Jason Berger: American Fauve traces the artistic lineage of Jason Berger (1924-2010), drawing connections between the Boston Expressionist painter and his Fauvist antecedents. Known for his exuberant landscapes and joyful outlook on life, Berger's use of vibrant, saturated colors and expressive brushwork place him firmly within the legacy of Fauvism.  

Led by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and André Derain (1880-1954), Fauvism was an early 20th Century art movement concerned with the expressive potency of color. Working together in the south of France in 1905, Matisse and Derain introduced highly saturated colors and bold, undisguised brushwork into their paintings, favoring simplification and abstraction over naturalistic representation. The paintings caused a sensation when they were exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in Paris later that year. Initially ridiculed for their bold coloration and seemingly wild paint application, art critic Louis Vauxcelles dubbed the group Les Fauves, or "the wild beasts".  

Following his graduation from Boston's School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1949, Berger was awarded the school's European Traveling Fellowship and departed for France. He eagerly absorbed the work of the Fauves and other French modernists; "It was a significant time to go to Europe since Bonnard, Matisse, Dufy, Picasso, and Braque were all still living there and showing their work." In 1952, after viewing an exhibition of Matisse's cut-outs at the Maison de la Pensée, Berger was fortunate enough to run into the aging artist at a nearby café. 

By the early 1950s, Berger had thoroughly fallen under the influence of the Fauves. Gone was the dark, moody palette of Boston Expressionism, which he had previously embraced – and in its place, a riot of pure color. Paintings such as Hotel Lobby, Patzcuaro, 1972/74 bring to mind Matisse's Fauvist icon Open Window, Collioure, 1905. Both compositions are sited on the threshold, interior scenes unfolding upon views of the natural world. Like Matisse, Berger employs a maximum intensity of color, relying on broad areas of complementary hues to create contrast and spatial depth. Expressive color, line, and brushwork activate both compositions, drawing the viewer into the space. For Berger, just as Matisse, the open window or doorway became a central motif in the artist's oeuvre.   

Jason Berger: American Fauve celebrates Berger's Fauvist palette, bringing together outstanding examples of the artist's landscapes and studio paintings. Fauvism offered Berger a visual language to express his unique joie de vivre, allowing his paintings to blossom with vibrant pigments and a sense of joyful spontaneity. 

The exhibition is on view in our main gallery space through September 15, 2024.

19th-century France saw the art of drawing transformed. Though initially draftsmanship was taught as a means of artistic training, the medium was reinvented as an independent form of expression rife with potential for exploration in materials and subject matter. During this time, venues began to exhibit drawings with the same reverence as paintings and sculpture, and collecting these artworks became fashionable amongst both museums and private individuals.

Jolis Dessins presents a group of 19th century French drawings by both known and unknown artists, with subjects ranging from deftly rendered portraiture to architectural studies both real and fantastical. The exhibition displays the virtuosity of French artists experimenting with a medium in rebirth. Jolis Dessins is available to view online through July 31, 2024.

REWIND: MEMORIES ON REPEAT spotlights the Black LGBTQ+ experience in America through the collages of creative artist Beau McCall and archival material. The collages are drawn from McCall's debut artist's book, REWIND: MEMORIES ON REPEAT which honors the legacy of ten of McCall's deceased friends. Each collage is created by hand using McCall's personal archival photos and papers, along with images from his button-embellished artwork. Once completed the works are then scanned and printed on metal for luminosity. The collages capture the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, from Philadelphia to New York, during the LGBTQ+ rights movement, the height of disco music, and the AIDS crisis. 

Additionally, McCall has included select collages from his series, "Diva Worship." These works transform photos from public archives to celebrate iconic divas who have inspired, empowered, and captivated McCall, his friends, and the LGBTQ+ community. Their inclusion speaks to the ways in which personal memories and historical moments–particularly within the LGBTQ+ community–are often tied to divas. Thus the "Diva Worship" collages provide another lens through which the Black LGBTQ+ experience can be viewed and interpreted.   

