Beyond NY: Bill Viola at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC and Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy

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Beyond NY: Bill Viola at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC and at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy

Bill Viola at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC “‘Bill Viola: The Moving Portrait’—the National Portrait Gallery’s first exhibition entirely devoted to media art—offers a new interpretation of the work of the pioneering video artist as a career-long experimentation with portraiture. Since the early 1970s, Viola has been recognized for his groundbreaking and masterful use of video technologies, creating poetic works that explore the spiritual and perceptual side of human experience and search for […]

via Bill Viola: The Moving Portrait at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, through May 7, 2017 — Arts Summary

Another installation of Bill Viola’s revolutionary work is going on now half a world away at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy.  This exhibition is centered on the comparison of Viola’s films and the classical works that served as the inspirations for them.  One of those comparisons is between newly restored work by Jacopo Pontormo‘s “Visitation” (1528-9) and Viola’s “The Greeting” (1995).

Florence has a particular place in Viola’s career as he first visited the city right after graduating from the Syracuse University, NY. He came there to connect with the vibrant contemporary art scene and joined the art/tapes/22 studio founded by the video producer Maria Gloria Bicocchi. For this year installation of Viola’s work the city of Florence is going out of its way with concurrent shows of his work at the Uffizi galleries, the Santa Maria Novella Church Museum, and in the freshly refurbished museum of the city’s famous Duomo Cathedral.

The FT points out that “Viola’s art, as it returns” to Florence, “close to the sources of its inspiration, seems to have acquired an extra layer of meaning.”

 

Venue: Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC                      Time: till May 7, 2017

Venue: Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy                                                                 Time: till July 23, 2017

April – August, 2017 Art Event in NYC – Doug Wheeler: PSAD Synthetic Desert III at Guggenheim Museum

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April – August, 2017 Art Event in NYC – Doug Wheeler: PSAD Synthetic Desert III at Guggenheim Museum

April - August, 2017 Art Event in NYC - Doug Wheeler: PSAD Synthetic Desert III at Guggenheim Museum

“The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents the first-ever realized work from a group of installations conceived by Doug Wheeler during the late 1960s and ’70s: Doug Wheeler: PSAD Synthetic Desert III. Produced in close collaboration with the artist, the Guggenheim installation is developed from drawings executed in 1968 and will be on view in the museum’s Tower Level 7. In […]

via Doug Wheeler: PSAD Synthetic Desert III at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, through August 2, 2017 — Arts Summary

The installation recreates the experience of the desert with its stillness and near silence to synthesize “lunar space”.  To reach that state the gallery has controlled optics and sound environment with Wheeler’s large abstract paintings of infinite geometric forms in hermetically closed gallery. That way the visitor can experience the cosmic infinity of space.

Doug Wheeler is associated with the Light and Space art movement  popular on the West Coast in the 60s.

The installation is best experienced with as little distraction as possible, so it requires a timed ticket. You can reserve it here. 

Venue: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY                            Time: Though August, 2, 2017

April 2017 Classical Music: Two Pianos Concert at Carnegie Hall

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April 2017 Classical Music: Two Pianos Concert at Carnegie Hall 

Leif Ove Andsnes / Marc-Andre Hamelin 

April 2017 Classical Music: Two Pianos Concert at Carnegie Hall
Leif Ove Andsnes, Marc-Andre Hamelin / image source carnegiehall.org

This concert with two greatest pianists sharing a stage at Carnegie Hall promises to be an event to remember. The concert is part of the spring tour program performed in Europe and the United States. In keeping with spring celebration, the program very appropriately features Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”, as well as the music of Mozart and Debussy.

Leif Ove Andsnes , a Norwegian pianist who was inducted to the Gramophone Hall of Fame in 2013, is a master in delivering what the New York Times calls a difficult and beautiful recital program. Marc-Andre Hamelin whose fame grows with each performance, is not only a brilliant pianist, but is a well known composer. Its extremely fascinating to hear music by the composer himself, which Mr. Hamelin sometimes includes in the encore at his concerts.

The tickets can be booked here.       Performance date: April 28, 2017

 

Venue: Carnegie Hall, 57th Street, NY      Directions to Carnegie Hall

 

April – July 2017 Art Event in NYC: “Age of Empires” Exhibition at the Met Museum

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April – July 2017 Art Event in NYC: Age of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties at the Met Museum  

April - July 2017 Art Event NYC: Age of Empires: Chinese Art of Qin and Han Dynasties at the Met Museum
Terracotta Warriors

Organized in collaboration with 32 cultural institutions from China, the Age of Emrires exhibition at the Met Museum covers the epic period in Chinese history. The Qin (221–206 B.C.) and Han (206 B.C.–A.D. 220) dynasties’ rulings brought in a long period of stability and fostered a “golden age” in Chinese history. Scholars ascribe the Chinese identity as we know it today to be rooted in that period of 221 B.C. – A.D. 220. The significance of Qin and Han empires’ period resembles Greco-Roman era in the West.

The exhibition includes more than 160 artifacts and features a Terracotta Warrior and other examples of ancient sculptures as well as ritual vessels, musical instruments, lacquerware, and silk textiles. It is organized into 3 sections in chronological progression. A review of the upcoming exhibition in the ArtNet News quotes Met’s outgoing director Thomas Campbell calling the show “the largest and most important display of Chinese art in the US”.

You can find more at the Met Museum site.

Venue: Metropolitan Museum, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street     Time: April 3 – July 16, 2017

March 2017 Art Event: Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection at MoMa

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March 2017 Art Event: Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection at MoMa

March 2017 Art Event: Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection at MoMa
Unfinished Conversations: From MoMa’s Collection

“Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection brings together works by more than a dozen artists, made in the past decade and recently acquired by The Museum of Modern Art. The artists that make up this intergenerational selection address current anxiety and unrest around the world and offer critical reflections on our present moment. The exhibition considers the intertwining […]

via Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection at The Museum of Modern Art, March 19 – July 30, 2017 — Arts Summary

Current affairs, personal motives, burdens of history, growing pains. Its all there at the Unfinished Conversations exhibition at MoMa. The show includes the works made and acquired by the museum in the past 10 years. The artists rosters covers all corners of the globe presenting diverse and critical perspective of the world around us.

Plan your visit

Venue: Museum of Modern Art, 53rd Street            Dates: July 30, 2017