Martin Puryear: Nexus @ Museum of Fine Arts Boston + Cleveland Museum of Art + High Museum of Art

Martin Puryear: Nexus

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

September 27, 2025 – February 8, 2026

Cleveland Museum of Art

April 12 – August 9, 2026

High Museum of Art

September 25, 2026 – January 17, 2027

For more than half a century, the preeminent sculptor Martin Puryear (born 1941) has captivated the public with works of astonishing beauty and elaborate craftsmanship, whose sources of inspiration range from global cultures and social history to the natural world. Co-organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), and the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), Martin Puryear: Nexus is the first substantial survey of the artist’s work in nearly two decades. Assembling some 50 works from across Puryear’s career, the exhibition focuses on his use of a rich variety of materials and media—from sculptures in wood, leather, glass, marble, and metal to rarely shown drawings and prints.

After debuting at the MFA, where it is on view in the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art, the exhibition travels to the Cleveland Museum of Art from April 12 through August 9, 2026, followed by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta from September 25, 2026 through January 17, 2027. Martin Puryear: Nexus is accompanied by a catalogue produced by the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Martin Puryear: Nexus reflects the artist’s singular practice, one that combines the distinctive techniques of production with the formal histories he has encountered through a lifetime of movement, research, and study. The exhibition begins with works on paper from the early 1960s and follows Puryear’s subsequent innovations in form, material, and process. Rooted in new scholarship, Martin Puryear: Nexus illuminates the ways in which the artist’s unique vocabulary has been shaped by his enduring interests in global traditions of material culture, African American history, and the natural world.

“With this exhibition we are pleased to feature an exceptional artist of our time and powerful works that speak to Martin Puryear's creativity and exceptional craftsmanship, and the lifelong learning that has fueled his practice,” said Pierre Terjanian, the MFA’s Ann and Graham Gund Director. “The sculptures included in this survey extend a compelling invitation to engage with themes of culture, identity, and history. We are grateful to our colleagues at the Cleveland Museum of Art for their partnership in making this project possible.”

“Martin Puryear’s art is staggeringly beautiful and also moving in the way that it invites us to see with fresh eyes the world we inhabit,” said William M. Griswold, Sarah S. and Alexander M. Cutler Director, the Cleveland Museum of Art. “Given the remarkable range of aesthetic traditions, cultural histories, and techniques of making that Puryear integrates in his work, we are especially pleased to present his career retrospective at museums with comprehensive collections from around the world, and spanning thousands of years of history.”

Martin Puryear: Nexus - Exhibition Highlights

Martin Puryear, Self (1978, The Joslyn Art Museum)

One of Puryear’s most iconic sculptures, Self shows the importance of dynamic formal oppositions in the artist’s work. At once a dark monolithic mass, Self is light and hollow, enclosing a hidden interior volume. It was assembled piece by piece through cold molding, a technique that Puryear learned through boat-building and which he has integrated into some of his most celebrated sculptures.

Martin Puryear, Night and Day (1984, Nasher Sculpture Center)

A rarely exhibited work, Night and Day reflects Puryear’s enduring interest in natural manifestations of black and white, which divide the two halves of the work’s semicircular arch. One end of the arch sits on the floor, while the other hovers just above it.

Martin Puryear, On the Tundra (1986, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Puryear’s interest in the natural world and ornithology are reflected in his creation of this cast iron sculpture, an abstracted form suggesting a falcon perched on a rock. It was partially inspired by a work from the MFA’s collection: a 1619 portrait of a gyrfalcon by the Mughal court painter Mansur (active around 1590­–1630). Mansur’s painting—a reproduction of which hangs in Puryear’s studio—was immediately compelling for him not only within the history of ornithological portraiture but also as a representation of geopolitical trade routes, as the gyrfalcon is not native to India and likely arrived via diplomatic trade channels from Europe. The exhibition also includes On the Tundra (Winter) (2022, collection of the artist), a recent iteration of the original sculpture in white marble.

Martin Puryear, Confessional (1996–2000, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Composed partly of wire mesh covered with tar, this work evokes a hollow inner space that is visible and obscured at the same time. Its title suggests one possible reading, delineating the wooden platform as a place upon which a confessor—implicitly, the viewer—may kneel and “confess.” Confessional is included only in Boston’s presentation.

Martin Puryear, Big Phrygian (2010–14, Glenstone Museum)

This colossal sculpture is the most dramatic representation of Puryear’s sustained engagement with the lineage of the Phrygian cap. This headdress signified formerly enslaved people in ancient Rome and later became a symbol of resistance to persecution during the French and American Revolutions. In the exhibition it is shown alongside the etching Phrygian (Cap in the Air) (2012, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).

Martin Puryear, Hibernian Testosterone (2018, courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery)

This large, wall-mounted sculpture reproduces in full scale the 12-foot antlers of the Irish elk, an extinct species of deer common during the Ice Age. Scientists of the 1700s had a theory that its antlers—which likely evolved to help the species survive combat and demonstrate sexual prowess and whose growth was propelled by testosterone—contributed to its extinction as they eventually became too heavy for the animal to hold up. Martin Puryear distills this parable-like history from the animal kingdom into a straightforward visual statement, suspending the antlers from an inverted cross.

Martin Puryear, Aso Oke (2019, Jack Shear Collection)

Encountered by visitors before they enter the exhibition, this monumental sculpture, cast in bronze, borrows its form from the fila gobi, a ceremonial cap worn by the Yoruba people of Nigeria. The intricate open latticework is a recurring technique used by Martin Puryear throughout his career.

Martin Puryear, A Column for Sally Hemings (2021, collection of the artist)

One of Puryear’s few indoor site-specific sculptures, this was created for the US Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Responding to the pavilion’s architecture, which was modeled on Monticello—the primary residence and plantation of Thomas Jefferson—the work’s fluted base echoes the Doric columns between which visitors passed to enter the exhibition space in Venice. The sculpture’s title refers to Sally Hemings (1773­–1835), the enslaved Black woman, with whom Jefferson had at least six children.

Martin Puryear: Nexus also features a film that documents Puryear’s most recent outdoor work Lookout (2023), a permanent site-specific commission for the Storm King Art Center. In Cleveland and Atlanta, additional film footage as well as prints, drawings, and documentation of other public commissions will also be on view, demonstrating how Puryear extends his studio practice into the public realm and maintains his commitment to craft and concept on a monumental scale.

