Polaridad Complementaria: Recent Works from Cuba

Biographies of curators Margarita Sánchez Prieto and Jorge Fernández Torres...

Installation photo(s) provided by International Arts and Artists.

News Release from July 1, 2011

Polaridad Complementaria: Recent Works from Cuba

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Housatonic Museum of Art @Housatonic Community College 
Robbin Zella, Director, 203-332-5052,
International Arts & Artists: Margalit Monroe, tel: 202.338.0680 e-mail:

EXHIBITION OF Internationally recognized contemporary Cuban artists to TRAVEL to North America

Bridgeport, CT: The Housatonic Museum of Art is pleased to announce Polaridad Complementaria: Recent Works from Cuba, an exhibition that introduces North America to the new generation of influential artists from Cuba.  Polaridad Complementaria is on view in the Burt Chernow Galleries at the Housatonic Museum of Art from August 15 through October 20, 2011

Developed by the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Wifredo Lam, Havana, Polaridad Complementaria offers audiences the opportunity to become acquainted with the island’s current and upcoming artistic talent. More than 40 works of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video and installation art provide a sense of the serious aesthetic and conceptual concerns that characterizes Cuban art today. The 24 artists presented here are mainly young artists who have attained international recognition. The majority of these artists have taken part in fairs and biennials abroad and all have exhibited in Europe, Latin America and were featured in various editions of the Havana Biennial. Several have exhibited in the United States, including René Peña, Abel Barroso, Aimeé García, Yoan Capote, Eduardo Ponjuán, Lázaro Saavedra, Sandra Ramos and Roberto Fabelo.

Often compared to American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, artist René Peña explores the relationship between individuals within society and the struggle for their own identity. Abel Barroso carves three-dimensional pieces using wood and various printing methods to create a conversation about technology and the third-world. From Zulueta, Cuba, Duvier del Dago takes things one step further, combining drawing with handmade 3D design examining the unattainable, whether it be the material or the ideal. From simplistic to intricately fabricated, these artists create a narrative of Cuba today.

Diverse in both medium and themes, the artists featured in Polaridad Complementaria understand the power of their art to address a wide range of social issues. The exhibition highlights works that connect the local context with global concerns and universal human issues. After many years, Polaridad Complementaria opens a pathway for dialogue and cultural exchange between Cuba and the United States, two countries with historic ties and common cultural processes, despite troubled relations.

Margarita Sánchez Prieto is curator, researcher and art critic at Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Wifredo Lam in Havana and recipient of the National Prize of Curatorship at the 2000 Havana Biennial. She has curated various exhibitions and lectured extensively on Cuban and Latin American art throughout South America, Europe and Canada. Her work has been published in various art magazines and she is the author of the anthology An Outlook of Latin American Art in the Decade of 1980. 

Director of the Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Centre and curator and art critic of the Havana Biennial, Jorge Fernandez Torres has curated over 15 major exhibitions in Cuba, Spain, Central, and South America. He was a member of the Commission for Cuban Cultural Development of UNESCO in 1997 and on the Advisory Council for the Arts of the National Library of Cuba in 2000 and 2001 as well as Vice Rector of the Higher Institute of Arts in Havana for the past ten years. He is the Author of several texts in catalogues of Cuban art and as professor of contemporary art at the Higher Institute of Arts (ISA), and has lectured all over the world.

Polaridad Complementaria: Recent Works from Cuba was developed by the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, Havana and is toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC.

Scheduled tour dates for Polaridad Complementaria: Recent Works from Cuba are as follows: Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA (January 16, 2010 to March 14, 2010); Sonoma County Museum of Art, Santa Rosa, CA (June 16, 2010 to August 29, 2010); Chicago Cultural Center, IL (October 16, 2010 to December 30, 2010); City Gallery at Waterfront Park, Charleston, SC (February 4, 2011 to March 28, 2011); Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT (August 15, 2011 to October 20, 2011). For an updated tour schedule, please visit http://artsandartists.org/exhibitions/cubanart.html.

Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Wifredo Lam is dedicated to the promotion of both contemporary Cuban art and the art of the countries of the so-called Third World. Its main purpose is organizing the Havana Biennial. The Center also promotes and investigates the work of the vanguard master Wifredo Lam as well as the current artistic production of South American countries.

International Arts & Artists in Washington, DC, is a non-profit arts service organization dedicated to increasing cross-cultural understanding and exposure to the arts internationally, through exhibitions, programs and services to artists, arts institutions and the public. Visit www.artsandartists.org

Housatonic Community College provides an affordable and accessible education through two-year degrees, transfer preparation, and certificate programs, as well as a wide variety of continuing education and personal/professional enrichment seminars and workshops.  In addition, HCC offers employee and occupational training for businesses, municipalities, government agencies, and professional associations to help develop the educated and skilled workforce required to meet regional business and industry needs.  HCC is nationally recognized as an “Achieving the Dream” institution.  To learn more, visit the college’s website at: www.housatonic.edu.

