Exhibitions

choi

To See These Gems, Don't Dawdle; Sublime paintings and more are in dazzling shows set to close next month. New York Times, Dec 27, 2024, at page C7.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/ ... hibits-closing.html
introduced eight exhibitions, each written by an individual reviewer of New York Times. It seems to me that reviews 1 and 6 are interesting.

(1) 'Paris 1874; The Impressionist moment'  Through Jan 19 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

This year is the 150th birthday of Impressionism, a movement so popular and so familiar that it can seem like some preordained crowd pleaser — all those sunsets and tutus, ready for their blotchy close-ups.

But once, those haystacks were rebellious. Once, those ballet dancers delivered a shock. And the National Gallery, which organized this show with the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, is now showing the first Impressionist works by Monet, Renoir and Degas alongside the shellacked paintings that appeared at the Salon of 1874. Can we rediscover what was so revolutionary about impressionism back in 1874? Can we still see the defiance in its beauty, and even its schmaltz? JASON FARAGO

(6) 'Mary Cully; Native modern.' Through Jan 12 at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art.

The Dakota Sioux artist who called herself Mary Sully is having an enchanting first survey at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but she came close to being swept off the stage of history. When she died in Omaha, Neb., in 1963, at age 67, her primary output of around 200 color-pencil-and-ink drawings lay hidden in a cardboard box kept by her older sister, with whom she had lived most of her adult life.

When that sister herself died a few years later, the box ended up among piles of ephemera waiting to be sorted through. Time passed. More than once the box came close to being tossed until one of Sully’s nieces, who happened to be a librarian, opened it and transferred the contents to a suitcase, which was then tucked away under a staircase.

More time passed. In 2006, the drawings resurfaced and came to the attention of Sully's great-nephew, Philip J Deloria, who happened to be a history professor at Harvard, and who documented them in a terrific 2019 book called “Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract.” Last year the Met acquired much of the work. And now we have this rich, strange show. HOLLAND CUTTER
Mary Cully's "Indian Church" (detail) is on display at the Met Museum.

Mary Sully, Native modern. The Met, July 18, 2024 to Jan 12, 2025.
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/mary-sully-native-modern