What Stands Before Us: Art in Quarantine is a group exhibition of art created during the Covid-19 pandemic. The exhibition encompasses the wide range of subjects that artists have personally grappled with during quarantine, including social isolation, the global health crisis, racial injustice, and climate change. This unprecedented time has brought new focus and greater urgency to the many challenges we face.

The exhibition takes its title from a line of Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem, The Hill We Climb. This poem captured a powerful moment in a tumultuous year, delivering a message of hope and perseverance to a nation reeling from a global pandemic, political tension, and racial injustice. Gorman implores us to: “lift our gazes, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us”; to confront together the many threats to our future.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the events of the past year have led many artists to likewise shift or intensify their gaze. This year of isolation and reflection, of political tension and social upheaval, has brought into greater focus the many issues that currently stand before us, whether personal, political, societal, or global.

Featuring work by sixteen contemporary artists, What Stands Before Us documents a turbulent year through paintings, prints, photographs, and works on paper, each piece telling the story of its creator’s experiences. Robert Freeman, best known for his celebratory and joyful images of Black life, found he could not ignore our country’s current racial reckoning after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black men and women at the hands of police. His diptych Struggle, viscerally depicting two lynchings, is part of his newest series Our Struggle, which directly addresses the artist’s indignation at the violent racial divide within our country. “As a visual artist releasing my anger, outrage and sadness has resulted in these canvases. This is a creative eruption of deep and vast emotional frustration.”

Karen Lee Sobol’s Germ of the Month watercolors reference medical journals, recalled from childhood, which featured magnified photos of microscopic organisms on the back cover. The images terrified her as a child, and took on haunting new meaning in the spring of 2020 as news continued of the Covid-19 virus’s rapid spread. Sobol’s images are bright and beautifully abstract, belying the deadly nature of the organisms they portray.

During the lockdown in Italy, Jorge R. Pombo used his solitude to start a series long on his mind: mixed media variations on John Singer Sargent’s The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. Pombo wanted the darkness prominent in Sargent’s painting to feature as the central protagonist in his works. As his city of Reggio Emilia experienced the stillness of isolation, Pombo painted the collective “nothingness” of social distancing as an unpredictable and unsettling black void marring the familiarity of Sargent’s work.

In addition to those mentioned, the exhibition will include works by David Avery, Resa Blatman, Thomas Darsney, Paul Endres Jr., William Evertson, Andrew Fish, Sean Flood, Jillian Freyer, Joan Hall, John Thompson, Margaret Rose Vendryes, Anthony Peyton Young, and Sara Zielinski. Though each artist tackles the events and hardships of the past year through the lens of their individual experiences, they also urge us to consider the issues that stand before us as a collective whole – a potentially mighty force with which to confront the problems that threaten our future.

POP/Modernism explores the trajectory of art from Modernism through Post-Modernism. Modernism encompasses a period in history that began with Impressionism and spanned various movements -  including Cubism, Fauvism, Constructivism - and culminating with Abstract Expressionism. With an obsession for the fruits of capitalism and popular culture, Pop Art became a bridge to Post-Modernism which at its core is identified by conceptual art.

As we've been clearing out the gallery at 169 Newbury Street and moving into our new space at 168, we've reacquainted ourselves with many treasures temporarily forgotten or not seen in some time. Forgotten Favorites, an online exhibition, is a curated group of artworks we've fallen in love with all over again, from Old Master prints to American Impressionist paintings to mid-century sculpture. Enjoy revisiting some old favorites with fresh eyes, or meeting a new piece for the first time!

John Thompson: An Artist Collects explores the fascinating connection between an artist’s practice and the artwork they choose to collect. This unique exhibition showcases the private art collection of artist John Thompson alongside examples of his own work. An accomplished painter and printmaker, Thompson is also a lifelong collector. His eclectic art collection, assembled over several decades, comprises more than 1,000 works, with exceptional examples of paintings and prints from Old Master through Contemporary. An Artist Collects features Contemporary selections from Thompson’s collection, including works by Patrick Casey, Jim Dine, Walton Ford, Robert Freeman, Nicola Lopez, Ana Maria Pacheco, and John Walker, exhibited with his own creative output.

Thompson’s multilayered prints and paintings evoke the fleeting beauty of small moments in nature: the play of light on leafy branches, the rustle of wind through grass, the ripple of raindrops across a pond. Thompson uses multiple printmaking techniques to orchestrate his expressive prints, building and layering overlapping elements. Each monoprint is a unique work of art, a harmonious symphony of pattern, texture, color, and light. For Thompson, a love of materials and willingness to experiment are paramount.

