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A view of the installation of Heroines of Abstract Expressionism at the Fenimore all photos provided by Fenimore Art Museum

Heroines of Abstract Expressionism, the current feature show on view through Dec. 31 at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, is representative of a recent art-world trend, whereby collectors (rather than curators) initiate major museum shows. It makes sense - with art prices soaring, it's often the collectors who are better able than the museums to bear the cost of assembling a body of work significant enough to draw attention. So, the two camps increasingly work hand in hand to reach the art-savvy public. A harbinger of this trend was the aptly named Sensation, which presented the private collection of Charles Saatchi at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1997, to great acclaim and controversy.

While much more sober than sensational, HerAbEx is still a revelatory gem. Created by Southampton collectors Rick Friedman and Cindy Lou Wakefield, who drew from a broader swath of modern American artists in their collection, it puts the focus on 19 women members of the mid-century movement that rewrote the history of modern art. It's a striking and intimate gathering, totaling 34 drawings, paintings, and sculptures, and is accompanied by a fine, slim catalog with several essays and good color reproductions of all the work in the show.

Lee Krasner - September Twenty-Third ink, crayon and collage on lithographic paper

Among the 19, there are names that range from the widely celebrated to the largely overlooked. Most of us already know about Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Louise Bourgeois, Grace Hartigan, and Dorothy Dehner - all of whom had significant recognition in their lifetimes. But what about Mary Abbott, Perle Fine, and Charlotte Park? These, and others, were new to me here.

A few motifs emerged as I wandered and relaxed in the comfortable upstairs gallery that holds all but one of the pieces (the other, shown here at left, being placed just outside the entrance). Most of the two-dimensional work is on paper (only six pieces are oil on canvas), and all of the work is relatively small in scale (that is, relative to the monumental scale of much of the AbEx masters' output). These limits can be explained by the seriously prohibitive purchase prices of larger works by such noted artists, but also suggests that the women in this group may have worked smaller overall than the men, possibly due to scarcer resources and, almost certainly, more human-scaled egos.

Elaine de Kooning - Cave #24 Red Oxide Wall acrylic and collage on paper mounted on canvas

It's also worth noting that a large portion of these artists are Jewish - not surprising, considering the time (immediately post-WWII), the place (primarily New York City and Long Island), and a similar demographic among the men of the movement. Additionally, many studied under or were directly influenced by the same people, in particular Hans Hofmann.

A poignant sub-theme of the show is the marital status of these women artists - many were married to major art-world figures (including painters, sculptors, and critics), whose shadows would have been difficult to escape (the solution frequently being divorce). That includes de Kooning (married to Willem, divorced in 1957), Frankenthaler (associated for five years with Clement Greenberg, then married to Robert Motherwell and divorced in 1971), Park (married to James Brooks), Dehner (married to David Smith, divorced in 1951), and Krasner (married to Jackson Pollock until his death in 1956). Some of the label copy in the show (all of it succinct and nicely readable) makes references to those conditions and how gender affected these artists' careers, a sad commentary on their time in contrast to today.

Perle Fine - Untitiled, oil on paper mounted on board

It struck me that quite a few works in the show are not truly abstract, instead plainly representing figures and landscapes - and even including two recognizable portraits. One prominently featured painting (which collector Friedman cites as the start of it all for him and Wakefield) appears abstract at first, with slashing strokes of bold color and calligraphic black marks - only to reveal itself as a direct interpretation of an early cave painting depicting a bull. Cave #24 Red Oxide Wall (shown above, at right) is one of six pieces by Elaine de Kooning included in the show. There are also four by Krasner and three each by Dehner and Nevelson, while the rest of the included artists are represented by just one or two pieces.

Though de Kooning is clearly intended to be the star of the show (and her best works here support that), Krasner was the revelation for me, and her Earth No. 7, a gouache on paper, emerged as my top pick. Other favorites include a luscious pink acrylic on paper by Frankenthaler (seen in the image below), a marvelous untitled bronze by Dehner that felt like a three-dimensional Motherwell painting (also seen in the image below), and a brooding maelstrom of black ink by Joan Mitchell. Those four works alone are well worth the trip to Cooperstown.

I also particularly liked a trio of paintings that evoke the brash, calligraphic style of Franz Kline: A captivating double-sided oil on paper by Michael West (she changed her name from Corinne Michelle West at the suggestion of Arshile Gorky) and an oil by Perle Fine (shown above, at left).