Artist Martin Puryear

Over the past five decades, Martin Puryear has created a body of work based on abstract organic forms rich with psychological, cultural, and historical references. His labor-intensive sculptures are made by hand at his studio in upstate New York. They combine practices adapted from many different traditions, including wood carving, joinery, and boat building, as well as more recent technology. As a student, Puryear studied ornithology, falconry, and archery, and in the 1960s he volunteered with the Peace Corps in west Africa, where he was exposed to the region’s Indigenous crafts. Since then he has continued to travel extensively, observing a range of cultures and their unique approaches to object making. “I think there are a number of levels at which my work can be dealt with and appreciated,” he has said. “It gives me pleasure to feel there’s a level that doesn’t require knowledge of or immersion in the aesthetic of a given time or place.”

Martin Puryear was born in Washington, D.C., in 1941. His first one-person exhibition took place in 1968, and since then he has exhibited throughout the world, including public commissions in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. His work was featured in Documenta 9, and in 1989 he represented the U.S. at the Bienal de São Paulo, where he was awarded the festival’s Grand Prize. In 2007, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized a survey of his work, which traveled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. In 2015, the Art Institute of Chicago organized an exhibition of 50 years of his works on paper, which traveled to the Morgan Library and Museum in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Martin Puryear received a MacArthur Foundation award in 1989 and a National Medal of Arts from President Obama in 2011. In 2019 he represented the U.S. at the 58th Venice Biennale. His recent commissions include outdoor works at Madison Square Park, the Storm King Art Center, and the Deichman Library in Oslo.

Martin Puryear: Nexus - Exhibition Catalogue

Martin Puryear: Nexus is accompanied by an expansive and richly illustrated catalogue. Designed and published by the Cleveland Museum of Art, with distribution by Yale University Press, the publication is anchored by five essays authored by a new generation of scholars: Rizvana Bradley, Joan Kee, Emily Liebert, Michelle Millar Fisher, and Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi.

Martin Puryear: Nexus

Exhibition Catalogue Cover

Published by the Cleveland Museum of Art

Image courtesy Yale University Press

Artwork © Martin Puryear

240 Pages, 10.50 × 13.00 in, 212 color + b-w illus.

Published October 2025

Additional perspectives enter the book through series of responses to individual works, contributed by thinkers and makers from a range of disciplines, many of whom are long-time interlocutors of the artist. They include Nairy Baghramian, Alex Da Corte, Thelma Golden, Maya Lin, Kerry James Marshall, Julia Phillips, Charles Ray, and Billie Tsien. Alongside these contemporary perspectives, the catalogue features archival materials that have never before been published.

Martin Puryear: Nexus - Exhibition Curators

The exhibition is co-curated by Emily Liebert, Lauren Rich Fine Curator of Contemporary Art, Chair of Art of the Americas, Modern and Contemporary Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and Reto Thüring, Head of Culture at the Foundation for Art, Culture, and History in Winterthur, Switzerland and former Beal Family Chair, Department of Contemporary LArt at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston with Gabriella Shypula, Leigh and Mary Carter Director’s Research Fellow, The Cleveland Museum of Art. The MFA’s presentation is organized by Ian Alteveer, Beal Family Chair, Department of Contemporary Art with Daisy Alejandre, Curatorial Assistant, Contemporary Art. The High’s presentation is organized by Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Senior Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art.

MFA - MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS BOSTON

465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.mfa.org

Deana Lawson @ High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Deana Lawson

High Museum of Art, Atlanta

October 7, 2022 — February 19, 2023

Deana Lawson (American, born 1979)

Hair Advertisement, 2005

Pigment print

Courtesy the artist; Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; 

and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

© Deana Lawson

Deana Lawson (American, born 1979)

Coulson Family, 2008

Pigment print

Courtesy the artist; Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; 

and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

© Deana Lawson

The High Museum of Art presents the first museum survey dedicated to DEANA LAWSON, who is known for investigating and challenging conventional representations of Black identities and bodies through her photographs. Co-organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston and MoMA PS1, “Deana Lawson” features nearly 60 works made over the past two decades that evoke a range of histories and photographic styles, including family albums, studio portraiture and staged tableaux, and employ documentary pictures and appropriated images.

“Lawson’s works, which are complex not only in their composition but also in the emotions they evoke, challenge us to think critically about Black representation and confront our perceptions of Black identity,” said Rand Suffolk, Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., director of the High. “Her photographs open important dialogues, and we look forward to bringing them to Atlanta and sharing them with our audience.”

In Deana Lawson’s highly staged tableaux, individuals, couples and families are pictured in intimate domestic spaces and public settings. As they depict these intimate scenes, they also channel broader ideas about individual and social histories, sexuality and spiritual beliefs. Lawson’s practice is global in scope, as she creates her images throughout the African diaspora in locations as varied as Brooklyn, Haiti, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Southern United States. This broad geographical range points to the artist’s interest in a collective memory of shared experiences and various cultural histories of the past.

Deana Lawson also uses photography to challenge assumptions about the facts the medium purports to deliver. She carefully composes each scene but does not always disclose details about how she has created them, or even where the photographs were taken. In some cases, she works with found images that depict people she does not know. Her tableaux tend to be composed of people she encounters on her travels rather than family, friends or acquaintances. Despite what certain pictures may suggest, some of the artist’s subjects may not have met before the shoot.

Deana Lawson (American, born 1979)

Nation, 2018

Pigment print and collaged photograph

Courtesy the artist; Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; 

and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

© Deana Lawson

Deana Lawson (American, born 1979)

Black Gold (“Earth turns to gold, in the hands of the wise,” Rumi), 2021

Pigment print with embedded hologram

Courtesy the artist; Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; 

and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles

© Deana Lawson

“Lawson is a singular voice in contemporary photography who causes us to question our assumptions about the medium’s relationship to the real,” said Gregory Harris, the High’s Donald and Marilyn Keough Family curator of photography. “Though her photographs appear to be drawn from the happenstance of everyday life, they are rigorously orchestrated portals to a world of Deana’s creation that nevertheless offers deep insight into the lived experience of people across the diaspora.”

The exhibition is arranged chronologically according to when the photographs were created, with themes of familial bonds, the female figure and the allure of popular media images recurring throughout.

DEANA LAWSON (American, born 1979) lives and works in New York and Los Angeles. She received her B.F.A. from Pennsylvania State University (2001) and her M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design (2004). She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2013), an Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship Grant (2008-2009), and a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant (2006), among others. In 2020, she was selected for the Hugo Boss Prize, the first photographer to receive the award in recognition of achievement in contemporary art. She is also the inaugural Dorothy Krauklis ’78 Professor of Visual Arts at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts.

Exhibition Catalogue

The exhibition is accompanied by the first scholarly publication on the artist, surveying 15 years of her photography. Featuring the voices and perspectives of a variety of scholars, historians and writers, the catalogue includes essays by exhibition curators Peter Eleey and Eva Respini, Kimberly Juanita Brown, Tina M. Campt, Alexander Nemerov and Greg Tate, and a conversation between the artist and Deborah Willis.

