If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon. And sign up for our free, occasional newsletter so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content ©Greg Cook 2022 or the respective creators.)


Let Love Quiet Fear
Praise Shadows Art Gallery, Brookline
Jan. 12 to Feb. 12, 2023
To coincide with the debut of “The Embrace,” the Martin Luther King Jr. monument on Boston Common, artists from Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., present art inspired by King and “his concept of agape — the highest form of love that can only be known when we allow ourselves to let go of fear and anger, and recognize our innate interconnectedness.” Artists include Paul Briggs, Erin Genia, Eric Gottesman, Ekua Holmes, DA Mekonnen, Helina Metaferia, Jo Nanajian, Kiyomi Quinn Taylor, Hank Willis Thomas, and Yu-Wen Wu.


Hank Willis Thomas rendering for “The Embrace," Boston Common.
Hank Willis Thomas rendering for “The Embrace,” Boston Common.

Unveiling of ‘The Embrace’
Jan. 13, 2023, 1 p.m.
Boston Common
New York artist Hank Willis Thomas’s landmark public artwork “The Embrace” debuts on Boston Common. “The memorial commemorates the legacies of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King, who met and went to school in Boston, and the civil rights leaders who worked alongside them in Boston,” according to Embrace Boston, which commissioned the artwork.


Mary Blood Mellen, "Field Beach, Stage Fort Park," 1850s.
Mary Blood Mellen, “Field Beach, Stage Fort Park,” 1850s.

The Art of Mary Blood Mellen
Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester
Jan. 13 to May 21, 2023
A look at Massachusetts painter Mary Blood Mellen (1819-1886), who copied the crystalline seascapes of her mentor, Gloucester’s Fitz Henry Lane. See how her renderings feature “a more vivid color palette than Lane’s and a tendency towards softer, less meticulous brushwork, a preference that often makes her work feel more painterly.”


Christian Robinson, illustration for “Just in Case You Want to Fly” by Julie Fogliano (Roaring Brook Press), 2019.
Christian Robinson, illustration for “Just in Case You Want to Fly” by Julie Fogliano (Roaring Brook Press), 2019.

What Might You Do? Christian Robinson
Eric Carle Museum, of Picture Book Art Amherst
Jan.14 to June 4, 2023
The 2015 picture book “Last Stop on Market Street,” written by Matt de la Peña and illustrated by California artist Christian Robinson, won a Caldecott Honor, a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor, and the Newbery Medal. Robinson’s expressionist collage technique and diverse subjects have made him one of the standout illustrators of this generation. This exhibition surveys his artwork for 17 books.


Cy Twombly, “Leaving Paphos Ringed with Waves (III),” 2009, acrylic on canvas.
Cy Twombly, “Leaving Paphos Ringed with Waves (III),” 2009, acrylic on canvas.

Making Past Present: Cy Twombly
January 14–May 7, 2023
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
“Modern Art isn’t dislocated, but something with roots, tradition, and continuity. For myself,” Cy Twombly (1928–2011) wrote, “the past is the source (for all art is vitally contemporary).” Known for how he turned graffiti and scribbles into effervescent abstractions, this exhibition explores the inspirations he took from ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt.


Books by Joel Christian Gill
Books by Joel Christian Gill

Comics Is A Medium, Not A Genre
Jan. 19 – March 24, 2023
Boston University’s Stone Gallery, Boston
Joel Christian Gill, creator of Black history comics “Strange Fruit” and the autobiographical graphic novel “Fights,” curates an exhibition that endeavors to demonstrate the potential of comics: “Comics are an expressive medium that artists use to tell stories, and those stories can be anything.”


Allison Maria Rodriguez, “Legends Breathe: Fairy Tales,” video still, multi-channel video installation.
Allison Maria Rodriguez, “Legends Breathe: Fairy Tales,” video still, multi-channel video installation.

Allison Maria Rodriguez: Legends Breathe
Montserrat College of Art Gallery, Beverly
Jan. 23 to March 4, 2023
An immersive video installation by the first-generation Cuban-American artist who resides in the Boston area. “Based on interviews with female-identified and non-binary artists about childhood fantasies, ‘Legends Breathe’ comprises a series of video portraits that bring these fantasies to life and as part of processes of healing and survival,” according to organizers.


May Stevens, “Forming the Fifth International,” 1985, acrylic on canvas.
May Stevens, “Forming the Fifth International,” 1985, acrylic on canvas.

