External | USA Today/The Journal News: 5 don't mss art shows that have extended dates, or gone virtual
The best shows you haven't seen. Yet. Museums extend exhibitions through summer
Michelle Falkenstein For The Journal News
Published 6:00 AM EDT Jun 16, 2020
From concept to opening, museum exhibitions require an enormous investment of time, coordination and money.
Sadly, like their cultural counterparts — theaters, concert halls, libraries and the like —museums were forced to shut their doors when the coronavirus struck. Many important spring shows had been open for just weeks, or even days, when they had to close. Others never opened at all.
But just as philharmonics and pop stars are streaming concerts from their living rooms, so too have museums found ways to share their exhibitions online through virtual gallery tours, conversations with artists and biopics.
Derrick Adams: "We Came To Party Plan 2.". Hudson River Museum
Many of the shows that were scheduled to close in the early summer have been put into suspended animation with no firm end dates, so there may yet be an opportunity to see them in person. In the meantime, here are a few exhibitions that fall in the “not-to-be-missed” category, whether experienced live in the galleries or on a laptop in your living room.
Pictured in this file photo is, “The Radiant One” by Bisa Butler. Morristown has developed a program that will have developers contribute to the arts in town. Daily Record file photo
Bisa Butler, who creates brilliantly colored portraits out of fabric, has her first-ever solo museum show, “Bisa Butler: Portraits,” at the Katonah Museum of Art (next stop: the Art Institute of Chicago).
The exhibition opened on March 15 and has been extended to Oct. 4, but for now, visitors to the KMA’s website can take a virtual tour, view a slideshow of the pieces in the exhibition and listen to an interview with Butler, who started out as a painter but ultimately turned to quilting as a way to work with non-toxic materials around her young daughter. Butler, who is of Ghanian heritage, says that quilting has long been a part of the African American experience. “We were the ones who got the scraps,” she says, “and we had to make do with them.”
How to see it: www.katonahmuseum.org.
“Gerhard Richter: Painting After All,” Met Breuer
The long-awaited Gerhard Richter exhibit at Met Breuer was to be the last show mounted in the old Whitney building before the Met pulls up stakes and subleases the Brutalist structure to the Frick Collection.
The Met’s departure was postponed by the coronavirus, and the Richter show, which opened on March 4, has been extended, end date unknown. Richter, considered by many to be the greatest living painter, pushes the boundaries of what paint can do through hyper-real portraits, smudgy grisaille scenes that mimic newsprint and squeegeed abstracts.
Examples of all of these (and even a few sculptures) can be found in “Gerhard Richter: Painting After All.” Richter, who was born in Germany in 1932, explores postwar German identity with a fearless gaze.
How to see it: On www.metmuseum.org, you can tour the exhibition, read an interview with the curators, and watch a full-length documentary, “Gerhard Richter Painting,” for free through early July.
Derrick Adams "Buoyant," Hudson River Museum
Derrick Adams: "Floater 17," 2016. Pizzuti Collection. Hudson River Museum
“Derrick Adams: Buoyant” (extended through Aug. 23) offers large-scale paintings of Black people riding or lying on large inflatables in all shapes, from the typical doughnut to unicorns and swans. At this boldly colored pool party, a woman smiles as she holds aloft a ubiquitous red plastic cup; another wraps her legs around the neck of a pink flamingo.
An installation by Adams, “We Came to Party and Plan” (through Oct. 18), was created by Adams during his Rauschenberg Residency last summer. It features picnic tables, colorful banners and numerous paintings of party-hat-wearing guests. While the proceedings may seem mild, don’t be fooled: “When we get together, it isn’t just to have a party,” Adams says. “We might be planning a revolution at the same time.”
How to see it: Visit www.hrm.org to view selected objects and a conversation between Adams and artist Mickalene Thomas, which includes a discussion of what they call “Black radical joy.”
"Judd," Museum of Modern Art
Donald Judd. Untitled. 1973. Brass and blue Plexiglas, 33 × 68 × 48″ (83.8 × 172.7 × 121.9 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Panza Collection, 1991 © 2020 Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Kristopher McKay
Donald Judd (1928-1994) is best known for what he termed stacks, boxes and progressions — usually rectangular shapes made from plywood, steel or concrete, sometimes with colored plexiglass inserts.
In a short video on www.moma.org, an off-camera voice asks Judd how he feels about the term minimal art. “I don’t like it,” he says with a smile. “What’s minimal about it?” He is also asked if he thinks sculpture is “exhausted.” “In the first place, I never thought of my work as sculpture,” he replies.
There are a wealth of online resources for “Judd,” the first major retrospective of this seminal artist in over 30 years, including a discussion of Judd by MoMA curator Ann Temkin, who says that he changed the meaning of the word sculpture itself; an interview Temkin conducted with the artist’s son and director of the Judd Foundation Flavin Judd; and brief audio interviews with 21 artists and writers who share how Judd’s work impacted their own.
How to see it: MoMA’s website still shows a closing date of July 11, so an online experience may be your only option. www.moma.org
“Bruce Davidson: Outsider on the Inside,” Queens Museum
Photographer Bruce Davidson found a way to earn the trust of those at the margins of society who were often wary of outsiders. At some future date, visitors will once again be able to see 100-plus images by Davidson at the Queens Museum, a recent acquisition. Until that time, enjoy selected shots from “Bruce Davidson: Outsider on the Inside” while taking an online audio tour at www.queensmuseum.org.
The pictures, which span from 1959-1997, were culled from several of Davidson’s best-known series, including Brooklyn Gang (1959), East 100th Street (1970), Subway (1980) and Lower East Side (1990). Davidson got close enough to his subjects—both physically and emotionally—to capture their humanity through his lens.
Craving more art? A number of museums have put their entire permanent collections online, including the Whitney and the Smithsonian. For those seeking an international adventure, no travel required, try the websites of the Louvre, Tate Modern and the Hermitage.
Michelle Falkenstein is a freelancer writer. Contact her at metro@lohud.com
This article appeared in the online version of The Journal News.