HIGH MUSEUM OF ART

1280 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA 30309

high.org

David Driskell @ High Museum of Art, Atlanta - Icons of Nature and History

David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History 

High Museum of Art, Atlanta 

Through 9 May 2021 

DAVID C. DRISKELL (American, 1931–2020) 

Self-Portrait, 1953 

Oil on board 

Collection of the Estate of David C. Driskell, Maryland 

© Estate of David C. Driskell. 

Courtesy DC Moore Gallery, New York 

Photograph by Luc Demers 

The High Museum of Art presents the exhibition “David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History,” celebrating the breadth of the renowned American artist’s oeuvre and marking the first major survey of his work since his death in April 2020. David C. Driskell (1931-2020) is recognized for his painting and printmaking practices, often characterized by the use of collage, which combined the Black American experience with his keen observations of the American landscape and the imagery and aesthetic innovations of the African diaspora. In partnership with Portland Museum of Art, Maine, the exhibition brings approximately 60 artworks together to present highlights of David C. Driskell’s career. After the High (Feb. 6-May 9, 2021) the exhibition will travel to the Portland Museum of Art (June 19-Sept. 12, 2021) and The Phillips Collection (Oct. 6, 2021-Jan. 9, 2022).

“Beyond David’s prolific career as an international artist and scholar, he was a dear friend of the Museum, in fact a life trustee.  Without question, his work, as well as his generosity of spirit and intellect, have been transformational for the field,” said Rand Suffolk, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., director. “We are honored to celebrate his incredible legacy through this exhibition.” Mark Bessire, the Judy and Leonard Lauder director of the Portland Museum of Art, added, “This exhibition is a unique opportunity to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of David’s widespread influence. The contemporary significance of subjects that David explored throughout his career are more salient than ever, and we are looking forward to highlighting this remarkable American artist.”

The High has a long history of collaboration with David C. Driskell, who in addition to his work as an artist was one of the world’s leading authorities on the history of African American art. In 1977, the High hosted Driskell’s landmark exhibition “Two Centuries of Black American Art.” In 2005, the Museum established the David C. Driskell Prize, the first national award to honor and celebrate contributions to the field of African American art, including distinctions for both artists and scholars. The most recent recipient is artist Jamal Cyrus, with past honorees including Amy Sherald, Naima J. Keith, Mark Bradford, Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, Rashid Johnson and Valerie Cassel Oliver. Funds raised through the prize’s annual dinner have supported the acquisition of 48 works by African American artists for the High’s collection.

“What remains steadfast in Driskell’s work is a commitment to his ‘icons,’ which elevate the mind and the spirit above that which exists in the physical world,” said guest curator Julie McGee, associate professor of Africana studies and art history at the University of Delaware. “Among the many gifts Driskell bequeaths to us is the delight of seeing the world through his eyes, and it is a journey of immeasurable beauty and grace.”

Added Michael Rooks, the High’s Wieland Family curator of modern and contemporary art, “Driskell’s command of vibrant color and line, and his attentiveness to what he called ‘the symbolic presence of form,’ endowed his subjects with a kind of frisson like that of an electrical charge, which made his work esthetically vigorous, bold and spirited.”

“Icons of Nature and History” is the first posthumous survey of Driskell’s work, spanning seven decades of his artistry, from the 1950s to the 2000s, with works drawn from museums, private collections and the artist’s estate. The exhibition includes key works from the High’s collection, including one of Driskell’s self-portraits. In addition, the exhibition follows the course of his career, from Howard University and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture to Talladega College and his studio in Falmouth, Maine, and features recurring motifs such as still lifes, pine trees, aspects of the natural world, African masks, and iconographies drawn from his Christian and Southern roots and the Black experience. Works in the exhibition, including paintings, drawings and prints, will reveal Driskell’s mastery of materials and his indefatigable spirit of invention, which led to the development of a hybrid technique he called “collage-painting.”

DAVID C. DRISKELL (1931-2020)

A Georgia native, David C. Driskell graduated from Howard University in 1955 and received a Master of Fine Arts from The Catholic University of America in 1962. In 1953, he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. A lifelong educator, Driskell honed his teaching repertoire at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) between 1955 and 1976, teaching at Talladega College, Howard University and Fisk University. From 1977 through 1998, he taught at the University of Maryland, College Park, which is now the home of the David C. Driskell Center, an exhibition space and research institute that houses Driskell’s archive. In addition to a growing collection of African American art, it serves as a study center for the history of African American art and art of the African diaspora. While Driskell built a distinguished career as a scholar, he simultaneously maintained an active and distinguished artistic practice, regularly presenting his work in both solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries including the High, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, The Phillips Collection, Tate Modern (London), DC Moore Gallery and Kunsthal KAde (Amsterdam).

Exhibition Catalogue

“David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History” is accompanied by an expansive and fully illustrated catalog of approximately 224 pages, published by Rizzoli Skira. The book will feature a lead essay by Julie L. McGee with contributions by Renée Maurer, Sarah Workneh and Katie Sonnenborn, Shaun Leonardo, Keith Morrison, Jessica May, Thelma Golden, Lowery Stokes Sims, Richard Powell, and Michael Rooks. It also includes a selection of David Driskell's writings, edited by Richard Powell, and a timeline assembled by Monet Timmons.

HIGH MUSEUM OF ART

1280 Peachtree Street, N.E., Atlanta, GA 30309

www.high.org

Monir Farmanfarmaian @ High Museum of Art, Atlanta - A Mirror Garden

Monir Farmanfarmaian: A Mirror Garden
High Museum of Art, Atlanta
August 14, 2020 - January 3, 2021 
(dates to be confirmed)

MONIR SHAHROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN

(Iranian, 1924-2019)

Untitled (Muqarnas), 2012

Mirror, reverseglass painting, plaster on wood

High Museum of Art, purchase with funds from

the Farideh & Al Azadi Foundation, 2019.174

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (1924-2019) was one of Iran’s most celebrated and revered visual artists, known internationally for her geometric mirror sculptures that combined the mathematical order and beauty of ancient Persian architectural motifs with the forms and patterns of hard-edged, postwar abstraction. The High Museum of Art will present the first posthumous exhibition of her work in an American museum with “Monir Farmanfarmaian: A Mirror Garden”.

The exhibition was inspired by the High’s 2019 acquisition of Monir Farmanfarmaian’s cut-mirror sculpture titled “Untitled (Muqarnas)” (2012) as well as her 2014 drawing “Untitled (Circles and Squares).” Muqarnas was acquired with funds from the Farideh & Al Azadi Foundation as part of a significant gift to The Woodruff Arts Center, of which the High is an arts partner, to present work by Persian artists and to engage the Persian community.

