How I Spent My Summer Vacation

By: Joseph Jacobs

July 2007

Summer is the height of the art year for museums, and this season’s enticing selection of exhibitions could very well influence vacation planning. Innovative shows can be seen in such summer tourist destinations as Salem and Williamstown in Massachusetts, Santa Fe, San Francisco, and Humlebaek, Denmark. Napoleonic design, fashion and jazzy African-American quilts vie for attention with new takes on such old standbys as Claude Monet, Joseph Cornell, Louise Nevelson and Edward Hopper.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum
“Nan Kempner, American Chic” (through Nov. 11)

Unquestionably, this is one of the most visually dazzling shows of the year, as attested to by the enormous crowds that flocked to it this past winter when it was shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition makes a powerful case for fashion as art. Kempner, labeled “the world’s most famous clotheshorse” by Vanity Fair and “la plus chic du monde,” by Yves Saint Laurent, in the 1950s started assembling a collection that included haute couture, sportswear and accessories by such names as Valentino, Oscar de la Renta, John Galliano, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld, Lanvin and Manuel Ungaro.

Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe
“Georgia O’Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction” (through Sept. 9)

Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the most popular and studied American artists of the 20th century, and yet it is a testament to her greatness and rich creativity that scholars are constantly uncovering new issues and themes embedded in her imagery. The most recent discovery comes from Mint Museum curator Jonathan Stuhlman, former curator of American art at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, where this exhibition originated. The show of approximately 60 works traces the artist’s prolific use of circular motifs, including ovals, ellipses and arching lines, and analyzes O’Keeffe’s compositional and iconographic dependence on this form. Adding to the allure of the exhibition is the fact that it can be seen in Santa Fe, near where O’Keeffe lived for the last 60 years of her life and where she made many of the works in the show.

High Museum of Art, Atlanta
“Louvre Atlanta: Kings as Collectors” and “Decorative Arts of the Kings” (now through Sept. 2)
“The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Renaissance Masterpiece” (through July 15)
“Annie Liebovitz: A Photographer’s Life 1990–2005” (through Sept. 9)
“Cecila Beaux: American Figure Painter” (through Sept. 9)

The High Museum of Art may be serving up the largest and classiest exhibition smorgasbord in America, one that will keep you busy for days. First, there are the two Louvre Atlanta exhibitions—“Kings as Collectors” and “Decorative Arts of the Kings”—which, through a three-year loan arrangement with the Louvre, presents late 17th- and 18th-century masterpieces of fine and decorative arts from the royal collections of France’s most famous museum. If time allows, catch Lorenzo Ghiberti’s “The Gates of Paradise,” the recently restored bronze doors made in 1452 for the baptistery of the Duomo in Florence. This landmark of Renaissance sculpture will be on view at the High through July 15. You may need a break before tackling the enormous traveling Annie Liebovitz show, which not only presents many of the artist’s most famous commercial portrait commissions, with subjects including Demi Moore, Al Pacino and Mick Jagger, but also displays many personal works, especially photographs of her lover, Susan Sontag, dying. And last, but not least, is a magnificent exhibition of the turn-of-the-century Philadelphia portraitist, Cecilia Beaux, who during her lifetime was compared to John Singer Sargent, in part due to her luscious handling of paint and color.

Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
“Lucian Freud” (through Sept. 2)

The 85-year-old Lucian Freud looms as one of the great figurative painters of the last 60 years and certainly rivals the likes of Willem de Kooning when it comes to manipulating oil paint. It only seems appropriate that Frued’s imagery, mostly portraits and nudes, is filled with psychological tension, since the London artist is the grandson of the famous father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. The show presents some 70 works, including several new paintings, among which are views of his garden, that reveal a side to the artist’s oeuvre that few viewers know about. The show travels to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark, Sept. 15–Jan. 28, 2008, and the Gemeente Museum, The Hague, Feb. 18–June 8, 2008.

