July 23 2021 #226
Founder Rebecca Hoffberger to Step Down as Head of American Visionary Art Museum
After 26 years as founder, director and primary curator of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Rebecca Alban Hoffberger will be retiring in March 2022.
The board has appointed the national firm m/Oppenheim Executive Search to launch an international search for her successor.
“After 41 total exhibitions, but 26 thematic ones, I’m passing the baton,” Hoffberger said. “The idea for the museum came to me in 1984, when I was working at Sinai Hospital for People Encouraging People, so it has occupied more than half my life…I think now is the right time.”
Rebecca Hoffberger, photo: Chris Myers
Hoffberger, who will turn 70 next year, said she intended to step down at the end of 2020 – AVAM’s 25th anniversary — but agreed to stay longer to help see the museum through the worst of the global pandemic.
Hoffberger has loved her time at the museum but wants to pursue other interests, including writing a play about the friendship between inventor Nikola Tesla and writer Mark Twain.
Her final curated exhibit as director will be “Healing & The Art of Compassion (And the Lack Thereof!),” scheduled for October 9, 2021, to September 4, 2022. It will focus on the twin forces for creating “greater good” in society, healing and compassion.
Kickstarter Campaign for Book on Chicago Lake Michigan Carvings
Bill Swislow:
For the last several years I have been discovering and documenting the artwork lining Chicago’s Lake Michigan waterfront — specifically the thousands of mostly anonymous stone carvings made in the rocks along the lake starting in the early 20th century.
The carvings range from mundane (though still interesting) initials and first names to incredible works of art, with imagery as elaborate, imaginative and skilful as any you would find in a museum. Yet this art is mostly unknown, even among people who frequent the lakefront. And much of it has been lost since I started documenting it.
photos by Aron Packer
With Aron Packer, who photographed the carvings in the late 1980s and 90s, I am producing the first book-length documentation of what amounts to a collective work of public art, really a 22-mile-long art environment.The book will include more than 200 images showing the best of the carvings as well as a history of the carvings and carvers. With your help, it will be printed on high-quality paper in a beautifully designed hard-cover volume of 160 pages and distributed as widely as I can get it.
Aside from sharing delight in the beauty of this work, my hope is that bringing attention to the work could aid in its preservation. There are many carvings in Hyde Park that remain at imminent risk of destruction from government lakeshore improvement plans, and many other carvings threatened by simple neglect.
Please consider supporting the Kickstarter campaign that is wrapping up on July 30. At a minimum, you can place a pre-order for the book. But I hope I can prevail upon your generosity to provide additional support that will enable us to produce a book worthy of its subject, in a quantity that will have an impact on public awareness of the beauty that is underfoot."
View the Kickstarter campaign here.
Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York
until August 13, 2021
Andrew Edlin Gallery presents two parallel exhibitions.
"Bruce Bickford: The Upland" is the first New York gallery exhibition of drawings by Bruce Bickford, who will be featured in Raw Vision 108, out in August/September.
"Nexus Singularity Takeover" features artworks from the collection of Aarne Anton. Artists include Eugene Andolsek, Charles Benefiel, JJ Cromer, Daniel Martin Diaz, Ionel Talpazan and Purvis Young.
Bruce Bickford
New Exhibition at Centro de Arte Oliva
July 23, 2021 - January 23, 2022
Jean Perdrizet, untitled (Fusée Palan d’Apollo XX ou hélicoptère lunaire ou terrestre), 1971 | mimeograph, ballpoint pen and colored pencil on stamped paper, 61 x 77 cm © André Rocha
Curated by António Saint Silvestre and Richard Treger, "EUREKA!" at Centro de Arte Oliva in São João da Madeira, Portugal, brings together works by 50 unorthodox creators, mainly self-taught artists. The exhibition presents an overview of projects and investigations, codes, formulas and theories that convey alternative models of interpretation of reality. Plans and projects of inventions, machines and various vehicles are exhibited, with a vast gallery of planes, cars, trains and UFOs. Artists include André Robillard, Charles Dellschau, François Burland, François Monchâtre, George Widener, Ionel Talpazan, Johann Hauser and Tom Duncan.
More at https://centrodearteoliva.pt/
Creative Growth at Nina Johnson, Miami
until July 31, 2021
Nina Johnson, Miami, presents "Vibrant", an exhibition of new works by the artists of Creative Growth Art Center (Oakland, CA), the oldest and largest nonprofit art studio for artists with developmental, mental, and physical disabilities.
"Vibrant, 17 artists from Creative Growth", installation view, courtesy www.ninajohnson.com
Drawings, paintings, and sculptures created by 17 of Creative Growth’s artists are on show. Artists include Juan Aguilera, Lauren Dare, Dan Miller, Latefa Noorzai, Aurie Ramirez and Ron Veasey.
"Vibrant, 17 artists from Creative Growth", installation view, courtesy www.ninajohnson.com
See more at www.ninajohnson.com/exhibitions/vibrant-16-artists-from-creative-growth
Artist Highlight:
Claudio Parentela
Born in 1962 in Catanzaro, Italy, Claudio Parentela is an illustrator, painter, collagist and textile artist. He has collaborated with many zines, magazines and comics in Italy and around the world, including NY Arts Magazine, Turntable and Blue Light Magazine.
Click here to see more of Parentela's work.
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