“We are honored to present Farmanfarmaian’s work at the High and to recognize her importance as a singular creative force,” said Michael Rooks, the High’s Wieland Family curator of modern and contemporary art. “For generations of artists in post-revolution Iran, Farmanfarmaian represents the paradigm of an independent artist whose work was unfettered by the histories and customs of its context but existed in conversation with contemporary art practices across cultures. At the same time her work reflects a deep understanding and reverence for Iranian culture.”

The exhibition’s title is borrowed from Monir Farmanfarmaian’s 2007 memoir, co-authored by Zara Houshmand, which evokes the visual splendor of the artist’s mirror-mosaic sculptures. Objects on view will include a selection of sculptures, drawings, textiles and collages spanning four decades, from 1976 to 2019. Drawings from the late 1970s such as “Untitled” (1977), featuring a composition based on the hexagon, provide examples of her early investigations of geometric form and pattern, while later drawings such as the High’s “Untitled (Circles and Squares)” (2014) are painstakingly crafted, demonstrating the artist’s conceptual and technical virtuosity and her use of repetition and pattern.

Sculptures from 2009 to 2019 unite fragments of mirror and colorful painted glass in resplendent mosaic patterns. “Untitled (Muqarnas)” (2012) is composed of identically opposite, wing-like forms. The title refers to the honeycombed ceilings in Persian shrines and palaces while also recalling the wings of the Faravahar, an ancient Zoroastrian symbol tied to Persian cultural identity. Another work, titled “Gabbeh” (2009), features a triangular pattern formed by overlapping hexagons that serves as the foundation for an irregular combination of colorful polygons, arcs and diagonals. Its title refers to a type of Persian carpet produced by Nomadic weavers. The exhibition also includes four silk carpets designed by Monir Farmanfarmaian.

Monir Farmanfarmian often grouped her work in series she called “families,” suggesting a familial affinity of form, dimensionality or structure between works in each group. The exhibition will include several examples of these “families,” most notably all eight members of “Third Family,” which is based on the first eight regular polygons in Euclidian geometry. Shown together, the entire group of works will demonstrate the complete progression of the artist’s concept for the series. Another special feature of the exhibition includes two works from the artist’s “Convertible” series in which component parts of the sculpture may be rearranged in multiple configurations demonstrating the fluidity of geometric structure.

The galleries will also feature several intimately scaled collaged boxes that the artist called “Heartache Boxes,” which were produced after the death of her husband Abol-Bashar Farmanfarmaian in 1991. Recalling Joseph Cornell’s boxes arranged with objects related to longing, memory and dreams, as well as the art of Persian miniature painting, these elaborately crafted assemblages are arranged with prints, photographs and a variety of objects that refer to the artist’s life and career, including images of her early work and references to her “lost” life in Tehran before the Islamic Revolution.

The exhibition will be presented on the second level of the High’s Anne Cox Chambers Wing.

Born in Qazvin, Iran, in 1924, MONIR FARMANFARMAIAN studied at the College of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran in the early 1940s, later traveling to New York to further her education. There she attended Parsons School of Design, Cornell University and the Arts Student League. In New York, Monir Farmanfarmaian absorbed the development of geometric abstraction and observed its burgeoning permutations in contemporary art. Her community of artist friends and colleagues there included Milton Avery, Alexander Calder, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol and others. These experiences, combined with her deep knowledge of Iranian arts and crafts, resulted in her personal vision for a truly global modernity.

Following her marriage in 1957, the artist returned to Iran, where she began to study, collect and preserve the traditional decorative arts of her home country. However, the 1979 Islamic Revolution led Monir Farmanfarmaian and her family back to New York, where they would remain in exile for the next 26 years. In 2004, Monir Farmanfarmaian moved back to Tehran, reestablishing a studio where she worked with some of the same craftsmen she had known in the 1970s.

The artist first received significant attention in 1958, when she was awarded a gold medal for her work in the Iranian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, leading to exhibitions in Tehran, Paris and New York. Since then, her work has been shown at major institutions and in exhibitions worldwide. Most recently, major retrospective exhibitions of her work have been presented by the Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Fundação de Serralves, Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Porto.

Farmanfarmaian’s work is included in important public collections around the world including the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Museum of Modern Art, Tehran; Tate Modern, London; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

She is the subject of the monograph “Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian: Cosmic Geometry,” edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and is the co-author of her autobiography, “A Mirror Garden” (Knopf, 2007). In December 2017, the Monir Museum opened in Tehran, the only museum dedicated to a single female artist in Iran.

HIGH MUSEUM OF ART
1280 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA 30309
www.high.org

Maira Kalman @ High Museum of Art, Atlanta

The Pursuit of Everything: Maira Kalman’s Books for Children
High Museum of Art, Atlanta
June 22 - September 15, 2019

This summer, the High Museum of Art will premiere “The Pursuit of Everything: Maira Kalman’s Books for Children,” a colorful exhibition exploring the extensive catalog of Maira Kalman’s imaginative stories and illustrations, which have delighted readers of all ages for more than 30 years.

Perhaps best known for her quirky New Yorker magazine covers and brilliant pictorial essays, Maira Kalman (American, born 1949) has published more than a dozen books for adults and 18 acclaimed children’s books, beginning with the game-changing picture book “Stay Up Late” (1985), which gave visual form to the famous Talking Heads song from the album “Little Creatures.” Since then her works have followed the comic adventures of beloved characters, including a poet dog named Max Stravinsky and Pete the dog, and have addressed important historical people and events with books including “Looking at Lincoln” (2012) and the 9/11-inspired “Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey” (2002).

“The Pursuit of Everything” provides an immersive panorama of Maira Kalman’s picture-book career spanning three decades. The more than 100 works on view will include original drawings and paintings from award-winning books including “Smartypants” (2003), about gluttonous canine Pete’s classroom antics, and “Next Stop Grand Central” (2001) as well as newer publications, among them “Bold & Brave: Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote” (2018), authored by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and the illustrated cookbook “Cake” (2018), written in collaboration with the food writer Barbara Scott-Goodman.

Maira Kalman’s stories weave a curious web of familiarity and imagination with illustrations that celebrate the visual splendor of everyday subjects through a lens that is all her own. Her books ignite curiosity and invite young readers to engage deeply with the world around them. Known for her surreal imagery, Maira Kalman expertly combines sophisticated and hilarious text with beautifully rendered pictures, readily acknowledging the interplay between her writing and painting practice. Her stories have deeply personal roots featuring characters, settings and story lines drawn from the artist’s life and whimsical imagination. Maira Kalman’s images reveal a profound curiosity about shared history and the human experience through themes of adventure, exploration, friendship, dreams and the search for meaning.

