Concise, critical reviews of books, exhibitions, and projects in all areas and periods of art history and visual studies

Browse Recent Exhibition Reviews

Eleanor Jones Harvey
Exh. cat. Washington, DC and Princeton, NJ: Smithsonian American Art Museum in association with Princeton University Press, 2020. 448 pp.; 215 color ills.; 22 b/w ills. Cloth $75.00 (9780691200804)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, September 18, 2020–January 3, 2021 (reopening 2021)
(Click here to view the exhibition website and related content.) The basis of the exhibition Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) is just a blip in history: six weeks. That is the amount of time that the show’s central figure, Prussian naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), spent in the United States in 1804. But curator Eleanor Jones Harvey wants us to realize that this brief stay planted a seed of influence that was “immediate, sustained, and profound” (26). On the tail end… Full Review
January 19, 2021
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Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, in person (May 21–August 23, 2020) and online (ongoing)
(Click here to view the exhibition in English, or click here to view in Spanish.) To Tame a Wild Tongue: Art after Chicanismo uses the aftermath of the Chicano Art Movement (1960s–70s) as a point of departure to bring together over twenty-five artists active since the 1980s who explore the distinct yet interconnected sociopolitical paradigms of contemporary Chicanidad. This digital, collection-based exhibition invites us into an important conversation about belonging, resistance, and identity through a transborder perspective. To Tame a Wild Tongue explores the idea of cultural hybridity by considering how Chicanx and Latinx artists in the United States… Full Review
December 1, 2020
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FROM THE ARCHIVE: This autumn, caa.reviews is revisiting reviews that relate to the social issues of the present, at a time when the field is taking them up in renewed ways. Explore two exhibitions on Detroit's 1960s civil rights rebellions and consider their continuing impact on the social justice movements of today. Read more in Nicholas Miller's review of Art of Rebellion: Black Art of the Civil Rights Movement at Detroit Institute of Arts and Say It Loud: Art, History, Rebellion at the Museum of African American History. Full Review
November 9, 2020
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FROM THE ARCHIVE: This autumn, caa.reviews is revisiting reviews that relate to the social issues of the present, at a time when the field is taking them up in renewed ways. This week, we revisit a group of exhibitions at the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas, that centered transgender artists and their stories. For more read Martha Scott Burton’s review of Transamerica/n: Gender, Identity, Appearance Today, Andy Warhol: Portraits, and TransSanAntonian: Examining Trans Identities and Gender Fluidity in the Archives. Full Review
October 26, 2020
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FROM THE ARCHIVE: This autumn, caa.reviews is revisiting reviews that relate to the social issues of the present, at a time when the field is taking them up in renewed ways. As museums and galleries undergo seismic change, we look to another critical shape these institutions have taken: solidarity collections and the “museum in exile." Explore this concept and “the politics of historicizing a present in the face of dispossession, state violence, and fascism” through Matthew Bent’s review of the 2015–19 traveling exhibition Past Disquiet: Artists, International Solidarity and Museums in Exile. Full Review
October 19, 2020
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Nina Wiedemeyer
Exh. cat. New York: Prestel, 2019. 224 pp.; 155 color ills.; 76 b/w ills. Cloth $60.00 (9783791359045)
Nina Wiedemeyer and Friederike Holländer, eds.
New York: Prestel, 2019. 160 pp.; 109 color ills. Cloth €29.00 (9783791359014)
Bauhaus-Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung and Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, September 6, 2019–January 27, 2020
Bauhaus scholars had a wealth of exhibition offerings to choose from in 2019, from major events in Weimar and Dessau, to provincial museums capitalizing on local architects’ ties to the Bauhaus, to, not least of all, three special exhibitions in Berlin. One of these, Original Bauhaus, was based largely on the collection of the Bauhaus-Archiv and, to a lesser extent, the Berlinische Galerie. It sought to highlight the Bauhaus’s current relevance by presenting fourteen case studies. Each case study took an archival object or group of objects as its starting point—its “original”—and used further items and histories to probe… Full Review
September 30, 2020
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FROM THE ARCHIVE: This autumn, caa.reviews is revisiting reviews that relate to the social issues of the present, at a time when the field is taking them up in renewed ways. Today we're spotlighting Liza Oliver's consideration of museums' role in presenting Indigenous stories, through the 2018–19 British Museum exhibition Reimagining Captain Cook: Pacific Perspectives. Full Review
September 28, 2020
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FROM THE ARCHIVE: This autumn, caa.reviews is revisiting reviews that relate to the social issues of the present, at a time when the field is taking them up in renewed ways. Today, explore Chicanx civil rights history through the Autry Museum of the American West exhibition La Raza, reviewed by Mary Thomas. Full Review
September 9, 2020
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SoLA Contemporary, Los Angeles, July 2–August 15, 2020
When, in 2013, the Oakland, California–based, employee-owned creative firm Design Action Collective was tasked by Black Lives Matter (BLM) organizers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi to create a visual identity for the incipient movement, the challenge was enormous. How to visually represent a movement that was an outgrowth of historic civil rights and progressive political protest movements? How to capture the energy and rage aimed at a fundamentally broken justice system, as well as instill hope for profound, systemic change? Daunting though the brief may have been, within three days Design Action Collective had produced a… Full Review
August 25, 2020
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Jill Ahlberg Yohe and Teri Greeves, eds.
Exh. cat. Minneapolis and Seattle: Minneapolis Institute of Art in association with University of Washington Press, 2019. 344 pp.; 400 color ills. Paper $39.95 (9780295745794)
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, June 2–August 18, 2019; Frist Art Museum, Nashville, September 27, 2019–January 12, 2020; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, February 21–May 17, 2020; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, October 7, 2020–January 3, 2021
Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists celebrates the works of North American Indigenous women throughout history and into the present. In selecting the 117 objects included in the exhibition, the curators, Jill Ahlberg Yohe and Teri Greeves (Kiowa), were determined to provide a comprehensive display that represented all geographical areas and a wide variety of media, from beadwork and basketry to video and performance art. They were guided by a team of native and nonnative artists, scholars, and curators, not only in selecting the works for the exhibition but also in ensuring that the narrative they presented challenged some… Full Review
August 20, 2020
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