Brant Mackley Gallery, Tlingit 1870-1880s Length: 43.75 in


Each Tuesday we present our weekly roundup of top shows, exhibitions, and events. This week, a pair of festivals put Native American and tribal art in the spotlight. In New York City, The Met, The Whitney, and The Frick offer three different perspectives on everything from the history of protest to the angels of Rembrandt. 


Photo courtesy of Antique American Indian Art Show

Antique American Indian Art Show

August 15-18, 2017

El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM

For more information, visit: www.antiqueindianartshow.com


The Antique American Indian Art Show Santa Fe, the most anticipated show and sale of historic Indian art of the summer art season, returns August 15–18, bringing together more than 65 of the world’s most knowledgeable experts in American Indian art and thousands of select historic art objects from indigenous cultures throughout the United States and Canada. Now in its fourth year, it is the largest show of its kind in the world. 


The four-day event will take place Tuesday through Friday at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe in the Santa Fe Railyard. The festivities kicks off on Tuesday evening, August 15, with an opening gala from 6 to 9 p.m. to benefit KNME New Mexico PBS. The show continues from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Friday. Admission includes a special viewing of Homage to the Square, a groundbreaking exhibit of twenty-five early Navajo rugs and blankets c.1870-1950, juxtaposed against a series of original modern artworks utilizing simple polygon design and complex color interaction.


In The Spirit: Northwest Native Festival at Tacoma Art Museum

August 19, 2017

Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA

For more information, visit: www.tacomaartmuseum.org


In the Spirit: Northwest Native Festival encompasses a day of dancing, drumming, singing, and shopping with a diverse group of Native American artists. Both museums will be filled with vendors selling artwork in all price ranges. Round out your festival experience by catching performances of Native singers, musicians, and dance groups throughout the day.


WSHM’s Director Jennifer Kilmer shared, “Tacoma Art Museum has been an exceptional neighbor and partner of ours for many years, and this collaborative approach is a truly exciting new endeavor. Our staff are working together with a commitment to bring the community an immersive, engaging festival. I hope you will make plans now to join us in August as our museums come alive with the celebration of Northwest Native artists, contemporary art, and time-honored traditions.”

Fazal Sheikh, Benares, India, 2012, from the series Ether. © Fazal Sheikh. From the exhibition Common Ground.



An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections From the Whitney 1940-2017

August 18, 2017 - ongoing

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

For more information, visit: www.whitney.org


Through the lens of the Whitney’s collection, An Incomplete History of Protest looks at how artists from the 1940s to the present have confronted the political and social issues of their day. Whether making art as a form of activism, criticism, instruction, or inspiration, the featured artists see their work as essential to challenging established thought and creating a more equitable culture. Many have sought immediate change, such as ending the war in Vietnam or combating the AIDS crisis. Others have engaged with protest more indirectly, with the long term in mind, hoping to create new ways of imagining society and citizenship.

Color, Light & Form

Through November 6, 2017 

Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, CA

For more information, visit: www.montereyart.org


Color, light and form are essential elements of art. The shade of a color can affect your mood, the brilliance of its light can catch your eye, and the shape or form of the subject can define the space of both what is being depicted and its surroundings. All of these properties can affect the viewer’s spiritual and physical relationship to an artwork. The works in this exhibition were drawn from the Museum’s post-1980 collection of contemporary art by California-based artists, and were selected to illustrate the diverse ways in which artists can utilize these aspects of art and design to engage the viewer through a contemporary lens.

National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Louis Kahn, 1962 – 83


Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture

Through November 5, 2017

The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA

For more information, visit: www.fabricworkshopandmuseum.org


The story of master architect Louis Kahn (1901-1974) is intrinsically connected to Philadelphia, where he spent most of his life and career. Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture is the first major retrospective of Kahn’s work in two decades, encompassing over 200 objects related to Kahn’s buildings and projects in the form of architectural models, plans, original drawings, photographs, and films. With complex spatial compositions and a choreographic mastery of light, Kahn created buildings of archaic beauty and powerful universal symbolism. The Fabric Workshop and Museum is proud to be the final venue of the international tour.

 

The Power of Architecture extensively documents all of Kahn’s important projects—from his early urban planning concepts and single-family houses to monumental late works such as the Roosevelt Memorial in New York City (1973-74), posthumously completed in October 2012. Among his most important works are the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California (1959-65), the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas (1966-72), and the National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh (1962-83). The presentation of Kahn’s architectural projects is accompanied by a selection of watercolors, pastels and charcoal drawings created during his travels, which document his skill as an artist and illustrator.

