Destination New England
You’ve seen spectacular exhibitions online, enjoyed virtual tours of art and architecture all over the world while sitting on your couch, and explored your favorite artist’s brushstrokes in pixelated detail via very engaging apps. Yet none of that replaces the joy of being physically face to face with a work of art, in real time and your own space. So now, after more than a very long year, it’s time to venture forth, exercising care and caution, with art guiding your itinerary.
A great place to start is at the southern end of the cultural corridor of western Massachusetts, in the town of Stockbridge in the Berkshires.
A beautiful setting and an extensive collection make the Norman Rockwell Museum, in Stockbridge, the ideal showcase for original paintings by one of America’s best-loved illustrators. However, despite its picture-postcard setting, the museum quickly establishes that there is more to Rockwell than his sunny covers of The Saturday Evening Post. In addition to those well-known small-town scenes, works by Rockwell delve deeper and darker into our recent past. Norman Rockwell: Murder in Mississippi (through May 31, 2021) centers around the 1965 painting illustrating the murders of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, and traces Rockwell’s process in creating the work. Combining research and re-enactment, Rockwell sought emotional verisimilitude rather than exact likeness. He went to the extraordinary length of using a shirt soaked with human blood in preparatory poses. In Reinventing Rockwell (also through May 31), the Berkshires-based artist Pops Peterson reimagines Rockwell’s illustrations to reflect current times. But there’s more at the museum, in a very different mode, starting June 12. Enchanted: A History of Fantasy Illustration includes over 100 works by more than 50 artists spanning five centuries. The human desire to escape into fantasy seems to be ages-old. Exhibition curator Jesse Kowalski reaches back to unknown artists of ancient Mesopotamia and to well-known artists of the Renaissance, such as Albrecht Dürer, and from there taps into many styles and schools, up to the present. Don’t expect the machine gleam of science fiction—this is the magical swirl of true fantasy, with dragons and demons, wizards and fairies. Extending the magic outdoors in July, Fantastical Creatures invites 20 local and regional artists to create fantasy sculptures to install across the museum’s 36 acres.
Move on to a sculptor’s version of Paradise, originally envisioned by Daniel Chester French, and currently run as a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. French is best known for his sculptures of the Minute Man (1871–1875)—an iconic figure throughout colonial New England—and the seated figure of Abraham Lincoln (1911–22) in the Lincoln Memorial (an image burned deep in our national consciousness). In Chesterwood, on 122 acres in Stockbridge, French designed and constructed his summer home, working studio, and extensive gardens as an intentional idyllic retreat for himself and his family. We can hope he enjoyed it back then as much as we do today, with Chesterwood recognized as both a National Historic Landmark and a Massachusetts Historic Landmark. Yet the estate does not rest on its historical laurels. Chesterwood is one of the earliest venues in the U.S. to install outdoor exhibitions of large-scale contemporary sculpture, showcasing works by emerging and established artists since 1978. This summer, opening July 10, Chesterwood presents Tipping the Balance: Contemporary Sculpture by John Van Alstine. Described as both an abstract artist and as a figurative sculptor, Van Alstine may be better understood as an artist who finds energy in the balance. To encompass the scope of his five-decade career, he worked with Chesterwood’s guest curator Caroline Welsh, director emerita of the Adirondack Museum, to select 11 large sculptures dating from the 1990s to one completed this year. A richly illustrated monograph on Van Alstine’s work was published in 2019, by The Artist Book Foundation, to coincide with the Chesterwood exhibition’s original display date of summer 2020.