Traces/Montana’s Frontier Re-Visited

Photographs of Montana Frontier by Richard Buswell

November 4, 2011 through December. 18, 2011

The Museum is closed November 24 - 27 for the Thanksgiving Holiday

GROUND TRUTH: Mapping the Senses/Charting Experience

Exhibition Catalog available as a PDF...

Participating Artists:

Christian Nold - Susan Sharp - Heidi Whitman - Denis Wood
Sarah Amos - Ree Morton - Suzan Shutan - Chip Lord
Pat Steir - Adriana Lara - Eve Ingalls - John Cage
Sharon Horvath - Leila Daw - Merce Cunningham

One Galcier by Leila Daw

NEW YORK SCULPTORS GUILD: Sculpture in the 21st Century

Download PDF of Exhibition Catalog

February 23 - March 23 , 2012
Reception for the artists: February 26 from 1-3 pm in the Burt Chernow Galleries

Queen by Stephanie Rocknack

The Housatonic Museum of Art presents Sculpture in the 21st Century featuring work by members of the New York Sculptors Guild. The exhibit will open Thursday, February 23 and continue through March 23, 2012. A reception for the artists will be held Sunday, February 26 from 1 to 3pm in the Burt Chernow Galleries. This event is free and the public is cordially invited to attend.

The Sculptors Guild, founded in 1937, was an important moment for Modern sculpture in America and Guild members have ranked among the most prestigious and significant artists of the past seven decades. David Smith, an influential mid-20th century sculptor and a forerunner of welded steel constructions of expressive geometric abstractions, exhibited regularly with Sculptors Guild along with such renowned figures as Jacques Lipchitz, Louise Bourgeois, Seymour Lipton, lbram Lassaw and Herbert Ferber. In addition, Expressionist figurative sculpture also flourished, most notably exemplified by the work of Paul Manship, Chaim Gross, William Zorach, Jacques Lipchitz, and Jose de Creeft.

With the advent of the new millennium the Sculptors Guild has enjoyed a resurgence of interest by emerging sculptors of various divergent aesthetics. The continuation of the extensive history of prominent sculpture visionaries within Sculptors Guild avant garde has extensively expanded during the past decade to include the notable digital sculptors: Bruce Beasley, Kenneth Snelson, Jon Isherwood, Robert Michael Smith, Michael Rees, Barry X Ball, Dan Collins, Mary Bates Neubauer, David Smalley, Greg Lock, David Morris, Michael Zansky and Dan Henderson.

Ruin of Belief   by Steven Dono

In 2010, the Housatonic Museum of Art invited Nick Capasso, Senior Curator at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts to select works created by the members for this exhibition. Capasso chose twenty-eight sculptures by fourteen artists, using several criteria.

“First and foremost,” Capasso said, “is my interest in work that is well wrought, and displays a confident, unselfconscious, or experimental attitude toward material, form, subject, and content. I was most attracted to works that look forward to the aesthetic and philosophical concerns of the 21st century, rather than back towards the 20th century.” Capasso selected a diverse body of work that explores architecture, history, art history, science, biology and the complexities of nature, and spirituality.

Sculpture of the 21st Century includes Stephanie Rocknack, June Ahrens, Eve Ingalls, Greg Lock, Lucy Hodgson, Steve Dono, Michael Zansky, Irene Gennaro, Mary Ellen Scherl, Katie Truk, Elizabeth Knowles, Alison Helm, Robert Michael Smith, and Mary Bailey.

Paper Trail:
15th Anniversary Celebration of the Burt Chernow Galleries

The Housatonic Museum of Art is pleased to announce the opening of the summer exhibition that highlights works from the Museum’s outstanding print collection. Paper Trail: 15th Anniversary Celebration of the Burt Chernow Galleries will be on view from June 20 through July 23, 2012 and is an opportunity for the public to see works on paper that are rarely on display due to their fragility. Culled from the nearly 2,000 works in storage in the Museum’s print room, Paper Trail is a celebration of not only the Burt Chernow Galleries, which opened in 1997, but the Museum’s print collection as well.

The late Burt Chernow taught at Housatonic Community College and was the founder and Director Emeritus of the Museum. He, and his wife Ann, also an artist and printmaker, donated many works to the collection and encouraged their friends to do the same. The exhibition includes prints given by the Chernows, such as Paul Signac’s Boats on the Seine, c. 1927 and Jacques Callot’s Temptation of St. Anthony, 1635, as well as many others given as a result of their efforts. Paper Trail showcases nearly 50 prints in a variety of media, including etchings, engravings, lithographs, woodcuts and screen prints. The exhibition includes works by Pablo Picasso, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Robert Rauschenberg, Henri Matisse, Albrecht Dürer, Roy Lichtenstein and Elaine de Kooning, to name a few.