The Jewish Museum, New York
“The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend” (through Sept. 16)

Many of the 66 works in this Louise Nevelson retrospective, the first in 20 years, may look familiar, but the story behind them will not be. In a radical departure from traditional interpretation, guest curator Brooke Kamin Rapaport sees the artist’s sculpture, drawings and paintings as imbued with autobiography, culminating in such iconic works as “Dawn’s Wedding Feast” and “Mrs. N’s Palace.” These two room-size installations are executed in Nevelson’s signature style—boxes filled with an assemblage of wood detritus scavenged from the streets of New York, all painted a haunting black. The latter installation is even shaped like a house, obviously Nevelon’s “palace.” The show includes rarely exhibited drawings that will be a pleasant surprise to viewers not familiar with the artist’s outstanding draftsmanship.Los Angeles County Museum of Art
“The Arts in Latin America, 1492–1820” (Aug. 5–Oct. 28)
“Dan Flavin: A Retrospective” (through Aug. 12)

With L.A.’s large Latino population, it’s appropriate that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is the last of three venues for this groundbreaking exhibition that explores three centuries of colonial art in Latin America. The 200 objects in the show include major works of painting, sculpture and the decorative arts, encompassing ceramics, gold, silver and textiles. Many of them come from remote Catholic churches and have never been seen before in the United States. They reveal a very different picture of the art of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies than that traditionally held. Instead of a second-rate imitation of European art, the exhibition reveals an aesthetic born of a creative melding of indigenous, European, African and even Asian cultures. This unique and fascinating vision informed the creation of luxury products for the rich, as well as the powerful imagery required by a zealous, proselytizing Christian church.

Also on view in July and into August is a show for lovers of contemporary art, a retrospective of the minimalist sculptor Dan Flavin. For more than 30 years, Flavin worked almost entirely with fluorescent tubes, and you’ll be amazed at the variety and beauty of his mesmerizing work, which ranks him among the most important sculptors of the 20th century.

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
“Richard Avedon” (Aug. 24–Jan. 13)

In the nearly three years since Richard Avedon died, his position as one of the great fashion and portrait photographers of the 20th century has only increased. His severe, yet elegant, bizarre and humorous work virtually defined these genres in the 1960s and ’70s. The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is presenting the first major retrospective in 10 years, which means the artist’s late work will now be seen for the first time within the context of his entire career. The show will include roughly 150 photographs, dating from the 1940s to Avedon’s death at age 81. For those who lived through this period, this exhibition should be like a trip down memory lane. The exhibition travels to the Forma International Centre for Photography in Milan from Feb. 13 to May 25, 2008. Also on view at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is “Boundaries of Architecture I,” a fascinating study of the impact of engineering technology on contemporary architecture (through Oct. 21).

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
“Edward Hopper” (through Aug. 19)

Boston is the first stop for this retrospective of Edward Hopper, co-organized with the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Art Institute of Chicago. This comprehensive show covers the artist’s entire career, from student days to his last works, and most important it prominently includes drawings and prints alongside the iconic paintings, demonstrating that Hopper was one of the great American printmakers of the 20th century. But the show’s focus is on the famous paintings made from 1925 to 1950, “Automat” (1927), “Early Sunday Morning” (1930) and “Nighthawks” (1942), works that have come to define America of the 1920s and ’30s and powerfully portray the sense of alienation that modernity was bringing to the world’s most advanced nation.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo.
Steven Holl–designed Bloch Building
“Manet to Matisse: Impressionist Masters from the Marion and Henry Bloch ollection” (through Sept. 9)
“Developing Greatness: The Origins of American Photography, 1839–1885” (through Dec. 30)
“Harry Callahan” (through Oct. 21).

