NEW YORK High Line In the mid-1970s, Sheila Hicks was considered a heroine of the “new tapestry” movement. For over 50 years, she has stretched the boundaries of fiber as a medium, creating a distinctive body of work that weaves together sculpture, craft, design, and architecture; now at 84, she continues to create innovative, energetic objects and installations that transcend genres and materials while uniting color and structure.
Jean Arp
MARGATE, U.K. Turner Contemporary “Arp: The Poetry of Forms,” the first U.K. museum exhibition of Jean (Hans) Arp’s work since 1966, gave viewers fresh insights into this pioneer of chance whose serendipitous configurations personify the core precept of Dada practice–that of the gratuitous creative act.
“Through That Which Is Seen”
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA Palo Alto Art Center The literal meaning of the word “diorama”– through that which is seen–served as the title for this exhibition of sculptures and installations by more than a dozen artists. The idea of the diorama explored in the show–as a model, whether miniature or life-size, of anything from a historical event to a species habitat–dates back to the 19th century.
Joyce J. Scott
HAMILTON, NEW JERSEY Grounds for Sculpture “Joyce J. Scott: Harriet Tubman and Other Truths” featured 74 works that tell stories from African American and world history, including two imposing new outdoor sculptures, as well as early works and a selection of objects collected within an installation called Harriet’s Closet.
Tony Moore
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK Sideshow Gallery The ceramic sculptures featured in Tony Moore’s recent exhibition, “Children of Light,” invoke themes of conflict, community, and survival. Alongside the work, Moore posted a warning from Dr. Martin Luther King: “Our generation will have to repent not only for the words and acts of the children of darkness but also for the fears and apathy of the children of light.”
Lucio Fontana
MILAN Pirelli HangarBicocca “Ambienti/Environments,” curator Vicente Todolí’s ambitious reappraisal of Lucio Fontana’s spatial installations and light interventions, focused attention on a little-known aspect of Italy’s leading Modernist, successfully re-constructing nine of these works as life-size cabinets of curiosity. Though less familiar than the “Holes,” “Cuts,” or “Spatial Concepts,” Fontana’s installations marked a comparable break with traditional forms of sculpture and painting, foreshadowing later explorations by Gruppo Zero and Yves Klein.
Gerold Miller
NEW YORK Cassina Projects The German sculptor Gerold Miller lives and works in Berlin. This show, his first in the U.S., offered an anthology of works for which he is well known in Europe. Ostensibly, these sculptures veer toward Mini – malism, but they are more deeply connected to theory than works from the American movement, even if this tie is downplayed and hard to uncover.
Frances Glessner Lee; Rick Araluce
WASHINGTON, DC Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum The “mother of forensic science,” Frances Glessner Lee (1878–1962) was a wealthy heiress from Chicago, who gave a large portion of her inheritance to Harvard University to create the first Department of Legal Medicine in the U.S. She was also the first female police captain in the country.
“To talk to the worms and the stars”
CALGARY, ALBERTA, CANADA The New Gallery “To talk to the worms and the stars,” a line from Arthur Evans’s Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, recently found new life as a whimsical incantation and the title of a group exhibition. Each visitor repeated the words when entering the show on the night of the opening and throughout its duration, drawing a linguistically ceremonious line around the space and the featured works.
“Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon”
NEW YORK New Museum The provocatively titled “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon” took on the politics of gender and identity with works by 40 artists, groups, and collectives. Avoiding the trap of using sexual orientation as an organizing principle and throwing out heteronormative or binary definitions of gendered identity in favor of a more fluid, inclusive, and performative model–one that refused limits and boundaries–the show’s organizer, Johanna Burton, with the assistance of Sara O’Keeffe and Natalie Bell, proposed a more activist curatorial model for how art about gender circulates in contemporary life.
