Here is a look at 10 promising shows/art events that will open in the first half (or just after) of 2016:
Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada, The Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Jan. 30-April 10: The Wexner is the only venue other than the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to present this revelatory retrospective of the late L.A. African-American artist who created his own outsider-art environment, the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum, in the California desert community of Joshua Tree. The show features 50 of his three-dimensional assemblages that used whatever material on hand, plus photographs and related material.
Do Ho Suh: Passages, Contemporary Arts Center, Feb. 12-Sept. 11: The CAC’s Steven Matijcio has curated this major survey of the Korean-American artist, who creates installations — life-size fabric replicas — based on houses in which he has lived. His work has a floating, dream-like quality that can be immensely compelling, especially in an unconventional space like the Zaha Hadid-designed CAC.
Daubigny, Monet, Van Gogh: Impressions of Landscape, Taft Museum of Art, Feb. 20-May 29: The Taft Museum’s chief curator, Lynne Ambrosini, has spent 14 years organizing this show and believes it will be one of the museum’s most important presentations. Inspired by the fact that the Taft owns three Charles-François Daubigny oil paintings, Ambrosini’s exhibition aims to prove that this 19th-century French landscape painter served as a major, unheralded harbinger of Impressionism.
The Mini (Microcinema), The Carnegie, March 11-April 23: C. Jacqueline Wood’s Mini Microcinema, which successfully programmed experimental shorts at People’s Liberty Globe Gallery last summer, gets a return engagement at The Carnegie.
Reopening of Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Ky., March 12: The Speed reopens with a cutting-edge 62,000-square-foot new addition designed by L.A.’s wHY Architecture that will double the existing total square footage and triple the gallery space. Among the new features will be a theater with a full-time curator of film, meaning Cincinnati is being ringed by state-of-the-art cinematheques — Columbus, Ohio, Bloomington, Ind., and now Louisville — while having no nonprofit film center of its own.
30 Americans, Cincinnati Art Museum, March 19-Aug. 28: Drawn from the collections of the Miami, Fla.-based Rubell Family and the museum, this presents Contemporary work by such African-American artists as Glenn Ligon, Robert Colescott and David Hammons that explores issues of identity.
Shinji Turner-Yamamoto: Sidereal Silence, Weston Art Gallery, April 8-June 5: No Cincinnati artist this decade has had a more powerful show than Turner-Yamamoto’s 2010 Hanging Garden/Global Tree Project at Mount Adams’ deconsecrated Holy Cross Church. Now he’s back with an installation that combines paintings, photographs and sculpture with a soundscape.
Not in New York: Carl Solway and Cincinnati, Cincinnati Art Museum, April 30-Aug. 14: Cincinnati’s most important gallery owner of the Modern and Contemporary era, maybe of all time, is the subject of this exhibit that looks at the work which he has played a role in bringing to the museum’s permanent collection over the course of 50 years. Featured artists include Ann Hamilton, Nam June Paik and John Cage.
Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt, Cincinnati Art Museum, June 18-Sept. 11: Competing with the Taft’s Impressionism show is going to be tough, but if anything can do it, it would be an exhibit about cats. This one, from the Brooklyn Museum’s Egyptian Collection, features some 80 artworks that show how important cats were to the ancient Egyptians.
Dressing Downton: Changing Fashion for Changing Times, Taft Museum of Art, July 2-Sept. 25: If the Taft’s Daubigny show leaves you wanting something completely different, there will be this celebration of Downton Abbey in summer. The traveling exhibit features costumes, accessories and film stills from the venerable PBS show.
CONTACT STEVEN ROSEN: [email protected]
