fall museum preview

culled from ken johnson's piece in the nytimes (subscription only, email me if you want the whole thing) from a few weeks ago. very eastcoast-centric, but i include exhibits closer to some of you and also within my possible striking distance (travelling exhibits noted when the info was available,... hello san diego!)

John Armleder, About Nothing: Works on Paper 1962-2007
Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
through December 17, 2006
John Armleder (b. 1948, Geneva, Switzerland, lives Geneva) is a performance artist, sculptor, and painter, whose multi-faceted activities are connected by drawing. Affiliated with Fluxus in the late 1960s and 70s, the value of ephemerality and notion that art is the conduction of creative energy are imperative to his work. During the 1980s, his "furniture sculpture" was highly visible within the context of "New Geometry" or "Neo Geo." This is the first major exhibition of John Armleder's work in the United States.

Enigma Variations: Philip Guston and Giorgio de Chirico
Santa Monica Museum of Art, California
through November 25, 2006
...will explore the influence of de Chirico’s distinctive vision on Guston, while illustrating Guston’s ability to transform inspiration through the inimitable lens of his creative consciousness.

Massive Change: The Future of Global Design
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Through December 31, 2006
Conceived by the internationally renowned designer Bruce Mau, the exhibition invites viewers to consider the dynamic future of design culture and the real choices we must make. Massive Change is dramatic, engaging and critical, immersing visitors in a series of powerful encounters with the latest innovations in the fields of urban design, transportation, information design, revolutionary material and more.

Picasso and American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC
Through January 28, 2007
Picasso's influence on American artists is the theme of a show juxtaposing Picasso's works with those of Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and others. Travels to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Feb. 23 to May 28); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (June 17 to Sept. 9, 2007).

Steve Reich at the Whitney: A Performance Event
Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC
Sunday October 15, 2006 2 - 6 pm
The Whitney pays special tribute to Reich with four hours of Reich’s music performed by some of today’s most exciting young contemporary music ensembles, including Alarm Will Sound, Prism Saxophone Quartet, So Percussion, and the Manhattan School of Music’s TACTUS, as well as Ransom Wilson and other accomplished Reich performers.

Bob Dylan's American Journey, 1956-1966
Morgan Library and Museum, NYC
Through January 6, 2007
The first big museum exhibition to study Mr. Dylan's early career will present historical artifacts -- handwritten lyrics, letters, instruments and photographs -- as well as films of performances by and interviews with him and others.

Lucio Fontana: Venice/New York
Guggenheim Museum, NYC
October 10, 2006 – January 21, 2007
The first major United States exhibition since 1977 to be devoted to this Italian avant-gardist known for slashing and puncturing his painted canvases and metal panels.

Courbet and the Modern Landscape
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
October 15, 2006 - January 07, 2007
Courbet's landscape paintings of the 1860s defined the essential artistic issues that would concern the next generation of avant-garde painters (who would be called the impressionists), changing the course of painting for the next 100 years. Despite its enormous significance, Courbet's landscape painting received surprisingly little consideration in exhibition form. This show will focus on 37 landscape paintings, which demonstrate how Courbet was a radical innovator both in the motifs he chose to paint and in the dramatic brushwork of his paintings.

Barcelona & Modernity: Picasso, Gaudi, Miro, Dali
Cleveland Museum of Art
October 15, 2006 - January 7, 2007
The first comprehensive exhibition (over 300 works) to focus on the Catalan Renaissance, a period of extraordinary artistic fertility centered in Barcelona from the late 1880's until Franco took power in 1939.

Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan
New York Public Library
October 20, 2006 - February 4, 2007
The Japanese literary tradition, dating from as early as the 8th century, is among the richest and most enduring of any country in the world, and ehon, or "picture books," although little known in the West are one of the glories of world art. Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan will demonstrate the variety of visual languages used by artists over many historical periods from 764 to 2005. It will include approximately 200 books with printed illustrations, as well as related manuscripts, drawings, woodblock prints, and photographs.

John Latham: Time Base and the Universe
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, NYC
October 29, 2006 - January 8, 2007
An exhibition of approximately thirty works by the late British artist John Latham (1921-2006). Conceived with the artist prior to his death in January 2006, the show surveys the major stages of his career, spanning over fifty years. With his uncompromising endeavor to explore some of the most complex cosmological ideas through art, and due to his criticism of the art market, he was both acclaimed and vilified in his lifetime. Visceral and enigmatic, his work encompassed sculpture, performance, installation, film, conceptual, and book art.

Music is a Better Noise
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
October 29, 2006 - January 8, 2007
Music is a Better Noise brings together musicians who make art and artists who make music, or for whom music is an integral part of their creative process. The exhibition, featured in two parts in P.S.1’s first floor Drawing and Painting Galleries, also includes a video program in the Vault.

Brice Marden retrospective
Museum of Modern Art, NYC
October 29, 2006 - January 15, 2007
From his monochromatic abstractions of the 70's to his recent compositions of meandering colored lines, Mr. Marden has produced the most consistently sensuous and elegant American painting of the last four decades. This retrospective will present 50 paintings and 50 drawings from all phases of his career. Travels to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Feb. 17 to May 13).

Albers And Moholy-Nagy: From The Bauhaus To The New World
Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC
Through January 21, 2007
Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy were two of the greatest pioneers of modernism in the twentieth century. This exhibition focuses on their individual accomplishments as well as the parallels in their work and examines their groundbreaking development of abstract art beginning in the early 1920s.


Morris Louis Now: An American Master Revisited
High Museum of Art, Atlanta
November 4, 2006 through January 24, 2007
The first consideration of Louis’s work in the United States since 1986 and offers a critical re-examination of this influential painter’s legacy. Featuring approximately 30 canvases produced from 1951 through 1962, Morris Louis Now examines the work that defined Louis’ career and that contributed to a critical turning point in American art. Louis worked in an innovative manner by “staining” the canvas with thinned acrylic pigments, using intense, rich washes of color to create unified compositions. Travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (Feb. 17 to May 6).

Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination
Smithsonian American Art Museum
November 17, 2006 - February 19, 2007
The first full-scale survey of this great American Surrealist in 25 years includes boxes, collages, films and graphic designs among its 200 works.

Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
November 19, 2006 – March 4, 2007
Will present forty to fifty Magritte paintings along with an equal number of paintings and sculptures by international artists working over the past forty years and will include the work of Jasper Johns, Ed Ruscha, Vija Celmins, Joseph Kosuth, Sherrie Levine, Richard Artschwager, Jeff Koons, Martin Kippenberger, Jim Shaw, Raymond Pettibon, Robert Gober and Marcel Broodthaers.

looking even further ahead: bruce nauman in berkeley, jasper johns at the NGA...