Everyone is talking about the recently opened, dazzling new 165,000-square-foot wing designed by New York architect Steven Holl, which in and of itself makes Kansas City a destination this summer. The partially submerged building melds into the landscape, becoming an underground glass gallery filled with natural light that houses special installations of work by Isamu Noguchi and Walter de Maria. In conjunction with the opening of the new wing, the museum is presenting the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection of the new building’s namesakes, Henry Bloch, chairman of the board, and his wife, Marion. (For more on the Blochs, see “Magnificent Obsession,” Art & Antiques, June 2006.) Titled “Manet to Matisse,” the show presents an impressive selection of signature works by Renoir, Degas, van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne. But be sure to catch two significant photography shows being offered as well, both drawn from the enormous, recently donated Hallmark Photography Collection. “Developing Greatness: The Origins of American Photography, 1839 to 1885” is a longoverdue look at the evolution in America of the newly invented medium. “Harry Callahan” focuses on the Chicago modernist whose spectacular spare formalist compositions rank him among the great photographers of the century.

Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass.
“Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination” (through August 19)

This is the Cornell show to end all Cornell shows. The first major retrospective in 26 years, it contains more than 180 works, 30 of which have never been publicly shown before. The show’s curator is the world’s preeminent Cornell scholar, Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, chief curator of the Peabody-Essex and formerly at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which co-organized the show and where it opened earlier this year (The tour ends at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Oct 6, 2007–Jan. 6, 2008.) Hartigan not only puts this self-taught New York artist, known for his poetic use of common materials, into the context of Surrealism, but she also demonstrates his relationship to such diverse sources as celestial navigation, Renaissance art and ballet. A special treat is the inclusion of the artist’s rarely seen films, which were extremely influential for contemporary artists in the 1950s and ’60s.Saint Louis Art Museum
“Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of the Empire Style, 1800–1815” (through Sept. 16)

Napoleon Bonaparte was notorious for his deft use of propaganda, which extended to the decorative and fine arts as well as to the burgeoning press. Crowning himself emperor in 1802, he demanded his designers furnish his royal residences at Versailles, Malmaison and Fontainebleau in an imperial style, hiring architects Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine to implement his vision. For their furnishings, they culled motifs from Egypt, Greece and Rome, associating Napoleon with these powerful ancient civilizations, and they organized these newly designed objects of power into dramatic, imposing settings that reaffirmed the emperor’s imperial supremacy and position. “Symbols of Power” presents more than 140 decorative artworks, including furniture, wallpaper, silver, porcelain, jewelry and clothing. The show is a rare opportunity to see some of the most opulent and forceful art of the 19th century.

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.
“The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings” (through Sept. 16)

Everyone knows the work of Claude Monet—or so they think. “The Unknown Monet,” organized in conjunction with the Royal Academy of Arts in London, presents a new side of the famous Impressionist, who everyone believed painted empirically, setting his canvas up in front of his motif and proceeding to paint exactly what he saw, not what he knew. Now it appears Monet made studies for pictures, and “The Unknown Monet” presents a vast graphic world that even scholars to date have either underplayed or outright ignored, despite Monet’s having shown seven pastels in the first Impressionist Exhibition of 1874. The Clark Institute exhibition includes 20 pastels, in addition to dozens of drawings and sketchbooks. And there could be no better summer setting for this exhibition than the beautiful Berkshires. Also in Williamstown is the Williams College Museum of Art, and cavernous MASS MoCA is just down the road in North Adams.

Tate Modern, London
“Dalí & Film” (through Sept. 9)

In 1929 Salvador Dalí made his grand entrance into the Paris art world with the presentation of his now-famous film, “Un Chien Andalou,” a surrealistic work made with compatriot Luis Buñuel, filled with terrifying and erotic imagery, most of it based on Freudian psychology. And yet, not until this exhibition has there been an intensive study of the relationship of Dalí’s paintings to his films. Sixty Dalí paintings and another 40 photographs, drawings and films— including the famous animated sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” (1945)— demonstrate the profound impact that cinema had on the development of the artist’s Surrealism, and remind us that Dalí, despite his destructive commercial self-promotion late in life, remains one of the most fertile and influential artists of the 20th century.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London
“Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design” (through July 22)