Maira Kalman paints with gouache on paper, favoring flat, highly saturated planes of color and an idiosyncratic use of space that imbue her works with surprises that will delight and excite the young and the young at heart. The exhibition will offer the opportunity for a different and satisfyingly intimate experience of Kalman’s art.

Maira Kalman says of her wide-ranging work, “The best children’s books are as appealing to adults as they are to children. There have to be different levels of humor, different levels of reference, which allow a dialogue between adults and children. If you live with children, the kinds of conversations you have during the day range from the surreal to the mundane to the insane to the pedantic. And that language can be duplicated in writing because the world is all of those things.”

“The Pursuit of Everything” marks the High’s fourth collaboration with The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, which organized the show and will present it in Amherst, Mass., from October 13, 2019, through January 19, 2020.

“We are thrilled to partner again with the High to bring children’s picture book art to Atlanta,” said Ellen Keiter, chief curator at The Carle. “Kalman is an astute chronicler of our time as well as someone who makes history accessible. Museum visitors will revel in her lively imagery and witty observations, which vacillate between the comic and the profound.”

“Both captivating and moving, Kalman’s work challenges all of us to rediscover the childlike curiosity that lives deep down inside,” said Virginia Shearer, the High’s Eleanor McDonald Storza director of education. “We are delighted to welcome families back to the High for another exhibition that highlights the work of an acclaimed author and illustrator, and we’re honored to continue our multiyear collaboration with our colleagues at The Eric Carle Museum, who are such wonderful partners.”

In addition to original works from her books, also on view will be Maira Kalman’s illustrated correspondence with her two-year-old granddaughter Olive, fascinating personal notebooks, a colossal reproduction from New York’s Grand Central Terminal, manuscripts, dummy books and other ephemera, including Kalman’s collection of crazy-named candy bars arranged as haikus. The galleries will also feature sketches and images of Kalman’s pictorial essays and covers for The New Yorker.

To bring the audience closer to her artistic process, Maira Kalman repainted the opening scene from her Mikado-themed book “Sayonara, Mrs. Kackleman” (1989) expressly for the exhibition, and she will also create an installation of photographs and objects that inspire her, similar to the one in her studio.

“It is such a wonderful thing to meet a gifted illustrator or a talented writer, and Maira happens to be both,” said Jane Bayard Curley, the exhibition curator. “She is just like her work: funny, smart, and an undisputed champion for the universal appeal of the picture book. Her highly personal and somewhat eccentric worldview appeals to anyone who wants to be verbally and visually amused and challenged.”

Key works featured in the exhibition will include:

- Four hilariously surreal paintings from Kalman’s first picture book, “Stay Up Late,” a collaboration with David Byrne pairing Maira Kalman’s paintings with the lyrics to the popular Talking Heads song

- An early self-portrait of the artist at age 7 sitting in a tree in Henry Hudson Park, from “Chicken Soup, Boots”

- A series of lovingly rendered portraits illustrating the adventures of Maira Kalman’s beloved dog Pete

- Preliminary sketches and finished paintings from Maira Kalman’s popular book series featuring her alter ego, Max the poet dog

- Delicate yet powerfully moving portraits of Sojourner Truth and Inez Milholland from “Bold & Brave: Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote,” Maira Kalman’s recent collaboration with U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Alliance Theatre at The Woodruff Arts Center, of which the High is also an arts partner, will present the world premiere play “Max Makes a Million,” from June 20 to July 21, 2019. Poetry, dance, jazz, visual art and dreams coalesce in this theatrical adaptation combining Kalman’s most notable books, adapted and directed by Liz Diamond.

This collaboration is the fourth in a series presented by the High and the Alliance Theatre in partnership with The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. The Kalman project follows the successful exhibition and theatre productions based on the work of children’s book authors and artists Ashley Bryan (2017), Eric Carle (2016) and Mo Willems (2015). The presentations are made possible through a grant to The Woodruff Arts Center from the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation to expand programming and increase access for family audiences.

“The Pursuit of Everything” will be presented on the lobby and second levels of the High’s Anne Cox Chambers Wing.

ABOUT MAIRA KALMAN

Born in 1949 in Tel Aviv, Israel, Maira Kalman moved to Riverdale in New York’s Bronx borough with her family at age four. Now a Manhattan resident, Kalman has written and illustrated 18 children’s books, including “Ooh-la-la (Max in Love),” “What Pete Ate,” “Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey,” “13 Words” (a collaboration with Lemony Snicket), “Why We Broke Up” (with Daniel Handler), “Looking at Lincoln” and “Thomas Jefferson: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Everything.”

She is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker magazine and is well known for her collaboration with Rick Meyerowitz on its “New Yorkistan” cover in 2001. Additional projects include illustrating Strunk and White’s classic “The Elements of Style.” Kalman also created two monthly online columns for The New York Times. The first, “The Principles of Uncertainty” (2006–07), was a narrative journal of her life. The second, “And the Pursuit of Happiness” (2009), was a yearlong exploration of American history and democracy. Both columns are now collected in book form, published by the Penguin Press.

Since 2003, Maira Kalman has had eight exhibitions at the Julie Saul Gallery in New York City, which represents her work. In 2010, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, organized a retrospective of Kalman’s work titled “Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World),” which traveled to the Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco), the Skirball Cultural Center (Los Angeles) and the Jewish Museum in New York. Her work has appeared in books published by The Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in connection with 2014 exhibition “Maira Kalman: My Favorite Things.” Her longstanding contributions to literature, art and design lent her the opportunity to serve as a resident at the American Academy in Rome and to present two renowned TED talks in 2007 and 2014. With her son Alex, Kalman co-curated the exhibition “Sara Berman’s Closet,” which debuted at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and is now traveling to other museums.