It’s easy to imagine that Edith Wharton would enjoy SculptureNow’s seasonal surge into her grand estate, The Mount, north of Stockbridge, in Lenox. You might sense her, trailing along on a self-guided tour linking the 31 large-scale sculptures displayed outdoors. And after hours, you might envy her spirit’s ability to return and revisit favorite installations—perhaps gazing at Flowers/Fungi by Susan Arthur, composed of pieces of glazed porcelain placed directly on the ground of the pine grove, as if popping up out of the ground, or maybe bringing an after-dinner apple to Robin Tost’s shimmering metallic Spirit Bear. While Wharton’s novels typically do not celebrate the joy of marriage—her view was more transactional than romantic—SculptureNow at The Mount represents a happy union in which Art and Nature embrace and enhance each other. The contemporary art is gracefully sited within the woods, gardens, and grounds of the estate, while spectacular views of the landscape are skillfully framed by the sculptures. The juried show includes contemporary artists who work locally, regionally, and internationally. Open from June 1, SculptureNow at the Mount 2021 is the 22nd SculptureNow exhibition and the eighth to be installed at The Mount. [In addition to self-guided tours, SculptureNow offers artist-guided tours to the general public, students, and disabled visitors.]
Also in Lenox, check out Sohn Fine Art, a gallery devoted to contemporary fine art photography. This year is the gallery’s 10th anniversary, and photographer/owner Cassandra Sohn is celebrating with FUTURITY, meaning renewed or continuing existence. Running from May 7 to July 25, this group show highlights both iconic and newly released works by the regional, national, and international artists represented by Sohn Fine Art. Looking back to honor the past, notes Sohn, goes hand-in-hand with going forward to the future, and continuing commitment to diversity and social justice. The pandemic has certainly been a low point, she acknowledges. But then, she adds, a high point has been making it through the pandemic safely. One pivotal moment came when she had been running the gallery for about two years, and then expanded into her current much larger space, allowing her to similarly expand her community outreach, gallery workshops, and educational activities. And another high point was the recent exhibition SOLIDARITY, featuring the work of four emerging Black artists—Jacob Borden, Yannis Davy Guibinga, Pops Peterson, and Shawn Theodore—and reflecting her ongoing commitment to social justice work. Going back to the future, Sohn plans to resume the gallery’s education program post-pandemic, with in-person master classes in October. In conjunction with an exhibition of her work at the gallery, United Kingdom artist Valda Bailey will offer a master class focused on in-camera multiple exposure techniques.
Zenas Crane, the third generation owner of the paper mills that supply the U.S. Treasury, thought globally and acted locally in 1903 when he built the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, north of Lenox. Inspired by the American Museum of Natural History, the equally august Smithsonian, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Crane envisioned a community museum combining art, science, and history. Today, despite renovations that close the second floor until August, the museum offers a range of exhibitions, open by reservation. A great place to take your inner (and actual) eight-year-old is the Aquarium under the first floor Lobby. Here in the dark, beside walls of water, enjoy a tank full of piranhas and a self-sustaining terrarium filled with poison dart frogs, among 35 tanks of appealing creepy-crawlies. Upstairs, the Rocks and Minerals Gallery is another family favorite and there’s also the Holst Orrery (model of the solar system) with planets made by glass artist Josh Simpson. Local natural history is presented in Berkshire Backyard, while Animals of the World in Miniature takes you around the world, to a variety of eco-systems. Man-made gets its due in the Feigenbaum Hall of Innovation, an interactive exhibition celebrating innovations that originated in the Berkshires. The art collection on the second floor re-opens early in August, plus a special exhibition, Muhheconeok: The People of the Waters that Never Stand Still, that showcases the history of the Stockbridge-Munsee Communities of the past, present, and future. Organized around the Mohican Medicine Wheel, the exhibition divides the gallery into four unique sections centered by a digital firepit. All written materials are in Mohican—the language of Stockbridge-Munsee communities—and English.
North of Pittsfield, in Williamstown, Greylock Gallery Fine Art specializes in showcasing traditional and contemporary art from both emerging and established artists. Director Rachele Dario is native to the Berkshires and returned to the region after living for many years across the U. S. and in Italy. This year, she offers personalized visits for art collectors, bringing artwork to their homes (with all safety protocols and within a reasonable travel distance) and allowing them to see paintings in their own environments. Among the many artists that the gallery represents, Greylock focuses on John MacDonald and Mary Sipp Green in May, and features Kate Tortland and Tracy Helgeson in June. MacDonald is well-known for his landscape paintings of Berkshire scenes that play with light and cast shadows, and that find light in water as well as infusing the sky. Sipp Green lives in Berkshire County, and the local fields, farms, hills, and valleys inspire many of her current works. In her atmospheric landscapes, the sky looms large and luminous. Kate Tortland turns her bold brushwork and impressionistic color on the landscape also, reflecting the local scene as well as that of her travels abroad. Helgeson, who moved to upstate NY in 2003, reveals the inspiration of the rural scenes and farm structures that surround her. She pares down her compositions to geometric essentials, then pumps up intense, vibrant color through her use of under painting and layers of glazing.
