Current Exhibitions
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For much of the 20th century, contact sheets (also called proof sheets) were vital to the practice of photography. The rising popularity of roll film encouraged more and more exposures; the best frame would be chosen later. The photographer first saw positive images on the contact sheet, which was marked up for printing and served as a lasting reference. Digital technology has put an end to that era: the photographer now sees the image instantly, and systems of storage, retrieval, and editing have become increasingly sophisticated.
This exhibition is the first to highlight the museum’s collection of works on paper produced in Latin America over the past century. Representing a wide range of countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, and Mexico, the works survey how artists have explored national and cultural identity during periods of political upheaval and dramatic social change. In particular, prints and drawings provided artists such as Roberto Matta, José Clemente Orozco, Jesús Rafael Soto, and Rufino Tamayo with a means of self-expression well suited for formal experimentation and reaching the broadest possible audience.
This video accompanies the exhibition A Graphic Revolution: Prints and Drawings in Latin America, on view in the James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Gallery.
Co-organized with the Seoul Museum of Craft Art, Gold Needles: Embroidery Arts from Korea celebrates anonymous women artists and their inventive creations that triumphed over the conventions of the patriarchal Joseon society. Through stunning examples of embroidery and patchwork, this exhibition explores Korean embroidered works of art as tools of empowerment to overcome social and cultural constraints.
In 1929 Ilse Bing (1899–1998) acquired a Leica, a new small, lightweight camera that took 36 shots per roll of film. Its technical characteristics, revolutionary at the time, encouraged spontaneity, experimentation, and boldness. The first professional to wholeheartedly adopt this 35mm single-lens camera, Bing was soon dubbed by a critic as the “Queen of the Leica” for the inventiveness and originality she brought to this innovative technology.
A photograph “takes the world and makes it into something else,” says Aaron Rothman, whose interest lies in transformative rather than documentary photography.
Focusing on Louis Comfort Tiffany’s passion for stained glass as a way to bring Nature’s splendid color into the home, this exhibition explores Tiffany’s vivid designs in relation to emerging artistic and craft movements at the turn of the 20th century. Through the dynamic, illuminated display of 20 of the designer’s finest stained glass table and floor lamps and featuring the iconic Hinds House stained glass window, Tiffany in Bloom introduces visitors to the magic that Tiffany created with thousands of shards of glass and the “newfangled” power of electric light.
In the last 100 years, China has undergone dramatic changes, including the emperor’s abdication in 1912, the establishment of the Republic of China (1912–49), the Communist takeover under Mao Zedong in 1949, the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), and the establishment of reforms after Mao’s death in 1976.