This Week's Major Events: An Array of Warhol Exhibits, the Naples Art, Antique & Jewelry Show, Plus Major Museum Exhibitions

FEBRUARY 16-22, 2016

NEW YORK

Andy Warhol: By the Book, Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY
On view through May 15, 2016
Andy Warhol’s fascination with publishing and the art of the book was lifelong—rooted in his artistic training as a college student and early career in advertising, fashion, and commercial illustration. For close to forty years, books were a touchstone for Warhol—a medium to which he returned again and again as a platform for his unparalleled creativity. He contributed to more than eighty projects for books and left traces behind in dozens of others that were never realized. Warhol by the Book is the first exhibition in New York devoted solely to Warhol’s career as a book artist. This retrospective, which originated at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, features more than 130 objects dating from the artist’s student days, his early years in New York as a commercial artist and self-publisher, and the innovative work of the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s that solidified Warhol’s standing in the history of modern art. Click here to continue reading.

Picturing Prestige: New York Portraits, 1700-1860, Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY
On view through November 18, 2016
Beginning in the 18th century, New York City’s well-to-do denizens commissioned paintings of themselves and their loved ones to display in their homes as indicators of prestige. Portraits were often created to commemorate a significant moment in the sitter’s life—a marriage, acquiring an inheritance, or assuming an important position—and they offered an opportunity for the subject to present a carefully crafted image to the world. Drawn from the permanent collection of the Museum of the City of New York, Picturing Prestige: New York Portraits, 1700-1860, features works by many of the leading American painters of their day and captures the aspirations of the rising, upstart merchant city as it became the most populous and the most important port in the young country. In addition, the exhibition chronicles the changing nature of portraiture and artistic patronage, and ties together the lives of a group of leading citizens who enjoyed financial and social benefits that were beyond the reach of most New Yorkers. Click here to continue reading.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
On view through May 8, 2016
Featuring 39 masterpieces spanning five centuries, this exhibition draws from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection to explore the evolution of European and American landscape art. Highlights include Jan Brueghel the Younger’s 17th‐century allegorical paintings of the five senses that invite visitors to consider their own experiences of the world. Venice, one of Allen’s favorite cities, is sumptuously represented in the exhibition through stunning Venetian scenes by Canaletto, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, and J. M. W. Turner, among others. Click here to continue reading.

MARYLAND

American Craft Council Retail Show, Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, MD
February 19-21, 2016
Join us for three days of festivities celebrating all things handmade! More than 650 top contemporary jewelry, clothing, furniture, and home décor artists from across the country will gather under one roof. It’s your chance to touch, feel, and explore high-quality American craft and meet the makers behind the fabulous work. This is the American Craft Council’s flagship show – a must-attend for craft lovers. Plus, meet the country’s top emerging artists! Stop by the Hip Pop pods dotting the show floor to see their contemporary pieces, ranging from sophisticated elegance to cutting edge. Look for the pink and black Hip Pop logo to locate these fresh finds. Click here to continue reading.

TEXAS

American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX
On view through May 1, 2016
The first major exhibition in more than twenty-five years to feature the life and works of the renowned American painter Thomas Hart Benton (1889¬1975), American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood explores the previously overlooked relationship between Benton’s art and movie making. Benton’s associations with the film industry began on the silent film sets of Fort Lee, New Jersey—the first “Hollywood”—and extended to an intimate career-long association with Hollywood’s movers and shakers. Benton’s awareness that movies were the best and most popular means of telling American tales inspired a signature artistic style that melded centuries-old traditions with movie-production techniques to create images that appealed to a broad range of Americans. The exhibition brings together nearly 100 works by Benton, including more than thirty of his paintings and murals, as well as a selection of his drawings, prints, and illustrated books in juxtaposition with scenes from some of Hollywood’s greatest films. The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, organized this exhibition in collaboration with the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Click here to continue reading.

Sculpted in Steel: Art Deco Automobiles and Motorcycles, 1929–1940, Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston, TX
February 21-May 30, 2016
Today's automotive manufacturers strive for economy and efficiency, but there was a time when art and elegance reigned. Sculpted in Steel: Art Deco Automobiles and Motorcycles, 1929–1940 celebrates the cars and motorcycles designed during this iconic period. Sculpted in Steel showcases 14 cars and three motorcycles, alongside historical images and videos. The classic grace and modern luxury of Art Deco design dazzles in vehicles from the United States and around the world. The innovative, machine-inspired Art Deco style began in France in the early 20th century, but the movement was interrupted by World War I. Click here to continue reading.