Changing gears, head east to the old industrial town of North Adams. Originally built in the 1800s as a textile mill, Eclipse Mill Artist Lofts sit by the Hoosac River and share views of Mount Greylock. The 40 condominium/studio lofts contain 14-foot ceilings, 10-foot high windows, hardwood floors, a shared gallery space, and a lively community of artists working independently and collectively. One example of collaboration can be seen (online) in the exhibit chair • arch • wave • oval • box: Collaborative Works on Paper by Catherine Dunning, Joanna Klain, Suzette Marie Martin, Diane Sawyer, and Sarah Sutro. As Sawyer explains, the collaboration began as Klain’s idea in response to the isolation caused by the pandemic. It evolved so that each of the five participants made a drawing in response to a prompt (all listed in the title of the show), then passed the drawing on to another person, to pick up the thread of overlap on the page, and create her own image, pass that drawing on to the next, and so on. In May, the gallery presents Something’s Missing, ceramics and drawings by Catherine Dunning, which will include drawings on paper and ceramic work adapted to be hung directly on the wall. In June, Emergence features work by Debi Pendell, Diane Sawyer, Sarah Sutro, and Betty Vera. A fiber artist, Vera will show woven hangings based on manipulated photographic images. Sutro creates pieces with inks she makes herself from natural pigments. Pendell, whose work changed during the year of isolation, sews together pieces of trash, then cuts them apart and re-stitches them. Sawyer’s work also changed, and after 10 years of working in pastel, she switched to using the rougher, tougher, and more textural medium of oil and cold wax.
While the world-class Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) spreads through a sprawling complex of abandoned factory buildings, a number of smaller, independent galleries cluster within its campus. Eckert Fine Art was founded by Jane Eckert in 1996, and specializes in post-war and contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on painting. Offering group and solo shows, the gallery features some of the same artists you may find inside MASS MoCA, such as Sol LeWitt, James Turrell, and Robert Rauschenberg. Opening on May 29 (through June 30) is ERIC FORSTMANN—21, celebrating 21 years of representing the painter with strong ties to the Berkshires. In his paintings, Forstmann seems to consciously play with the basic illusions of realist art. He employs a shallow depth of field to heighten the impact of the object. So while he may start with an ordinary object, he takes it into a realm of his own vision and allows viewers a peek into that world of heightened observation. He has been quoted as saying, “I’m an eyeball realist. I look at things as they are and try to do as much justice to the subject as I possibly can by choosing ordinary objects. I force the viewer to look at them through my eyes.” The “ordinary objects” may be as deceptively simple as shirts on a hanger or as artfully placed as an over-ripe peach, but they become imbued with a beauty that might otherwise be too easy to overlook.
The Artist Book Foundation (TABF) is another organization among the red brick buildings on the MASS MoCA campus, with its mission of celebrating the lives and works of living and historic artists through the publication of monographs, catalogue raisonnés, surveys, and limited editions. One recent publication is a monograph devoted to contemporary sculptor John Van Alstine, who currently has 11 large outdoor sculptures on view at Chesterwood. [Publication was planned to coincide with an exhibition scheduled for summer 2020, but those plans were derailed by the pandemic. Publication proceeded on schedule while the exhibition was delayed until this year.] This summer, TABF focuses on Muses, Magic & Monotypes: The Art of Richard Segalman, with actual works on loan from the Polk Museum of Art in Florida, and a virtual tour available for online viewing. While Segalman may be best known for his colorful, light-filled paintings, he turned to experimenting with black and white monotypes just before his 60th birthday. His subject matter remained similar, as did his infatuation with the way that infusions of light define form and direct the eye to eloquent detail. White as well as black come to life, as do both light and shadow. [Segalman’s work is also showcased in an extensive monograph, published by the TABF in 2016.]
