The Museum of Fine Arts will be showing a Goya exhibit.
Trying to class up your going out experience? Why not check out these upcoming art exhibits?
Wifredo Lam: Imaging New Worlds
Through Dec. 14
McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College
140 Comm. Ave., Chestnut Hill
Free, 617-552-8100
www.bc.edu
Wifredo Lam’s art is indeed imaginative. The Cuban painter, who lived from 1902 to 1982, had Chinese, African and Spanish ancestry, and his work drew from an equally diverse set of influences, from cubism to magic realism to postmodernism to Santeria. This retrospective show also explores his literary influences, which were eclectic and numerous.
Sam Earle: Circus
Through Oct. 19
Adelson Galleries, Boston
520 Harrison Ave., Boston
Free, 617-832-0633
www.adelsongalleriesboston.com
Sam Earle creates his images with a laborious layering technique that makes them look a little bit like a city wall that’s been covered over hundreds of times with posters — this sense of the passage of time is particularly striking — we wonder how deep Earle’s rabbit hole goes. This series draws on classic (and often rather creepy) circus imagery.
Branching Out: Trees as Art
Sept. 27 through Sept. 20, 2015
Peabody Essex Museum
161 Essex St., Salem
$15-$18, 866-745-1876
www.pem.org
Everyone who’s ever hung out with a tree knows trees are very cool. If they could make art, their art would be cool, but they can’t, so we have to. This show, featuring over 30 different works, reveals the ways in which artists use trees both in and as art—there’s even music made, somehow, through a process involves trees and leaves.
Marc Chalme
Sept. 27 through Oct. 26
Axelle Fine Arts
91 Newbury St., Boston
Free, 617-450-0700
www.axelle.com/boston/
Edward Hopper’s lonely but strangely peaceful paintings come to mind when you look at the work of French painter Marc Chalme, but his mysteriously suggestive domestic scenes and sensitivity to light also recall Vermeer. We often see his human figures from behind, walking, or reading a book—as with Hopper, a tantalizing narrative seems to hover, never to be told.
Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb: Memory City
Sept. 27 through Oct. 31
Robert Klein Gallery
38 Newbury St., Boston
Free, 617-267-7997
www.robertkleingallery.com
This series is one of several collaborative efforts between the Webbs, a husband and wife pair of photographers. It captures a year in the everyday life of an everyday city, Rochester, NY, often choosing to show the scenes between scenes—people waiting, wondering, gathering for a night out. We see a dress soon to be worn, or perhaps, never to be worn again.
Goya: Order and Disorder
Oct. 12 through Jan. 19
Museum of Fine Arts
465 Huntington Ave., Boston
$23-$25, 617-267-9300
www.mfa.org
The Spanish master Francisco Goya (1746-1828) produced some wild imagery, especially for his era — as this show’s title suggests, he was a painter of extremes, ranging from savage violence to peace and harmony. Some of his greatest work, including his most famous print, “The Sleep of Reason Begets Monsters”, will be shown here, in the largest Goya exhibition in more than 25 years.
Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals
Nov. 16 through July 26
Harvard Art Museum
32 Quincy St., Boston
$10-$15, 617-495-9400
www.harvardartmuseums.org
The Harvard Art Museums will finally re-open in November, and the first special exhibition will reveal the murals abstract expressionist Mark Rothko created for Harvard University in the early 1960’s. In 1979, after years of exposure caused extensive fading, they were put into storage, but now they’ve been restored by a novel digital technique to appear in all their original, fierce brightness.
