New York City museums continue to provide culturally enriching relief from the summertime heat. Exhibitions this month feature innovative fashion brands, feminist art, decadent materials and more. Continue reading for our selection of NYC museum highlights in August.
The Morgan Library & Museum: “Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing 552D”
Installation: June 29 to August 22, 2018
Painting Phase begins July 30, 2018
The Morgan Library and Museum opens art making process of a Sol LeWitt with "Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing 552D” beginning on July 30, 2018.
Visitors have been invited to follow the installation in the Morgan’s Gilbert Court of the late Sol LeWitt’s “Wall Drawing 552D,” which presents a motif described by the artist as “not quite a cube.” With a tilted form producing an illusion of volume, a black border interrupts it and preserves the flatness of the wall. First known for his modular sculptures based on variations of the cube, LeWitt radically transformed his medium in the late 1960s when he began making drawings directly on the wall. He conceived more than 1,200 wall drawings, in pencil, colored ink and acrylic. Ultimately all painted over, each wall drawing exists as a set of instructions that can be re-created on another wall by another person.
The drawing phase of Wall Drawing 552D, first executed in 1987, began at the Morgan on June 29, 2018. Visitors can witness the painting phase when it begins on July 30, 2018.
The Morgan Library & Museum is located at 225 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016. www.themorgan.org.
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"Wall Drawing 552D" by Sol LeWitt. Color ink wash, dimensions variable. First Drawn by David Higginbotham, Linda Taylor, Jo Watanabe. First Installation: Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Scotland, December 1987. Gift of the LeWitt Family in Honor of Richard and Ronay Menschel. © 2018 The LeWitt Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York and The Morgan Library & Museum.
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The Whitney: “Eckhaus Latta: Possessed”
August 3 through October 8, 2018
The Whitney Museum will present “Eckhaus Latta: Possessed,” the first solo museum show of the design team’s work.
Started by Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta in 2011 after the two met at the Rhode Island School of Design, Eckhaus Latta is a New York and Los Angeles-based fashion label that plays with and against the conventions of the fashion industry while addressing the crosscurrents of desire, social relations and consumption. Using unexpected materials, emphasizing texture and tactility, and incorporating writing, performance and video into their practice, the duo belong to a new generation of designers operating at the intersection of fashion and contemporary art.
The crux of the three-part installation is an operational retail environment in which visitors may touch, try on and purchase clothing and accessories designed specifically for the space. The everyday elements of a retail space, from the clothing racks to the dressing room, were created by more than a dozen artists in dialogue with the designers. Photographs playing on the tropes of iconic fashion photo spreads will also be on display, juxtaposing the polished look of the industry’s media with Eckhaus Latta’s unique aesthetic. The final part of installation is a darkened room featuring a bank of screens depicting surveillance footage of the installation. Evocative of a security room, the voyeuristic view gives visitors a glimpse into the tracking and surveillance that often accompanies the experience of shopping.
The Whitney Museum of American Art is located at 99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014. www.whitney.org.
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"Possessed" by Eckhaus Latta. Image on lightbox. Photograph by Charlotte Wales; Art direction by Eric Wrenn; Modeling by Gemma Ward for IMG; Styling by Avena Venus Gallagher; Hair by Shingo; Makeup by Kanako Takase; Production by Blake Abbie, Spencer Morgan Taylor, and Carlos Garcia of Harbinger Creative; and Retouch by studioRM. Image courtesy Eckhaus Latta and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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Museum of Arts and Design: “From the Collection: GOLD”
Opens August 14, 2018
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) will present “From the Collection: GOLD,” an exhibition highlighting the use of gold in art through history.
Gold, which embodies the transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary, carries a heavy weight throughout the history of art and the world. Using pieces from the museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition looks at how gold was applied across mediums beyond its traditional use in jewelry. Carrying an abundance of cultural associations that transcend time and place, gold can represent immortality, glory, wealth, power, beauty, luck or love. Warm and reflective yellow, much like the sun, gold has been intertwined with the sun’s extensive symbolic significance and served as a signifier for kings, queens, religious figures and leaders.
From gilded saints of the Byzantine era to the gold funerary mask of King Tutankhamun to medieval alchemists risking their life attempting to turn base elements into the coveted material; from goldsmiths worshipped in the Renaissance era and Victorians glorifying the purity of love through gilt jewelry to gold’s current symbolic weight in terms of wedding bands and trophies, gold has remained a constant symbol of wealth, power and importance throughout the centuries.
The Museum of Arts and Design is located at 2 Columbus Cir, New York, NY 10019. www.madmuseum.org.
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Brooklyn Museum: “Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection”
August 31, 2018 through March 31, 2019
The Brooklyn Museum will present “Half the Picture: A Feminist Look at the Collection.”
Exploring a wide range of art-making, the exhibition features more than 100 works from the collection by more than 50 artists who combat stereotypes and dominant narratives, rally support, or motivate action. Based on the assertion in a 1989 Guerrilla Girls poster that viewers are seeing less than half the picture “without the vision of women artists and artists of color." The exhibition looks back at the past 100 years to focus on historical and contemporary work.
Combining message and medium to engage with political and social issues, the works are often radical and many advocate for communities, beliefs and hopes for equality despite popular or state supported opposition. Works by artists such as Vito Ancconi, Beverly Buchanan, Renee Cox, Harmony Hammond, the Guerrilla Girls, Wendy Red Star, Joan Semmel, Nancy Spero, Andy Warhol and more will be on display.
The Brooklyn Museum is located at 200 Eastern Pkwy, Brooklyn, NY 11238. www.brooklynmuseum.org.
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Wendy Red Star "Apsáalooke (Crow)," born 1981). Alaxchiiaahush / Many War Achievements / Plenty Coups, 2014, from the series 1880 Crow Peace Delegation. Pigment print on paper, from digitally reproduced and artist-manipulated photograph by C.M. (Charles Milton) Bell, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, 25 × 17 in. (63.5 × 43.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum; Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Gift of Loren G. Lipson, M.D., TL2018.8.5a-b. © Wendy Red Star. (Photo: Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum.)
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