Ferrin Contemporary, also on the MASS MoCA campus, specializes in contemporary ceramic art, from 1950 to the present. From one of the very first ceramic shows she organized, highlighting the burgeoning variety of teapot forms in 1979, director Leslie Ferrin has focused on ceramic work that pulls from traditional craft material roots as it pushes toward the conceptual edge of innovative fine art. On view through May 29 are selected works from Nature/Nurture, a show that invited a group of women artists to explore the influence of gender and its impact on their creative practice. In response to the pandemic, Ferrin developed the exhibit online last year, and significantly expanded the gallery’s online presence. This year, Nature/Nurture returns with new additional works and a physical presence. The Melting Point starts June 24, a collaboration with Ferrin Contemporary in North Adams and Heller Gallery in New York City. While Ferrin specializes in ceramics, co-curator Katya Heller, focuses on glass. Each of the 20 artists will have at least one piece at each gallery, with more of the glass work at Heller and more of the ceramic pieces at Ferrin Contemporary. The theme of their summer exhibition offers many points of entry, from the literal temperature at which glaze melts and glass softens, to something much broader and more metaphorical that embraces many subjects as well as material process. As Ferrin points out, “In 2020, forces combined under pressure of the COVID virus, politics exploded and nature responded with melting ice, raging fires and extreme weather. Likewise, the artists in the show use the melting point as a metaphor in their work to express their political beliefs and sound the alarm using the fragile materials of glass and ceramics.“
Like a baby whale, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) was born big, and has grown bigger and bigger since it first opened in 1999. The former factory buildings of North Adams spread out on a grand scale, and accommodate vast and ambitious works of contemporary art. Of all the many exhibition spaces, Building 5 is one not to miss. This huge space, the size of a football field, is completely transformed with each installation. On view now is In the Light of a Shadow by Glenn Kaino. Using light, shadow, and sound, the visual surroundsound references the protests met with violence known as Bloody Sunday in both Selma, Alabama and in Northern Ireland. Of this work, Kaino states: “We might find ourselves in each other’s history in order to fight for each other’s future.” On May 29, two new large scale works open. The Pipes, by Taryn Simon and Shohei Shigematsu, consist of 11 occupiable concrete towers, reconstructed on the MASS MoCA campus, as silos to invite contemplation, visualize grief, and amplify the sounds of mourning. James Turrell’s free-standing, circular Skyspace, transforms a repurposed water tank into an immersive light installation framing a small piece of sky. The work joins Turrell’s nine light installations inside MASS MoCA—sights not only to be seen but experienced as visually enveloping. Organizing the flow of visitors in immersive spaces is not simple in the best of times. And in the worst of times, it is even more challenging. In addition to advance timed tickets to MASS MoCA, you need advance reservations to enter the nine illuminated spaces of Turrell’s Into the Light.
Heading north from North Adams, MA, there are sites to discover in upstate New York and in Vermont.
The Fenimore Art Museum, located beside Otsego Lake in Cooperstown, NY, re-opened this spring with a cornucopia of 11 exhibitions scheduled over the summer, in addition to its strong permanent collections of American folk art and Native American art, including The Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art. Topping the list is Keith Haring: Radiant Vision (May 29–September 6) featuring lithographs, silkscreens, drawings on paper, and posters that trace Haring’s short yet prolific career. While almost everyone will recognize Haring’s Radiant Baby, the exhibit aims for context and currency. The focus is on introducing young people to Haring’s life and work, with free museum admission for visitors under 19 during the run of the exhibition. With this desire to bring Haring to a new generation comes an emphasis on the artist’s insistence that art is for everyone and the public has a right to art. Another major exhibition, Manzanar: The Wartime Photographs of Ansel Adams (through July 25), also carries relevance, even urgency, in its historical context. The photographs, a far cry from Adams’s iconic landscapes, date from 1943 and document lives of Japanese-Americans uprooted from their homes and forced into relocation camps in California. In two live Zoom events (May 1; June 19), the artist’s son, Michael Adams, talks about his father’s work. Other exhibits opening in May and June include Elegant Line/Powerful Shape: Elements of Native American Art, Water as Muse: Paintings by Mary Nolan, Hamilton’s Final Act: Enemies and Allies, and Karl Bodmer: Travels in North America.