Overall, Heroines of Abstract Expressionism provides a great opportunity to see work by many worthy artists in a worthy setting, and for curious folks who haven't yet come to appreciate abstraction, it offers a window into that world. The show is meant to travel, but an agenda hasn't yet been set.

From left, works by Helen Frankenthaler, Dorothy Dehner, Louise Nevelson, and Mercedes Matter are seen in Heroines of Abstract Expressionism at the Fenimore.

Robert Irwin - Excursus: Homage to the Square3, installation view

If you've never been to Dia:Beacon, and you like modern art, then add it to your list.

I took advantage of November's first major holiday to dash down to Beacon in time to see a major installation by Robert Irwin that was slated to close on Nov. 26 (as this posts, there's just one day left - sorry, folks!), and to stroll around the grounds both inside and out that Irwin had a hand in designing.

While this experience was worth the trip, so is everything else about Dia:Beacon - no need to be discouraged by the Irwin ending, there's still plenty there to revel in whenever you go. Now 15 years old, the vast museum created from a former Nabisco box factory presents unique opportunities to see some of the 20th century's greatest monumental works of art. In the words of the Dia website, "each gallery was designed specifically for the presentation of one artist’s work. Examples include Dan Flavin’s series of fluorescent light “monuments to V. Tatlin”; Joseph Beuys’ mixed-media installations such as Fond III/3 (1979) and Fond IV/4 (1979); Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses (2007); and Michael Heizer’s North, East, South, West(1967/2002)."

Looks like a piece of plate glass but is merely a rectangle marked in yarn, by Fred Sandberg

The Irwin piece, entitled Excursus: Homage to the Square3, found itself in perfect company with these and the other regularly exhibited artists. It's an experiential, immersive, architectural construction that uses white wooden frameworks covered with white scrims to establish a matrix of rooms (which, incidentally, are rectangular, not square), each of which is lit and punctuated by a set of four vertically oriented fluorescent tubes. The tubes are covered by intricate layers of color filters, establishing a sort of totemic system that makes each room unique. Watching other people, including children, wander among - or streak through - the spaces added to the fun.

On this visit, I had limited extra time to explore, so I made sure to stop with a couple of favorite artists (Fred Sandberg, Blinky Palermo), while also checking out ones I knew not at all. Sandberg's super-minimalist yet hyper-real yarn constructions did not let me down, as invisible planes floating in space emerged from his pieces inexorably to all present (see photo example at right, above).

One discovery was the work of Mary Corse - big white or black paintings that go through shimmering changes with each glance, due to a swirled surface of tiny glass beads. I also quite enjoyed Walter De Maria's final work, a ghostly trio of restored (actually, transformed) 1950s pick-up trucks, each with three shiny obelisks sticking up from its bed like alien invaders.

In between came a big hall of wonderful John Chamberlain sculptures, which recently had a flotilla of many spindly boat-like pieces added, forming a fine, fresh counterpoint to his bulkier constructions of junked car metal. To anyone who might suspect that twisting and welding and coloring huge slabs of steel into fresh forms isn't a fine art, I suggest you see this work.

To everybody else, I say have a good time whatever you do!

Hall of sculptures by John Chamberlain

Richard Barlow Roadside Picnic II - chalk on blackboard paint on wall

The 2017 edition of the annual Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region (popularly known as the Regional) is on at the Albany Institute of History & Art and, as ever, it is a must-see for all local fans of contemporary art.

Victoria Palermo Reds - wood, poured resin and colored plexiglas

This year's show was judged and installed by Jack Shear, a photographer, curator, collector of photography, and the president of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. You may recall Shear's gift last year of over 500 photographs to the Tang Teaching Museum (reviewed here); now he has given the region a different sort of gift by providing an unusual, sharp perspective on the Regional, and by adding a couple of unique elements to the show that I found most welcome.

First, Shear mined the Institute's collection for works of art that had been purchased from past Regionals over many decades; these pieces (more than 20 of them) were then installed salon-style at the entrance to the exhibition, providing a refreshing reprise of those past purchase-prize winners. I will describe Shear's other innovation a bit later.

Niki Haynes To What End mixed media collage

So - how is the show? With just 87 works by 32 artists selected from 600 submitted by 268 artists, this Regional is unusually spare - and that's a good thing. All but a few of the artists have three pieces on view (the rest have two, except for two artists with a single, very large-scale work on view: Richard Barlow, whose 27-foot wall drawing is shown at the top of this post, and Tatana Kellner, who is represented by a 12-foot grid of 30 monoprints). This added depth allows the viewer to understand each artist's point of view much better than would be possible in a broader-based, more inclusive and, presumably, more cluttered curation.

