November–December 2020 Calendar
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22224_Wadsworth Atheneum.indd 1-2 Non-Profit U.S. Postage PAID Hartford, Ct 600 Main Street, Hartford, Connecticut 06103 Permit #82 Calendar 2020 November–December 10/16/20 10:54 AM Visitor Information Hours Access The Wadsworth is operating on a reduced schedule The museum’s accessible entrance is located in line with the state’s Reopen Connecticut capacity at 29 Atheneum Square North. Handicapped and safety guidelines. Visitor registration is required parking spaces are located nearby on Main in advance via thewadsworth.org. Walk-up visitors Street and Prospect Street. Wheelchairs are may be accommodated based on availability. Call available at the Info Desk upon request. (860) 278-2670 to talk to a representative at the Info Desk Wednesday–Sunday. Visitor Guidelines Fridays: noon–8pm The Wadsworth is operating at a limited capacity Saturday & Sunday: noon–5pm with timed-entry. Registration is required in advance via thewadsworth.org and visitors are Holiday Hours asked to arrive no more than 10 minutes before the entry time window specified at registration. A Closed on Christmas Day, face mask/covering and contactless temperature Friday, December 25, 2020; and check are required to enter the museum. Floor New Year’s Day, Friday, January 1, 2021 markings and room capacity signs are posted While our annual Festival of Trees & Traditions to ensure safe social distancing. Visitors are will not take place this year, the museum is encouraged to bring a smartphone or connected wonderful to visit during the holiday season. device to access audio tours and digital versions Stroll the galleries with family, shop for the of the museum map and interpretive materials perfect gift in The Museum Shop and enjoy in the galleries. Free WiFi is available. The library, festive seasonal décor. food service, theater, and Austin House will be closed to the public. Coat check and bag storage Admission will not be available and visitors are advised that backpacks, food, and drink are not permitted in Bring a friend and explore art together. the galleries. Admission to the Wadsworth is free to all through November 25, 2020. Parking Adults: $15 Seniors: $12 Park for $3 at the Connecticut Convention Center Students: $5 garage (with validation at the museum), located Members, Hartford Residents & at 100 Columbus Boulevard. The Wadsworth Youth (age 17 & under): Free is also accessible via public transit such as CTfastrak. Street parking is metered 8am–6pm weekdays, and free after 6pm weekdays and all day on weekends. For more information visit thewadsworth.org. 22224_Wadsworth Atheneum.indd 3-4 10/16/20 10:54 AM MATRIX Opposite: Ali Banisadr, The Prophet, 2020. Oil on linen. Courtesy of the artist and Kasmin Gallery, New York Left: Ali Banisadr, Only Breath, 2020. Oil on linen. Courtesy of the artist and Kasmin Gallery, New York MATRIX 185 / Ali Banisadr Through February 14, 2021 palettes heighten the drama of veiled masses in representational, Banisadr finds a kinship in Occupying the “between space” of fantasies motion. Banisadr differentiates individual figures their subject matter: strangely vivid worlds often and dreams, Ali Banisadr’s lively paintings by pattern and style, variously applying paint with animated with disturbing creatures. explore intangible worlds balancing figuration brushes, rags, and sticks. Like an all-seeing eye, Other works chosen by Banisadr remain on view and abstraction, order and disorder, energy and Banisadr observes and considers societies past, elsewhere in the museum and are presented in entropy. The artist’s process has been related to present, and future, positioning his work as a a video collage created by the artist, available to synesthesia—an internal response where sound critique on the human condition. view both online and in the museum. Interested takes visual form in his painterly compositions. Inspired by a wide range of sources, Banisadr has in showing his artist’s eye, the collage presents His perception of sound as inextricably linked selected works from the Wadsworth collection specific details in works of art where his to color and form began in his native Tehran, that illuminate his artistic interests. Within the focus is drawn. A playlist curated by Banisadr Iran, when he was a boy, during the Iran-Iraq MATRIX gallery, several Wadsworth collection expresses the integral role sound plays in his art War (1980–1988)—he recalls making drawings prints, drawings, and paintings dating from the making. Access the playlist and video collage via while sheltering from attacks. Fleeing with his sixteenth to twentieth century from a variety of thewadsworth.org family first to Turkey, then California, and now cultures join Banisadr’s work including a panel Inaugurated in 1975, MATRIX is the Wadsworth’s groundbreaking living in New York, Banisadr’s life experiences painting after Hieronymus Bosch, etchings by contemporary art exhibition series featuring works by artists from have fueled his interest in different cultures, Francisco Goya from his series Los Caprichos, around the world. Many