May Stevens: My Mothers
MassArt Art Museum, Boston
Jan. 26 to May 21, 2023
Boston native May Stevens (1924-2019) made politics the engine of her painting. A founding member of both the Guerrilla Girls and the collective feminist journal “Heresies,” exhibition organizers write, “through figurative paintings, photocopied and collaged works, colorful political pop canvases, and somber efficient sketches, she criticized American patriarchy, championed the Civil Rights movement, and imbued Marxist ideals into everyday life.”


Rachel Gloria Adams, “Miami Dip,” dyed cotton and linen with latex paint, 2022.
Rachel Gloria Adams, “Miami Dip,” dyed cotton and linen with latex paint, 2022.

2023 CMCA Biennial
Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, Maine
Jan. 28 to May 7, 2023
This edition of the “longest-running statewide juried exhibition in Maine” highlights the latest developments from 35 Maine-based and connected artists.


Joe Wood, "Loopy" Brooch in Brushed Silver, 2002, silver electroformed from 3D print with patina. (Photo by Dean Powell)
Joe Wood, “Loopy” Brooch in Brushed Silver, 2002, silver electroformed from 3D print with patina. (Photo by Dean Powell)

Creative Alloys: The Boston Metals Scene
Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton
Jan. 28 to June 4, 2023
Spotlights Boston’s vibrant metalsmithing and jewelry community over the past half century.


Daniel Steele, “Tunebook,” 1821, watercolor and ink on paper, 5 x 8 1/2 inches (closed). Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York. (Photo by Gavin Ashworth)
Daniel Steele, “Tunebook,” 1821, watercolor and ink on paper, 5 x 8 1/2 inches (closed). Collection American Folk Art Museum, New York. (Photo by Gavin Ashworth)

American Perspectives
Portland Museum of Art, Maine
Feb. 3 to May 7, 2023
More than 70 quilts, embroideries, assemblages, potteries, paintings and sculptures from the collection of the American Folk Art Museum in New York showcase folk and self-taught art in the United States from the 18th century to today.


Alma Thomas, “Ruth Kainen’s Amaryllis,” 1976, acrylic on canvas.
Alma Thomas, “Ruth Kainen’s Amaryllis,” 1976, acrylic on canvas.

Women and Abstraction: 1741–Now
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover
Jan 29 to July 31, 2023
Drawn almost entirely from the museum’s permanent collection, this exhibition proposes a “more nuanced and expansive history of the development of abstraction in America” by including artworks “created hundreds of years before the advent of Abstract Expressionism as well as objects historically denied the status of fine art.”


Tsherin Sherpa, Skippers (Kneedeep), 2019–20. Gold leaf, acrylic, and ink on fiberglass.
Tsherin Sherpa, Skippers (Kneedeep), 2019–20. Gold leaf, acrylic, and ink on fiberglass.

Spirits: Tsherin Sherpa with Robert Beer
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem
Feb. 4 to May 29, 2023
Contemporary Himalayan artist Tsherin Sherpa’s paintings and sculptures “are grounded in the traditional Buddhist art of his training but stretch, bend, reconfigure, and repurpose its forms to explore contemporary concerns.” Plus line drawings by British artist Robert Beer, “lauded as the first Westerner to study thangka painting.”


Daniel Giordano, “My Scorpio I,” 2016–19, 1970s Husqvarna motocross bikes, aluminum, Canadian maple syrup, cattails, ceramic, deep-fried batter, epoxy, phosphorescent acrylic paint, plastic wrap, railroad spikes, steel, stockfish, urinal cake. (Photo: Ernesto Eisner)
Daniel Giordano, “My Scorpio I,” 2016–19, 1970s Husqvarna motocross bikes, aluminum, Canadian maple syrup, cattails, ceramic, deep-fried batter, epoxy, phosphorescent acrylic paint, plastic wrap, railroad spikes, steel, stockfish, urinal cake. (Photo: Ernesto Eisner)

Daniel Giordano: Love from Vicki Island
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), North Adams
Opens Feb. 4, 2023
Working in his family’s defunct factory in Newburgh, New York, Daniel Giodano sculpts assemblages from “industrial artifacts, foodstuffs from prosciutto to Italian nougat, and organic matter including ticks and bald eagle excrement” to create “complex portraits of the artist and his [Italian-American] family, as well as a city—and a nation—struggling to reconcile the past with the present.”


Lyle Ashton Harris, “Succession,” 2020, Ghanain cloth, dye sublimination prints, and artist’s ephemera.
Lyle Ashton Harris, “Succession,” 2020, Ghanain cloth, dye sublimination prints, and artist’s ephemera.

Lyle Ashton Harris: Our first and last love
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham
February 9, 2023 – July 2, 2023
The New York artist’s photographs and installations offer a “critical examination of identity and self-portraiture while tracing central themes and formal approaches in his work of the last 35 years.”


