During this season, art spaces across Philadelphia step up to demonstrate the voices of underrepresented communities as the city prepares to celebrate the semi-quincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. While institutions and sports fans are celebrating, artists take this moment to reflect on America’s 250 years, and how definitions of liberty, equality, and justice have evolved beyond what the Founding Fathers drafted.
Entering the fourth floor of the Guggenheim, you are met with fields, mountains, lakes of the Bavarian Alps, daily objects, and people—bright, saturated colors held together by dark edges. The exhibition brings together landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, with a focus on Münter’s early Expressionist years alongside later paintings.
Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture examines the dynamic relationship between Thomas Gainsborough’s portraits and the culture of fashion in eighteenth-century Britain. The exhibition explores how style shaped not only the sitters’ attire but also the scale, composition, and facture of painted portraiture. Bringing together more than two dozen works from North America and the United Kingdom, the show spans Gainsborough’s four-decade career and marks the museum’s first special exhibition devoted to the artist—and the first focused on his portraiture in New York. Technical studies conducted with major conservation partners further illuminate his materials and process, linking his practice to the textiles, pigments, and luxury goods that defined the era.
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Installation view of Beamsplitter featuring Unnamed, Stable and True Penetrates Being with Sight in Hand. (Gavin Wilson) and Bleap (Lauren Anaïs Hussey)
The artwork in Beamsplitter, a six-person show at Field of Play, functions as a series of portals. Named for a scientific device that both transmits and reflects light, Beamsplitter opens up spectrums of material, concept, and time. Using a mix of large and small works from artists across generations, curator David Shaw expands the Gowanus gallery’s 9 x 15-foot footprint into a dynamic array of gateways. The recurrence of circular forms and apertures presents a menu of windows to the artist’s interiority or world-view. Field of Play’s signature astroturf floor provides an idiosyncratic arena to home these loci.
From Manhattan to Brooklyn, there is funny business happening in the galleries this holiday season, quite literally. Portraits of humorous creatures in a solo exhibition titled Donut Dog by Nancy Elsamanoudi at Doghouse Gallery are an opening act to the performances at the Brooklyn Comedy Collective. Slightly absurd paintings of “Lost” posters by Jeffrey Morabito crack a joke in a two-person exhibition titled Flat Theater at Space 776 (CLOSING DECEMBER 18th), while a humorous undertone sets the mood in the Paintings and Chairs group exhibition at Zepster Gallery.
Signal to Signal by Crystalle Lacouture at Trustman Gallery, Simmons College in Boston, MA.
As Boston’s fall season unfolds, the city comes alive with a vibrant tapestry of exhibitions, from the creative heart of the SoWA Arts District to the bustling streets of Back Bay. University galleries join the celebration, offering a rich array of materials and themes that captivate and inspire. While the leaves change color and the evenings grow cooler, the art scene radiates warmth, keeping the city’s creative pulse strong and steady. Here are some standouts this month.
Some Thoughts About Portrait Artist of the Year, a British TV Show
Portrait Artist of the Year 2019 Season 5, Episode 8, Sky Arts; Artist: Rebecca Train, Sitter: Daniel Lismore
One of my guilty pleasures is binge-watching creativity reality shows, especially from the UK. We’ve got the Great Pottery Throw Down, where the judge, a great hulking potter in overalls with a Wallace and Gromit face, bursts into tears every time he sees a beautifully made ceramic. There’s Blown Away, a glass-blowing show with lots of macho folk blowing glass sweatily. And there’s Landscape Artist of the Year. But my all-time favorite is Sky Art’s Portrait Artist of the Year.
Portrait of the artist in his studio in Poughkeepsie, NY. Image Credit: Matt Moment
In Carl Grauer’s latest suite of paintings for Carrie Haddad Gallery titled A QU(i)E(t)ER Interior, the Kansas-born visual artist elicits a disregard for distinction between the animate and the inanimate. Throughout, Grauer characterizes the home he shares with his husband Mario in Poughkeepsie, paying special attention to the majesty of light as he portrays his abode and the mementos that adorn it. Hearkening back to his Lost & Found series from 2017—wherein Grauer also documents everyday objects—he now contextualizes his personal artifacts in space and time. At once, he conveys his meditations on queerness, mortality, and the omnipresence of his mother, Janice, who passed away early in 2023 following her battle with Alzheimer’s.
A Conversation Between Christine Sullivan and Marianne Gagnier
Christine Sullivan, The Place Between, 44 x 32” oil/linen
This conversational exchange between artists Christine Sullivan and Marianne Gagnier was catalyzed by artist and writer Paul D’Agostino. He encouraged them to engage in dialogue with one another upon noting that they had both produced new bodies of work, right around the same time, featuring bird imagery. Taking this as impetus for a fertile discussion, Marianne and Christine decided to interview one another regarding themes of journeys and migration, and they discovered a number of surprising points of connection in their lives.
Entanglement (Paintings by Cecile Chong, Sculpture by Jack Henry, courtesy BravinLee Programs
Entanglement is a new exhibition of works by Jac Lahav, Cecile Chong, Jack Henry, and Erik Olson. The work ranges from the psychological to the sentimental with many references to the natural world. Much of the work is dissimilar, like a portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg wearing leopard print and a leafy necklace which stands in contrast to atmospheric encaustic paintings referencing Chinese landscape. Together these pieces take us deep into a post-pandemic psyche. The binding theme is plants, using nature as a metaphor for an internal growth many of us have experienced during the past two years. Entanglement opened on Thursday March 3rd and is up at BravinLee Programs in Chelsea New York until April 9th. We sat down with gallerist Karin Bravin and two of the artists to talk about the show.
