Fall Arts Preview: ICA Picks for Visual Art in Boston

From beloved artists who’ve appeared at the ICA to up-and-comers we can’t wait to check out, ICA Staff share Boston-area picks not to miss.

Converging Lines: Eva Hesse And Sol Lewitt
Addison Gallery of American Art
Through Jan 10, 2016

Two of the late 20th century’s most important artists, Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt shared a close and generative friendship. If curator Veronica Robert’s insightful, generous catalog is any indication, this exhibition will not only elucidate the artists’ shared and diverging aesthetic and conceptual concerns, but also their friendship, an oft-overlooked aspect of artistic creativity also at the center of the ICA’s upcoming Leap Before you Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957. —Dan Byers, Senior Curator

I also recommend Converging Lines: Eva Hesse And Sol Lewitt! The selected art creates a correspondence focused on a visual/personal relationship illuminating the genesis of conceptual art. —Ruth Quattlebaum, Tour Guide

Laura McPhee, The Home and the World
Carroll and Sons
Through Oct 31

As a photographer myself, I’ve been a big fan of Laura McPhee’s work for a while now, especially her projects River of No Return and Guardians of Solitude. She teaches at MassArt and she’s one of my favorite Boston area photographers. I just learned about this series The Home and the World, in which she photographs gorgeous domestic architecture in Kolkata, India. I can’t wait to check it out at the gallery. Her prints are beautiful and if you want to see all the marvelous details, you really need to see them in person. —Chris Hoodlet, Membership Manager

Language vs Language
Sol Koffler Graduate Student Gallery at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence
Sep 15–Oct 11

The Sol Koffler Graduate Student Gallery is a great place to see what RISD students are putting out throughout the year. This fall’s exhibition, Language vs Language, is a group exhibition exploring “language, translation, and intercultural space.” RISD’s grad student open studio events are amazing also—the chance to see hundreds of artists’ work—but details for the fall event haven’t been released yet, it seems. —Africanus Okokon, Interpretive Media and Adult Education Coordinator

The Krieg Cycle: Käthe Kollwitz and World War I
The Davis Museum at Wellesley College
Through Dec 13

I’m fascinated by woodcuts in general—and how they so evocatively show the traces of the artist’s hand and the hours of painstaking work. I can’t wait to see this exhibition of woodcuts by the wrenching East German artist Käthe Kollwitz from her print series Krieg (War), published nine years after her son was killed in battle in World War I. I expect to be awed, inspired, rattled, heartbroken, and galvanized, in equal measure. — Kris Wilton, Creative Content Manager

Image: Käthe Kollwitz, The Parents (plate 3) from the portfolio “War,” 1923. © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

Makeover!
Sübsamsøñ
Oct 7–24

Sübsamsøñ and the BLAA (Boston LGBTQIA Artist Alliance) teamed up for Makeover!, a show of 18 Boston-affiliated or -based artists whose work considers reshaping, modifying, and updating the self. With the recent loss of a permanent space, the BLAA is undergoing its own makeover and this exhibition is an exciting first look at the organization’s new direction. [Disclosure: I have work in this show. See it here.] Come to the opening reception! Friday, Oct 9 from 6–8 PM. —Lenny Schnier, Education Department Assistant

24th Drawing Show: Feelers
Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts
Oct 9–Dec 20

For the 24th installment of the Mills Gallery’s annual Drawing Show, the BCA enlisted guest curator Susan Metrican (one quarter of the 2015 ICA Foster Prize recipient kijidome). The 56 artists in the exhibition explore the possibilities of existing in a two-dimensional reality through drawing’s inherent encounter with flatness. [Full disclosure: I have work in this show too.] Come to this opening reception too, Fri, Oct 9 from 6–8 PM! —Lenny Schnier, Education Department Assistant

Rosa Barba: The Color Out of Space
MIT List Visual Arts Center
Oct 23, 2015–Jan 3, 2016

Rosa Barba’s much-needed first survey exhibition in North America, at MIT’s List Center, includes a diverse range of works made over the last ten years. The exhibition premieres Barba’s latest work, The Color Out of Space, a film that incorporates images collected over the past year from the Hirsch Observatory at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, which expands on the artist’s sustained interest in different registers of time. —Jeffrey DeBlois, Curatorial Assistant

Lorraine O’Grady: Where Margins Become Centers
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University
Oct 29, 2015–Jan 10, 2016

Lorraine O’Grady, born in Boston in 1934, has been one of the more perceptive observers of contemporary culture since bursting onto the New York scene in the 1980s. I am excited to witness her energetic and critical engagement with questions of race, gender, and class across six bodies of work brought together in this survey exhibition. —Ruth Erickson, Assistant Curator

Image: Lorraine O’Grady, Miscegenated Family Album (Sisters I), 1980/1994. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates.

Actually, everything this fall at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard

What other organization can get away with a program that combines the elegantly cerebral institutional interventions of Martin Beck, the participatory and public boat building of Mare Liberum, the stunning monotypes of Dutch graphic design giant Karel Martens, Josiah McElheny’s walking mirrors, and film screenings by Boston-born and LA-based Kerry Tribe, not to mention exhibitions by an artist long overdue (Lorraine O’Grady) and prescient (Shahryar Nashat). And that’s not even everything. —Dan Byers, Senior Curator