Winter Museums

Current Exhibitions: Museums

Librado Romero: From the Desert to the River @ HRM: This recently opened exhibition at the Hudson River Museum continues the museum’s important role as a chronicler of art of the Hudson River Valley. Romero’s paintings of the Hudson are made from his apartment window in Riverdale and are infused with the visions  and desert colors of his youth growing up in Calexico., CA. His river paintings substitute the expressionistic values of Modern Art for the Romanticism of the paintings of the Hudson River School of the nineteenth century. In this exhibition of eight of his acrylic works and two watercolors, Romero transports us from the river through the desert with images of his many cross country travels that connects remote images and remote passages of his life on one canvas. The exhibition can be viewed Thursday to Sunday from 12-5pm through June 6. The Hudson River Museum is located at 511 Warburton Ave., Yonkers.

“She Sweeps With Many Colored Brooms” Opens November 22 @ The Bruce Museum: This new exhibition of paintings and prints from Emily Mason takes it name and inspiration from the Emily Dickinson poem. Mason’s works characterized by brilliant hues and surprising color combinations, are inspired by the Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting in Europe and New York City. This exhibition focuses on her oil on paper paintings from the 1960s. Her experimentations in translating her painterly style to printmaking in the 1980s and finally her printmaking of the late 80s and 90s facilitated by her adoption of printmaking techniques developed by the Surrealist artist Joan Miró. The exhibition runs from November 22 to March 21. The Museum is open Tues-Sun: (9:30am-4:30) Reservations required for time admission. (1 Museum Dr., Greenwich, CT; www.brucemuseum.org)

The Hudson River Museum (HRM) celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment and women’s suffrage in a new exhibition, Women to the Fore. This exhibit showcases the works of more than forty female-identifying women with selections spanning 150 years. The installation includes paintings and drawings, prints and photography, collage and sculpture from the museum’s permanent collection as well as loans from regional artists, galleries, and collectors. One of the featured works is Caribbean Thoughts Mashup, digital print on metal from Julia Santos Solomon, an American artist born in the Dominican Republic. The exhibit runs through January 3, 2021.

Another exhibit, Landscape Art and Virtual Travel is running concurrently at HRM. This new exhibit, which will run through August 8, 2021, celebrates the great outdoors with landscape paintings from the HRM permanent collection and two key loans from Art Bridges. Namely, Cynthia Daignault’s Light Atlas, a collection of 360 small landscapes, oil on canvas, of farms, orchards and cornfields, beaches, houses, and a refinery and post office or two across the American Heartland. And David Hockney’s 15 Canvas Study of the Grand Canyon.  Both exhibits can be viewed Thursday through Sunday from 12-5pm. The Hudson River Museum is located at 511 Warburton Ave., Yonkers.

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum’s Frank Stella’s Stars, A Survey is a must see and the highlight of our area’s fall museum season. The exhibition showcases Stella’s use of the star throughout his career from his two-dimensional works of the 1960s to its most recent incarnation in sculptures, wall reliefs, and painted objects from the 2010s. Stella’s first solo exhibition at the Aldrich will be on view outdoors throughout the Museum’s grounds and inside the galleries. Outside, large-scale sculptures will be sited on Ridgefield’s historic Main Street, the Museum’s semi-enclosed interior courtyard, and two-acre Sculpture Garden. Inside, the exhibition will occupy the entire ground floor including the Museum’s Project Space where the largest sculpture in the exhibition, Fat 12 Point Carbon Fiber Star (2016), pumps up against the room’s perimeter with its twelve puffed up rays, twenty-one feet in all directions.  Also on exhibit at the Aldrich, Genesis Belanger: Through the Eye of the Needle. Branching out from a career in fashion and advertising, this is Belanger’s, first major solo exhibition. Her sculptures and tableaux, primarily composed out of porcelain, stoneware, and upholstery are pop and surreal interpretations of common household objects. There are lipsticks with tongues, lamps with ladies’ pearls, and tins with doey-eyed sardines. Both exhibitions run through May 9, 2021. Museum hours are Wednesday through Sunday: 12-5pm (10am-5pm on Saturday). The Aldrich is located at 258 Main St., Ridgefield, CT.

Two new exhibitions open on October 20 at the Katonah Museum of Art. The first, Hands & Earth: Perspectives on Contemporary Ceramics, displays 41 works providing a comprehensive survey of Japan’s ceramic tradition over the past 80 years. From the Mingei Folk Craft Movement of the 1930s to contemporary ceramic sculpture. Organized by the Lowe Art Museum, this is the first time that this renowned collection from Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz will be on exhibit in New York. Also showing is Mark Rothko’s Unititled, one of his signature works painted in 1951 – the same year the famed Ninth Street Show launched the Abstract Expressionism movement. Untitled will be the first in an ongoing series of works by Mark Rothko presented by the KMA. Both exhibitions run through January 24, 2021. The museum, located at 134 Jay St. (Rt. 22) in Katonah is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10am-5pm and Sunday from noon to 5pm.

A long term exhibition of the work of Mario Merz will open at The Dia Beacon on November 20. Meerz was a central figure in Italy’s Arte Povera movement of the late 60’s that fused sculpture and performance. “Using recycled organic and industrial materials, Merz developed an imaginative iconography and recast timeless forms, such as the igloo and table, in installations that envision the interdependency of individuals, society, and the natural environment.” The exhibition includes loans from collections in the United States and the Fondazione Merz in Turin and recent acquisitions. Such as his Tavola spirale (Spiral Table, 1982) that employs fruits, twigs, wax, tar, wire, and neon tubes. Also opening at the Dia Beacon in the fall are three video and performance installations by Joan Jonas. They include the large scale multi-media installation commissioned by The Dia in 2004, The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things. And two recent acquisitions Stage Sets and After Mirage. (pictured here) The Dia Beacon is open Friday to Monday from 11am to 6pm. It is located at 3 Beekman St., Beacon. Read more about The Dia Beacon on What To Do’s: Bucket List.