January 4, 2015
2015 in Bay Area Art Museums
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 4 MIN.
Although it's impossible to foretell the future, the following abbreviated run-down provides some clues as to what's in store at area museums in 2015. Happy New Year!
The Legion of Honor's High Style: The Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection, opening in early spring, is, for this writer, one of the most anticipated exhibitions of the year. Utilizing the acquiescent services of 60 mannequins, it traces the changing face of fashion from 1910-80 with elegant ball gowns, upscale accessories and designs by French couturiers Dior, Lanvin and Elsa Schiaparelli. Special attention is also paid to American women designers of the 1930s and 40s, and to their male counterparts. Oh boy! (March 14-July 19)
The de Young Museum has a raft of promising shows like Janet Delaney: South of Market, which illuminates the transformation of a San Francisco neighborhood through more than 40 archival pigment prints by the Berkeley-based photographer, who shot the images during the 1970s and 80s, when redevelopment was threatening to overtake the district. (Jan. 17-July 19); Botticelli to Braque: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland The 55 paintings gathered from three esteemed Scottish art institutions span more than 400 years, from the Renaissance through the early 20th century, with masterworks by El Greco, van Dyck, Watteau, Raeburn, and Monet, as well as by Vermeer, Velazquez, Veronese, and a Botticelli never seen before in the U.S. (March 7-May 31); J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free Mr. Turner, Mike Leigh's biographical film starring Timothy Spall, who'll likely be forever identified with the grunting, irascible 19th-century British painter of sublime land- and seascapes (though not exclusively those subjects), covered roughly the last 20 years of his life, the same productive period as this exhibition, which explores his revolutionary techniques, and includes 65 major oils and watercolors, resplendent with spectacular light and color. (June 20-Sept. 20)
MoAD is back in gear this year in an expansive, newly renovated space, fresh environs that will be accompanied, one can only hope, by a reinvigorated commitment to getting the word out about their shows. On view now: Lava Thomas: Beyond, a two-parter that mediates on the passage of time in both spiritual and physical manifestations. It incorporates early and new works -- drawings, photography, sculpture, and installations -- by Thomas, a West Coast artist who takes a variety of approaches to the body, referencing cloudscapes, Victorian funerary practices, the modern-day operating theater, and hair as a potent symbol of identity. (through April 12); Portraits and Other Likenesses from SFMOMA, which includes paintings, sculptures, photographs, and videos, mines interpretations of portraiture from the early 20th century onward, in European, African and American cultures. It features works by Romare Bearden, Sargent Johnson, and Wifredo Lam in dialogue with recent pieces by Nick Cave, Glenn Ligon, Chris Ofili, Kara Walker and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. (May 8-Sept. 27)
Asian Art Museum: Tetsuya Ishida: Saving the World with a Brushstroke is an exhibition of eight works, on view in this country for the first time, by the Japanese painter, whose career and life were cut short in 2005 at the age of 31. Known for his dark imagery and his probing of identity, social displacement and the meaning of existence in the post-industrial landscape, his paintings combine nature and the unnatural, the fantastic and the hyperreal. (through Feb. 22); Seduction: Japan's Floating World A selection of 50 woodblock prints, paintings, ornate kimonos that adorned courtesans, flashy Kabuki theater costumes and other fantasy-laden objects transports visitors to the mid-1600s, when Japan's alluring entertainment districts and the Yoshiwara, or "pleasure quarter," flourished in Edo (now Tokyo). (Feb. 20-May 10)
Cantor Arts Center: She Who Tells the Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World showcases work ranging from fine art to photojournalism, by a dozen leading female artists of the region, who explore issues of identity and representation, and the ravages of war and its impact of daily life. Through 81 photographs and a pair of videos they create narratives that forge a deeper understanding of the Middle East, while dispelling myths of female oppression. (Jan. 28-May 4); Promised Land: Jacob Lawrence The Cantor has one of the largest museum collections of artworks by this dynamic chronicler of the black American experience. Characterized by a bold, distinctive style sometimes described as a meld of Cubism and early 20th-century Social Realism, the show's prints, paintings and drawings chart the evolution of a natural storyteller over six decades, offering a panoramic perspective of the struggle against slavery and for civil rights, the rise of Harlem as a thriving center of black culture, and the contributions of African-American builders who shaped the country's cities at the beginning of the 20th century. (April 1-Aug. 3)
Lamp of the Covenant (detail) by Dave Lane. Photo: Abhi Singh
The Contemporary Jewish Museum kicks off the year with Lamp of the Covenant, a commissioned artwork by Dave Lane. The massive, 90-foot-long, six-ton, antique steel sculpture, suggesting the divine and humanity's relationship to the cosmos, will be suspended from the ceiling in the lobby starting Feb. 1; For their immersive video project Letters to Afar, Budapest-based filmmaker and video-artist Peter Forgacs, along with the New York City band the Klezmatics, resurrect a vanished world based on archival materials and home movies made by Jewish immigrants from the US who had returned to their hometowns in Poland during the 1920s and 30s before the Holocaust annihilated a entire people and their way of life. (Feb. 26-May 24); While it's true that Amy Winehouse: A Family Portrait won't be up until mid-summer, I'll be counting the days until it arrives. Winehouse, the young British singer who loved jazz and gospel, and idolized Mahalia Jackson, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan, had a big, emotionally expressive voice and an even larger problem with alcohol that contributed to her tragic death three years ago. Her guitar, record collection, edgy outfits and private photographs are on view in a show that reveals the Jewish roots of one extraordinarily soulful white girl. (July 30-Nov. 1)