Exhibition Organization and Support: “The Pursuit of Everything: Maira Kalman’s Books for Children” is organized by The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, Amherst, Massachusetts. Support for the High Museum’s presentation is provided by the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation. This exhibition is made possible by Exhibition Series Sponsors Delta Air Lines, Inc., and Turner; Premier Exhibition Series Supporters the Antinori Foundation, Sarah and Jim Kennedy, and Louise Sams and Jerome Grilhot; Benefactor Exhibition Series Supporter Anne Cox Chambers Foundation; Ambassador Exhibition Series Supporters Tom and Susan Wardell and Rod Westmoreland; and Contributing Exhibition Series Supporters the Ron and Lisa Brill Family Charitable Trust, Lucinda W. Bunnen, Corporate Environments, Marcia and John Donnell, W. Daniel Ebersole and Sarah Eby-Ebersole, Peggy Foreman, Robin and Hilton Howell, Mr. and Mrs. Baxter Jones, and Margot and Danny McCaul. Additional support is provided by 2018 Grandparents Circle of Support members Spring and Tom Asher, Anne Cox Chambers, Ann and Tom Cousins, Sandra and John Glover, Shearon and Taylor Glover, Sarah and Jim Kennedy, and Jane and Hicks Lanier and by Lavona Currie, Nena Griffith, Ellen and Tom Harbin, and Margaretta Taylor. Generous support is also provided by the Alfred and Adele Davis Exhibition Endowment Fund, Anne Cox Chambers Exhibition Fund, Barbara Stewart Exhibition Fund, Marjorie and Carter Crittenden, Dorothy Smith Hopkins Exhibition Endowment Fund, Eleanor McDonald Storza Exhibition Endowment Fund, The Fay and Barrett Howell Exhibition Fund, Forward Arts Foundation Exhibition Endowment Fund, Helen S. Lanier Endowment Fund, Isobel Anne Fraser–Nancy Fraser Parker Exhibition Endowment Fund, John H. and Wilhelmina D. Harland Exhibition Endowment Fund, Katherine Murphy Riley Special Exhibition Endowment Fund, Margaretta Taylor Exhibition Fund, RJR Nabisco Exhibition Endowment Fund, and Dr. Diane L. Wisebram.

HIGH MUSEUM OF ART
1280 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA 30309
www.high.org

Contemporary Jewelry & Design, High, Atlanta, 2013-2014

Bangles to Benches: Contemporary Jewelry and Design - Campana Brothers, Ron Arad, Zaha Hadid, Marcel Wanders and Other Renowned Designers at High Museum of Art, Atlanta 
October 8, 2013 - June 8, 2014

The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia (USA) will broaden visitors’ ideas of jewelry as wearable sculpture with Bangles to Benches: Contemporary Jewelry and Design, on view October 8, 2013 through June 8, 2014.

Ranging from mass-produced to one-of-a-kind works and from hand-crafted to digitally fabricated pieces, this exhibition focuses on the scale, range and creative dexterity found in many contemporary designers’ repertoires today. Innovative contemporary jewelry will be paired with other design objects—from chairs to climbing walls—created by the same designers.

This exhibition will celebrate the accomplishments of key designers currently in the High’s permanent collection, including Ron Arad, Fernando and Humberto Campana, Héctor Esrawe, Johanna Grawunder, Zaha Hadid, Joris Laarman, Marc Newson, Ettore Sottsass, Jr. and Marcel Wanders. The show will also highlight many of the High’s recent acquisitions by these designers and will demonstrate the range of contemporary design.

Examples of notable pairings in the exhibition include the modular "Bone Structures" necklace (composed of 18 leather pieces attachable by magnets) by Fernando and Humberto Campana alongside their vibrant 2010 "Sushi" sofa and the gold-plated clown "Nose" necklace by Marcel Wanders, displayed with his 2006 prototype "Crochet" chair made of hand-crocheted fiber and epoxy resin.

“Over the last seven years, we have grown our collection of works by these designers to reinforce and explore ideas of production, material, intent and form,” said Sarah Schleuning, curator of decorative arts and design at the High. “By showcasing wearable designs by these artists alongside their works in other mediums, we’ll celebrate the breadth of the influence of these artists and also show how their works have come to shape the High’s permanent collection.”

Other notable works in the exhibition include: Ron Arad’s "Blo-Void I" rocker and "Hot Ingo" earrings; Zaha Hadid’s "Glace" series with Atelier Swarovski and "Tea and Coffee Towers"; Joris Laarman’s "Credit" brooch and "Ivy" climbing wall; and Marc Newson’s "Orgone 1" bracelet and "Embryo chair".

HIGH MUSEUM OF ART, ATLANTA, GA
Museum's website: www.high.org

20th century iconic art works at High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Fast Forward: Modern Moments 1913 ›› 2013
High Museum of Art, Atlanta
October 13, 2012 - January 20, 2013

In the exhibition Fast Forward: Modern Moments 1913 ›› 2013, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, is explorin the development of modern and contemporary art by selecting key years in art history that represent watershed moments in the 20th century.

ROY LICHTENSTEIN (American, 1923-1997), Girl with Ball, 1961

Oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 60¼ x 36¼ inches (153 x 91.9 cm)

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of Philip Johnson, 421.1981

The exhibition presents approximately 100 works of art created during the years 1913, 1929, 1950, 1961, and 1988, as well as the art of today.  The exhibition examines the years prior to the start of World War I and the Great Depression, the lead-up to postwar American prosperity and the years preceding the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall and how artists responded to and were influenced by events on the world stage.

The exhibition also presents the works of contemporary artists Aaron Curry, Katharina Grosse, and Sarah Sze, whose work extends themes first explored in the 20th century and updates them for the 21st century.

Fast Forward: Modern Moments 1913 ›› 2013 is one of the largest surveys of 20th-century art to ever be exhibited in the southeastern United States. Co-organized by the High Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), as part of the two museums’ ongoing collaboration, the exhibition is on view since October 13, 2012, through January 20, 2013.

“These periods of time ushered in new ways of thinking that forever transformed the artistic landscapes,” said Michael E. Shapiro, the High’s Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., Director. “We’re delighted that this partnership with MoMA will enable our visitors to see how the work of artists from different eras was influenced by major historical events.”

The exhibition includes iconic works from each represented year, including:

· 1913: Umberto Boccioni’s Futurist sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space

· 1929: Salvador Dalí’s Surrealist painting Illumined Pleasures

· 1950: Willem de Kooning’s landmark of Abstract Expressionism, Woman, I

· 1961: Roy Lichtenstein’s Pop art masterpiece Girl With Ball  

· 1988: Jeff Koons’s famed porcelain sculpture Pink Panther

Michael Rooks, the High’s Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, has chosen Aaron Curry, Katharina Grosse and Sarah Sze to highlight the art of 2013. Sarah Sze, who will represent the United States in the 2013 Venice Biennale, created a site-specific installation for the High. Aaron Curry debuts three new works—monumental, polychromed steel sculptures titled “Boo,” “Thing” and “Deadhead”—which are installed on the Museum’s lawn. Rounding out the selection, a large three-dimensional painting by Katharina Grosse are on display on the skyway level of the Wieland Pavilion. 

“Aaron Curry, Katharina Grosse, and Sarah Sze are artists who push the boundaries of artistic practice,” said Rooks. “Each is known for their conceptually open-ended and physically immersive works that invite viewers to walk through and around them. In the process of physically exploring these works, viewers draw out the present moment, stretching time toward moments yet to come.”

