Matthew Coolidge at the Carpenter Center, ‘Ana Maria Pacheco’ at the Danforth, and the December Sale at the SMFA
By RANDI HOPKINS | November 27, 2007
CLUI Archive, 209-10a-es (1997) |
| Matthew Coolidge lecture at Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge | December 6 at 6 pm | 617.495.3251 | “Ana Maria Pacheco: Dark Night of the Soul” at Danforth Museum of Art, 123 Union Ave, Framingham | Through May 18 | 508.620.0050 | 27th Annual December Sale at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, 230 the Fenway, Boston | December 5-9 | 617.369.3204 |
Tucked in unobtrusively next door to the Museum of Jurassic Technology along Venice Boulevard in Culver City, the Los Angeles site of the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) keeps a low physical profile. But this earnestly titled organization is a sly hotbed of activity, promoting exhibitions and projects around the world, doggedly dedicated, as its mission statement asserts, to “the increase and diffusion of information about how the nation’s lands are apportioned, utilized, and perceived.”Founded in 1994 by BU graduate Matthew Coolidge, the CLUI combines the traditional research techniques used by anthropologists, urban planners, and geologists with the eye and mind of an artist steeped in ideas about contemporary land and landscape as pioneered by Robert Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher. Recent CLUI projects include “Pavement Paradise: American Parking Space,” which explores the “liminal, substanceless, and static space of automotive transience,” and “Ultima Thule,” which documents two remote American electromagnetic facilities in Thule, Greenland, 700 miles north of the Arctic Circle. On December 6 at 6 pm, Coolidge speaks on “UNDERSTANDING ANTHROPOGEOMORPHOLOGY” at Harvard’s Carpenter Center. A reception at the Sert Gallery follows.
Depictions of Saint Sebastian in art are numerous and stirring — the handsome youth pierced by arrows has been imagined by visual artists as disparate as El Greco and Salvador Dalí. Contemporary Brazilian artist Ana Maria Pacheco has created a sculptural installation using this dramatic moment as its reference point in “ANA MARIA PACHECO: DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL,” which is at the Danforth Museum of Art through May 18. Pacheco’s interpretation draws on the cultural diversity of her heritage, which includes Portuguese and West African sculptural traditions that reached Brazil through the colonial slave trade. In “Dark Night of the Soul,” 19 life-size wooden figures are arranged so that they surround the kneeling figure of a masked man transfixed with arrows. Viewers join the cluster in order to take in the exhibition, becoming participants in the scene and raising issues of passivity and responsibility.
“THE 27TH ANNUAL DECEMBER SALE” at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) runs December 5-9 this year, once again offering an enormous selection of fine art in many media across a broad price range. The sale of nearly 5000 works — by the likes of Ellsworth Kelly and Kiki Smith as well as yet-to-be-discovered up-and-comers — benefits both the participating artists and SMFA student scholarships. In addition to the rewards of giving or living with one-of-a-kind art, December Sale buyers receive complimentary one-day admission to the Museum of Fine Arts.
On the Web
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts: www.ves.fas.harvard.edu
Danforth Museum of Art: www.danforthmuseum.org
School of the Museum of Fine Arts: www.smfa.edu
Related:
Full disclosure, Id vicious, Utopia station, More 
- Full disclosure
Back in 1927, Hermann Hesse in Steppenwolf likened the hidden layers of the human personality to an onion: “made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads.”
- Id vicious
Money is a dominant topic of conversation in the art world even when there isn’t a global financial crisis.
- Utopia station
The grimy surfaces of walls, sidewalks, and utility poles in neighborhoods of San Juan have replaced canvas as a medium for Puerto Rican artist Rafael Trelles.
- The devil in the details
It’s hard to imagine stopping to look at drawings that don’t coalesce till you let them pull you in and spin you around a bit.
- Holiday, it would be so nice!
The Museum of Fine Arts offers a full-out festive immersion approach to the impending holidays this year — a line of attack that, in keeping with the contemporary spirit of art, embraces performing arts, multimedia, and site-specific.
- Across the Universe
Intuition tells us that certain places are powerful, that certain spaces are sacred, and that we are sometimes in the presence of cosmic energy.
- Live at five
The Tufts University Art Gallery has taken the off-season opportunity to celebrate its year-round neighbors.
- Steering off course
We recommend the course taught by the indie filmmaker, the course inspired by a Daily Show regular, and the course considered “experimental.”
- Who are you?
I’d hazard that when most of us think of pictures with “hidden meanings,” we don’t envision portraits, a genre that usually entails straight-ahead representations of, well, heads, at least.
- 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.”
- Journey to the surface of the Earth
Looking at the landscape brings out the artist in everyone.
- Less
Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Harvard University, Visual Arts, Cultural Institutions and Parks, More
, Harvard University, Visual Arts, Cultural Institutions and Parks, Museums, Museum of Fine Arts, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Ellsworth Kelly, Salvador Dali, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Robert Smithson, Less
