Mixed traffic
“Ciiserec —Now Do You See It?” (collage and mixed media on ledger paper), by Henry Payer, in the show “Free Association: New Acquisitions in Context,’’ at the Addison Gallery of American Art, in Andover, Mass.
The gallery says:
{The show} “places a focus on the gallery's newest additions to its collection. But new works don't exist in a vacuum, each piece is surrounded by other works collected over the Addison's nearly 100-year history. These associations create a dialogue between old and new, putting everything in a new light.’’
Samuel Phillips Hall, the social science and language building of Phillips Academy, the elite boarding school in Andover.
Picture of modern life
“The Kitchen” ( marquetry hybrid: wood veneer, oil, acrylic and shellac), by Allison Elizabeth Taylor, in her show “The Sum of It,’’ though July 30, at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass.
— Image courtesy of the Addison Gallery of American Art
The gallery lauds her “stunning works of wood inlay that are used to vividly represent modern-day subject matter. In 40 large-scale works and a room installation, Taylor captures a picture of modern life from the mundane to the exciting to the risqué using a centuries-old art form.’’
Andover Town Hall. Many elections in New England are held in March.
'Persistent interrogation'
“Checkerboard ("It's How You Play the Game"), (mixed-media collage). by Greater Boston artist Rosamond Purcell, in her first retrospective show, “Nature Stands Aside,’’ at the Addison Gallery, at Phillips Andover Academy, Andover, Mass., through Dec. 31.
The gallery says:
“Murre eggs nestled in cotton that appear to have been decorated by an overzealous Abstract Expressionist, a blanched piranha charging ahead in a glass jar of orange-tinged formaldehyde, a cast off typewriter transformed by time into an octopean tangle of rusticles. From luscious large format Polaroid prints to objects rescued from obscurity, the empathetic, evocative, and multifaceted work of the photographer and conceptual artist Rosamond Purcell (born 1942) explores the ill-defined interstices between the unsettling and the sublime, the beautiful and the bizarre, the natural and the manufactured. As a body of work, it lays bare humanity’s desperate desire to collect and make sense of it all.
“Over a career spanning some fifty years, Purcell has collaborated with paleontologists, anthropologists, historians, museum curators, termite experts, and even a scholar-magician to illuminate and explore the shifting boundaries between art and science. She has found some of her greatest inspiration in long-overlooked storage spaces in natural history museums across the world and in the hills and the shacks of a 13-acre junkyard located in an otherwise picturesque Maine coastal town. Purcell’s six decades of work, while brilliantly varied and resistant to easy classification, speaks eloquently to the artist’s persistent interrogation of the ways in which humanity has and continues to attempt, often fruitlessly, to understand the world around it.”
Tough look at 1950s America
“Trolley—New Orleans ‘‘ (neg. 1955-1956, print 1989, gelatin silver print) , by the great Swiss-American photographer Robert Frank (1924-2019) as seen in his book The Americans.
A show — “Robert Frank: The Americans” — running until April 11 at the Addison Gallery of American Art, at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., displays a range of photographs from the famed book, providing an unflinching account of 1950s America. Note in this picture that the Blacks had to sit in the back in the still-segregated South.
The unusual Andover Town Hall.
A near-century of Harlem art
“Art Is…(Girlfriends Times Two) 1983/2009’’ (c-print), by Lorraine O’Grady, courtesy of her and Alexander Gray Associates, New York. It is in the show “Harlem: In Situ,’’ at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass., through July 31. The gallery says the show displays nearly 100 years of art created in Harlem, with the aim of exploring “the impact that Harlem has had on American culture and art, along with its periods of growth, new styles and redevelopment and gentrification.’’
Harlem: In Situ is an exhibition showing nearly 100 years of art created in Harlem, New York. It aims to explore the impact that Harlem has had on American culture and art, along with its periods of growth, new styles and redevelopment and gentrification. "One of the great centers of cultural production in the United States, Harlem's incredible past and present make this neighborhood a wonderful subject for the Addison's ongoing engagement with the theme of place," says Judith F. Dolkart, The Mar
Lethal game
"Chess,'' by LORNA SIMPSON, in her Sept. 20-Jan. 4 show at the Addison Gallery, at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass.