From traveling group shows to career retrospectives, CalArts alums and faculty are among the artists and curators named in Hyperallergic’s listing of the 50 most memorable art shows last year from around the world.
The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, California presented a showcase of enduring artist friendships with how we are in time and space: Nancy Buchanan, Marcia Hafif, Barbara T. Smith, curated by School of Art Associate Dean Michael Ned Holte. The major group exhibition, which comprised more than 50 works and spanned more than 3,000 square feet of the Armory’s gallery space, explored the art and legacies of School of Film/Video faculty emeritus Nancy Buchanan, Marcia Hafif, and Barbara T. Smith (Chouinard 65).
Hyperallergic reporter Anya Ventura shared a reflection of the show:
In tracing the overlaps and connections between the three friends’ work, created against the vagina-strewn backdrop of a nascent feminist art, curator Michael Ned Holte brilliantly reveals how artmaking is a process of weird and lively communion.
Starting last August, Sprüth Magers in Los Angeles held Kaari Upson: never, never ever, never in my life, never in all my born days, never in all my life, never, dedicated to interdisciplinary artist Kaari Upson (Art BFA 04, MFA 07). Hyperallergic’s Natalie Haddad observed that the artist, who passed away in 2021, was honored with a show fittingly deviating from the standard comprehensive museum retrospective:
[I]t was the perfect tribute, lovingly curated by her longtime gallery, to an exceedingly gifted artist: an intimate show that gave newcomers a broad overview of her multimedia practice and recurring themes and foregrounded the imagination and humor that made her art so compelling.
Paintings by CalArts alum Mark Bradford (Art BFA 95, MFA 97) are included in A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, a group show featuring emerging and established artists alike. Hyperallergic Senior Critic Seph Rodney explained the concept behind and necessity of such an exhibition:
A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration is one of those exhibitions whose creation is so timely and needed and whose ambitions are so irreproachable that it should be celebrated for simply being. The show explores the historical circumstance of the Great Migration when, between 1910 and 1970, approximately six million Black Americans moved from the American South to parts north and west, and does so through the stories, traditions, politics, and memories of the featured artists who all have familial connections to the South.
Originally presented at the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, the show traveled to the Baltimore Museum of Art, where it is on display through the end of this month.
See the full list at Hyperallergic.