If you’re eager to shop for fine arts and crafts or delve into a do-it-yourself approach, The Fletcher Farm School, Vermont’s oldest residential arts and crafts school located in Ludlow, has a charming down-home history. Originally settled in 1783 by Jesse Fletcher, the farm prospered and remained in the Fletcher family until 1933, when the last two living family members donated the farm to a foundation, to be used for educational purposes. In 1947, the foundation turned to the Society of Vermont Artists and Craftsmen, Inc., to extend its educational mission, now emphasizing arts and crafts. Robert Frost served on the Society’s original board of directors, and the School honors him annually with an award in his name, given to an individual who has advanced arts education. The School offers classes in the summer—a lack of heating in most classroom and studio spaces drives the schedule—with residential courses for adults and classes for young artists, ages 7 to 17. Jewelry-making and silver-smithing are particular strengths in the curriculum, but the wide range embraces both traditional and emerging crafts. Along with quilting, tatting, and bobbin lace making, consider the Early American art of theorem painting (stenciling a design on velvet) or try your hand at weaving together discarded neckties to create sturdy, comfortable chair seats. The Gift Shop, open June 14 to August 31, sells work by members of the Society of Vermont Artists and Craftsmen, and the Society sponsors two Annual Outdoor Arts and Crafts Festivals, on July 3 and August 21.
For another take on how-to, continue on to the American Precision Museum in Windsor, VT. The museum is housed in the renovated 1846 Robbins & Lawrence Armory, said to be the first U.S. factory to manufacture precision interchangeable parts and seen as the birthplace of the precision machine tool industry. And what is a “precision machine tool”? It’s a machine—such as a lathe, milling machine, or drill press—that makes parts to other machines—such as screws or gunstocks—with a machine operator rather than a skilled craftsman doing the precision work. STEM or Steampunk, architecture or artifacts, gadget or gear—the museum appeals to many interests and age levels. And it opens for the season on May 1 with a new exhibition that highlights its historical trajectory, Transitioning from Made by Hand to Made by Machine. According to executive director Steve Dalessio, the exhibit starts with artifacts of woodworking and metalsmithing from the mid-19th century. Then it introduces the three founders of the original armory: mechanical wunderkind Richard S. Lawrence, gun-making shop owner Nicanor Kendall, and businessman Samuel E. Robbins. And then it goes interactive, with a water wheel simulating the early role of water power in manufacturing. Next, a display of works made by machines, and then, “Off you go into the rest of the museum,” says Dalessio, also turning visitors towards the Innovation Station, where Museum interns operate historic and modern machine tools.
On to another historic riverside site, at the Canal Street Art Gallery in Bellows Falls. Mike Noyes and Emmett Dunbar founded the gallery in 2017, in the Exner Block, a 19th century building originally constructed for shops and, after restoration in 2000, sporting some fine architectural detail. In founding the gallery Dunbar and Noyes sought to establish an open space where all creative voices can be heard. To that end, the gallery showcases artists who have worked professionally for decades but also offers opportunities to others who have not shown previously. The schedule mixes individual and group shows. Through May 8, MARTHA NICHOLS Mountain Sea and Sky highlights the artist’s most recent oil paintings, looking at light and color in the subjects of mountains, ocean, sky, and farms, and reflecting landscape a metaphor for adventures in spiritual realms. Light and color—plus pattern—help define a dialogue between the two artists in the next exhibition, running from May 12 to June 12. KEISER + KEKIC Color Light and Pattern brings together work by painter Carol Keiser and glass artist Nicholas Kekic. A Vermont resident for more than 50 years, Keiser notes in her artist statement: “I am always looking, looking, looking. It is most often color or a color relationship that moves me….” Kekic, a third generation glassblower, designs his work to be both decorative and functional, finding glass to be most beautiful when it maximizes its relationship to color and light. Starting June 18 is the gallery’s annual Vermont Summer Group Show featuring “All Mediums, All Subjects, All Art,” welcoming all artists, established and emerging, and similarly welcoming a wide audience for art.