Surrealism was hardly confined to the fine arts—the movement had an enormous influence on the decorative arts, fashion, theater, film and even advertising. This is the first extensive exploration of Surrealism’s impact on these fields, and will include such disturbing, provocative or erotic objects  as Salvador Dalí’s “Mae West Lips Sofa” and “Lobster Telephone,” Meret Oppenheim’s “Table with Bird’s Legs” and “Fur Bracelet,” Elsa Schiaparelli’s “Tear” and “Skeleton” dresses, Oscar Dominguez’s satin-lined “Wheelbarrow” armchair, and advertisements for Shell Oil and Ford Motors in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Also included are Surrealist film clips, such as Dalí’s mindbending sequence from Hitchcock’s “Spellbound.” This exhibition promises to be one of the year’s most wondrous and fantastical.

The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
“Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt” (through Aug. 26)

The quilts of the remote rural African- American community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, are hardly new to the art world. Revealed in 2002 in the first version of this show, which comes largely from a collection put together by Atlanta art dealer and collector Bill Arnett, it was shown, among other places, at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.

This second selection, organized like the first by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Arnett’s Tinwood Alliance and traveling to other museums, focuses on the compositions of Gee’s Bend quilts made from 1925 to the present day, demonstrating the development of such innovative patterns as housetop, bricklayer, medallions and strip quilting.

The triumph of the quilts is their ability to reinvigorate the American quiltmaking tradition with new motifs, patterns and palette.

Gee’s Bend quilts, like most 20th-century African-American quilts, are dazzling abstractions, irregular in pattern and syncopation, their expressionistic power in many respects paralleling improvisational jazz. We can never get enough of these spectacular works, which rank among the finest art of the century. Ideally, this show would travel forever.

Art critic Joseph Jacobs is executive director of The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation, New York, and an Art & Antiques’ contributing editor.FOR MORE INFORMATION
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum 415.863.3330
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe 505.946.1000
High Museum of Art, Atlanta 404.733.4400
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 011.35.31.6129.9000
Los Angeles County Museum of Art 323.857.6150
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art Humlebaek, Denmark 011.45.4919.0719
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 617.267.9300
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Kansas City, Mo. 816.751.1278
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass. 978.745.9500
Saint Louis Art Museum 314.721.0072
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass. 413.458.2303
Tate Modern, London 011.44.20.7887.8888
The Jewish Museum, New York 212.423.3200
Victoria and Albert Museum, London 011.44.20.7942.2000
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore 410.547.9000

ART SHOWS
This summer will be a bonanza for aficionados of contemporary art because this is the year not only for the Venice Biennale but also for Documenta in Kassel, Germany, an exhibition that occurs once every five years. This means the two shows overlap only once every decade.

The Venice Biennale, also known as the 52nd International Art Exhibition, includes “Think with the Senses—Feel with the Mind. Art in the Present Tense” (now through Nov. 21). The entire contemporary art world descended in early June, not only to be seen but also to see which 100 artists from all over the world Robert Storr, former contemporary curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, had selected for the Biennale’s curated show, “Think with the Senses.” The international pavilions will reach a record number of 77 this year, so budget several days to see everything.

The Venice Biennale is in the Giardini and in various venues in the city center. “Think with the Senses” is in the Corderie and Artiglierie Arsenals and the Italian Pavilion in the Giardini, through Nov. 21.

Held in the summer once every five years since it was founded in 1955, Documenta is the one art exhibition designed to have its finger on the pulse of the contemporary art scene, to the point of actually defining that scene for generations to come. The 1972 and 2002 Documentas are certainly must-mentions for any art book of the period.

This year the director of the exhibition is the German curator Roger M. Buergel who has written that “Documenta 12 is confronted to a great extent with Western middle classes whose standard of living is declining precipitously in the current wave of globalization ‘in the new spirit of capitalism.’” Do not expect to find any pretty pictures in Kassel; rather be prepared for videos and installations dealing with heady social issues, as this quote implies.

Venice Biennale. 011.03.53.1612.9900, www.labiennale.org.
Documenta. 011.49.5.61.70.72.70, www.documenta12.de.