Museum shows

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Artists Reconsider and Reframe Past, Present, and Future Events in “Agitated Histories”
Final Project 20 exhibition opening Feb. 11 explores social, political movements and icons
The Contemporary Museum exhibition “Agitated Histories” brings together an international and intergenerational collection of artists whose works create a dialogue with history, on view beginning Friday, February 11, 2011. Using a range of media including site-specific installation, video, photography, drawing, and theater, and working both individually and collaboratively, these artists reconsider, reframe, and reenact specific historic events to put them in new contexts. The exhibition also includes a commissioned piece whose long-term impact stands to alter the future skyline of the Station North Arts and Entertainment District. “Agitated Histories” will be on view through Sunday, May 1, 2011.

The Contemporary Museum is located at 100 West Centre Street, in Baltimore’s Mt. Vernon Cultural District. Museum hours are noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.

For more information about the Contemporary Museum and Project 20, www.contemporary.org.


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The Corcoran celebrates the release of the landmark publication Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945, organized and edited by the Corcoran’s Bechhoefer Curator of American Art Sarah Cash.  Comprised of a fully illustrated 336-page hardback volume as well as a companion online component - free and available to all via the Corcoran Web site - it is the first to authoritatively catalogue and place into larger context the Corcoran’s historic collection of American art.
www.corcoran.org


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MAIRA KALMAN: VARIOUS ILLUMINATIONS

(OF A CRAZY WORLD)

Opens at The Jewish Museum on Friday, March 11

Major Museum Survey Features Original Works by Much-Beloved Illustrator.

Organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World) was curated by ICA Senior Curator Ingrid Schaffner.

New York, NY – The first major museum survey of the work of illustrator, author and designer Maira Kalman (b. 1949, Tel Aviv), known for her whimsical yet probing imagery, opens at The Jewish Museum on March 11 and remains on view through July 31, 2011. Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World) features a selection spanning thirty years of 100 original paintings, drawings, and sketches shown along with the many ways Kalman’s work has entered contemporary culture – in books and magazines, and on commercial products, from clothing to watches.  Less widely seen works in photography, embroidery, textiles, and performance are also included.

Kalman illuminates contemporary life with a profound sense of joy and a unique sense of humor.  Many of Kalman's best-known works are on display in the exhibition, including iconic covers created for The New Yorker magazine; Stay Up Late and Ooh-la-la (Max in Love), and other children’s books she authored and illustrated; drawings from her critically hailed illustrated edition of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, the classic writer’s reference manual; and artwork from her online columns for The New York Times. 

Born in Israel in 1949, Kalman emigrated to the United States and has lived in New York since the age of four.  New York seems a perfect milieu for her sharply observed world.  As she explains in the exhibition catalogue, “There is a strong personal narrative aspect of what I do. What happens in my life is interpreted in my work.  There is very little separation.  My work is my journal of my life.”

The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, Manhattan.
TheJewishMuseum.org