The most exotic destination you can visit this summer is in Massachusetts at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem. The featured exhibition, “Fiery Pool: The Maya and The Mythic Sea,” captures the excitement and essence of the ancient American civilization in a dramatic new way.
At five tons, the pale pink cube that dominates the lobby at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, may be the largest, heaviest piece of glass ever cast. Then again, maybe it’s not. The art in the museum’s latest exhibition, titled “Roni Horn A.K.A. Roni Horn,” is ambiguous.
For more than a century, African art has challenged the western imagination. How and why does an embroidered apron, for example, made in the 1970s by an unidentified, young South African woman, merit a place in a world-class museum? The answer may be found in “Object, Image, Collector: African and Oceanic Art in Focus,” the fascinating exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston, through July 18. The exhibition traces the evolution of African artifacts from object to art.
Superpowers are a fact of history. Before the Soviet Union and The United States, the British Empire was the world superpower. The Brits assumed “the white man’s burden” and carried back to England treasures to fill its museums with booty from many lands, most famously Greece, Egypt, and the Mideast. Skimming the cultures of less powerful people is not looked upon kindly as recent headlines illustrate. Yet, objects in British museums often fare far better than those left in their native country, especially in war torn areas of the globe.
Art preserves - youth never fades and flowers never wilt - so even though the calendar tells us it’s October, it’s still summer at the Museum of Fine Arts where “Imperishable Beauty: Art Nouveau Jewelry” is on view through November 9. Bejeweled butterflies, exotic enameled dragonflies, fantastical flora, and beautiful women who first saw the light of day a century or more ago glow with perpetual life.
If you’re going to visit only one museum this summer, make it the Institute of Contemporary Art, and make it soon. The Anish Kapoor exhibition closes September 7. “Past, Present, and Future” is the first museum survey in the United States of the London-based artist’s sculpture in more than 15 years, and many of the works are on view here for the first time.
