whitney has offered in many years.”

While many critics dumped on the show as a whole, I  thought it was fun.

The Biennial runs through May 25, 2014.

–Anita M. Harris

Anita Harris is a writer, photographer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA. New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm in Kendall Square. Cambridge.

The Cambridge Art Association’s 13^th National Prize Show,will open May 13, CAA announced today. The show will exhibit the work of 82 artists chosen by Dr. James Welu, Director Emeritus of the Worcester Art Museum from among 383 artists from 13 states.  Prize winners, include artists from Lexington, Belmont, Duxbury, Lexington Providence, Roslindale, Providence, and West Yarmouth.

The show will run  through June 26, 2014, at both the Kathryn Schultz Gallery (25 Lowell Street, Cambridge) and the University Place Gallery (124 Mt Auburn Street, Cambridge).  An opening reception will be held on Friday, May 16, 6-8pm, in both galleries.

The prizewinners are:

Best in Show: Zoe Perry-Wood (Lexington, MA)

Mixed Media Prize: Warren Croce (Belmont, MA)

Photography Prize: Dorothy Pilla (Duxbury, MA)

Painting Prize: Wilson Hunt, Jr. (Roslindale, MA)

Sculpture/3D Prize: Jesse Thompson (Providence, RI)

Work on Paper Prize: Carol Flax (West Yarmouth, MA)

Welu, who selected  the exhibitors and the award-winners said: “Jurying the National Prize Show was exciting and challenging–exciting to see such a wide range of art from across the country, but challenging to narrow a field of over a thousand entries to an exhibition of about 85 works.”

In jurying the show,  Welu  focused on  visual impact and originality with the goal of representing the variety of media that was submitted, he said.  “I was particularly attentive to the artists’ choice and use of medium for expressing the subject of their work. It was reassuring to see so many fresh and innovative approaches to a number of traditional subjects.” Welu said he was also impressed by the number of outstanding abstract paintings.

Previous jurors have included: Toby Kamps (Menil Collection) Malcolm Rogers (MFA, Boston); Clara Kim (Senior Curator, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis); Joseph Thompson (Director, MassMoCA); Lisa Dennison (Guggenheim); Marc Pacter (Director, National Portrait Gallery); Robert Fitzpatrick (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago), among others.

–Anita M. Harris
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA. Anita Harris is the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity, the forthcoming Ithaca Diaries–and managing director of the Harris Communications Group.