Bill Arning tours art at MIT; Alexander Dumbadze examines sculptural form at Brandeis; books and dioramas at NESAD
By RANDI HOPKINS | July 11, 2006
Bill Arning and Alexander Calder’s The Big Sail (La Grande Voile) at MIT |
MIT’s campus is dotted with art — 46 works are listed on its most recent “Public Art Collection Map,” a document that you can download if you want to know what that big thing in front of the Stata Center is, or who made the cube-like piece in front of the library. The school’s impressive collection of outdoor sculpture has been growing since the 1961 commission of Dmitri Hadzi’s bronze Elmo-MIT, and thanks to the List Visual Arts Center’s administration of MIT’s Percent-for-Art program, it has come to include cool stuff like Dan Graham’s Yin/Yang Pavilion (2002) and Sarah Sze’s Blue Poles (2006). But if walking from Building E15 over to W34 clutching the map you printed out isn’t your thing, don’t miss this summer’s “CAMPUS ART WALKING TOUR WITH LIST VISUAL ARTS CENTER CURATOR BILL ARNING,” which departs from the List Visual Arts Center on July 20 at 6 pm. Come prepared to listen carefully — Arning is a notoriously fast talker — but do come; his popular tour promises to illuminate, among others, Matthew Ritchie’s 2002 Games of Chance and Skill, which overlooks the pool at the Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center, Mark di Suvero’s 2005 Aesop’s Fables, II, in front of Frank Gehry’s Stata Center, and Louise Nevelson’s 1975 Transparent Horizon, on the East Campus. And wear comfortable shoes!Artist Erwin Wurm’s current show at Brandeis’s Rose Art Museum turns traditional notions of sculpture on their ear, presenting social interaction, for example, as sculpture, and offering a sculpture that questions its own role and existence by way of an angst-filled video that finds it in a self-reflective, talkative mood. Up through July 30, the show is the impetus for “ART IN CONTEXT: SCULPTURAL FORMS SINCE THE 1960S,” in which art historian Alexander Dumbadze will examine changing ideas about sculpture in the context of artists from Donald Judd to Pipilotti Rist. That’s July 19 at 7 pm, and you should call ahead, since reservations are required.
Two shows at the New England School of Art & Design are bright spots on the summer art-viewing horizon. Art duo Matthew Nash and Jason Dean, a/k/a “Harvey Loves Harvey,” team up with artist Lee Walton to present “BOOK CLUB,” a project in which the artists dismembered a mystery novel, divvied it up among themselves, then convened, with cameras rolling, to apply their individual but fragmented understanding of the book to figure out whodunit. And fascinating photographs taken in natural-history museums are the subject of “KATHERINE CUMMINGS: THE DIORAMA SERIES.”
CAMPUS ART WALKING TOUR with Bill Arning at MIT List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames St, Cambridge | July 20, 6-8 pm | 617.253.4680 | “ART IN CONTEXT: SCULPTURAL FORMS SINCE THE 1960S” at Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, 415 South St, Waltham | July 19, 7-8:30 pm | reservations required; admission $10 for non-members | 781.736.3438 | “HARVEY LOVES HARVEY AND LEE WALTON: BOOK CLUB” and “KATHERINE CUMMINGS: THE DIORAMA SERIES” at New England School of Art & Design, 75 Arlington St, Boston | through August 14 | 617.573.8785
On the Web
List Visual Arts Center: http://web.mit.edu/lvac/www/
Rose Art Museum: http://www.brandeis.edu/rose/
New England School of Art & Design: http://www.suffolk.edu/nesad/gallery/
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