Monthly Roundup
New Haven Resident Reginald Betts is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow
New Haven’s Reginald Betts has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. The poet and lawyer’s work “[promotes] the humanity and rights of individuals who are or have been incarcerated," according to a recent interview.
Reginald Betts, via NPR
City-Wide Open Studios returns to New Haven as Open Source
Taking place across multiple sites from October 15 through 24, Artspace has rebranded its annual celebration of local artists as Open Source. The 2021 Festival showcases artists from around and beyond New Haven delivered in a hybrid virtual and in-person format. The new iteration also features workshops for artists covering studio visits and social media marketing.
Closing Soon
Jessica Smolinski, installation view of A Bird in Hand, Jennifer Terzian Gallery.
Through Oct 16 | A Bird in Hand, Jennifer Terzian Gallery
In Litchfield at Jennifer Terzian Gallery, A Bird in Hand presents works from the New Haven-based artist couple, Jessica and Joseph Smolinski in their first two-person exhibition together. Drawing loosely from their daily lives, the works on view range from photography, sculpture, installation, and drawing. Read the profiles of Joseph Smolinski and Jessica Smolinski on this blog.
Through Oct 17 | Secrets Exposed / Exposed Secrets
At the Kehler Liddell Gallery in New Haven, a two-person exhibition shows how two artists have responded to the pandemic. Marjorie Gillette Wolfe’s photographs and drawings were made over the past year, during a period of isolation. On the other side of the gallery, Kate Henderson presents paintings and collages, stating: “In this body of work, I am exposing both how I work, and the underlying themes of my work, that I have not revealed before.” Read my review in the New Haven Arts Paper.
Through Oct 24| Lydia Viscardi: Then the Morning Comes
Real Art Ways presents a solo exhibition at the Hartford art space by Newtown-based artist Lydia Viscardi, curated by David Borawski. Viscardi utilizes mixed media, oil, and collage to create paintings that depict complicated layered scenes. The resulting textures and saturated color palette encourages the viewer to explore every nook and cranny to discover what hides within their compositions. Found textiles and images offer uncanny moments of legibility in otherwise chaotic scenes.
Ongoing
Through Nov 14 | Leonardo Drew: Two Projects
Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum brings the work of Connecticut-born artist Leonardo Drew to two sites for these shows. On the Front Lawn, Drew will present an interactive sculptural landscape, closing on November 14. Inside the museum’s main lobby, Drew has planned a site-specific installation — an “explosion” in the words of the artist.
FEED, Tileset head 2, 2020. Inkjet print on Epson hot press bright white paper. 36 × 28 1/2 in. Image via Artsy.
Through Nov 14 | Solos, Ely Center of Contemporary Art
ECOCA’s Solos includes works from FEED, Kathie Halfin, Caroline Harman, Ron Lambert, and Amelia Toelke. The exhibitions are on view in tandem with Creative Collision Artist, Yvonne Shortt. Read about Shortt’s practice on this blog.
Through Nov 20 | Everywhere and Here: Artists Respond to the Yale Peabody Collection
At Artspace, New Haven, Everywhere and Here: Artists Respond to the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History Collection is a group exhibition of work by artists Martha Friedman, Anina Major, Brittany Nelson, Cauleen Smith, and Tuan Andrew Nguyen. The artists researched works from the Peabody database, creating newly commissioned works that are presented beside the masks, fabrics, household goods, and meteorites pulled from the collection.
Through Nov 28 | Christian Curiel: Between Reveries
NXTHVN has mounted the first solo exhibition in its gallery. Curated by Kalia Brooks and Victoria McCraven, Christian Curiel: Between Reveries features works of magical realism. Curiel, who is based in New Haven and Miami, draws from Latin American cultural and literary references while touching on topics such as migration, immigration, belonging, and identity.
Through Dec 12 | The Language in Common
The Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan’s main gallery on campus, has reopened to the public with an exhibition featuring works that occupy the spaces between poetry, visual art, and performance. Through installation, sculpture, video, drawing, poetry, and performance, five artists present iterations of what the poet Alice Notley calls “the language that holds all being together.”
Through Jan 2 | Hugo McCloud: From Where I Stand
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum will mount the artist’s first solo museum exhibition, continuing through January 2, 2022. Works in the show are from 2014 to 2021, a transformative period that includes experimental abstraction to figurative painting. Touching on notions of class and identity, Hugo McCloud’s works often incorporate unconventional materials such as single-use plastic bags. Watch Aldrich Exhibitions Director Richard Klein and McCloud in conversation on YouTube here.
Through Jan 9 | Strict Beauty: Sol LeWitt Prints
The New Britain Museum of American Art presents an overview of the conceptual artist Sol LeWitt’s printmaking practice with lithographs, silkscreens, etchings, aquatints, woodcuts, and linocuts. Strict Beauty: Sol LeWitt Prints includes eighty-three objects and is arranged chronologically. In conjunction with this exhibition, the NBMAA will also mount complementary shows of the artist’s daughter Eva LeWitt as well as selections from the LeWitt Collection, both opening on November 11.
View of the exhibition On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women atYale, Yale University Art Gallery. Photo: Jessica Smolinski.
Through Jan 9 | On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women at Yale
On the Basis of Art: 150 Years of Women at Yale presents works by women artists who have graduated from Yale University including Audrey Flack, Eva Hesse, Howardena Pindell, Roni Horn, Maya Lin, Wangechi Mutu, Mickalene Thomas, Mary Reid Kelley, among others. The show continues through January 9, 2022. Read my forthcoming review of the exhibition in the Nov/Dec issue of Art New England magazine.
Events
Poetry Reading: Tanya Lukin Linklater | Oct 6, 4:30 p.m.
This online event features a poetry reading by Tanya Lukin Linklater. She will read from her first book, Slow Scrape (Anteism, 2020), which is, in the words of poet Layli Long Soldier, “an expansive and undulating meditation on time, relations, origin, and colonization.”
Opportunities
Jobs
Reporter, The Arts Paper, deadline Oct 15
Manager of Public Programs, Mattatuck Museum
Open Call
Want to Write for Connecticut Art Review?
Thanks to funding from the Connecticut Office for the Arts, CAR will be able to pay a small handful of writers. Our current columns include exhibition reviews, essays, and interviews, but we are open to other formats and ideas that prioritize the mission of this site. Note: Writers must be willing to participate in the editing process.
Kindly send ideas and pitches to jgleisner@gmail.com.
The Monthly Roundup is a list of curated events, exhibitions, and opportunities published near the beginning of the month.
Send press releases, job openings, information about opportunities, and event details to jgleisner@gmail.com