At The Blue Horse Inn, in Woodstock, VT, owner/innkeeper Jill Amato can anticipate at least one question her guests will pose. “People always ask about the name,” she laughs. Jill, who runs the inn with her husband, Tony, explains that they inherited the name when they bought the inn in 2018, and it refers to the paintings of blue horses done by German expressionist painter Franz Marc. “And now, we have a whole collection of blue horses,” she adds. Mainly small figurines, they are gifts from former guests, who bring them on return visits. This herd of blue horses currently roams on shelves in the library, one of many gracious common spaces—including a living room, music room, back porch, dining room, and a second library devoted to art books—in the 10-room inn. The building is a “grand old Lady,” notes Jill—an extensively restored, and now restructured and modernized, Federal Greek Revival mansion dating back to 1831. Local legend claims General Lafayette slept at the inn, and another rumor places the house as a rest stop on the Underground Railroad. An east wing became a bed and breakfast in 1980, and after going through several owners and under several names was closed for a while until the Amatos took on the project of restoring and running the inn. A former art history major and a retired art teacher, Jill draws on her background in attention to details and design. “Plating the perfect breakfast is now my new art form,” she says.
Another inn to enjoy, equally at ease in its historical New England setting, is the Ipswich Inn Bed and Breakfast, in Ipswich, MA. Inn keepers Ray and Margaret Morley offer a truly warm “Welcome!” Ray takes generous delight in the town’s history, sandy beach, winding trails, bustling shops, and fine restaurants. “I like to say that when Abraham Lincoln was alive, this house was standing,” he says. “As were so many in this community.” Actually Ipswich’s inhabitants go way back before colonial days. Ray is quick to lay claim to the Salem witch trials as well. The courts were in Salem, he acknowledges, but some of the people accused of witchcraft were from Ipswich and Topsfield. The house that eventually became the eight-room inn was built in 1863 by local merchant Robert Jordan. He must have been prosperous—the house contains architectural flourishes like a Belvedere on the third-floor roof. The Carriage House has been renovated as a separate room, and each room has its own unique layout and décor, from the third floor Skylight Room to the newest, the Veranda Room on the first floor. Along with this look to the past, there is a sense of history continuing as guests’ experiences become part of inn lore. One favorite story is that of the two high school sweethearts who had lost touch, but never forgot each other. They reconnected, by accident, at the inn. She was sunning herself on the porch. He was in the dining room, pouring himself coffee, when he glanced out the window and saw his long-lost love. Yes, Ray reports, they married. (Happily ever after, we hope.)
Down the coast, in the seaside city of Newport, RI, the Spring Bull Gallery takes its name from its original site at the corner of Spring and Bull streets. The gallery retained the name, even after moving to its current location on Bellevue Avenue. Gallery member Stephanie Marisca explains that Spring Bull started in 1990 as a place “to do art and share art.” Now a 15-member cooperative, it continues in its original spirit, with an emphasis on promoting emerging artists and providing a venue for them to show. The gallery also emphasizes a “user-friendly” attitude towards visitors, encouraging them to linger and ask questions. The person sitting in the gallery is one of the artists, so is delighted to chat about the work—maybe his or her own! Offering a range of media and styles at affordable prices, co-op members each have their own time and place to exhibit. The gallery also schedules special shows throughout the year. May brings an invitational, 19 on Paper, displaying works by a group of 19 New England painters, collage artists, printmakers, book artists, photographers, digital artists, and sculptors who create works of art of, on, or with paper. Later in the summer, the Gallery opens its doors even wider to include non-member artists with an un-juried exhibit of small scale, affordably priced, summer-themed work. Over six weeks, from June 19 to July 31, the Everything Summer Little Picture Show changes constantly. As any one work sells, it walks out the door with its new owner and another small work replaces it on the wall. Marisca adds that the gallery also ships work if a purchaser does not prefer “cash and carry.”