Peter Crabtree PFOA Portrait: Loreen Hackett: Activist archival inkjet print

Further, Shear has organized the exhibition into sections that group the artists loosely under themes (nature, figure, three-dimensional abstraction) that are like curated shows within the show. This also helps the viewer probe deeper into the meanings of the individual artists' work by putting it in context; though the Regional itself is a context, these sub-themes supercede the idea of a regional identity to touch on trends that artists around here (and everywhere) are currently exploring.

Within these themes, there is an additional subset of images set into a smaller gallery (with a warning outside for those with youngsters in tow) which are all photographs of people, some of them nude. Considering that Shear's collection at the Tang includes many such images, this makes sense. One might guess that photographers intentionally submitted work of this nature, or that more people who produce this sort of work submitted to the show. In any case, Shear did the expected by including these examples, some of which are in the slightly shocking realm, but the majority of which are nowhere near that turf (such as Peter Crabtree's wonderfully sensitive portraits, an example of which is shown at right above).

Dave Waite Guardian - archival inkjet print

As a lifelong follower of photographic art, I can say with confidence that, regardless of anyone's predilections, the photos included here are worthy; they also represent a great diversity of approaches, which helps show just how much this medium has done to liven up post-modern art. Among my favorites are three traditional landscape studies by Dave Waite (example shown at center above), Ray Felix's light-infused nude portrait of a heavily tattooed young man, Allen Bryan's masterful digital concoctions, and Laura Christensen's witty, mixed-media transformations of antique pictures.

T. Klacsmann Raptor and Automata mixed media collage

I should note that not all of the photographs are in this one room - many are also included in a larger gallery with art of other media. Among those other media, sculpture is particularly well represented, as is drawing and other works on paper. Painting has a pointedly slight presence here compared to most Regionals - perhaps a commentary on what sort of approach Shear sees as being relevant in today's art scene. The top prize in the show went to a mixed-media collage (shown at right above), and a number of other collages also are included. Again, as a lifelong follower of collage art, I'm perfectly OK with this.

Jake Fallat 1997568-1 cast aluminum

The only two oil painters in the show are about as different as could be from each other - Jane Bloodgood-Abrams makes 19th-century-style cloud studies and Paul Sattler makes neo-expressionist extravaganzas (example shown at the bottom of this post). Again, this shows the juror's integrity, as he is not following a discernible style in his selections, but exercising thoughtful and tasteful decision-making about what to include.

As for Shear's other addition to the Regional, Back: A Re-Installation of 19th Century Sculpture, is a delightfully engaging intervention into one of the Institute's staple displays, and the first time that any Regional juror has directly participated in the show as far as I know.

The 2017 Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region runs through Sept. 3, and will feature three artist talks in the galleries at 6 p.m. on one Friday each month: July 7, Aug. 4, and Sept. 1. Admission to the Albany Institute of History & Art will be free on Sunday, July 2; admission is also free every Thursday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Paul Sattler Letters to Cross (Reading the Letters from H. Matisse to H-E Cross) oil on canvas

A group of drawings by Alexander Ross as seen in Future Perfect

The exhibition Future Perfect: Picturing the Anthropocene at the University at Albany Art Museum is a grand compendium of ideas
that handily meets its purpose to "explore and inform," but falls a bit short simply as an art exhibition.

Curated by Associate Professor Danny Goodwin, Director Janet Riker and Associate Director/Curator Corinna Ripps-Schaming, the show features significant individual pieces or bodies of work in a variety of media by 12 artists, augmented by 11 additional artists whose prints, drawn from the museum's permanent collection by participants in a class project, create a sidebar exhibition within Future Perfect.

Three sculptures by JoAnne Carson confront three photographs by Miljohn and Heltoft

The anthropocene is the label now affixed to our current geological era, so named to reflect the changes to the earth's climate and ecology that human activity has caused. Much of the work that has been selected to represent this concept here leans toward the futuristic, including animated science fiction film projects by Colin C. Boyd and Jacolby Satterwhite, and colorful, cartoonish critter paintings by Alexander Ross.

