A short (and definitely not comprehensive) list of exhibitions worth traveling for this season.
Making your way to New York this fall? ICA staff including Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director and Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator, let you in on what they’re seeing:
From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires
MoMA
Through Oct 4
MoMA’s From Bauhaus to Buenos Aires is the first major exhibition exploring the work and relationship of two leading avant-garde photographers of the 1920s and beyond, Grete Stern and Horacio Coppola. Stern’s photomontages are a celebration of the progressiveness of the day, heavily influenced by a strong Leftist emphasis on social commentary, her Bauhaus tutelage, and a fascination with psychoanalysis and the female unconscious. Coppola, introduced to the Bauhaus by Stern after meeting her in Berlin, combines an enthusiasm for Surrealism and the uncanny with a politically motivated depiction of social reality. —Kate McBride, Marketing Associate
Image: Grete Stern (Argentine, born Germany. 1904–1999). Dreams No. 1. 1949. Gelatin silver print, 10 ½ x 9” (26.6 x 22.9 cm). Latin American and Caribbean Fund through gift of Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis in honor of Adriana Cisneros de Griffin. © 2014 Galería Jorge Mara-La Ruche
Ron Nagle
Matthew Marks Gallery
Through Oct 24
Simply one of the best sculptors, and painters, working today. Nagle is not shown enough in museums or on the East Coast, though the deft, humorous, and deliciously weird forms of his exquisitely colored ceramic sculptures say as much about bodies, human behavior, architecture, abstraction, and the sheer power of individualized beauty as anything else on public view. —Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator
Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence
Brooklyn Museum
Through Nov 1
Zanele Muholi is an activist who makes stunning, unforgettable photographs of the LGBTI communities in South Africa, who are under constant threat of violence and discrimination in their country. Often printed in large-format and displayed in disarming grids, her photographs capture the individuality, defiance, beauty, and complexity of her subjects in a way that registers across the expanses of silent galleries. —Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator
Image (at top): Zanele Muholi (South African, born 1972). Ayanda & Nhlanhla Moremi’s wedding I. Kwanele Park, Katlehong, 9 November 2013, 2013. Chromogenic photograph, 10 7/16 x 14 9/16 in. (26.5 x 37 cm), framed. © Zanele Muholi. Courtesy of Stevenson Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York
Berlin Metropolis: 1918–1933
Neue Galerie
Oct 1–Jan 4, 2016
As a former Berliner, I’m drawn to most things having to do with this dynamic and fascinating city. But this exhibition is something really special: a multifaceted endeavor bringing to life one of the most progressive, prolific, and ultimately disastrous cultures in history, a time marked by sexual emancipation, artistic experimentation, and an intoxicating modernity in art, design, film, jazz, and more. Chronologically—and even thematically—it also leads right into our big fall exhibition Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957, and with artists and teachers escaping Germany around this time and landing at BMC, I bet we’ll see some threads of influence. —Kris Wilton, Creative Content Manager
Swedish Wooden Toys
Bard Graduate Center Gallery
Through January 17, 2016
I’d also really like to see this exhibition of Swedish toys. With playthings from the 17th through the 21st centuries, I bet it’ll be a really interesting lens through which to consider changes of all kinds—in manufacturing, design, conceptions of childhood, pedagogical theory, societal roles, materials, materialism… And be really cute to boot. —Kris Wilton, Creative Content Manager
Walid Raad
MoMA
Oct 12, 2015–Jan 31, 2016
I am extremely excited to see the new Walid Raad exhibition, opening next week at MoMA and organized by our Barbara Lee Chief Curator Eva Respini. Raad, a Lebanese-born artist living and working in NY, tackles insistent questions about history in his photographs, videos, sculptures, and performances: Who writes history? Who excavates, who archives, who constructs our understanding of war and conflict? Raad’s work is painfully relevant today, especially as we witness the thousands of refugees fleeing Syria and ask who will write their histories. The ICA is proud to present Walid Raad to Boston audiences when it travels to the ICA in January 2016. —Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director
Picasso Sculpture
MoMA
Through Feb 7, 2016
This fall, I will be waiting in line for the Picasso Sculpture exhibition that just opened at MoMA. It is not every day that Roberta Smith (of the New York Times) calls a show a “once-in-a-lifetime event.” And I say this with some authority, since stalking, or as I like to term it, “assiduously following” art critics, is part of my official job capacity! —Colette Randall, Director of Marketing and Communications
Walter De Maria, The New York Earth Room
141 Wooster Street
Open fall, winter, and spring
One of my favorite things about fall: The Earth Room re-opens! It is a natural respite in the middle of a brick and mortar city. Go, breathe, and enjoy—it’s a delight. —Anna Lyman, Chief of Staff
