New Shows! New Performances! Not to be missed!

Supposedly, February is the off-season for cultural happenings in the Berkshires and neighboring communities. Don’t believe it! From Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s incredible Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, New York, to Bennington Museum in Bennington, Vermont, to Smith College Museum of Art’s opening exhibit, Plastic Entanglements, Ecology, Aesthetics, Materials, the breath, depth and diversity of our region knows no bounds. The above are, but a few of the incredible opportunities within an hour of north county to witness new, innovative art or fresh new discoveries of Vermont Folk sculpture. Fortunately most of these exhibits are on view for at least a month and some through the spring season. Plan ahead and enjoy!

Thursday, February 7

Chameleon, by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

EMPAC, Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media
and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer
On the corner of 8th Street and College Avenue
Troy, New York
Free

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko is a performance artist and poet who works with dance, media, and sound on stage and in museums. He is in residence at EMPAC to develop a new work, Chameleon, which will have its premiere at New York Live Arts in 2020.

Chameleon explores how minoritarian communities record and affirm their existence through collaborative actions and protests that archive personal freedom narratives as a way to subvert culturally charged fields of systemic oppression, loss, and erasure. The creation of media content as a part of and in response to these actions might range from documentary film, popular music and television, cell phone footage of an event captured by a witness on the street.

Curated by Ashley Ferro-Murray

The work-in-progress showing for this event will include a conversation with the artist during an early-stage technical residency, so its structure and form will be determined by the artist’s creative process.

Chameleon is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Friday, February 8

Annual Mohawk-Hudson Regional Invitational
Exhibiting Artists: Amy Cheng, Susan Meyer, Karin Schaefer, and Amelia Toelke
Exhibition Dates: February 8 – March 16, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, February 8, from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Albany Center Gallery
488 Broadway, Albany, New York

The 2019 Mohawk-Hudson Regional Invitational Exhibition features the work of regional artists Amy Cheng, Susan Meyer, Karin Schaefer, and Amelia Toelke. An artists’ reception will be held at ACG from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Friday, February 8, 2019.The public is invited to attend.

Exhibit Sponsors: Ann Pfau & David Hochfelder, ParkAlbany, New York State Council on the Arts, and The Albany Wine and Dine for the Arts Festival.

17 Years Boy: Epilogue, New work by Imo Nse Imeh
February 8, 2019 – March 15, 2019
Opening reception February 8, 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Readywipe Gallery
532 Main Street
Holyoke, Mass.

“To me, this new body of work symbolizes the challenging, yet beautiful, journey down the path of healing, to transform the horror of unspeakable tragedy into a renewed sense of life and celebration. I wanted to make something new. I wanted it to be reflective of a dark past, but also hopeful for the future. It needed to be about healing and the celebration of Black boys.” Dr. Imo Nse Imeh

Plastic Entanglements, Ecology, Aesthetics, Materials
February 8 – July 28, 2019

Smith College Museum of Art
20 Elm Street
Northampton, Mass.

The story of plastic is as complex as the polymer chains that make up its unique material properties. Plastic Entanglements brings together sixty works by thirty contemporary artists to explore the environmental, aesthetic, and technological entanglements of our ongoing love affair with this paradoxical, infinitely malleable substance. Both miraculous and malignant, ephemeral yet relentlessly present, plastic infiltrates our global networks, our planet, and even our bodies.

This major loan exhibition features work by an international roster of emerging and mid-career artists, including Moreshin Allahyari, Ifeoma U. Anyaeji, Dianna Cohen, Willie Cole, Mark Dion, Brian Jungen, Zanele Muholi, Aurora Robson, Tejal Shah, Jessica Stockholder, Deb Todd Wheeler and Kelly Wood. Visitors will encounter a varied array of artwork, from meticulous drawings, photographs, and video installations to 3D-printed objects and sculptures fabricated from found plastic.
Plastic Entanglements unfolds in three sections, charting a timeline—past, present, and future—of our ongoing engagement with this ubiquitous manmade material.

Plastic Entanglements: Ecology, Aesthetics, Materials was organized by the Palmer Museum of Art, Penn State, and curated by Joyce Robinson, curator, with guest co-curators Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor, Penn State professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and English, and Heather Davis, assistant professor of culture and media, The New School. SCMA’s presentation is led by Emma Chubb, Charlotte Feng Ford ’83 Curator of Contemporary Art.

This exhibition and related programs at SCMA are made possible by the support of the Suzannah J. Fabing Programs Fund; the Carlyn Steiner ’67 and George Steiner Endowed Fund, in honor of Joan Smith Koch; the Judith Plesser Targan, class of 1953, and the Enid Silver Winslow, class of 1954, Art Museum Funds; and the Tryon Associates.

