LONDON Imperial War Museum In order to reach the Imperial War Museum’s landmark “Age of Terror” exhibition, you had to negotiate its astonishing atrium, complete with a suspended jet plane and rocket. Underfoot, James Bridle’s Drone Shadow lurked as a white outline on the floor. IWM has commissioned contemporary artists to go to war zones since its founding 100 years ago. Its collections include 20,000 works of art, in addition to thousands of war-related artifacts that combine a big-picture view with intimate personal stories.
Elizabeth Michelman
RUTLAND, VERMONT Clastleton Downtown Galler Pandora, the first installation in Elizabeth Michelman’s recent exhibition, “Notes from Underground,” consists of things one might find forgotten in a basement, unearthed after the passage of years. An oversize steamer trunk made of dark gray-green metal provides an anchor. Propped up against it is a cello, its generous curves contrasting with the trunk’s linearity.
Christopher Wilmarth
NEW YORK Betty Cuningham Gallery
Carolee Schneemann
QUEENS, NEW YORK MoMA PS1 Carolee Schneemann, speaking at the press conference for her touring retrospective, recalled the days when the art world labeled her unabashed use of her body to disrupt misogynist attitudes toward women as “lewd” and “narcissistic.”
Doerte Weber
SAN ANTONIO Artpace Doerte Weber grew up in a country divided by a wall. Born in West Germany, she attended university in Berlin (1979–83). To visit her boyfriend in West Germany on the weekends, however, she had to travel through East Germany. Each time Weber crossed the border, she was overcome with emotion as she confronted the formidable wall erected inside a single country, complete with barbed wire and armed guards.
Patricia Cronin
DUBLIN The LAB Gallery Even the crudest structure or site can become a shrine. Once connected to an item or individual deemed sacred, it transfigures into a space conducive to contemplation and rituals of remembrance—activities that keep the enshrined, in some way, alive. Patricia Cronin subverts traditional notions of a shrine to memorialize something that is handled, globally, with systemic disdain and a chronic lack of care.
Andy Zimmermann
BOSTON Boston Sculptors Gallery The back gallery at Boston Sculptors is small, dim, and oddly shaped. But under the hand of Andy Zimmer – mann, it became vast and colorful— a panorama of construction and destruction, a maze of welded rebar, translucence, imagery, and mirrors that immersed viewers in the illusion of being in the midst of a work site.
Ydessa Hendeles
TORONTO The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery A palpable sense of unease pervaded Ydessa Hendeles’s “The Milliner’s Daughter,” at least initially. The installations in this decade-long survey broke down into three dimly lit spaces populated by various mannequins and four brighter spaces featuring mechanical toys, panels of illustrated texts, and assorted supplementary images. Lingering in the galleries, that first impression of unease began to erode before reasserting itself. Not only did the heartening impact of the mech – anical toys wane dramatically, but deeper and darker associations also began to emerge.
“The Art of Burning Man”
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA Hermitage Museum & Gardens Since the early 1990s, Burning Man has enticed crews of artists to craft increasingly large, complex, and extravagantly lighted sculptures during a yearly gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The event is not for wimps; everything gets coated in dust and is subject to windstorms and extreme temperatures. Still, artists are drawn to Burning Man by the freedom to go bold with scant censorship and by the atmosphere of radical self-expression and com – munal cooperation.
Jen Durbin
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK Art 3 Silas Von Morisse Gallery The title of Jen Durbin’s 11-part installation 90 Moves in Nine Seconds (The Jackie Series 2001–2017) refers to the actions of Jackie Kennedy in the immediate moments after her husband, President John F. Kennedy, was shot in Houston. Durbin’s immensely complicated, immensely ambitious project follows the movements of Jackie’s pillbox hat, as captured in nine seconds of film, in a sequence of sculptures that rise as high as 30 feet.
