‘Impermanence’ at the Essex Art Center, ‘Two Chinas’ at WAM, Renée Green at the Carpenter Center, and Feminism at the MFA
By RANDI HOPKINS | February 26, 2008
For a building, inclusion on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 11 Most Endangered list is a mixed blessing. You’ve been acknowledged as historically and/or architecturally significant, which is great — but people also think you’re on your last legs, threatened, heading toward oblivion. Photographer Shelley Zatsky wants to preserve for posterity this particular moment in a building’s life, to photograph it as it teeters between survival and destruction. Opening at the Essex Art Center on March 7, “IMPERMANENCE: PHOTOGRAPHY BY SHELLEY ZATSKY” presents both interior and exterior images of such edifices as the first US Marine Hospital, a three-story Greek Revival structure built in Louisville in 1851 and used as a military hospital during the Civil War. When Zatsky photographed it, the building was in a state of flux: the first floor had been transformed into a museum, whereas the remaining space was neglected and in a state of disrepair.
“Impermanence: Photography by Shelley Zatsky” at Essex Art Center, 56 Island St, Lawrence | March 7–May 2 | 978.685.2343
“Two Chinas: Chen Quilin and Yun-Fei Ji” at Worcester Art Museum, 55 Salisbury St, Worcester | March 8–September 21 | 508.799.4406
Renée Green lecture “Climates and Paradoxes” at Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge | March 13 at 6 pm | 617.495.3251
“Locating Feminism within the Art School” at Museum of Fine Arts’ Remis Auditorium, 465 Huntington Ave, Boston | March 7: 10 am–3 pm | 617.369.3605 |
The altered landscapes and human displacement that followed the flooding caused by China’s massive Three Gorges Dam Project is the jumping-off point for “TWO CHINAS: CHEN QUILIN AND YUN-FEI JI,” which opens at the Worcester Art Museum on March 8. On view will be two works recently acquired by the museum: Chen Quilin’s 2003 video Bie Fu (Farewell Poem), in which the artist revisits her home town of Wanzhou, one of the cities flooded by the dam project, now reduced to rubble; and Yun-Fei Ji’s scroll-like 2006 painting Below the 143 Meter Mark, an elegant, epic detailing of an abandoned town on a crumbling hillside.Multimedia artist RENÉE GREEN has used film, sound, performance, and prose to examine issues from radicalism, race, and culture to electronic music and the social processes involved in the making of art. She speaks about her work at Harvard’s Carpenter Center March 13 at 6 pm under the title “CLIMATES AND PARADOXES.”
Feminist theory and æsthetics have come a long way since 1971, when art historian Linda Nochlin published her famed essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”, kicking off decades of feminist thinking about art. And where are we at with this question now? “LOCATING FEMINISM WITHIN THE ART SCHOOL,” a colloquium organized by the Museum School and taking place in the Museum of Fine Arts’ Remis Auditorium on March 7, brings together a panel of artists at different stages of their careers. It’s moderated by Meghan Hughes; the panelists include Ambreen Butt, Catherine Lord, and Mary Ellen Strom.
On the Web
www.essexartcenter.com
www.worcesterart.org
www.ves.fas.harvard.edu/ccva.html
www.smfa.edu
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