As a collector, Thompson is particularly drawn to proofs and early states, works that provide insight into the artist’s process or technique. He appreciates the painstaking effort involved in the creation of an artwork and admires the audacity and necessity of experimentation. Thompson’s collecting habits both inform and reflect the qualities he values most in his own work: technique, process, virtuosity, experimentation, and expressiveness

Originally scheduled for exhibition in the fall of 2020, An Artist Collects was postponed due to Covid-19. Thompson notes that the ongoing pandemic has affected both his creative and collecting processes. More time in his studio has allowed him to retreat into art - both his own and that of others. Thompson’s Waltham studio doubles as storage for much of his extensive collection, and, surrounded by both his art and centuries of works by others, he is afforded a hyper focus on both what he wants to create and what he wants to collect. His artistic output has recently concentrated on woodcuts; though no stranger to the medium, Thompson felt drawn to their more assertive nature throughout the past year. He also feels collecting has become more important to him, and the extra time spent with his vast holdings of hundreds of years of paintings and prints has refined his approach to acquisitions. Thompson continues to seek out both older, historical works and those of established and emerging contemporary artists, with an eye for artistic ingenuity.

John Thompson: An Artist Collects is the first exhibition to open at Childs Gallery’s new 168 Newbury Street location. Showcasing art through the introspective lens of the artistic process itself, An Artist Collects is a fitting inaugural exhibition, and we look forward to welcoming guests. As part of our Covid-19 precautions, we are currently open to the public 11am to 4pm, Tuesday through Sunday, and by appointment.

On view in Childs Gallery’s new Print Department at 168 Newbury Street, Henry Moore: Prints presents an impressive array of etchings and lithographs by the famed British artist. Best remembered as a sculptor of figurative semi-abstraction, Moore also produced numerous prints during his career, often of his wildly popular reclining and seated figures. Henry Moore: Prints features several examples of these ubiquitous forms, including the monumental Stone Reclining Figure (also a rare artist proof), as well as animals, interiors, and mothers with children – another frequent motif after the birth of Moore’s daughter in 1946. The exhibition also demonstrates the artist’s progression from early work principally concerned with mass, to later figures, pierced through with openings to examine space.

The exhibition is on view in our upstairs Print Department through April 25, 2021.

Goya’s seminal series, Los Caprichos, is a visual condemnation of the follies and foolishness of the 18^th century Spanish society in which he lived. Comprising 80 etchings, Los Caprichos wittily criticizes wide-ranging dangers including superstition, ignorance, and irrationality. Though inspired by his own society, Goya’s prints expose humanity’s universal failings, revealing the tendency of all cultural movements to give way to fascism and inequity. Our new online exhibition Goya: Prints from Los Caprichos presents works from this visionary series, including several etchings from the coveted first edition of 1799.

The exhibition is timed to coincide with the upcoming display of contemporary artist Emily Lombardo’s The Caprichos at Monserrat College of Art (January 25 through May 15, 2021). Lombardo’s prints are in direct conversation and homage to Goya’s Los Caprichos, exploring the foibles and follies of our modern era, while also highlighting the timelessness of the original work.

After seventy-six years at 169 Newbury Street, Childs Gallery will be transitioning to a new space across the street at 168 Newbury. We will remain at our current address until the beginning of next year, when we will fully transition into our new location. Despite our many years at 169, this isn’t the gallery's first move – when Charles Childs founded his eponymous gallery in 1937, it was originally located at 171 Newbury Street, and moved to its current location in 1944.

Maintaining our long-term presence on one of Boston’s best-known streets, conveniently on the same block, we will remain easily accessible to our artists and clients. We will be operating as normal, with a full schedule of exhibitions during the relocation process.

Time Capsule: Art of the Forties is planned as one of Childs Gallery’s last exhibitions at its 169 Newbury Street location. Looking forward to the gallery’s next chapter has inspired us to reflect on the past. With Time Capsule we take a look back at the decade that saw the gallery’s last change of address: the 1940s.

Much like the present moment, the 1940s was not only a time of physical transition for Childs Gallery, it was also a turbulent decade that in many respects reshaped the globe. The period was truly one of transition for the art world - the decade witnessed the shifting ascendancy of movements ranging from American Regionalism and Social Realism to Modern Abstraction and Abstract Expressionism.  Regionalism and Social Realism dominated American art during the 1930s and early 1940s, highlighting social concerns and aspects of traditional American life. During, and in the wake of World War II, refugee artists arriving in the United States helped to usher in Modern Abstraction. By the end of WWII, the American art scene had begun to change dramatically. The decade served as an incubating period between pre-war avant-garde movements and such breakthrough movements as Abstract Expressionism.

Time Capsule: Art of the Forties provides a snapshot of a decade of transition in American art. Drawn from Childs Gallery’s holdings, the exhibition includes paintings, drawings, and prints of the period and includes examples of Regionalism, Social Realism, Abstraction, and Expressionism. The exhibition also features work by many of the gallery’s longest represented artists who were working during the decade, such as Herbert Barnett, Jason Berger, Henry Botkin, Bernard Brussel-Smith, Donald De Lue, Molly Luce, Ben Norris, Anne Powers, and Dudley Vaill Talcott.