Other improbables, in the form of fantastic plants, are presented in sculptures by JoAnne Carson and silver-print photographs by Miljohn Ruperto and Ulrik Heltoft. But not all the work shown in Future Perfect is obsessed with the future. I found the more interior-looking artists in the show were more effective.

An altered photograph by Letha Wilson

Several altered landscape photographs by Letha Wilson and three freestanding resin-bound sculptural montages by Amy Brener are both elegant and thought-provoking - the fact that these two groups are installed together suggests the curators also see a connection between them. I really liked seeing four leaning painted planks by Jason Middlebrook, an artist I first encountered in a 2007 solo show in this same space; and a quasi-narrative photo series by Dana Hoey that uses naturalistic subjects to evoke a chilling future.

A photograph of salamanders by Dana Hoey

The best part of the show for me, however, was the students' effort to make a statement along one long wall, where they sequenced photographs and prints in a way that clearly communicates a point of view and clearly articulates unanswered questions. This part included outstanding works by both widely known and local artists such as Marilyn Bridges, Michael Marston, Robert Smithson, and Ken Ragsdale.

Future Perfect: Picturing the Anthropocene, which runs through Dec 10, has featured a busy schedule of related events, including weekly programs in the gallery, since it opened in July; the next event is a poetry reading and discussion at 7 pm on Nov 29 - check here for more details.

Colin C. Boyd works on an animation project on-site at Future Perfect

This 1817 map of the proposed Erie Canal is part of Masterworks: Paper

With trips to all the summer shows winding down, I'd like to recommend a really worthy exhibition closer to home. Actually, this is a pair of exhibitions with the unifying theme of a deep exploration of the collections of the now-225-year-old Albany Institute of History & Art, entitled Masterworks: 225 Years of Collecting and Masterworks: Paper.

Thomas Cole - Button Wood Tree, ink over pencil 1823

These shows were mounted during the past year to celebrate the Institute's anniversary and its own history, with the larger, more inclusive exhibition featuring a thoughtfully constructed timeline of the organization, punctuated with compelling artifacts and objects such as grandfather clocks, a book of wool samples, paintings from three centuries, marvels in glass and silver, a fire bucket, travel posters, etc.

The richness of the AIHA's holdings is well displayed here, and would be difficult to exaggerate. Though I am biased toward contemporary art, I can enjoy a sumptuously festooned French-style bed as much as the next guy, along with almost absurdly decorative cast-iron stoves, Americana in the form of elaborately incised powder horns, ceramics from near and far, and plenty of earlier fine art.

Tea Caddy with paper filigree 1804

The Paper show has had a shorter duration, due to the fragility of its contents, but the restriction to one material still allows for so much diversity that its designers created no fewer than 16 distinct sections for it, with titles such as Landscape on Paper, Weather on Paper, Certified on Paper, and so on. Though this organizing principle has merit, I have to say it didn't really work - in fact, the Paper show is so crowded that navigating through it is a confusing chore - but it is so stuffed with marvels that it's worth every effort.

Among my favorites (shown at left) is an architectural rendering of Albany's "first skyscraper," an elegant bank building on State Street that still stands (though in rough shape), where it is now overshadowed by the much taller, nearly new building next door that I happen to work in. There is also a great range of first-rate works of art in the show, including nearly every paper-based medium - even painstaking cut constructions, along with every sort of print, watercolors, photographs, and drawings by some major names: Charles Burchfield, Jacob Lawrence, Ellsworth Kelly, and contemporary artists Harold Lohner and Phyllis Galembo.

Alice Morgan Wright The Fist, painted plaster 1921

Meanwhile, back at the 225 Years of Collecting show, there are many, many more great artists, most significantly the heart and soul of this collection - its Hudson River School paintings - but also a spate of other excellent works representing social realism, Cubism, Surrealism, Pop, even post-Modern work.

If you're going, you need to hurry, as Masterworks: 225 Years of Collecting ends on Sept 4. For Masterworks: Paper. there's a bit of breathing room - it continues through Oct. 16. And there's a bargain to be  had: Through the end of 2016, Saturday admission to the AIHA is just $2.25. Go and discover - or remind yourself of - the treasure in our midst.

Installation view of Borrowed Light: Selections from the Jack Shear Collection photograph by Arthur Evans

The future looks pretty frightening at the moment, and personal legacies may seem like a shallow concern - but Jack Shear's personal collection of photographs, a huge selection of which is on view at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs through Aug. 14, is an absolutely dazzling legacy.