Finally, select collages are paired with archival items which frame McCall's personal memories and experiences within historical and social contexts. This pairing draws a parallel between the personal narrative of McCall and his friends and the larger historical moments that impacted their lives. Collectively, McCall's collages and archival materials reflect the joys and struggles of the Black LGBTQ+ community and demonstrate how art and archives can be used as tools to better understand our lives, find connections between the past and present, and imagine a brighter future.  

Beau McCall creates wearable and visual art by applying clothing buttons onto mostly upcycled fabrics, materials, and objects. His artworks, offering commentary on topics such as pop culture and social justice, have been included in exhibitions at The Museum at FIT (New York, NY); Nordstrom; the African American Museum in Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA); Houston Museum of African American Culture (Houston, TX); Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History (Detroit, MI); Stax Museum of American Soul Music (Memphis, TN); Black Fashion Museum (New York, NY); the Langston Hughes House in partnership with the inaugural Columbia University Wallach Art Gallery Uptown triennial and StoryCorps (New York, NY); and Rush Arts Gallery (New York, NY). McCall's work is held in the permanent collection of public institutions and by private individuals, including the Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY); Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA); Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK); The Museum at FIT (New York, NY); Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (New York, NY); Amistad Research Center (New Orleans, LA); The Museum of Modern Art Library (New York, NY); Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York, NY); Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library (Fort Lauderdale, FL); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Library (San Francisco, CA); Cyndi Lauper's True Colors Residence; Debbie Harry of Blondie; Jeffrey Gibson; and Cristina Grajales. For more information on McCall, please visit www.BeauMcCall.com. 

REWIND: MEMORIES ON REPEAT is curated by Souleo, who has been hailed as an "Icon of Harlem" (Ruth Millington, art historian and author of Muse) and "Harlem's Heart & Soul" (NY Daily News). An acclaimed creative, curator, impresario, consultant, and muse he seamlessly merges the worlds of art, fashion, literature, media, and music to document and amplify the stories of the emerging and underrepresented via exhibitions, events, and writing. Souleo has collaborated with noteworthy institutions and brands, including New York Public Library (New York, NY); Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (New York, NY); Brooklyn Public Library/Center for Brooklyn History (Brooklyn, NY); Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY); Columbia University (New York, NY); Barnard College (New York, NY); Newark Museum of Art (Newark, NJ); Stax Museum of American Soul Music (Memphis, TN); Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York, NY); Nordstrom; and AARP. Souleo's work has been widely covered in outlets including the Associated Press; NY Times; The New Yorker, New York Magazine/The Cut; ESSENCE; EBONY; and NBC. For more information on Souleo, please visit www.SouleoUniverse.com. 

Please join us for a reception with Beau McCall and Souleo, Saturday, June 1, 4-6pm. The reception is presented in collaboration with The History Project, an independent community archive focused exclusively on documenting and preserving the history of New England's LGBTQ+ communities and sharing that history with LGBTQ+ individuals, organizations, allies, and the public.

Abstract modernist Ruth Eckstein was renowned as a master of both painting and printmaking, and frequently pushed the boundaries of both through the incorporation of collaged elements: additions of paper cutouts, wooden pieces, rope strands, and other design embellishments. Ruth Eckstein: Collaged Elements considers these mixed media works throughout the many decades of Eckstein's career, highlighting the artist's adept hand at interweaving layers, texture, and color into deceptively minimalist artworks. 

Of her work, Eckstein explained: "I do not like being confined to a single medium. I like the excitement that comes from switching modes. I like to 'walk' around an idea, deal with it in various ways." Eckstein thus enjoyed freely moving between various media and techniques, yet often threaded ideas together into series which stretched across painting, collagraphy, etching, and screen printing. Though Eckstein created prolifically within each of these media, her finished works were very rarely easily defined as one or the other. Rather, they were amalgamations of artistic techniques, connected through themes, and ornamented with the addition of collage. 

