A soft blue light descends upon delicate Chinese artifacts housed inside dark cabinets. Each has a dedicated source of light announcing it. From a distance, the mechanism holding them vanishes, leaves them floating like fragile notes on an invisible music sheet. The room is quiet, ceremonial. The song of hammers and drills can’t touch this sacred space. Nobody dares speak. Not … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2018-19: Palm Beach art
By Sandra Schulman After an unusually hot summer, the cooler temps and invigorating new art season are more than welcome. The art offerings are heavy on photographs and Florida history with glamour shots in the spotlight at the Flagler Museum, and Sunshine State history at the Boca Raton Museum. Former President Bush makes a Florida art show bow with portraits of the … [Read more...]
Arts briefs: Alswang to retire from Norton; Danis departs at FGO
WEST PALM BEACH — Hope Alswang, who has led the Norton Museum of Art since April 2010, will retire in March after it reopens following its massive expansion and renovation by the eminent British architect Norman Foster. Alswang, who led a $100 million capital campaign called The New Norton, has overseen an expansion of the institution’s collections, receiving donations of … [Read more...]
Summer season preview: In the PBC galleries
Who says we can’t have a tan and culture too? Contrary to popular opinion, art offerings in Palm Beach County don’t end with the summer. They actually go hand in hand. As temperatures soar, museums and galleries open their doors to welcome locals and tourists and any bikini body escaping from the sun. If the upcoming shows – featuring tapestries, paintings, photography and … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: April 20-22
Film: With such a benign title as A Bag of Marbles, you might not suspect that the film attached to it is a danger-laced Holocaust tale of two young Jewish boys, sent off by themselves by their French parents – a barber and a violinist – to cross the country to relative freedom in Nice, eluding the occupying Nazis. With tough-love brutality, the boys’ father beats into them … [Read more...]
At Norton: Art patron Whitney had gift of her own
Who should Meryl Streep play next? The Norton Museum of Art’s latest exhibition could be the answer. It might seem at first the story of a poor little rich girl finally getting what she wanted or a study on the wonders money can do to procure recognition and fame. But it is not what it looks like. Unlike her New York City neighbor Florence Foster Jenkins, Gertrude … [Read more...]
Small-scale works at Norton, Boca give mixed results
Two local museums are closing the year and welcoming the new one with an old question: does size matter? Small is in, at least at the Norton Museum of Art, which currently has on view a series of miniature paintings and bronze sculptures adorning the walls and rooms of dollhouses. This is no kids’ play, though. The artworks are by Julian Schnabel, Michele Zalopany and Cy … [Read more...]
‘Requiems for dying things’: Artist Guariglia chronicles man’s inhumanity to Earth
The digital technology explosion has turned everyone into a photographer, and the mushrooming of social media means the world is awash in an infinity of images. That’s why the photographer and artist Justin Brice Guariglia wanted to do more to than simply document the effect of man’s activities on the Earth, and climate change in particular, than simply present the kinds of … [Read more...]
Arts Preview 2017-18: The season in Palm Beach County art
Art selfies have arrived! And they are welcome to stay, so long as we are mindful of the artworks nearby. Just because cultural institutions are thinking outside-the-box, embracing new technologies and millennial-inspired ideas doesn’t mean the golden rule stopped applying: Look, don’t touch. This is not photography’s year. Then again, Earth Works: Mapping the Anthropocene, … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Oct. 6-8
Art: If there’s a more important art exhibit in the area than Justin Brice Guariglia’s Earth Works: Mapping the Anthropocene, now at the Norton, we’d be hard-pressed to tell you what it is. Guariglia is a photographer who is accredited to NASA, which in 2015 and 2016 investigated the shrinking glaciers of Greenland. Guariglia turned his photos of what he saw into artworks that, … [Read more...]