Edward Weston - Point Lobos, Calif. 1939

Shear, who is the executive director of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, is also a photographer in his own right and has experience as a curator (this selection was co-curated by Shear and Tang Director Ian Berry). But this more-than-500-piece collection, donated in its entirety to the Tang last year, is what he will be remembered for, and with good reason.

Beginning in the 1840s with a vitrine full of Daguerreotypes, and continuing through the early 2000s, this compendium of the history of Western photography is a treasure trove that belongs at a teaching museum, where Berry and Shear contrived to place it at the fingertips of students, curators and scholars for the years to come. For now, we get to be those scholars, exploring about half the collection where it is gorgeously arrayed through the Tang's entire second floor galleries, in pristine rows and heady constellations of cleanly framed prints.

Andre Kertesz - Satiric Dancer 1926

An 18-page printed guide provides essential information, including a concise introduction, a glossary of technical terms (around a dozen different photographic processes are represented), and diagrams to help the visitor sort out what they are looking at. The gallery-hung pictures are numbered to correspond with lists in the guide, while those presented salon-style must be identified via the guide's charts; the decision to forgo wall labels was the right one, as they would have been too distracting among the more than 200 objects on display.

Aaron Siskind - Chicago 42 1952

This absence of text provided me with the opportunity to have a little adventure on my first walk through the show, as I tried to name as many of the photographers as I could from memory or guesswork, and I recommend that approach to anyone familiar enough with the medium to give it a go. My score wasn't spectacular - I got a few wrong and missed a few easy ones, not to mention simply not knowing a whole bunch - but it was a lot of fun. Shear has assembled a somewhat thematic tour of the greats, including many singular images we all know (e.g. Andre Kertesz's Satiric Dancer and Roger Fenton's Valley of the Shadow of Death), but the lesser known artists and images are almost equally fascinating and they add a welcome freshness to the selection.

Lewis Hine -  A Young German Just Arrived at Ellis Island 1910

The show introduces itself, appropriately enough, with a large portrait of Shear by Robert Mapplethorpe, who is also represented here by a very early Polaroid self-portrait that could serve as a chapter header for the large portion of the exhibition dealing with sensuality and the human body. Other artists who have worked this turf and are presented here include George Platt Lynes, Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, Jock Sturges, Frank Eugene, Duane Michals, Peter Hujar and many more.

While the sexy stuff is the heart of the show, its soul is deeper - war, child labor, and other social issues are present, as are conceptual art and abstraction. Portraiture is also a theme here (not a huge interest for me personally, but of great significance in the medium of photography) and the landscape, both urban and natural, is another theme (and of greater personal import to me).

Emmett Gowin - Edith, Newtown, Pennsylvania 1974

Within each subgroup, there are stellar examples to enjoy, by everyone from Abbott, Arbus and Avedon to Warhol, Weems and Weston (both Edward and Brett). Overall, there is a dominance of black-and-white above color and an emphasis on certain periods (the '20s and '30s, the '60s and '70s - both very rich times for innovative photography), but that makes total sense for a personal collection. What is truly remarkable is that Shear was able to maintain strong, consistent interest in so many aspects of 165 years of the medium that, even staying within his personal range of tastes, this is still a very wide view of its history.

Nan Goldin - Pawel's Back, East Hampton 1996

One must take the show as a whole, both because of its survey approach and because of its five big floor-to-ceiling groupings (one of which contains 37 individual works); but it is easy to home in on individual favorites in the gallery-hung areas, and these contain a fabulous selection to choose from. For me, who grew up as a photographer in the '70s, it was candy-shop time - all my idols are on view, and I could never choose among them. All the more impressive, when I think that Shear not only had to choose, he had to pay for each choice with actual dollars, and decide each time just how to distribute those (presumably) limited funds.

Nice job, Jack. And, one more thing: Thanks for sharing.

Installation view of Borrowed Light  Note: the middle section has now been rehung with a different selection by Skidmore art history students researching the collection. Photograph by Arthur Evans

1976's Running Fence introduced the world to a new kind of environmental artist.

Heads-up! A traveling exhibition titled Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Tom Golden Collection opens today at The Hyde Collection and will run just six weeks, through June 26 - so I recommend you put it on your calendar now.

This event creates many associations for me, most delightfully bringing up the memory of renovations many years ago at the Hyde house that caused it to be fully wrapped in plastic for months on end. I wonder if Hyde administrators remember thinking then, as I did, that it looked just like a Christo project.