Ross Manning: Dissonant Rhythms

Through October 28, 2017

Institute of Modern Art Brisbane

For more information, visit: www.ima.org.au


The Institute of Modern Art (IMA) is pleased to present Brisbane-based artist and musician Ross Manning’s first-ever survey exhibition, Dissonant Rhythms. Best known for his use of everyday materials, Manning’s major exhibition features sculpture that repurpose ceiling fans, fluorescent tubes, and overhead projectors, creating exquisite interplays of light and sound. In a major new commission made especially for the IMA’s galleries, the artist has constructed a large-scale self-playing instrument that resembles a wave form, along with a custom-designed performance space for the artist and his collaborators. In what is a transformative opportunity, the four-gallery exhibition will be complemented by the publication of his first monograph, published by the IMA, accompanied by a vinyl LP, released by IMA and Room40.

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), Louise Tiffany, Reading, 1888. Pastel on buff colored wove paper, 20 1/2 x 30 1/4 inches. The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Gift of the family of Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham, 2003 (2003.606).

Gilded Age Drawings at the Met 

August 21-December 10, 2017

The Met Fifth Avenue, Floor 1, New York City, NY

For more information, visit: www.metmuseum.org


Gilded Age Drawings at the Met will feature more than three dozen rarely seen treasures from The Met's collection of late 19th-century American works on paper. Created during America's so-called Gilded Age—which began shortly after the museum was founded in 1870 and flourished through the 1890s—many of these innovative drawings in watercolor, pastel, and charcoal were acquired during the artists' lifetimes and became the cornerstone of The Met's important holdings in this art form. On view will be iconic works by some of the leading American artists of the time, including Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and Louis Comfort Tiffany, as well as several new acquisitions. Three recently promised gifts to The Met are a highlight of the exhibition—works by Cecilia Beaux, John La Farge, and Sargent.

Fazal Sheikh, Abshiro Aden Mohammed, Women's Leader, Somali Refugee Camp, Dagahaley, Kenya, 2000, from the series A Camel for the Son.© Fazal Sheikh

Common Ground: Photographs by Fazal Sheikh

Through November 12, 2017

Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO

For more information, visit: www.denverartmuseum.org


Common Ground: Photographs by Fazal Sheikh, 1989-2013, is a survey of the nearly 25-year career of the critically acclaimed photographer Fazal Sheikh. Born and raised in New York City, the artist has focused on raising awareness of international human rights issues through his documentary-based photography practice.


The exhibition features more than 170 portraits and landscapes chronicling individuals living in displaced and marginalized communities around the world, many times as the result of war, exploitation, and poverty. Photographs in Common Ground span a period from 1989 to 2013, offering deeper insight into major world events, racial strife, and mass global displacement in places such as East Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and the Netherlands. Stories told through Sheikh’s pictures focus on survivors, orphans, and victims of violence and abuse.

Catch It Before It Closes: 


Rembrandt (1606–1669) Abraham Entertaining the Angels, 1646 Oil on oak panel 6 3/8 x 8 3/8 inches (16.1 x 21.1 cm) Private collection Photo: Michael Bodycomb. From the exhibition, Divine Encounter.


Zaha Hadid Architects : Reimagining Architecture

Through August15, 2017

Mira Bay Sands, Singapore

For more information, visit: www.marinabaysands.com


‘Zaha Hadid Architects: Reimagining Architecture’  offers a rare glimpse of the late Dame Zaha Hadid and her work with  clients that have a global reputation for excellence. Zaha redefined  architecture for the 21st century with a repertoire of projects that  have captured imaginations across the globe. The exhibition presents an enriching experience for the design, architecture, and cultural communities and will not only feature some of Zaha's most famous works,  but will, for the first time in Singapore, showcase the  custom-designed furniture pieces for UEM Sunrise’s Mayfair.


Zaha's  optically rich architecture is built on essays in spatial composition.  It invites perception so that space becomes personal, owned by all  who see it. The purity of Zaha's formal geometries and fluid lines in architecture also engages the senses and captures the eye; creating  unrivalled spatial experiences that are clearly organized and intuitive  to navigate.

Divine Encounter: Rembrandt’s Abraham and the Angels

Through August 20

The Frick Collection, New York, NY

For more information, visit: www.frick.org


Beginning in the late 1630s and increasingly through the 1640s, Rembrandt shifted away from the dynamic movement of his earlier work toward imagery characterized by stillness and calm. These are the defining qualities of the artist’s Abraham Entertaining the Angels of 1646, in which a momentous episode of divine revelation unfolds in the most hushed of ways—dramatic action replaced by subtle gesture and an astonishing luminosity, all within a panel measuring fewer than nine inches wide. 


On loan from a private collection and displayed publicly for the first time in more than ten years, this extraordinary painting is the centerpiece of a small exhibition dedicated to Rembrandt’s depictions of Abraham and his various encounters with God and his angels, as recounted in the book of Genesis. In the panel and in the other works included in the show—a tightly focused selection of prints and drawings and a single copper plate—Rembrandt explored, in different media, the nature of divine presence and the ways it was perceived.