New World Coming
Three short reviews on some local art
Friends,
I recently wrote some reviews that’ll be quoted in an upcoming article by a new friend, and I thought you’d like to read the whole thing here. You might recognize some of the locations, as they first appeared in Still Life here and here.
I turned the writing opportunity into a short exercise: how can I channel the voice of Peter Schjeldahl? A consummate art critic, Schjeldahl wrote for the New Yorker, the Village Voice, and others, and his reviews always felt potent and personable. He wrote about art without sacrificing a point of view, a human voice, and poetic language. Something I strive for in these letters.
As the poet writes below, “In our imperfect world / we are meant to repair / and stitch together / what beauty there is, stitch it / with compassion and wire…” We could add: and stitch it together with words and artists and museum shows and galleries, too.
Take care,
Michael
The Target Wing Rotunda at Minneapolis Institute of Art from September 9 to September 21.
If you travel back in time a few months, you could look down from this rotunda at our state's best art museum as Tibetan Buddhist nuns build a sand mandala. As you hear the shinkshink of the chakpur sifting bright color into ritual shapes, you might look around at the hundreds of people—including special guests from the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota. On the last day, you might applaud as nuns place a ceremonial khata on Virajita Singh, Mia's very first Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, you might cancel your afternoon plans and join a ragtag art pilgrims at the edge of Mississippi thinking “this could only happen here” as they pour the sand into the overflowing river.
Bockley Gallery
Small and mighty, Minneapolis’ Bockley Gallery has quietly and consistently supported Indigenous artists and others historically ignored by the American visual art tradition. But the artworks on display don’t feel so much like a hand-ringing “correction” as much as a celebration of deeply felt aesthetic excellence—it’s up to viewers to catch up. Take the recent show Together: Leslie Smith III & Dyani White Hawk for example: White Hawk’s communal-built Lakota totem brought global attention to our lineage of indigenous artists when Bockley presented it at the recent Armory show. The curling edges of Smith’s abstract canvas refuse to find their fit—and entice viewers to reflect on a history of American abstraction distorted by its lack of diverse perspectives. Are we looking, really looking? That’s up to us, but Bockley knows how to make room (pro tip: Make a day of it. After visiting the gallery, pick up a book at Birchbark Books next door, walk around the Lake of the Isles, and end up back were you started at the Kenwood for conversation over dinner).
Weinstein Hammons Gallery
Careful: if you walk into Weinstein Hammons, you might feel yourself open up to art in ways you weren’t planning to. It’s not only the art which, by the way, is top notch (where else can you be enticed by Robert Mapplethorpe’s queer photographs and journey through Teo Nguyen’s Vietnamese/Midwestern landscapes? Only here.). It’s not only the charming space with its bright windows and creaking floors. It’s Leslie Hammons herself whose disarming warmth and intelligence will melt your white cube anxieties away. She’ll just as quickly invite you to look at art books in the back room as she’ll chat with you about which sold painting she wishes she could keep for her own family. Could she run circles around the best of us with her encyclopedic knowledge of art and photography and fashion? No question. But it’s that unfussy hospitality and real passion for art—and the artists who make it—that’ll make you want to stay and linger for hours.
“Holding the Light” by Stuart Kestenbaum
Gather up whatever is
glittering in the gutter,
whatever has tumbled
in the waves or fallen
in flames out of the sky,
for it’s not only our
hearts that are broken,
but the heart
of the world as well.
Stitch it back together.
Make a place where
the day speaks to the night
and the earth speaks to the sky.
Whether we created God
or God created us
it all comes down to this:
In our imperfect world
we are meant to repair
and stitch together
what beauty there is, stitch it
with compassion and wire.
See how everything
we have made gathers
the light inside itself
and overflows? A blessing.Poems About Art — a project by the National Gallery of Art
These visual artists highlight the power of words