Betye Saar, “Kingdom of the Spirits” (detail), 1991, mixed media assemblage. (Photo: Robert Wedemeyer)
Betye Saar, “Kingdom of the Spirits” (detail), 1991, mixed media assemblage. (Photo: Robert Wedemeyer)

Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer
Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum, Boston
Feb. 16 to May 21, 2023
Betye Saar, a leading figure of the 1970s Black Arts Movement, is known for her magical assemblages—including her iconic 1972 “Liberation of Aunt Jemima.” This exibition collects the Los Angeles artist’s sketchbooks and finished artworks inspired by trips to Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, reflecting on race, colonialism, forced migration, and spiritual systems.


María Berrío, “Cavalry,” 2022, collage with Japanese paper and watercolor paint on canvas.
María Berrío, “Cavalry,” 2022, collage with Japanese paper and watercolor paint on canvas.

María Berrío: The Children’s Crusade
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Feb. 16 to Aug. 6, 2023
New York-based, Colombian-born artist María Berrío’s paintings blend the history of Europe’s Children’s Crusade of 1212 with the contemporary mass movement of migrants, women and children across borders.


Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, “Discontent,” 1920s.
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, “Discontent,” 1920s.

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: I will not bend an inch
Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence
Feb. 17 to Aug. 4, 2024
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (1890-1960), the first women of color to graduate from RISD, turned her academic training to a “distinctly Modernist sensibility” as she was living as an expatriate in Paris between the world wars. The exhibition features sculptures in marble and wood, painted wood friezes, watercolors, and photographic presentations of archival documents and lost or destroyed sculptures.


Keith Haring "TV Hydra" chalk on paper.
Keith Haring “TV Hydra” chalk on paper.

Keith Haring: Subway Drawings
Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Vermont
Feb.18 – April 16, 2023
Witness the birth of Keith Haring’s signature cartoony style in original chalk drawings that he graffitied on advertising spaces in New York’s subways in the early 1980s.


Alison Elizabeth Taylor, “The Desert Inn,” 2017, marquetry hybrid: wood veneer, acrylic, glitter, museum board, mica and shellac.
Alison Elizabeth Taylor, “The Desert Inn,” 2017, marquetry hybrid: wood veneer, acrylic, glitter, museum board, mica and shellac.

Alison Elizabeth Taylor: The Sum of It
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover
Feb. 18 to July 31, 2023
Alison Elizabeth Taylor deploys the centuries-old practice of marquetry (think mosaics made of pieced together wood) to depict “gritty and provocative subject matter.”


Jace Clayton, “40 Part Part,” 2022. (Photo: Field Studio Photography)
Jace Clayton, “40 Part Part,” 2022. (Photo: Field Studio Photography)

Jace Clayton: They Are Part
MassArt Art Museum, Boston
Feb. 23–May 14, 2023
Jace Clayton pens musical compositions, creates new audio instruments, and constructs participatory installations to create “multisensory experiences that explore the unexpected and conversational nature of music from around the world.”


Alison Nguyen, “my favorite software is being here” (still), 2020-21, HD video, color, sound.
Alison Nguyen, “my favorite software is being here” (still), 2020-21, HD video, color, sound.

List Projects 26: Alison Nguyen
MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge
Feb. 23 to June 26, 2023
New York artist Alison Nguyen premieres a moving image installation, “history as hypnosis” (2023), in which three women “who are programmed by artificial intelligence and whose memories from their previous existence have been erased” search for a man named X across California desert to gas stations, gritty strip malls, starchitect-designed buildings and underground enclaves.


Artist active in the Viceroyalty of Peru, after Diego de Ocaña (1585–1608), “Our Lady of Guadalupe at Extremadura,” 1730–80, oil on canvas. (Photo by Jamie Stukenberg)
Artist active in the Viceroyalty of Peru, after Diego de Ocaña (1585–1608), “Our Lady of Guadalupe at Extremadura,” 1730–80, oil on canvas. (Photo by Jamie Stukenberg)

From the Andes to the Caribbean: American Art from the Spanish Empire
Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge
March 3 to July 30, 2023
Twenty-six paintings from the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation and the Harvard Art Museums illuminate “the political and spiritual work of Catholic icons, the ways in which empire begets hybrid cultural identities, and the relationship between labor, wealth, and luxury.”


Nelson Stevens, “Primal Force,” 2019, serigraph.
Nelson Stevens, “Primal Force,” 2019, serigraph.