Born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1916, Eckstein took an early interest in art after working in her father's fabric shop as a teenager. In 1934, she fled the Nazi regime for Paris, where she would live for next five years before finally emigrating to New York City in 1939. There, she found asylum within a burgeoning network of émigré artists living in political exile.  Eckstein took painting classes at the Museum of Modern Art and studied under Stuart Davis at The New School for Social Research. With the encouragement of Harry Sternberg, her teacher at the Long Island North Shore Community Art Center, Eckstein enrolled at the Art Students League in New York, where she immersed herself in printmaking techniques as well as painting and drawing, studying with Sternberg, Julian Levi, and Vaclav Vytlacil. Later, intrigued by the woodcut method of printmaker Seong Moy, Eckstein studied with him at the Pratt Graphic Art Center, and also learned etching techniques with master printer Roberto De Lamonica. 

Collaged Elements sees Eckstein's utilization of these various techniques and explores her evolution into mixing media to produce artwork that is bold in its presumed simplicity. Eckstein favored stark color combinations and pared-down compositions to achieve a tranquility of space that belies the labor inherent in each work. By layering flat planes of color and texture, Eckstein imbues depth into her paintings and prints, thoughtfully enhancing and developing the sense of space contained within each. 

Eckstein's work is represented in over fifty prestigious public collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art; the Guggenheim Museum; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; the National Museum of American Art; and the Harvard Art Museums. 

Ruth Eckstein: Collaged Elements celebrates the artist's genre defying works, using collage to craft sculptural paintings and layered prints into compelling arrangements of dimensional abstraction. The exhibition is on view May 24 through July 21 with a reception Sunday afternoon, June 9, 2-4pm.

With the arrival of spring comes a proliferation of flora in vibrant hues: shades of red, pink, yellow, orange, purple, and verdant greens. In Full Bloom is an online exhibition celebrating the beauty of springtime through artistic depictions in paintings, prints, and watercolors.

BOSTON, MA – Carol Wax's masterful mezzotint engravings depict the ordinary as extraordinary. Using dramatic lighting effects, exaggerated perspectives, and a dose of wit, Wax transforms commonplace objects into astonishing icons, cleverly revealing "the anima in the inanimate".  

Wax originally trained as a classical musician at the Manhattan School of Music, earning a bachelor's degree in 1975 with a major in flute performance. While continuing to work as a musician, Wax took printmaking courses at the Lake Placid School of Art during the summers of 1975 and 1976. She subsequently studied at the Pratt Graphics Center in New York City, where she was first introduced to mezzotint engraving.  

Developed in the 17^th century, images in mezzotint engraving are achieved by roughening a copper plate using a tool with a curved serrated blade, called a rocker. The rocker's teeth plow up a field of burrs that, when inked, produces a rich black background. Images are drawn by erasing the burrs in increments so they hold less ink to print as lighter tones and print white where burrs are removed entirely. The resulting wide range of tonal gradations and textures made it ideal for reproducing paintings. 

Though mezzotint fell out of favor in the 19^th century with the advent of photography, it experienced a resurgence as a means for creating original works of art in the 20^th century due in large part to the publication of Wax's book The Mezzotint: History and Technique. 

In addition to her virtuoso work as a mezzotint artist, Wax is regarded as an authority on the history of the medium as well. Her groundbreaking publication on mezzotint is the result of the artist's frustrations with the limitations of technical knowledge available in the 1980s. This led Wax to conduct her own research into historical techniques, uncovering methods long out of use that could be revived for contemporary artists. The updated and expanded upon Second Edition of The Mezzotint: History and Technique, recently published by Schiffer Books, will be available for sale throughout the duration of the exhibition. 

Extraordinary Objects highlights Wax's use of mezzotint's unique qualities to reinvent antiquated machinery and vintage wares into lively gadgets and anthropomorphic objects. In her words, the work "…speaks to an inner life perceived in inanimate objects." Marrying the hardness of everyday items with the soft richness of mezzotint, Wax's subjects take on a life of their own, often with cheeky titles further humanizing the cameras, fans, phones, and other objects appearing in her work.  

Venturing through several decades of the artist's prints, Carol Wax: Extraordinary Objects is on view in the Childs Gallery Print Department April 5 through May 24, 2023.