FLORIDA

Naples Art, Antique & Jewelry Show, Naples Exhibition Center, Naples, FL
February 19-23, 2016
More than 60 acclaimed international exhibitors, including J.S. Fearnley, Rehs Galleries, and M.S. Rau Antiques, will offer millions of dollars worth of rare and beautiful treasures at this year’s Naples Art, Antique & Jewelry Show at the Naples Exhibition Center.  The show kicks off with the private preview benefit for the American Red Cross on February 19, 2016, and is then open to the public from February 20 – 23, 2016. This annual show, which launched in 2011, has become a must-stop destination for collectors, art experts, respected dealers, history buffs and avid shoppers as it offers a wide variety of stunning collections and rare offerings that date as far back as 2,000 years. More than 15,000 guests attended last year’s event, which is now one of the most important features of the Naples social season. Scott Diament, CEO of the Palm Beach Show Group, which produces the fair as well as the Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antique Show, which ran February 11-16, 2016, says, “Our Naples Show is the perfect complement to our Palm Beach Show. With this event we provide our exhibitors with tremendous back-to-back exposure to the most affluent collectors from the Northeast, who choose to winter in Southeast Florida, and the most affluent collectors from the Midwest, who choose to spend their winters on the West Coast of Florida.” Click here to continue reading.

CALIFORNIA

Ed Ruscha Then & Now: Paintings from the 1960s and 2000s, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA
On view through April 24, 2016
An innovator of West-Coast Pop and Conceptual Art, Ed Ruscha’s work defies and exceeds both categories, drawing upon popular media, commercial culture, and the landscape of Los Angeles. This tailored exhibition considers the artist’s use of recurring words, images, and themes across the decades. The iconic artist first gained attention in the 1960s for work that combines text and image with deadpan takes on American vernacular culture. The show is anchored by MCASD’s 1962 canvas Ace. Click here to continue reading.

Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
February 21-May 15, 2016
Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957 is the first comprehensive museum exhibition in the United States to examine the history of Black Mountain College (BMC). Founded in 1933 in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, this renowned experimental college placed the arts at the center of a liberal arts education in an effort to better educate citizens for participation in a democratic society. Profoundly interdisciplinary with an emphasis on inquiry, discussion, and experimentation, it gave equal attention to the visual arts—painting, sculpture, drawing—and so-called applied arts or crafts like weaving, pottery, and jewelry-making, as well as architecture, poetry, music, and dance.Influenced by the teaching of philosopher John Dewey and the ideals of the progressive education movement, there were no required courses and free inquiry and learning by doing were encouraged. Click here to continue reading.

LONDON

Andy Warhol: Works from the Hall Collection, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford
On view through May 15, 2016
This spring exhibition presents, for the first time in public, an important private collection of works by Andy Warhol (1928–1987). Cultural icon, celebrity and provocateur, Warhol produced images which are instantly recognizable, but this exhibition, through the lens of a private collection, also reveals an unfamiliar side to the artist in his less well-known works. The exhibition features over a hundred works from the Hall Collection (USA), plus loans of artist films from the Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. Curated by Sir Norman Rosenthal, the exhibition spans Warhol’s entire output from iconic pieces of the 1960s Pop pioneer to the experimental works of his last decade. It is arranged chronologically, opening with the early Pop masterpieces and portraits. The first room includes works from key series such as Flowers and Brillo Soap Pads Box. Click here to continue reading.

VANCOUVER

MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia
February 20-June 12, 2016
From the moment that Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque undertook the revolutionary gesture of adding a rectangle of floral wallpaper, a newspaper headline or a scrap of sheet music to their compositions, they initiated an immediate and fundamental shift in European art. The resulting explosion of mashup strategies employed across media and movements offers the clearest evidence of the relevance of this process to the growth of visual culture during the 20th century. From Marcel Duchamp to Jean-Luc Godard, Liz Magor to Isa Genzken, artists of diverse disciplines have adopted and reworked this creative strategy. Taking over all four floors of the Vancouver Art Gallery, this ground-breaking exhibition will offer an international survey of mashup culture, documenting the emergence and evolution of a mode of creativity that has grown to become the dominant form of cultural production in the early 21st century. Click here to continue reading.