Edward Burtynsky at Tufts, Kara Walker at the Addison, and ‘Works from the Permanent Collection’ at the Rose
By RANDI HOPKINS | January 17, 2007
Edward Burtynsky, Manufacturing #17, Deda Chicken Processing Plant, Dehui City, Jilin Province, China, 2005 |
What we think of as “progress” — urban development, industrialization — has been proceeding at a rapid rate in China over the past decade, with significant environmental and human consequences. Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has traveled from the southern province of Guangdong, with its virtually unbroken landscape of factories and workers’ dormitories, to the Yangtze River, site of the world’s largest and most powerful hydroelectric dam, and beyond, taking photographs that are remarkable both for their beauty and for their frightening commentary on the current course of global human events. Opening at Tufts University Art Gallery January 19, “EDWARD BURTYNSKY: THE CHINA SERIES” presents 20 large-scale photographs of recent development in China. On his Web site, Burtynsky writes: “These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire — a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.”Also opening January 19 at Tufts: “ALTERED STATES: VIEWS OF TRANSITION IN RECENT PHOTOGRAPHY,” work by six artists examining the environmental effects of industry and development worldwide. And “HERO — THIS IS WE” and “JUN YANG AND SOLDIER WOODS,” two videos by artist Jun Yang, further explore questions of cultural and personal identity, and of globalization.
Going back to the America of the 1860s, artist Kara Walker crafts a complex dialogue between the past and the present using her signature black silhouette images in “KARA WALKER: HARPER’S PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR (ANNOTATED)”; it’s at the Addison Gallery of American Art, with an opening reception January 26. And opening at the Addison on January 27 is “MODELS AS MUSE,” new work by four contemporary artists invited to use the museum’s famed model-ship collection for inspiration.
Just as 90 percent of any given iceberg is said to lurk unseen beneath the sea’s surface, so a large part of an art museum’s permanent collection usually languishes in storage. “ROSE ART: WORKS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION,” and “PAPER TRAIL: ARTISTS EXPLORE UNSEEN WORKS ON PAPER FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE ROSE ART MUSEUM,” both opening at Brandeis’s Rose Art Museum January 25, offer opportunities to revisit, or discover for the first time, works from the museum’s fine modern and contemporary collections.
“Edward Burtynsky: The China Series,” “Altered states,” and “Jun yang” at Tufts University Art Gallery, 40R Talbot Ave, Medford | January 19–April 1 | 617.627.3518 | “Kara walker” and “Models as muse” at Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover | through April 15 (Walker) & January 27–March 18 (“Models”) | 978.749.4015 | “Rose art” and “paper trail” at Rose Art Museum, 415 South St, Waltham | January 25–April 1 | 781.736.3434
On the Web
Tufts Univeristy Art Gallery: www.ase.tufts.edu/gallery
Addison Gallery of American Art: www.addisongallery.org
Rose Art Museum: www.brandeis.edu/rose
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Return to the edge of the world, It’s the end of the world, and isn’t it lovely, Walk on by, More 
- Return to the edge of the world
Photography and new media loom large on the horizon in 2007, with cameras pointed in every direction.
- It’s the end of the world, and isn’t it lovely
Toronto photographer Edward Burtynsky spent the 1980s and ’90s roaming North America, photographing strip mines, quarries, oil fields, trash heaps, and junk bundled for recycling.
- Walk on by
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.
- I spy
Artist Julia Scher was way ahead of the Homeland Security gang’s obsession with electronic eavesdropping and video voyeurism, having made high-tech installations that allowed museum and gallery goers to watch each other watching each other since the late 1980s.
- Hand made
Eight years after Loïs Mailou Jones’s death, School of the Museum of Fine Arts curator Joanna Soltan is proclaiming her to be “among the most significant African-American artists of the 20th century.”
- Tempo tantrum
In 2008, the fourth dimension, time, steps to the fore in the art world.
- New new things
Robolobster, an underwater crustacean with eight plastic legs and an industrial-strength plastic shell, is a groundbreaking example of the new science of biomimicry.
- Promise deferred
Last December 10, the Institute of Contemporary Art moved to brand new digs on the South Boston waterfront, tripling its exhibition space in the process.
- Will Brandeis sell out the Rose?
Will Brandeis take the money and run?
- Cannibals and castaways
Dana Schutz flirts with the ugly, considers our condition, pictures the unimaginable, and uncovers what some might prefer left under a rock.
- Brandeis shutters art museum
Late Monday afternoon, Brandeis University informed leaders of its Rose Art Museum that it would close the institution this summer and auction off the more than 6000 pieces in its renowned collection, which includes major works by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns.
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Museum And Gallery
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