When the Lyman Allyn Art Museum opened in 1932 in coastal New London, CT, its collection included only 13 works. Since then, it has expanded in scale, scope, and mission to over 17,000 works focused on 18th–20th century American art, which are highlighted in two permanent exhibitions: American Perspectives and Louis Comfort Tiffany in New London. Art education for children and adults looms large, and the museum also offers special exhibitions. Opening May 29, Memories & Inspiration: The Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection of African American Art, presents 62 works from the extensive collection assembled by Kerry Davis, a retired mailman, and Betty Davis, a former television news producer. While they did not have deep pockets, the couple clearly shares a strong passion and a great eye for art. Over 35 years, they collected work by well-known African American artists—Radcliffe Bailey, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, Alma Thomas, and Charles White—and also searched through catalogues, visited studios, and spoke with curators to discover less familiar artists. Kerry Davis is expected to speak as part of virtual programming for the exhibition, so check the museum’s website. On view June 19, The Prismatic Palette: Frank Vincent DuMond and his Students looks at the legacy of a key figure in American art education. DuMond (1865–1951) taught at the Art Students League in New York for almost 60 years. His most famous students include Norman Rockwell and John Marin, yet his influence spanned generations. In the summer, he taught and painted en plein air, and he and his wife, Helen, became founding members of the Lyme Art Colony. DuMond’s technique of pre-mixing color is still taught today—and his legacy lives on in the light and shadow of landscape painting.
The Spectrum Gallery, in nearby Centerbrook, CT, is a non-profit spinoff of Arts Center Killingworth, originally started and currently directed by Barbara Nair to showcase fine art and fine craft. Nair estimates that three quarters of Spectrum’s space serves as a gallery for fine art while the remaining one quarter (still a large area, she emphasizes) is an artisan store, displaying high-end crafts. The summer kicks off with a group show that runs from May 14
to July 3, and invites artists to submit works in all media that present impressionistic and abstracted views of nature. For this show, nothing is really representational, because, as Nair points out, that is the whole point. In the process of curating Abstracting Nature, Nair notes that the gallery receives submissions from close to home and far away. While many come from the Connecticut shoreline and the tri-state region, there are artists from Boston, New York, and even Poland, like painter Anka Pikos. “How she found us, I have no idea,” says Nair. The gallery—and Arts Center Killingworth—also host an Annual Summer Arts Festival fundraiser on the Essex town green, on Father’s Day Weekend (June 19 and 20) that includes representational and abstract painters, photo-graphers, and artists and artisans. [They sponsor a second outdoor festival every year on Columbus Day Weekend, on the Madison town green.] The festivals, Nair explains, tend to pull in emerging as well as established artists, and let artists get involved with the gallery even if their work does not fit any of the themed shows.
Nature joins nurture at I-Park, an international artist-in-residence program in East Haddam. Nurture is built into the basic bones of the residency program, which brings together artists in different fields and supports them as they work in independent proximity and creative community. Music composition/sound art, visual arts, architecture, moving image, creative writing, and landscape/garden/ecological design all inter-pollinate. And as I-Park developed its particular interest in site-specific and site-responsive works over the years, Nature plays a major role as both site and inspiration. The varied topography of I-Park’s 450-acre nature preserve offers a whole lot of a little bit of everything including open fields, miles of walking trails and stone walls, sheer cliffs, ponds, and diverse natural habitats such as wetlands, a second generation forest, and a pristine river. In 2021, to celebrate I-Park’s 20th year, Marvin Touré and Sui Park are creating site-responsive Anniversary Commissions. Touré, an Ivorian-American artist, uses what he calls “objects of innocence” (artifacts and stories from his childhood in Atlanta, Georgia) as a vehicle to interrogate themes of race and mental health. Park, a New-York based artist born in Seoul, Korea, creates three-dimensional, flexible, organic forms using mass-produced industrial materials, like monofilament and cable ties. Their work, tucked into the landscape, can be viewed along with site-responsive works by the six summer residency artists in the 2021 Site-Responsive Biennale, opening September 18. Before that, I-Park offers other opportunities for the public to wander its trails and discover art along the way. Enjoy its Open Trails (free to the public) on May 15 and June 22, when I-Park opens its annually reconfigured trails to reveal new and old works installed throughout the landscape.