It's also always a treat to see work by this curious duo who helped transform our conception of art from insisting on a housed display into a reluctant embrace of environmental installation on a scale beyond most of our imaginations. The fact that they could even conceive of building a curtain across a valley, or skirting eleven islands with pink polypropylene - much less actually doing it - is a testament to human ingenuity and persistence.

Married partners Christo (still alive) and Jeanne-Claude (died in 2009) took seriously the implications of their simultaneous births on June 13, 1935 on two different continents; I share that birthday as well (and add a third continent, though in a different year), so maybe I'm not objective - but I reasonably expect to love this show. Hope you do, too.

Installation view of The Gates,Central Park, New York City 2005 photo by Wolfgang Voltz

Ellsworth Kelly in his studio in 2012 (photo stolen from the New York Times)

As 2016 yawns and stretches into existence, a few items on the local art scene have caught my attention:

1. The recent death at age 92 of Ellsworth Kelly. Almost universally regarded as a giant of 20th-century art, Kelly lived and worked in our region (Spencertown, Columbia County) for a great many years. I recall one encounter with the man, about 1984, when he stopped in to peruse my modest gallery on Washington Avenue in Albany. We knew he was a client of the hairstylist upstairs, but had never seen him. So, one day a middle-aged gentleman came in from the stairway area and looked around with what seemed to be a very practiced eye. I tried to engage him in conversation - no luck. Then I asked if we could place him on our mailing list (we did that with all visitors), but he demurred. When I more or less forced an introduction, he only gave one name: Kelly. I do recall that he did not seem impressed by what he saw, but neither did he seem disgusted. Personally, I love his work for its purity of form and color, and for its spirit of adventure. I also like the fact that Kelly was a supporter of local ventures, donating a print or two to be sold at Albany Institute fundraisers and employing local artists as assistants. He will be missed.

   an early Robert Mapplethorpe Polaroid self-portrait from the Jack Shear Collection

2. Jack Shear photography collection donated to the Tang Teaching Museum. Shear was Ellsworth Kelly's longtime partner, and on Feb. 6 the Tang will open an exhibition selected from 500 significant and historical photographs he recently donated. It's a very truncated who's-who of 20th-century photography (with a notably gay-centric twist) that is sure to draw a lot of viewers and perhaps a snippet of controversy. Remember when the political right wing went nuts because the NEA had supported an exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe pictures in Philadelphia? This show will definitely make it clear we're over that.
   

   Mazing Cave - collage by Michael Oatman

3. This year The Hyde Collection will host the Annual Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region (popularly know as the Regional), and the judge will be a truly local artist for the first time in memory - Michael Oatman. Oatman, a professor at RPI, has shown regularly in prominent venues such as MASS MoCA and the Tang, as well as in New York City galleries for over a decade, so his credentials as a judge pass muster. Yet he also has regularly and recently participated in local juried shows such as the Regional and the Arts Center's Fence Show, which sets him apart from the typical Regional juror. This may bother some people, but I think it's appropriate - and a great choice of juror for this always intensely interesting local showcase.

   a photograph by Dan Burkholder

4. The Photography Regional, our other most closely watched local juried show, will be held much earlier than usual this year, as co-host Fulton Street Gallery in Troy has scheduling conflicts for the more usual late-springtime slot. According to a recent announcement from co-host The Photo Center of the Capital District in Troy, the show will open on Jan. 29 as a two-week salon with all entries hung at both locations; then the judge's pared-down selection will be presented more formally at Fulton Street beginning Feb 20. This year's judge is Dan Burkholder, a Palenville-based digital photographer known for lushly detailed and subtly colored imagery.
5. Beyond local: Oscar season is heating up, and I am struggling to catch all the films likely to gain lots of nominations. So far, the best film from 2015 that I've seen is Spotlight. I don't plan to catch the Star Wars film (sorry if you're a fan) - neither have I ever seen Titanic or Avatar, the other highest grossers of our time, so at least I am consistent. Am excited to see Carol as soon as possible, and have heard The Big Short is also very good, though I'm afraid it may give me unpleasant MBA-school flashbacks. More to come on the best films of 2015 in a later post ...

The movie Spotlight deserves special notice for the brilliant ensemble work of its cast.