As we look toward our future with an exhibition celebrating our past, we invite visitors to view Time Capsule: Art of the Forties at our 169 address Tuesday through Sunday, 11am to 4pm and look forward to welcoming guests into our new 168 space in the near future. We view our upcoming relocation as an opportunity to truly make our mark in the storied history of Childs, while maintaining the traditions that have made the gallery both successful and beloved. We look forward to continuing our relationships with our art, artists, and clients at 168 Newbury Street.

Please stay tuned for more updates on our relocation process. We will be updating our social media pages with additional information as we move forward.

We thank you for your continued support!

Autumn Splendor presents the colors, sights, and feelings of the cozy months of fall. Featuring artists such as William Partridge Burpee, Bernard Brussel-Smith, Molly Luce, and Sally Michel, this exhibition explores the wonders of autumn through artwork ranging from Old Master prints to Regionalist paintings.

Paul Endres Jr. is back with the latest installment of his ongoing series The American Burden. This monumental – and entertaining – series depicts the sprawling narrative of a post-apocalyptic world in which all of history is lost. Endres’ paintings recount the pivotal events and figures of this fictional history, while offering a satirical take on our own.

In The 20/20 Shell Games, Endres’ headless dictator Hadrian holds an Olympics style competition in an attempt to distract his subjects from his lack of leadership and ill-fated reelection. Meanwhile, a recent archaeological discovery has uncovered a trove of rectangular plastic “shells,” and the strange “VCR” contraption that projects their contents, unleashing a slew of long forgotten pop culture references on Burden America.

In The 20/20 Shell Games, twenty paintings are dedicated to documenting the Games, which include events like boxing, polo, baseball, pole-vault, and synchronized swimming, while twenty golden VHS tapes, decorated with paintings of Hadrian, serve as the victors’ medals. Both sets of works revel in the trademark absurdity of Endres’ alternative future-history. The Shell Games paintings lean heavily into nostalgic pop culture of the past forty years, pairing various sporting events with imagery from Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Jaws, and more to an amusingly madcap effect. Their bold colors and playful folly contrast with the no-less preposterous yet decidedly-more-restrained images on Hadrian’s VHS-cum-medals.

Endres deliberately juxtaposes the energy in the two sets of works, ultimately amplifying the baser feeling of lunacy in the former and loneliness in the later. With The 20/20 Shell Games, he has essentially created two shows in one: twenty vibrant and energetic paintings of the Games themselves, paired with twenty sad and lonesome glimpses at the life of a miserable tyrant in the twilight of his rule - intimate moments memorialized into keepsake-sized oil paintings on VHS tapes.

If the outright absurdity of The 20/20 Shell Games and the entire Burden series feels alarmingly real these days, Endres agrees. His paintings have always merged the historical and contemporary in creating bizarre, satirical scenarios that mimic and mock both narrative history and our modern world. However, his pairing of the real and the ludicrous feels especially pertinent in our new, ever changing reality. Endres notes of The 20/20 Shell Games:

“Lately it seems as though the real world has caught up to the post-apocalyptic and post-historical world of the Burden, dominated by the idea of polar binaries in all things. With this in mind this body of work is, as with all my work, about bringing opposite things together in hopes of finding some form of catharsis in their pairings.  The results are often absurd, silly, and funny, and this is especially true of the Shell Games, but I was once told there is nothing more serious than a good joke, and that is something I believe. Each individual piece should stand on its own, each a perfectly formed joke.”

Endres’ continued epic mythmaking in The 20/20 Shell Games plays out much like the sporting events depicted – theatrically escapist. But each of Endres’ “perfectly formed joke[s]” is equal parts entertaining and serious, a polarity masterfully explored through his particular style of pseudo-history painting. While the forty works in the exhibition chronicle the events of the Shell Games within Endres’ larger Burden narrative, they also reflect upon our own society, using engrained pop culture references to offer critiques in pithy, absurd, painted vignettes.

Endres further describes the narrative:

 Hadrian the Bold, The Burden’s preeminent headless ruler, is facing reelection. The past several years of his arrogant wartime bravado have grown tiresome to the people of New Boston. Hadrian has squandered his subjects’ resources and trust. Worst still, if the calls for revolution materialize, they will surely claim Hadrian’s remaining body parts. Poor Hadrian, this just isn’t your day!

 But it’s not all bad news, Hadrian’s team of archeologists recently discovered a priceless treasure: a library of rectangular plastic ‘shells’ and a machine that projects the contents therein! Jurassic Park! Return of the Jedi! This bizarre ‘VCR’ contraption provides the people of Burden America a whiplash connection to a culture long forgotten. And somewhere between bingeing Chariots of Fire with multiple seasons of The Bachelor, inspiration strikes our poor despot Hadrian, and the

20/20 Shell Games are born! 20 nostalgia fueled competitions designed to provide the ultimate widespread distraction. And to the 20 champions of Hadrian’s absurd whims go  the Golden Shells, valuable relics adorned with his unique and royal likeness!

Good luck and see you at the Games!