Paper Trails: 15th Anniversary Celebration of the Burt Chernow Galleries is the result of a nearly year-long cataloguing project by Maura Brennan, Curator of Prints and Drawings, a position funded by the Werth Family Foundation and the Fairfield County Community Foundation. Drawn on the strengths of the collection, this exhibition funded by Suzio-York Hill of Meriden, highlights works by The School of Paris, as well as American printmakers from the 1960s and 1970s.

Download Paper Trail Catalog (PDF)

Domestic Tools Subject of Contemporary Art Exhibit
at Housatonic Museum of Art

Reimaging the Distaff Toolkit Catalog (PDF)

Bridgeport, CT: The Housatonic Museum of Art is pleased to announce Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit, an exhibition that explores household tools as metaphor for the social and cultural histories of women embedded in them. Reimagining the Distaff Toolkit will be on view in the Burt Chernow Galleries at the Housatonic Museum of Art through September 6 through October 26, 2012.

Rickie Solinger, an award-winning author, historian and curator, reexamines women’s history by positioning tools used in a domestic setting as the “fulcrum for a contemporary work of art.” She says, “The artists in this exhibit
place these old tools at the center of their own work: washboard, a dressmaker’s dummy, graters, doilies, an advice book, cooking pans, a basket, a garden hoe, dress patterns, a rolling pin, buckets, darning eggs, a work glove, a needle threader, rug beaters, ironing boards, mason jars and a telephone.”

The term “distaff” itself refers not only to the tool attached to a spinning wheel to hold unspun fibers, but over time, came to refer to women generally.  Solinger points out, “Many of these old tools facilitated….repetitive labor and evoke the various cultural histories of women’s unpaid, often diminished and disrespected status within the household and society. But in the 21st century, at a moment when ‘old tools’ have become aestheticized and expensive, we can look again and see their costly beauty.”

Twenty-eight artists are represented in this show including Betye and Alison Saar, Lisa Alvarado, Dave Cole, Judy Hoyt, Larry Ruhl, Flo Oy Wong, Debra Priestly, to name a few.

Rickie Solinger is an independent scholar, curator and author. She received the Prelinger Award from The Coordinating Council of Women in History for her book entitled Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Abortion, Adoption and Welfare in the United States. Solinger is the author of Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe V. Wade (Routledge, 1992) which won the first Lerner-Scott Award given by the Organization of American Historians. She is also the author of The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law (The Free Press, 1994) and the editor of Abortion Wars: Fifty Years of Struggle, 1950-2000 (University of California Press, 1998). Solinger's scholarly articles include: "Dependency and Choice: The Two Faces of Eve," Social Justice 25 (Spring, 1998); "Poisonous Choice" in Bad Mothers (1998), edited by Molly Ladd-Taylor and Lauri Umansky; "'A Complete Disaster': Abortion and the Politics of Hospital Abortion Boards, 1950-1970," Feminist Studies 19 (Summer, 1993); and "Race and 'Value': Black and White Illegitimate Babies in the U. S., 1945-1965," Gender and History 4 (Autumn, 1992). In addition, Ms. Solinger has also organized art installations and traveling exhibitions that focus on women’s issues and history.

Rickie Solinger regularly writes book reviews for scholarly and popular publications and reviews manuscripts for university presses. She is a founding member of Women United for Justice, Community, and Family, a Boulder, Colorado-based cross-class coalition of women committed to welfare justice. She has served on the Boulder County Welfare Review Committee and frequently speaks and writes in the community and elsewhere on matters of poverty, welfare, and economic justice.

The Art of Business: Collector's Press Lithographs

November 8 - December 21, 2012

Top-drawer prints see the light of day at HMA show...

Up All Night

Download the UP ALL NIGHT Catalog

Eye On The Storm

A New Exhibit at the Housatonic Museum of Art Explores Social Media- CT.com

June 13–July 26, 2013
Burt Chernow Galleries @ HMA

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 13, 5-7 pm

Curated by D. Dominick Lombardi

Artists can explore, reflect, extrapolate or rearrange in any number of ways, the barrage of endless data from hard news to social media that we all must navigate, initiate or muddle through each day.

Artists in the exhibition: Isak Applin, Anita Arliss, Jonathan Beer, Susan Breen, Mia Brownell, Ernest Concepcion, Paul Gagner, Chambliss Giobbi, Richard Höglund, Shawn Huckins, Marcus Jansen, Arcady Kotler, D. Dominick Lombardi, Marci MacGuffie, Tim Merry, Arnold Mesches, Rashaad Newsome, Trong Nguyen, Leah Oates, Rebecca Reeve, Holly Sears, Karen Shaw, Patricia Smith, D. Jack Solomon and Melanie Vote.