Fall Arts Preview: New Life, New Spaces

A major expansion project at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is expected to support a permanent collection that has more than doubled in size.

Museums reborn, museums resurrected, museums opening (some in the most unlikely places): the art world is bubbling up with exciting and unexpected things to see and do in the 2011 fall arts season. The word “contemporary” comes up a lot as museums continue to find ways to engage arts patrons and enthusiasts alike.

Among the new additions to the American museums world is the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Both an expansion and a transformation, it houses seven galleries and triples the display space for contemporary art to 80,000 square feet in the dramatic I.M. Pei-designed building. A 24-hour celebration starting Sept. 17 leads up to the public opening the following day and the debut of its new 24-hour video acquisition, Christian Marclay’s “The Clock.” The video is a compilation of movie and television clips of clocks that tell the current time at any given moment. The opening exhibition is “Ellsworth Kelly: Wood Sculpture,” a survey of 19 works by the noted artist, on view through March 4.

Playing with the idea that “all art is contemporary,” Jen Mergel, senior curator of contemporary art, said, “We hope to build curiosity, context and an exchange about contemporary culture as an unending story.”

Named for long-time museum benefactors Joyce Linde, her late husband Edward and their family, the galleries also include educational facilities and events space.

A grand reopening takes place on Sept. 16 for New York’s National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts, which has been closed since last July. Architect Bruce Fowle reinvigorated the Beaux-Arts Fifth Avenue mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

“Will Barnet at 100” is the opening exhibition, with 43 paintings and prints that date from 1935 to 2008. It’s the first New York museum retrospective of the renowned artist, who celebrated his 100th birthday on May 25. In addition, ”An American Collection,” a show of 100 works from the museum’s repository, will chart the course of American art from 1820 to the 1970s, including works by Winslow Homer, George Bellows, Isabel Bishop, Richard Estes and William Merritt Chase.

Among works on view throughout the wing are pieces by internationally recognized artists including El Anatsui, Lynda Benglis, Jun Kaneko, Mona Hatoum, Ken Price, Eva Hild and Betty Woodman.

For more of “New Life, New Spaces,” pick up the Fall 2011 issue of AmericanStyle, on newsstands Sept. 6!
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