New exhibits for a new decade

With the winter “blahs” upon us, now is great time to warm the soul with a visit to a museum. Our local museums offer a wide range of exhibits. Here’s a sampling.

Women X Three At Nassau County Museum of Art
Women are the focus of Nassau County Museum of Art’s first exhibition of the new decade. It’s a subject matter that the museum is devoting considerable space to – in fact all of its gallery space. This trio of exhibits, offering a lavish viewing of works by women and works depicting women, is a glimpse into the many private collections of local art collectors and those elsewhere.
The main exhibition,“The Subject is Women: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism,” is a sumptuous exhibit that demonstrates how artists of these movements and eras depict women – and how women artists depict themselves. The works in the show, many of them vibrant oils, include renowned masters such as Cassatt, Degas, Pissarro, and Renoir, as well as others. Degas is represented by Danseuse (buste), 1900; Pissarro by La Marché des Gisors, rue Cappeville, 1894-95; Renoir by Jeunes filles aux lilas, c. 1890 and Femme nue aux coussins verts, 1909 and Alfred Stevens by Le Masque japonais, c. 1877. Works by women Impressionists and Post Impressionists include Mary Cassatt’s Lyontine in a Pink Fluffy Hat, 1898; Berthe Morisot, Portrait de Louise Reisner, 1881, and Marie Laurencin’s Women in the Forest, 1920. The 57 works selected for “The Subject is Women Impressionism and Post-Impressionism” – curated by Acting Director

Constance Schwartz – are drawn from remarkable public and private collections.
The second exhibit, “Latinas!,” was planned in response to Long Island’s burgeoning Latin American population. Latin American art has exploded and become one of the leading voices to explore the richness of the Latin spirit and culture. In this major exhibit of Latin American art, art created by women and images of women heighten awareness of the distinctive ethnic and historic roles played by women, particularly their inextricable connection with sustaining and nurturing life.
Artists represented include Fernando Botero (Colombia), Ana Maria Martinez (El Salvador), Vik Muniz (Brazil), Carlos Luna (Cuba), Adriana Varejao (Brazil), Victor Rodriguez (Mexico), and many others. The 30 pieces included are drawn from the museum’s extensive holdings of Latin American art and from important public and private collections.
“Eye of the Beholder” is presented in the museum’s Contemporary Gallery. The exhibit showcases six of the most intriguing female artists working today. Works by Nina Chanel Abbey, India Evans, Marilyn Minter, Sara Rahbar, Christy Singleton, and Aya Uekawa are on view in a multimedia exhibition that includes sculpture, photography and works on paper and canvas. What unites these artists is their fresh, often provocative, take on life. The exhibition is curated for the museum’s Contemporary Collectors Circle by Elaine Berger.
The three exhibits, which opened Jan. 10, can be seen through Feb. 28.

Architectural History Explored At Heckscher Museum Of Art
Modernist architecture can be found throughout Long Island and some of the most prominent architects in history – including Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson and Marcel Breuer – designed buildings here. Following its “Long Island Moderns: Artists on the North Shore from Edward Steichen to Cindy Sherman” exhibit – which celebrated the rich role of Huntington and the North Shore in American art – The Heckscher Museum of Art opened “Arcadia/Suburbia: Architecture on Long Island, 1930-2010” last week. The exhibit highlights the Long Island’s significant architectural history over the past 80 years.
“This exhibition demonstrates that Long Island provided fertile ground for early Modernism,” said Chief Curator of Collections and Exhibitions Kenneth Wayne. “Arcadia/ Suburbia: Architecture on Long Island, 1930-2010 underscores the role that Long Island played in the broader development of Modernism and then Post-Modernism in the U.S. By identifying a number of important projects, awareness about modern architecture in the region will be raised, encouraging preservation of this heritage. Major modernist architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson created important homes here, and there have already been major losses, including the destruction of important buildings designed by Marcel Breuer and Philip Johnson.”
This exhibit charts the region’s development from a largely agrarian society with a significant role as a leisure destination to a “mature” suburban culture. The show presents drawings, photographs, architectural models and other items related to some of the most prominent architects of the era, as well as many talented but less well-known Long Island architects. Many previously unpublished drawings, photographs and models are on view.
Among the architects whose projects are examined are Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, Marcel Breuer, Jose Lluis Sert, John Hejduk, Paul Rudolph, Robert Venturi, Charles Moore, and Resolution: 4 Architecture. Long Island architects include William Landsberg, Herbert Beckhard, George Nemeny, Norman Jaffe, Walter Blum, Fred and Maria Bentel, Andrew Geller, Tom Mojo and Mark Stumer, and Eduardo Lacroze.

Small Works At Hofstra Museum
Art does not have to be large to create an impact. One of the most famous and frequently published paintings of the 20th century is Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory (the melting clocks in a barren landscape).  It measures just 9 1/2 inches high by 13 inches wide. In the late 20th and early 21st century, contemporary art is often created on a grand scale: an installation fills an entire gallery or a photograph covers the whole wall. 
In Hofstra University Museum’s current exhibition, “Something’s A Foot: Small Works from the Hofstra University Museum Collection,” all the art works measure 12 inches or less in all directions. The size of the object is a common trait in this exhibit, which opened in January and is on view through Sept. 12.
These intimate, small scale works of art reflect the diversity of objects in the Museum’s collection of approximately 4,500 works of art. Delving into the collection, the staff rediscovered pieces not seen in many years; this is in fact the first time a number of works of art have been exhibited.
 
Nassau County Museum of Art
One Museum Drive (just off Northern Boulevard, Route 25A), Roslyn Harbor.
(516) 484-9337 or www.nassaumuseum.org.
Hours: Tuesday through Sunday., 11 a.m.-4:45 p.m.
Docent-led tours of the main gallery exhibitions are offered each day at 2 p.m. Exhibition tours and Family Sundays at the Museum are free with museum admission.

Heckscher Museum of Art
Main St. and Prime Ave., Huntington.
(631) 351-3250 or www.heckscher.org.
Hours: Wednesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

Hofstra University's David Filderman Gallery
9th floor, Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, South Campus, Hempstead.
(516) 463-5672.