Portals & Passages explores the possibilities of liminal space through the paintings of Robert Freeman and photographs by Max Stern. Both artists depict images sited on the threshold: windows, doorways, tunnels, tree-lined passages, and other found openings. Such portals and passages function as transitional spaces that connect or separate worlds: interior and exterior, known and unknown, before and after. As such, these intermediary places can represent exciting possibilities or harrowing rupture. A simple door can be a portal to freedom or a formidable barrier, a symbol of hope and catharsis or estrangement and loss.    

Robert Freeman's paintings explore the darker side of this experience. Inspired by a recent trip to Ghana, where he spent part of his childhood, Freeman's paintings depict the slave castles at Elmina and Cape Coast. These fortresses were used to hold enslaved Africans before they were loaded onto ships and sent to the Americas as part of the transatlantic slave trade. Freeman's paintings attempt to process and purge the grief and anger he experienced after spending hours in the dungeons where his ancestors were forced to live in captivity.  

A prominent feature of the slave castles are the Doors of No Return, passages through which enslaved people were taken from the castles to the slave ships, never to return. Freeman depicts these Doors in several of his paintings, actual physical thresholds marking the boundary between the enslaved person's free life before and the brutal unknown life of slavery beyond. The Doors are powerful, visceral markers of the enslaved person's ruptured experience. Freeman's two largest paintings in the exhibition, Afrika and Modern Day Slave Ships, extrapolate further on the transatlantic slave trade, the Middle Passage, and the movement of people and material resources from Africa to the Americas.  

Freeman's work in the exhibition is rounded out by colorful paintings of the Aburi Botanical Gardens, located outside of Ghana's bustling capital city of Accra. The sunny gardens were a childhood favorite to visit for Freeman, and a cathartic balm to paint as an adult. The heavy contrast between the colorful garden paintings and stark slave castle imagery produces its own, unseen, liminal space within this body of work; a transitional void contemplating the disparity between freedom and enslavement. 

Max Stern's photographs depict a multifaceted experience of architectural and natural openings. Stern is captivated by a still photograph's ability to create mystery or stimulate curiosity.  His images of portals and passageways inspire a myriad of questions in the mind of the viewer: What is on the other side? Where does this lead? Where are they going? His photographs capture the tension of liminal space, the anticipation of the unknown. Drawn to these transitional, in-between spaces throughout his career, Stern has found such moments in locations around the world, from Germany to Barbados. 

To Stern, a photograph - a snapshot of a single moment – has the potential to be more exciting than live action. As an undefined moment in time, a still image possesses limitless possibilities for storytelling. Stern's images are small peeks into another world, and merely suggest what has, is, and will take place. As the artist, Stern creates these worlds, but it is up to the viewer to flesh them out - to determine what lies at the end of the passage, beyond the portal. 

Freeman and Stern are longtime friends and have previously exhibited jointly with vibrant paintings and photographs of Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans. Portals & Passages represents their second showing together. The artists both see their work as interpretive, provoking questions of which neither has the answers. In both bodies of work, the audience is just as integral as the art itself, filling in the blanks, becoming the storytellers who determine what these portals and passages mean and where they lead. Though only two works in the exhibition directly reference each other - Freeman borrowed from the imagery in Stern's Rothenberg for his own Door of No Return – the paintings and photographs are complementary, each exploring the transitory and uncertain nature of the threshold as a conduit for a multitude of often contradictory emotions and experiences. 

Portals & Passages: Works by Robert Freeman and Max Stern is on view March 14 through May 19, 2024. Please join us for a reception with the artists, Thursday, March 14, 6-8pm.

Best known for his work in and promotion of Abstract Expressionism, Boston-born artist Henry Botkin was also a prolific watercolorist during the earlier stages of his productive, decades-long career. After spending seven years immersed in the Parisian art scene (a sojourn partly supported by his cousins George and Ira Gershwin), Botkin returned to the United States heavily influenced by the impressionistic flourishes of European Modernism. Henry Botkin Watercolors presents works from this post-European period of the mid-1930s and early 1940s, where the artist explored a variety of genres including landscapes, harbor scenes, and still lifes, through a Modernist lens.     

