TMA celebrates beauty through the ages
9/18/2005Glass, fashion, and beautiful faces are this autumn's amusements at the Toledo Museum of Art.
On view now through Nov. 27 is "International Identities in Glass"; objects from ancient to contemporary times, along with several newly acquired glass pieces.
"Being Modern: Fashion, Art and Identity," also through Nov. 27, looks at the Modern era, 1890 to 1940, through the window of fashion. From Moulin Rouge bohemians, to American suffragettes, to Betty Boop, this exhibit includes 125 photographs, posters, costume designs, and fashion plates by Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Matisse, and Braque.
"About Face," portraits of celebrities from the museum's collection, opens Sept. 30 and continues through Dec. 31 in the Hitchcock Gallery. It aims to provoke thoughts about how artists communicate the concept of celebrity. The 75 images include Ernest Hemingway, Sarah Bernhardt, Pablo Picasso, Art Tatum, and Gloria Swanson.
"About Face" will complement a pair of shows that open in October and continue through year's end.
Opening Oct. 15, "Strong Women, Beautiful Men: Japanese Portrait Prints from the Toledo Museum of Art" features 75 Japanese woodblock prints from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
Opening Oct. 16 is "I Wanna be Loved By You: Photographs of Marilyn Monroe from the Leon and Michaela Constantiner Collection." Two hundred photographs, 1945 to 1962, by 39 photographers capture the woman born as Norma Jeane Baker, including a nude photo that was the centerfold in the first issue of Playboy magazine.
In February, a three-month traveling show of work by Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933), will feature 120 paintings, iridescent favrile glass, furniture, stained glass, jewelry, mosaic panels, and bronze objects.
The 400th anniversary of Rembrandt's birth will be marked by an exhibit assembled from the museum's extensive collection of his prints. It will focus on the artist's thought process, and run from March through May.
But the biggest event of 2006 will be the mid-year opening of the low-slung $28 million Glass Pavilion, in a park across Monroe Street from the museum. The 76,000-square-foot building will display and house the museum's glass collection, glass-making furnaces and studios, and classrooms. It will also have open-air courtyards and areas for parties.
Regional museums have scheduled intriguing shows, including "The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America, 1880-1920: Design for the Modern World" at the Cleveland Museum of Art Oct. 16 through Jan. 8. Its 300 objects have been culled from 75 institutions throughout the world. Many of the proponents of the Arts and Crafts movement believed that art and life should be fully integrated, and that hand-crafting artful objects for everyday use, with indigenous materials and native traditions, would result in moral and spiritual uplift.
The Detroit Institute of Arts opens a show extolling the passion between two legendary artists who were lovers and often worked side-by-side. "Camille Claudel and Rodin: Fateful Encounter," runs Oct. 9 to Feb. 5.
Fifty museums, collectors, and the Musee Rodin in Paris loaned works for the show, which has 58 sculptures by Rodin, 62 by Claudel, photographs, drawings, and letters.
In Ann Arbor, the growing University of Michigan Museum of Art will feature 60 pieces by Californian Betye Saar, from 1967 to 2004. Saar often incorporates found photographs into assemblages evocative of American culture and politics, feminism, and the African-American experience. The Saar show will run from Oct. 15 to Jan. 8.
Galleries at area colleges and universities often give voice to emerging artists and fresh ideas.
In Bowling Green State University's Bryan Gallery, the implications of a deciphered human genetic code is examined by artists in "DNA (Do Not Assume ●)," Oct. 29 to Nov. 20. A panel will discuss "Who's in your genes?" from an artistic, bioethical, and scientific perspective, Oct. 28 at 6 p.m. The gallery is in the Fine Arts Center.
The University of Toledo's Center for Visual Arts hosts an exhibition of contemporary Czech art, "Cultural Domestication Instinctual Desire," Nov. 4 to Dec. 31. The center is adjacent to the Toledo Museum of Art.
The Terhune Gallery at Owens Community College mounts "Artists Create Books," with handmade books using distressed paper, from Nov. 7 to Dec. 15. The exhibit will correspond with the Ohio Shakespeare Conference hosted by OCC.
At the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, "Part Object Part Sculpture" presents an alternative history of sculpture since World War II emphasizing the sensual and the handmade, and the connection between sculpture and mundane objects.
Art lovers will find additional shows featuring individual artists or themes at the many privately owned galleries in the area. These events are listed in The Blade, including in the News of Art column that appears in Thursday's Peach Weekender.
Contact Tahree Lane at:
tlane@theblade.com
or 419-724-6075.