Jeannette Klute American (1918-2009) Trillium, ca. 1950 Dye transfer print, 14 1/4 x 18 3/8 in. All photos shown with this post: The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY Gift of George Stephanopoulos and Family, 2013

In a time of transition for The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, two small shows drawn from the museum's permanent collection are on display. The more significant of the two was curated by outgoing Director Charles Allan Guerin, who will be replaced in July by former Hyde curator Erin Coe. Titled Click!: Selections from the George Stephanopoulos Collection, the Hoopes Gallery display features 31 photographs chosen from among more than 120 that were recently donated to the Hyde by the political and media pundit. It hangs through May 31.

Having heard the news about this important addition to the collection, I was eager to have a look - and I'll admit I was a bit disappointed not to be seeing the whole trove. Guerin culled the larger group down to the work of 12 artists (pointedly describing them as such in the show's written material), with a nice range of styles, methods and time frame, creating a mini-lesson in the history of the medium of photography. A few of those included are widely regarded as significant, and none of the work is second rate, but some is rather little known, a treat for a crusty old curmudgeon like me who thinks he has already seen all the worthwhile pictures of the 20th century.

Mario Finocchiaro - Man Standing beside His Fiat 1000, ca. 1970s, gelatin silver print, 11 3/4 x 8 1/2 in.

Among the household names are Larry Fink, represented here by four prints from his 1980s series on working-class people at home in Pennsylvania; Joel Meyerowitz, with four small color gems from his Bay and Sky series of Cape Cod pictures; and Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose two prints from the 1960s are more like news photographs than most of his best art. Surprises include an Italian photo-club member from Milan named Mario Finocchiaro (example shown at right); Jeannette Klute (the only woman in the show), who had a career at Eastman Kodak developing the dye-transfer printing process (image shown at the top of this post); and William E. Dassonville, a recently rediscovered practitioner from the early days of West Coast photography.

The majority of the pictures have social or political overtones, not surprising considering their source. Some of these are wonderfully witty, incisive, or even mysterious, such as Leon Levenstein's two undated pictures of people seen from behind, and Leonard Freed's four documents from diverse locales, including Sicily (the shot features a large tuna) and London (depicting British women of Indian descent). There are two images of Dwight D. Eisenhower, one by Cartier-Bresson (who was French), the other by the Canadian portraitist Yousuf Karsh.

Karl Struss American (1886-1981) Bridge and Train Signal, Pittsburgh, ca. 1912 Gelatin silver print, printed ca. 1980, 3 3/4 x 4 3/4 in.

One of my favorites in this selection is a small, very Modernist print made from a 1912 Karl Struss negative (shown at left), which stands in stark contrast to a 1910 Struss image that is pure Pictorialism - what a difference a couple of years made! Also outstanding are two 8-inch-by-20-inch black-and-white contact prints by Michael A. Smith; one is of a lifeless corporate building in Princeton, N.J., the other of a sunny vineyard in Tuscany.

Only 13 works of art are included in the Rotunda exhibition titled Making Their Mark, but as the title suggest, they have an impact. Again drawn from the museum's permanent collection, these works on paper are by names major, minor, and in-between. Examples of the known include Wassily Kandinsky, Dorothy Dehner, and Robert Motherwell. Also included are two fine drawings by local artists Sandra Miller and Dorothy Englander, which were purchased by the Hyde back in the days of the Adirondack Regional exhibitions (full disclosure: Englander and I share a studio).

All the work in this show is abstract or nearly so. One curiosity is a very graphic representation of figures (so stylized they look more like mechanical drawing tools than people) titled "The Specious Solemnity of Gossip," made by Attilio Salemme in 1943. There's also a vibrantly colorful composition made by Ludwig Stein in 1985 titled "Time Trap" - somewhat ominous if you note his death date is 2015.

Perhaps the strongest piece in the show is a drawing by Gregory Amenoff (pictured below) - I would say that work alone is worth the trip. Making Their Mark will hang through June 21. The Hyde is also hosting the 24th Annual Regional Juried High School Exhibition through May 31 in the Wood Gallery.

Gregory Amenoff - Pink Sweet (Suite) #1, 1979 Gouache and pastel, 13 x 15 inches Gift to The Murray Collection in memory of Terry A. Murray

A view of the Small + Seductive installation

Pink Hat - Gayle Johnson, gouache on paper

From Here to Eternity - Wendy Ide Williams ceramic sculpture

Catskill Creek - Judy Alderfer Abbott  oil on board

Albany Rural Cemetery Carol Caruso, oil on canvas

View of Shaker Creek - Richard Callner, watercolor and gouache on paper