AARON CURRY (born 1972), on view through May 2013

Originally trained as a painter, Aaron Curry turned to sculpture while he was an undergraduate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he first became interested in the flat planes that characterized the work of David Smith and Isamu Noguchi. Aaron Curry’s interplay between two and three dimensions encourages viewers to walk around his work, creating new lines of sight as planes of color rotate into nothingness. In his own words, his sculptures are “almost like a cubist painting . . . [they] refer to the surface but give you illusion at the same time. It’s an awkward space that I still find rather exciting to play with.” Since earning his M.F.A. from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, he has exhibited in dozens of group shows throughout the United States and Europe as well as solo shows in Los Angeles, Berlin, London and New York. In 2010, Aaron Curry received a fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin, an experience that culminated in an exhibition at the Schinkel Pavilion in early 2011. His work has been praised by critics Holland Cotter and Roberta Smith, the latter of whom proclaimed Curry’s work to be “physically inventive and sculpturally inclined.”

KATHARINA GROSSE (born 1961), on view through January 20, 2013

The Berlin-based artist Katharina Grosse’s distinctive approach to painting and installation is characterized by the simultaneous expansion and elimination of boundaries for painting, “Abstract Expressionism opened up new ways to look at painting, but it also hindered, to a certain extent, painting’s development. Negating painting’s illusionism narrowed it down to applying paint to a flat surface. I have a totally different approach. I don’t think that a painting is a coherent, closed system that only takes place within its borders.” Her works challenge traditional notions of painting and architectural space and invite viewers to confront their spatial boundaries. Katharina Grosse resists identification with specific media, historical movements or other affiliations, preferring instead to remain as uninhibited as possible. Since 1996 she has exhibited in more than 30 solo shows and several dozen group shows in galleries and museums across the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, the Tate St. Ives in England, the Museum for New Art in Freiburg, Germany, and Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, Denmark (Wanafoto has published a post about this exhibition with pictures of Katharina Grosse artworks). In 2011 she installed her monumental installation “One Floor up More Highly” at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, which received critical praise, including the article, “Chromatic Theater,” published in Art in America. In addition to her artistic practice, Katharina Grosse is currently a professor of fine arts at the Arts Academy of Dusseldorf.

SARAH SZE (born 1969), on view through January 20, 2013

Educated at Yale University and the School of Visual Arts, New York, Sarah Sze has emerged as one of the foremost installation artists of her generation. Best known for her elaborate and gravity-defying installations—microcosmic spaces of dizzying complexity—her work often seems to be a three-dimensional collage in which the placement of every object holds meaning both outside the work and within it. Her coupling of familiar objects—towels, chairs, ladders, for exmaple—with ones that are less immediately identifiable provokes the viewer to create rich associations between otherwise unrelated items. Over the last fifteen years, she has shown in group exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, and at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Monographic exhibitions of her work have been organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Whitney; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others. Her permanent installations are on display at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Berkley. Sarah Sze has been the recipient of numerous honors, including the Atelier Calder prize and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, and most recently she has been selected to represent the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Sarah Sze lives and works in New York City. 

Fast Forward: Modern Moments 1913 ›› 2013 continues a multi-year, multi-exhibition collaboration between the High and MoMA, which began in 2009 with “Monet Water Lilies,” the first in a series of six exhibitions, followed by “Modern by Design” in summer 2011 and “Picasso to Warhol: Fourteen Modern Masters,”. The initiative builds on successful past collaborations between the High and MoMA that resulted in four exhibitions presented in Atlanta between 1997 and 2000. This project extends ties between the institutions through professional exchanges, development of educational programs and publications and reciprocal admission benefits. 

This exhibition is organized by Jodi Hauptman, MoMA Curator of Drawings, and Samantha Friedman, MoMA Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Drawings, in collaboration with David Brenneman, the High’s Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Frances B. Bunzl Family Curator of European Art, and Michael Rooks, the High’s Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Fast Forward: Modern Moments 1913 ›› 2013 is accompanied by a fully illustrated 

catalogue.

High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia 30309
Museum's website: www.high.org

French Film Festival 2011 Atlanta - Bienvenue au 12th French Film Yesterday and today series organized by the High Museum of Art at the Richard H. Rich Theatre

2011 French Film Yesterday & Today Festival

Festival du film français d'Atlanta 2011

High Museum of Art, Atlanta

At Richard H. Rich Theatre

February 5 — 26, 2011

Paris view from MontmatrePhotograph by Gautier Willaume (c) 2005

The High Museum of Art will host the 12th annual FRENCH FILM YESTERDAY AND TODAY series from Saturday, February 5, through Saturday, February 26. The four-film festival will include three contemporary releases—“Queen to Play,” “Kings of Pastry” and “Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno”—as well as the classic production “The Rules of the Game.” This annual series is made possible with support from the Embassy of France Cultural Services and the Consulate of France in Atlanta.

“The theme of mastery that is integral to the idea of creating a masterpiece ties together the four films in this year’s ‘French Film Yesterday and Today’ program. Both ‘Queen to Play,’ a fiction film about a novice chess player, and ‘The Pastry Kings,’ which follows professional pastry chefs seeking France’s highest honors for their craft, explore the rewards and torments of seeking perfection,” said Linda Dubler, curator of media arts at the High. “‘Henri Georges Clouzot’s Inferno’ looks at the pitfalls and eventual madness that accompanies the self-conscious creation of a masterpiece. The series concludes with an undisputed masterpiece, Jean Renoir’s ‘The Rules of the Game,’ a film often listed among the top ten of all time.”

The festival begins Saturday, February 5, with “Queen to Play,” the debut film from Caroline Bottaro. Set on the island of Corsica, it tells the story of wife and mother Hélène, who works as a maid for a standoffish American ex-pat, Dr. Kroger. Hélène is used to being taken for granted and wanting little for herself, but one day she finds the nerve to ask Kroger to teach her chess after noticing a board in his study. Before long, Hélène is envisioning the black-and-white tiled floor she is mopping as a chess board and the tallest perfume bottle on her vanity as the almighty queen. On the website filmsdefrance.com, James Travers called Bottaro’s debut “an intensely moving, imaginatively crafted piece of cinema, which uses the chess motif intelligently and unpretentiously as a potent allegory for life.”