MATRIX artists, such as Christo, Sol LeWitt, art history, and the current events that inform woodblock prints by Utagawa Hiroshige, and a Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, and Carrie Mae Weems, are now considered seminal figures in contemporary art. his art. Hallucinogenic or monochromatic color Joseph Cornell sculpture. Whether abstract or 22224_Wadsworth Atheneum.indd 5-6 10/16/20 10:54 AM Focus Exhibition Exhibitions A series of presentations of singular masterpieces, organized in recognition of the Wadsworth’s 175th anniversary. Installation view of Protest and Promise Chaim Gross ILoveMyBaby/ALoveofWood November 11, 2020–March 21, 2021 Protest and Promise Selections from the Contemporary Art Collection, 1963–2019 A recent gift to the museum, Chaim Gross’s I Love My Baby (1948) is an outstanding example Ongoing of direct carving from a single piece of hardwood. Artists of every era have engaged with politics for a different kind of national leader, one A master of the medium, Gross wrote the through various means, and the Wadsworth has who has experienced some of the real-life essential instructional resource on the subject, been collecting politically engaged art since struggles depicted and addressed in Protest and The Technique of Wood Sculpture (1957). The 1842 beginning with its founding collection Promise. Movements demanding racial, gender, book features photographs by documentary of Hudson River School paintings. And yet, and sexual orientation equity strive for legal photographer Eliot Elisofon. With I Love My Baby from the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, rights. Gun violence, strict immigration laws, as a centerpiece, the artist’s process is examined artists have challenged and addressed social and the AIDS crisis incite demands for policy through several preparatory drawings, Elisofon’s and political issues with a new directness as change. Using art as a form of activism, criticism, photographs of Gross at work, a selection of the activists and visionaries. and empowerment, the work on view confronts artist’s tools, and a short film that follows Gross longstanding injustices and social disparities Newly acquired by the Wadsworth, Zoe Leonard’s through the creation of a single sculpture. with an eye to systemic transformations and a i want a president… (1992/2018) inspired this more hopeful future. Right: Chaim Gross, I Love My Baby, 1948. Lignum vitae. Gift of installation. The text-based work of art calls Mimi Gross 22224_Wadsworth Atheneum.indd 7-8 10/16/20 10:54 AM Exhibitions Freedom & Fragility Through February 7, 2021 Made in Connecticut: Celebrating Freedom, 1863–2020....Are we there yet? 25 Years of the CT Art Trail The promise of “Freedom” for all, though a Through February 7, 2021 cornerstone of American values, remains largely Installation view of Savor fraught to this day. While the Union’s victory over The Connecticut Art Trail— the Confederacy would secure the ratification of one of the first tourism the thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery in trails in the state—has been the United States, African Americans continued guiding art aficionados across Savor: A Revolution in Food Culture to face recurring challenges aimed at preserving Connecticut on a journey Through January 3, 2021 Savor: A Revolution in Food Culture is organized by the former racial hierarchy. Resiliency would that includes 22 world-class the Gardiner Museum, Toronto, and curated by characterize the struggle of the African diaspora museums and historic sites Food and dining were transformed in eighteenth- Meredith Chilton, Curator Emerita at the Gardiner who survived the middle passage and earned for 25 years. In celebration of this milestone century Europe by profound changes that Museum. This presentation of the exhibition is a their freedom in the United States of America. In anniversary Made in Connecticut brings together resonate to this day. What many of us eat, the collaboration between the Wadsworth Atheneum the works of artists Hale Woodruff, Faith Ringgold, works of art and objects from the collections of way food is cooked, and how we dine continue to Museum of Art and the Gardiner Museum. and Sheila Pree Bright is an enduring spirit each of the Art Trail member institutions. be influenced by radical changes that took place that portrays the challenges and risks African in France between 1650 and 1789, the start of Major support provided by Beatrice Koopman, Dorothy Brooks Curated by James Prosek, American artist, writer, Americans face in exercising their rights. Despite the French Revolution. Savor explores the details Koopman, and Rena Koopman through the Beatrice Fox Auerbach naturalist, and current Artist-in-Residence at the new liberties given to the formerly enslaved and events behind this transformation. Rare Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, Yale University Art Gallery, the exhibition features the Design and Decorative Arts Council, the David T. Langrock and their descendants, the notion of freedom in objects, from early cookbooks and gardening Foundation, Duff Ashmead and Eric Ort, Mr.