Nelson Stevens: Color Rapping
Springfield Museums: D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield
March 4 to July 9, 2023
“I create from the rhythmic color-rappin-life-style of Black folk. I believe that art can breathe life, and life is what we are about,” wrote Nelson Stevens (American, 1938-2022). An early member of AfriCOBRA (the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), the Black Power psychedelic activist art collective from Chicago, he landed in Springfield, Massachusetts, as he taught at he University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1972 to 2003. And in the early 1970s, he initiated a public art project that produced more than 30 murals throughout Springfield.


Dave (or David Drake), storage jar, 1857, stoneware with alkaline glaze.
Dave (or David Drake), storage jar, 1857, stoneware with alkaline glaze.

Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
March 4 to July 9, 2023
Art and enslavement are themes in this landmark exhibition surveying monumental storage jars by the enslaved and literate potter and poet Dave or David Drake (about 1800–about 1870) plus rare examples of utilitarian wares and face vessels by unrecorded makers who worked in the Old Edgefield District of South Carolina, a center of stoneware production in the decades before the U.S. Civil War. The historical show is augmented by contemporary responses by Theaster Gates, Simone Leigh, Adebunmi Gbadebo, Woody De Othello, and Robert Pruitt.


Paul Goesch, “Visionary Design for an Arch,” c. 1921, graphite and gouache.
Paul Goesch, “Visionary Design for an Arch,” c. 1921, graphite and gouache.

Portals: The Visionary Architecture of Paul Goesch
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown
March 18 to June 11, 2023
Visionary paintings by Paul Goesch (1885–1940), an artist and architect in Weimar Germany. He was a “spiritualist steeped in diverse religious and esoteric belief systems, as well as his altered psychological states,” and struggled with schizophrenia, for which he was institutionalized, and ultimately murdered by the Nazis.


Jeff Weaver, "Tally's Corner," 2003.
Jeff Weaver, “Tally’s Corner,” 2003.

This Unique Place: Painting and Drawings by Jeff Weaver
Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester
March 18 to June 4, 2023
Gloucester artist Jeff Weaver’s oil paintings, pastels and charcoals evoke the legend of the commercial fishing city, with echoes of Edward Hopper.


Nora Krug, “A Little Souvenir,” 2018, from “Belonging.”
Nora Krug, “A Little Souvenir,” 2018, from “Belonging.”

Nora Krug: Belonging and On Tyranny
Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge
March 18 through June 19, 2023
“Images have political power, and they can change the way we think. Illustrating is also an act of witnessing: images compel us to notice and investigate, and at their best, they shed light on and at the same time critically confront the subjects they engage with,” writes the German-American author and illustrator Nora Krug. This exhibition features illustrations from her graphic memoir, “Belonging: A German Reckons With History and Home,” and her illustrated version of Yale historian Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.”


Katsushika Hokusai, “Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa-oki nami-ura),” also known as “The Great Wave,” from the series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei),” Japanese, Edo period, about 1830–31 (Tenpō 1–2). Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper.
Katsushika Hokusai, “Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa-oki nami-ura),” also known as “The Great Wave,” from the series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei),” Japanese, Edo period, about 1830–31 (Tenpō 1–2). Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper.

Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
March 26 to July 16, 2023
“Until the age of 70, nothing that I drew was worthy of notice,” Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) wrote. It was at that wise age that the Japanese artist created his “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” woodcut series, including “Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa-oki nami-ura)” also known as “The Great Wave,” which has become one of the most famous artworks in the world. This exhibition demonstrate Hokusai’s influence by bringing together more than 90 woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books by Hokusai with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers, including his daughter Katsushika Ōi, his contemporaries Utagawa Hiroshige and Utagawa Kuniyoshi, the 19th-century French Japonistes, and modern and contemporary artists including Loïs Mailou Jones, John Cederquist, and Yoshitomo Nara.


Solidarity! Transnational Feminisms Then and Now
Poorvu Gallery, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge
March 27 to Oct.16, 2023
Feminist posters, newspapers, photographs and memorabilia from the 1970s to the present reveal “the complex, vexed history of international women’s rights, sisterhood, and alliance” through the lens of the United Nations International Women’s conferences held in Mexico City in 1975, Copenhagen in 1980, Nairobi in 1985, and Beijing in 1995. “These conferences shaped a new global agenda for women’s causes on the international stage. Women from around the world debated the possibilities of an international feminist alliance and reimagined civil rights for women through conference themes of equality, peace, and development,” exhibition organizers write.


If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon. And sign up for our free, occasional newsletter so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content ©Greg Cook 2022 or the respective creators.)


Categories: Art