On Saturday, February 12, “Kings of Pastry” from celebrated documentarians D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus explores the quest and competition to be named “Meilleur Ouvrier de France” (Best Craftsman in France), a title that is awarded to one pastry chef after a grueling three-day contest that tries the nerves, talent and luck of its participants. The film follows to Lyon three aspiring contestants—Jacquy Pfeiffer, co-founder of Chicago’s French Pastry School; Regis Lazard, competing for the second time; and Philippe Rigollot, from Maison Pic, France’s only three-star restaurant owned by a woman—as they measure themselves against their peers. For those who labor in the kitchen making exquisite desserts, the coveted title is the ultimate honor, dream and obsession. The film was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “marvelous” and led the Herald Scotland’s critic to declare, “This is the culinary ‘Hurt Locker.’”

Showing on Saturday, February 19, is Serge Bromberg’s César-winning documentary “Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno.” In 1964, Clouzot, maker of such masterpieces as “Diabolique” and “The Wages of Fear,” made a hallucinatory psychological thriller about a man driven mad by jealousy. The unfinished project, “Inferno,” starred the gorgeous Romy Schenider as a water-skiing vixen and Serge Reggiani as her possessive husband. Bromberg’s film resurrects a treasure trove of footage shot by Clouzot and tells the story of how badly things can go wrong for even the most gifted directors. In Eye Weekly Jason Anderson wrote, “The glimpses of the dazzling, op-art inspired effects and Romy Scheider at her dishiest will provoke paroxysms of pleasure among cinephiles.”

The series closes on Saturday, February 26, with “The Rules of the Game,” both a comedy of manners and a scathing look at a corrupt society under the shadow of war. In “5001 Nights at the Movies,” Pauline Kael called it, “Perhaps the most influential of all French films, and one of the most richly entertaining. [Director] Jean Renoir’s legendary . . . masterpiece is a farce about a large house party, gathered for a hunt, where the servants and masters begin to chase and shoot each other. The party at the country chateau is a tragicomic world in motion.” Robert Altman famously said that “‘The Rules of the Game’ taught me the rules of the game,” and surely photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who served as second unit director on the production, was enriched by the experience.

Film Series Schedule

Unless otherwise noted, all films begin at 8 p.m. and are screened in the Richard H. Rich Theatre. The theatre is located in the Memorial Arts Building, adjacent to the High at Peachtree and 15th Streets in midtown Atlanta. All films are in French (eh oui! :)) with English subtitles (oh yes! :)). “Kings of Pastry” is in French and English (en stereo!) with subtitles.

Queen to Play > Saturday, February 5

Kings of Pastry > Saturday, February 12

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno > Saturday, February 19

The Rules of the Game > Saturday, February 26

Support: This program is made possible with support from the Embassy of France Cultural Services department and the Consulate of France in Atlanta. 35mm projection facilities in the Rich Auditorium were provided by a gift from George Lefont.

www.high.org

Andrew Wyeth Retrospective at Philadelphia Museum of Art

Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic
Philadelphia Museum of Art
March - July 2006

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, in partnership with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, will present Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic , a retrospective that surveys seven decades of the artist’s achievement. The exhibition will be seen in Atlanta (November 2005-January 2006) before coming to Philadelphia, where it will be on view from March until July 2006.

Anne d’Harnoncourt, Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, said: "Wyeth’s art grew out of his boyhood experiences both in the Brandywine Valley near Philadelphia and on the coast of Maine, and his intensely personal vision has been etched in the American national consciousness for at least half a century. While many of his landscapes and interior views seem familiar to those of us who live in Southeastern Pennsylvania, Wyeth’s work is ultimately elusive and enigmatic in its meaning. We hope this exhibition will provide a deeper understanding of his contribution to American art."

John Wilmerding, the Christopher Binyon Sarofim Professor of American Art at Princeton University and Senior Advisor to the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is preparing an introduction to the scholarly volume that accompanies the exhibition. He noted: "As we reexamine the full range of Andrew Wyeth’s art, from landscape to figure subjects, we intend to show the various ways in which his creativity has transformed the ordinary and familiar."

Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic will present about 100 tempera paintings, watercolors, and drawings from the 1930s to the present. It will explore in depth Wyeth’s frequently unadorned and often haunting images—ranging from meditative, softly lighted vessels and containers to scenes of stark rooms, windows with curtains lifted in the breeze, barren hills, and people lost in deep introspection.

The exhibition is organized by the High Museum, Atlanta with the collaboration of the Wyeth family and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The curatorial team for Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic includes guest curator Ann Knutson for the High Museum of Art, and, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Kathleen L. Foster, the Robert L. McNeil Curator of American Art, and Michael Taylor, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art.

Catalogue
In the fully illustrated catalogue, published by the High Museum of Art, guest curator Anne Knutson will explore the central role of objects in Wyeth’s art and situate these works in the larger context of American art. Kathleen Foster will discuss the artist’s tempera painting Ground Hog Day (1959) in terms of its meaning and technique and related works in tempera, watercolor, and drawing; and Michael Taylor will write about Wyeth’s relationship to currents in Realism and Surrealism in the 1930s and 1940s. Christopher Crosman, the Director of the Farnsworth Art Museum, will examine the role of Betsy Wyeth in the artist’s life and art.

About Andrew Wyeth
Born in 1917 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, southwest of Philadelphia, Andrew Wyeth is one of America’s most highly regarded living artists. The youngest of five children, Wyeth received his artistic training from his father—the famed illustrator Newell Convers (N.C.) Wyeth. During annual vacations in Maine, Andrew Wyeth explored watercolor and tempera; both would become signature mediums for his work. Subject matter for Wyeth’s painting and drawing came primarily from his surroundings in Pennsylvania and Maine. In 1939, Wyeth married Betsy James and they had two sons, Nicholas and James (Jamie). Jamie Wyeth, a much-exhibited painter and watercolorist, is the third-generation artist in the family.

In 1936, at the age of 19, Andrew Wyeth held his first solo exhibition, at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. In 1963, President Kennedy awarded Wyeth the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the first visual artist to be honored with the nation's highest civilian award. Opened in 1971, the Brandywine River Museum, in Chadds Ford, Pa., became closely associated with the Wyeth family and is among the largest repositories of the Wyeth artists’ work. In 1990, Andrew Wyeth was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, again the first artist to receive this honor.

Andrew Wyeth at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
In 1959, the Philadelphia Museum of Art acquired Ground Hog Day (1959), one of Wyeth’s best-known tempera paintings, in which pale sunlight rakes across a windowsill and strikes the flowered golden wallpaper of a kitchen in the Kuerner farm, Chadds Ford, where a table is set for one. The Museum has since added to its collections other important works by Wyeth, including Cooling Shed (1953), acquired in 1998, and the early tempera Public Sale (1943), acquired in 2001. Both were included in the exhibition celebrating the Museum’s 125th anniversary in 2002. These three works are currently on view in Gallery 119 of the American Wing.

Philadelphia Museum of Art
www.philamuseum.org