Sunday, February 10

Be Mine

On view through March 24
Winter viewing hours: Saturdays 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m., and by appointment
Opening Reception: Sunday February 10, 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

LABspace
2642 NY Route 23, Hillsdale New York
On view through March 24

Amy Lincoln, Barbara Slitkin, Cathy Wysocki, David Ambrose, Dina Bursztyn, Elisa Pritzker, Jackie Shatz, Julie Chase, Melissa Stern, Polly Shindler, Sascha Mallon, Wayne Hopkins

Ongoing Exhibits

Bennington Museum
75 Main Street
Bennington, Vermont
Hours: November through May: Thursday – Tuesday (closed Wednesday)
10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Closed month of January, Easter, Thanksgiving Day,
Current Exhibitions, Special Exhibition

Vermont Folk Sculpture: Recent Acquisition
Works on Paper: A Decade of Collecting
The Mind’s Eye: Paintings, Sculpture, and Books by Paul Katz
February 1 through May 5

Collar Works
621 River Street
Troy, New York

Ever Upward
January 25 – March 16, 2019
Hours: Thursday & Friday, 12:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.; Saturday, 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Recent MFA Graduates residing in New York State
Artists: Emily Furr, Aysha Hamouda, T. Eliott Mansa, Vanessa Mastronardi, Martian (Komikka Patton), Ann Moody, Gaku Tsutaja, Barrett White.
Curated by Sean Fuller and Monica Bill Hughes

Geoffrey Young Gallery,
40 Railroad Street, 2nd Floor
Great Barrington, Mass.

ESCAPE!
Through February 24
Hours: Thursdays – Sundays, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., or by appointment.

Guest curators: Hope Davis and Sharon Gregory, will explore the intriguing subject of ESCAPE, and its role in the work of local artists.

David Ambrose, Stephanie Anderson, Derek Buckner, Morgan Bulkeley, Tom Burckhardt, Roselle Chartock, Carol Diehl, Warner Friedman, Ann Getsinger, Michael Glier, Tom Goldenberg, Sutton Hays, Philip Knoll, Maggie Mailer, Dan Perkins, Alex Ross, Charles Schweigert, Gabriel Senza, Rosemary Starace, Linda Stillman.

MCLA Gallery 51
Massachusetts College of Liberal Art
51 Main Street
North Adams, Mass.

Colour and Form: Beauty in Abstraction
Hours: Monday – Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.; Sunday, 12:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Kathline Carr, Dawn Nelson, Sarah Sutro
Curated by Arthur De Bow
Work explores the beauty, complexities, and depth of abstract art, and how it inspires our curiosity.

Outside Gallery
10 Ashland Street
Hours: Friday & Saturday 12:00 – 6:00 p.m.; Sunday, 1:00 – 5:00 p.m.

Current Exhibitions

You don’t have to be a hedge fund success story or a part of the 1% to buy artwork. A selection of original work by Outside’s artists thoughtfully curated, flat formated and affordably priced, Portfolio allows you to bring a piece of outside into your home. Before you go, view work on their website.

University Museum of Contemporary Art, Fine Arts Center
UMass Amherst
151 Presidents Drive
Amherst, Mass.
Hours: Tuesday – Friday 11:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.;
Saturday & Sunday 2:00 – 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m, 1st Thursday of each Month.
Closed: Mondays, Academic Breaks, State Holidays

Xylor Jane: Counterclockwise
January 31 – April 28, 2019

Xylor Jane’s hypnotic paintings are rooted in mathematical concepts, numerology, and love. Devotional portraits of gridded Arabic numerals hold personal significance to the artist but are intended to spark a spell-like visceral experience for the viewer. The subjects include tetradic primes, Fibonacci sequences, and Magic Squares. The colors emerge from a seven-hue system that holds space for our curiosity, despair, and aspiration.
Xylor Jane is a Greenfield, Massachusetts-based painter, represented by CANADA Gallery, New York.
With special thanks to CANADA Gallery, New York.

Terry Winters: Facts and Fictions
January 31 – April 28, 2019

A leading figure in the art world for four decades, Terry Winters became well-known in the 1980s for his materially-conscious drawings, prints and paintings. Organized by The Drawing Center, NY, this exhibition presents an overview of Winters’s drawings from 1980 to the present, the first such exhibition in the US. Organized by Claire Gilman, Chief Curator, The Drawing Center, New York.

Terry Winters: Facts and Fictions is made possible by Jack Shear; Agnes Gund; Kathy and Richard Fuld; The Ellsworth Kelly Foundation; Jane Dresner Sadaka and Ned Sadaka; Waqas Wajahat; and Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson.
Special thanks to Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

Williams College Museum of Art
15 Lawrence Hall Drive
Williamstown, Massachusetts

James Van Der Zee: Collecting History

22 works documenting life in Harlem, including images of African American high society, the Harlem Renaissance, and daily cultural life in Harlem during the first half of the 20th century.
Curated by Horace Ballard, Assistant Curator and Kevin Murphy, Eugenie Prendergast Senior Curator of American Art, in collaboration with Lisa Conathan, Head of Special Collections, Sawyer Library