Technique mirrors content: The collage, composed of various individual pieces, has enjoyed great popularity among Black American artists for decades. The Phillips Collection Museum is dedicating a major exhibition to this object: Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage can be seen in Washington, D.C. from July 6.
Collage has been established as an art form for many decades, but large museum exhibitions about it are rare. At The Phillips Collection museum, the exemplary presentation, which focuses on collages by Black American artists, can now be seen in a modified version. Earlier this year, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston exhibited the artworks. The departure from classical painting or screen printing with found materials of all kinds, which form something new in a unique way, reflects the search for identity and the cultural fragmentation of Black Americans. Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, featuring some 60 exhibits, will be on view in Washington, D.C. from June 6 through September 22. The Phillips Collection was founded in 1921 and is the oldest museum for modern art in the USA.
Unlike the exhibition in Houston, this version focuses even more on emerging and established contemporary artists. Included are Mark Bradford, M. Florine Démosthène, Lauren Halsey, Rashid Johnson, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Deborah Roberts, Tschabalala Self, Lorna Simpson, Devan Shimoyama, Mickalene Thomas, and Kara Walker. They express the infinite possibilities of Black constructed narratives in a fragmented society.
Robert Frank was an influential photographer of the 20th century. In Robert Frank: Mary's Book, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston presents a very personal photo book from the artist's younger years. The show opens on December 21.
The lively, dynamic and concentrated formal language of sculptor Mathias Kadolph has so far manifested itself primarily through his material, wood. Now, for the first time, he has had miniatures cast in bronze in an edition of twelve sculptures each. These convey essential impressions of his formal ideas and open up to new impulses for our perception.
