"Return to Realism: Contemporary Art from The UBS Collection" -- At 43 pieces by 30 artists, this exhibition at the Boca Raton Museum of Art is smaller than "Embracing the Present: The UBS PaineWebber Art Collection," which was on display a year ago at Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Art. But the Boca show is more balanced and much better organized, making it a strong case for corporate support of art. The UBS collection -- one of the largest corporate art collections in the world -- got a modest start in 1971 with some prints by such major talents as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Rauschenberg. In the three-plus decades since, it has grown to more than 900 works, from paintings and works on paper to sculptures and photographs. The emphasis is on art from the past half century. Much of the collection rests not in a vault but throughout the midtown Manhattan offices of UBS. Imagine going to work every day at a company that displays on its walls the works of such artists as Eric Fischl, Lucian Freud, Anselm Kiefer, Susan Rothenberg, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol. Some of this art, fortunately for us, is featured in the Boca Museum show, including a handful of outstanding etchings by Freud, grandson of Sigmund and one of the titans of 20th-century art. (Through March 28 at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, Mizner Park, Boca Raton, 561-392-2500.)
"Frederic Remington: Illustrator, Sculptor, Painter -- Artist of the Old West" -- Frederic Remington, who died of appendicitis in 1909 at age 48, was much in demand a century ago as a commercial illustrator. But it was his two dozen or so sculptures of cowboys on horseback that established his reputation. This exhibition at the Boca Raton Museum of Art showcases nearly 40 of the artist's photographs, paintings, and drawings, as well as a handful of those famous sculptures, which haven't aged especially well. The milieu of cowboys and Indians as portrayed by Remington, a New Yorker who first made his way west in the late 1800s, is responsible for much of our shared vision of the Old West. That may be why so much of his work seems trite today. The exceptions are the atmospheric oils of structures back in Remington's native state that he turned to late in his short career. Four of those lovely paintings are included here. (Through March 28 at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, Mizner Park, Boca Raton, 561-392-2500.)