Next, head north to Hartford to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. The oldest continuously operating public art museum in the U.S., the Wadsworth first opened its august doors in 1844. With over 50,000 square feet of gallery spaces and work that ranges from Greek and Roman antiquities to Hudson River School landscapes and world-renowned Baroque, Surrealist, Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary works of art, the Wadsworth’s collection is encyclopedic. A full roster of special exhibitions adds even more. Paul Manship: Ancient Made Modern (through July 3) looks at one of America’s most celebrated early 20th century sculptors, deeply influenced by his studies at the American Academy in Rome. Todd Gray/Matrix 186 (through July 18) presents a 14-part work over 30 feet long that stacks and layers framed photographic assemblages to explore the history and ongoing impact of European colonialism, slavery, and the African diaspora. Goya, Posada, Chagoya: Three Generations of Satirists (through November 7) looks at how three artists examine their respective cultures through printmaking, while rarely seen lithographs by Toulouse-Lautrec are shown in Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec: Jane Avril Leaving the Moulin Rouge (through August 29). Milton Avery: The Connecticut Years (May 14–October 17) examines the Connecticut roots of the modernist painter who began his career in Hartford. Early in June, Leonardo Drew: Two Projects brings an expansive site-specific installation to the Main Street lobby, and an outdoor, interactive sculptural landscape to the central courtyard. Opening June 11, Stories in Ivory and Wood, Told by Master Carvers, reveals ivory and boxwood sculpture from the mid-1600s by an artist known only as the Master of the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian.
One year before Daniel Wadsworth opened his Hartford atheneum to inspire and educate the public, further north in Harvard, MA, two New England philosophers pursued their own lofty intentions in a farmland retreat called Fruitlands. In 1843, Amos Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane established a Transcendental experiment in communal living and subsistence farming. Today, Alcott is less known than his famous daughter, Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, and Fruitlands Museum operates four separate buildings, in addition to the original farmhouse. If Louisa May is your initial lens on Fruitlands, then artwork by Leslie Schomp should delight you. Schomp is one of four contemporary artists whose work with textiles and stitching comprises a major exhibition in the phased opening at Fruitlands. Piecework: Resistance and Healing in Contemporary Textile Art advocates for fiber art as an innovative medium that both reflects and restores society. The artwork is installed in the museum’s main galleries and through site-specific interventions in Fruitlands’ historic buildings. Schomp’s work is in the Farmhouse, where 10-year-old Louisa May lived, during her father’s short-lived social experiment. In several small works, the artist borrows words from Louisa’s diary and stitches them, recreating handwriting. In another piece, she handstitched quotes from Alcott, senior, and Lane (from 1843) in dialogue with the words of David Wallace-Wells, the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Global Warming (2019). Also exploring social and environmental concerns, Andrew Mowbray makes quilts made of the industrial insulation Tyvek Home Wrap; Alicia Henry fabricates figurative wall hangings from stitched and hand-embroidered, dyed cotton, leather, felt, linen, and burlap. And Gina Adams (mining her Ojibwe-Lakota, Irish-Lithuanian ancestry) creates quilts and sculptures that highlight words of the broken treaties between colonists and Native peoples. Adams served as guest curator of another landmark exhibition, Ripples Toward the Future, opening May 29, featuring 20 contemporary Indigenous artists based in North America. In additional programming, Adams will offer an open letter-cutting program to the public. She will also collaborate with Gregg Deal (Pyramid Lake Paiute) in a public, site-responsive performance, details to be announced.
PLEASE NOTE: Dates may change and regulations about opening/phased re-opening may vary due to the course of the pandemic in May and June. Always check websites for updates.
—Laura Holland