The Boca Raton Museum of Art has a well-established, mostly noble tradition of showcasing art from local collections, usually in the gallery at the far northern end of the first floor — not prime real estate, as museum space goes, but certainly respectable. For “Masters of Latin America: Selections from…
There’s a great deal to be said for an exhibition that feels as if it has been installed with just the right attention to flow and contrast and all the other intangibles that please and stimulate the senses. Juxtaposition is sometimes everything, or almost everything, especially in a group show…
Whenever word gets out that a new art gallery has opened in Broward or Palm Beach county, I’m usually tempted to drop everything and rush right over, for fear that it might not be around if I hold off too long. Indeed, several times I’ve dallied only to find the…
Do your eyes glaze over at the mention of the term “public art”? Do you stifle a yawn and think, not another heap of tortured metal? That’s a justifiable response, considering that much of what passes for public art comes across as something that has been hijacked on its journey…
When I first stumbled upon Spirit of Asia two years ago, it was called Spirit of Vietnam, and it was a relatively new presence on the 1500 block of East Las Olas Boulevard. Stepping into this combination gallery/home furnishings boutique was a transporting experience. The hint of incense in the…
It’s a sure sign summer has arrived when museums begin delving into their permanent collections. Hence, Miami Art Museum’s “Big Juicy Paintings (and More): Highlights from the Permanent Collection.” The exhibition delivers on its provocative title with more than 50 items from the vault, along with ten loans, presumably works…
It’s a faintly surreal, even disorienting experience to take in two of South Florida’s big juried summer group shows, which run roughly concurrently. First, take the elevator to the sixth floor of the Broward County Main Library in downtown Fort Lauderdale and step out into Gallery Six for “United and…
In the catalog for “metro pictures,” now at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in North Miami and the Moore Space in Miami’s Design District, curator Silvia Karman Cubiña sums up the two-part show as “snapshots of the city” and says it brings together 29 artists “whose works define, interpret…
How’s this for topicality? Just as the subject of immigration is sweeping the country, getting more heated and complicated by the day, the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood presents “Signals/Señales,” an exhibition featuring work by contemporary Mexican artists addressing current social issues in that culture. More specifically, these artists,…
On my most recent visit to the Coral Springs Museum of Art, Executive Director Barbara O’Keefe mentioned that the museum’s current exhibitions, “Collecting Dali” and “Dali on Tour,” which opened in March, had proved to be consistently popular. She seemed surprised. I wasn’t. Critical opinion of the flamboyant Spaniard fluctuated…
Once every year or two, I stray outside my assigned territory and venture deep into the heart of Miami to write about an exhibition that promises to transcend its physical location. Last year, the Robert Rauschenberg show at the Miami Art Museum (MAM) fit the bill, but I dallied and…
You can’t accuse “Illegal Art” of false advertising. Most of the 40 or so works in this uneven but provocative exhibition, now at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, share the dubious distinction of having inspired lawsuits or at least the threat of lawsuits. There’s no posted introduction (an…
Consider the irony: When the first French impressionists began exhibiting their work in the late 19th Century, the occasion marked a fairly radical break with the academic art of the time. Even the designation impressionism, coined by critic Louis Leroy and popularized by the French press, had a slightly derogatory…
“Malcolm Morley: The Art of Painting,” now at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, is the final installment in a trio of exhibitions surveying the careers of painters who are very different yet also very similar, and what a smashing conclusion it is. Think of the series as…
On a recent sunny Saturday, the Coral Springs Center for the Arts and environs bustled with activity. The center’s auditorium was hosting a graduation ceremony for a local school, and the surrounding athletic fields were all in use. The sprawling parking lot, usually mostly empty, was so full that several…
Abstraction and figuration coexist uneasily, often within the same painting, in the output of Matthew Carone, whose recent work is now on view at Lurie Fine Art Galleries in Boca Raton. The New Jersey-born artist has been a South Florida force since 1959, when he opened the Fort Lauderdale gallery…
The last time I wrote about the work of Aric Frons, it was in the context of Frons/Martin Dynasties, the art/home furnishings gallery he and longtime business partner Joan Martin opened in the late 1990s. They specialized in country Chinese antiques, although the furniture, ceramics, and Buddhas and Buddha heads…
The big draw at the Boca Raton Museum of Art right now may be “James McNeill Whistler: Selected Works from the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland,” but don’t miss a smaller, less flashy exhibition tucked away on the museum’s second floor in the Walter and Lucille Rubin Gallery. “Milton Avery:…
Let’s engage in a little free association. I say Whistler and you say — what? The word that springs to mind is most likely mother, as in Whistler’s Mother. The formal title of that 1871 painting by American artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler is actually Arrangement in Grey and Black,…
An exhibition of art inspired or influenced by cartoons, in the broadest sense of that word, sounds like a surefire winner. Its well of potential material is deep and vast, from classic animation and comic strips to contemporary anime and underground comix. So why is “Art in the ‘Toon Age,”…
Having done a post-Wilma update on three of my favorite places in the Gateway Shopping Center in Fort Lauderdale a couple of weeks ago, it seemed only fair to revisit a pair of their counterparts in Wilton Manors, in the little strip mall anchored by Old Florida Seafood House. So…
Every once in a while, I like to stop by galleries I´ve previously written about to see how they´re faring. Given the precarious nature of the gallery scene, I find — alarmingly often — that they´re no longer in business. Happily, that was not the case when I decided to…
