Four Museums (You Will Love) Reopen

Four Museums (You Will Love) Reopen: With the exception of New York City, museums in all New York regions were cleared to reopen on July 21 under the guidelines of the NY Forward plan. Locally, the Katonah Museum of Art reopens to the public on Sunday, July 26 with their Bisa Butler: Portraits exhibition – a gallery of twenty-five larger than life vibrantly colored quilts that capture African-American life. The exhibition originally opened on March 15 – one week before NY Pause shut down all non-essential businesses in the state. Butler’s first solo museum exhibition was originally scheduled to move to the Art Institute of Chicago on June 14. Now it will remain at KMA through October 4. Check out our review of this extraordinary artist’s exhibit now on view in Katonah.

Derrick Adams Floater Series, Hudson River Museum: For a more contemporary view of African-American culture, Derrick Adams’ Floater Series rips the scab off traditional expectations of the black experience with his collection of vividly painted portraits depicting Black people buoyantly floating on plastic floaties in blue water. Adams’ provocative Pop Art take on Black success conveyed in these archetypal images of carefree middle class pleasures are at once familiar and unexpected.

Adams is a recipient of the 2018 American Family Fellowship from the Gordon Parks Foundation. He has also received a 2009 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and 2014 S.J. Weiler Award. Adams received his MFA from Columbia University and his BFA from Pratt Institute. His art is in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Hudson River Museum, and the Whitney Museum of Art. The Exhibit is open Wednesday to Sunday, 12-5pm through August 23.

Masterworks by Laurits Anderson Ring,The Bruce Museum: Connecticut museums have been gradually reopening since June 14. The Bruce Museum in Greenwich returned on July 15 with its exhibition On the Edge of the World: Masterworks by Laurits Anderson Ring from SMK – the National Gallery of Denmark that was similarly suspended due to COVID restrictions in March. Ring, a Realist and Symbolist painter, is considered one of the most important Danish painters in the decades around the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth centuries. Here, The Bruce showcases 25 of the most important pieces that represent the themes, variety and complexity of his oeuvre.

Ring’s work chronicled a period of great upheaval in Denmark, as the processes of industrialization brought major changes to the labor market uprooting people from the country to the city. Although art critics have drawn parallels in his work to the landscapes of American realists and naturalists at the time, the lay person would not be faulted  for finding Ring’s work reminiscent of the great Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh. Certainly for their shared melancholy and the stoic townspeople that populate their art. Open Tuesday to Sunday: 10am-5pm. This one is worth a trip.

Multiple Exhibits, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum: A trip to the Aldrich is always a positive mood changer. Their contemporary art exhibitions always have a “next-wave” feel to them. For all you visionaries out there (and those who want to catch up on them), the Aldrich currently is showing Eva LeWitt’s site specific sculptural installation Untitled (Mesh A-J),  a colorful walk through a wonderland of Plexiglass, acetate, latex and vinyl that could be a set for a Twyla Tharp performance. Weather Report, an ecologically themed exhibition from 21 artists and researchers, explores how weather affects our mood and how our actions affect climactic events. One exhibition highlight is Storm Prototype by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, two scale models of an actual supercell thunderstorm that traveled over the Midwest in 2000, suspended in midair. (Shown at top of page) The Aldrich is open Wednesday through Monday 12-m to 5pm, 10am to 5pm on Saturdays.

The Dia Beacon and the Neuberger Museum at SUNY Purchase remain closed at this time.