Posted inArt

How We Picture Civil Rights

Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement shoulder an unreasonable burden: we look to them as moral beacons. Bruce Davidson: Time of Change at Howard Greenberg Gallery displays several dozen rich images by Bruce Davidson, who sat with the freedom riders and joined Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march from Selma to Montgomery. It is a timely exhibition, as Trayvon Martin’s murder raises the shadow of Emmett Till, and America looks inward to find our racial hierarchy has been reformed but not dismantled.

Posted inOpinion

Your Weekly Art Rx

Here at Hyperallergic we are allergic to a lot — dust, nuts, cats, insipid art criticism, bad art shows, people who suck. Enter our weekly remedy: a list of exhibitions and events that will serve as your weekly dose of art medicine. Here is this week’s prescription …

Posted inArt

Is The Art Show a Senior Citizen’s Swinger’s Club Past its Prime?

The Art Show has been hosted by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) for the last 23 years, reigning supreme as the longest running national art fair. The ADAA consists of 175 galleries but only seventy exhibitors enrolled this year, excluding stunners like Andrea Rosen, Betty Cunningham, PPOW and Gavin Brown. A large majority of the participants are located uptown between 50th Street and 90th Street. The generalized content (“cutting-edge, 21st century works” and “museum quality pieces from the 19th and 20th centuries”) and my fears of dated academia prepped me for the deflated viewing that was The Art Show. The ADAA’s Executive Director spoke to the “calm and intimate atmosphere” of The Art Show. Although the Park Avenue Armory’s soaring “balloon shed” construction is partially responsible, the cavalcade of elderly patrons weren’t exactly rambunctious. The air-kisses exchanged between crotchety senior citizens summoned a swinger’s club way past its prime.