Botkin began his early career in his hometown of Boston, studying at the Massachusetts College of Art, before continuing his education at the Art Students League of New York. In his eight years in New York, he also worked as an illustrator for Harper's, The Saturday Evening Post, and Century magazines. In the early 1920s, Botkin moved to Paris; he was fortunate to have a close relationship with his first cousins, the famous composers and lyricists George and Ira Gershwin, whose backing during this time allowed him to devote himself exclusively to art. Upon his return many years later, Botkin based himself out of New York, but traveled often (including a notable trek to Folly Island, South Carolina with George Gershwin where Porgy and Bess was composed). During these trips, Botkin documented his surroundings in the free-flowing brushstrokes of watercolor, capturing scenes across the country with the strong echoes of French art learned during his time in Paris.

Starting in the 1940s, Botkin would shift his style towards figurative abstraction, before completely abandoning representational imagery in favor of purely abstract art. This exhibition thus illuminates a little shown period of Botkin's while also highlighting a lesser explored, but thoroughly engaging media for an artist most often associated with painting and collage.

Henry Botkin Watercolors is on view in our upstairs gallery February 16 through March 30, 2024. 

Hannah Barrett has previously described her paintings as "invented portraits based on collage: copies of photos or in some cases, copies of paintings are cut apart and reassembled into figures of ambiguous gender. Fusing the features of both sexes creates a range of androgynous characters that may be straight, queer, hermaphroditic or just cross-dressing." Her aim is to create portraiture that deviates from the conventional male or female, and to explore the resulting pictorial and conceptual possibilities in a fun and unexpected way.

In her latest series Monsters, Barrett has pushed beyond human attributes and created creatures that are fully of her own imagination, with no singular reference to reality. In this way her Monsters are entirely fictional, and the viewer can project their own character onto the portraits. Part fantastical being, part modern-day Dandy, the artist reconsiders the figure through a theatrical lens, creating a mise-en-scene exploring the ideas and ideals of otherness with a sense of humor, style, and whimsy. Barrett creates magnificent wallflowers, tender beasts flitting about inside an eccentric universe. The figures, both bursting out of and ensconced within their tight, monochromatic surroundings, are interchangeable: malleable beings filled with personality but tied to no specific identity.

Hannah Barrett: Monsters is an online exhibition available to view on our website through March 9, 2024.

Lee Essex Doyle's mastery of light, color, and pattern is on full display in her latest series of mixed media paintings, Dancing on the Ceiling. These luminous paintings depict jewel-like lanterns and radiant chandeliers – architectural details drawn from her extensive travels across India, Africa, and Europe. Doyle deftly captures the play of light and shadow across richly patterned surfaces, blurring the line between representation and abstraction to dazzling effect. 

As with Doyle's earlier series, the works in Dancing on the Ceiling are drawn from her frequent and far-flung travels. Inspired by the art and culture of each new location, Doyle combines architectural elements, ornate design motifs, and vibrant color to evoke an authentic sense of place. The focused subject of Doyle's most recent work further highlights her remarkable ability to fix the impression of a particular location using only small details. Here Doyle distills the essence of a place down to its most basic elements: light, color, and pattern. 

In Dancing on the Ceiling, brilliant light fixtures cast intricate patterns of light and shadow across the ceilings they adorn. The heightened contrast of radiant light increases the visual perception of line and shape. Doyle's layered arrangements of light and shadow merge with architectural ornamentation and design motifs to push her paintings further into abstraction than she has yet ventured. At times, the physical light fixtures appear almost obliterated by their own brilliance. The resulting paintings offer a dazzling array of vibrant hues and tessellations, pushing the limits between representation and abstraction. 

Doyle employs a variety of media and processes in the execution of these new works. First, she snaps a photograph of eye-catching patterns and chandeliers spotted during her travels. The captured images are then digitally combined and printed at an enlarged size. Doyle builds atop this 'footprint' image with ink, watercolor, colored pencil, and oil pastel, layering the different materials to achieve an ethereal luminosity amidst a background of jewel-toned decorative arrangements. 

Lee Essex Doyle: Dancing on the Ceiling is a colorful romp around the globe, exploring space through the unconventional manner of simply looking up and observing details often overlooked. The exhibition is on view January 18 through March 9, 2024. An opening reception with the artist will be held Wednesday, January 24, 6-8pm.