The Art and Culture Center of Hollywood is typically a pretty quiet place. There are no security guards patrolling the four downstairs galleries, just a volunteer staffing the front desk and at best a handful of visitors. Not so on a recent Saturday, when the place seemed to be crawling…
Latin American art is more important over the long haul for the Museum of Art|Fort Lauderdale than even Princess Diana and King Tut. Those royal visitors were just that — guests from the outside world, invited in to stimulate publicity and generate big bucks. Latin American art is in the…
A new art gallery in the area is always cause for celebration, and the Painted Easel is no exception – even if it is on the far side of the known world, Broward County division. This spiffy mother-daughter operation opened with little fanfare in March in the Weston Town Center,…
It’s hard to imagine an exhibition that could even begin to compete with the Boca Raton Museum of Art’s current “Elvis at 21” photography show. The museum, smartly, doesn’t even try. Instead we get “Rememberingstanleyboxer: A Retrospective 1946-2000,” as bracing a contrast as one might reasonably expect in such a…
If we were to think of our arts institutions here in South Florida as family members, the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood might be characterized as a specific breed of aunt — a respectable, calm-on-the-surface type who likes to bake but who still has a streak of eccentricity that…
When I first heard that the Boca Raton Museum of Art was bringing in an exhibition of photographs of Elvis Presley, my heart sank a little. Like the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls, hadn’t Elvis been looked at and photographed until there was nothing left to see? But as “Elvis…
In ancient Greek mythology, nine muses governed the arts and inspired creativity: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (lyric poetry), Euterpe (music), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (choral poetry), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), and Urania (astrology). At the 9Muses Art Center in Lauderhill, the range of creative expression is as broad, if…
The background for one of the several fine shows now at the Norton Museum is the remarkable story of a world-class Dutch art dealer whose huge collection was looted by Nazis in World War II. If you like a little history mixed in with your art, not to mention international…
A friend of mine holds that there are no coincidences. But I’m hard-pressed to explain this otherwise: One week, the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach opens “Avedon Fashion 1944-2000.” Two and a half weeks later, the Museum of Art|Fort Lauderdale premieres “Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the…
As much as it might delight some graduate art student researching a thesis on the finer points of this American impressionist, I can’t imagine that “Mary Cassatt: Works on Paper” would be of much interest to anyone else. This small show of 40 or so works, now at the Boca…
Unless you’re a dyed-in-the-wool fashionista, it might be best to approach “Avedon Fashion 1944-2000,” now at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, not so much as a show about fashion as one about personality. There’s personality aplenty on display here. Take Jeanne Moreau in a Pierre Cardin…
The big ticket at the Boca Raton Museum of Art right now — and we’re talking big as in more than 300 items — is “The Magical World of M.C. Escher,” a sweeping survey of the life and career of the Dutch artist. The show is both exhaustive and exhausting…
How’s this for a cool concept? Solicit works of art in various media from more than a hundred top South Florida artists, then raffle everything off ßso that all raffle participants take home a piece of original art. The holder of the first randomly drawn ticket, for example, is entitled…
Artist’s Eye Fine Art Gallery owner Timothy Leistner has done it again. And by that, I mean he has once again shoehorned a surprising volume of art into his little space in Canterbury Square in Dania Beach. For “Of the Earth,” Leistner has assembled a small but representative sampling of…
Last year, the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood “went to the dogs” with its exhibition of works created by a Jack Russell terrier named Tillamook Cheddar. Now the Coral Springs Museum of Art goes all zoological on us with “Hunt Slonem: Birds, Butterflies & Bunnies” and “Donna Long: A…
The first time I stepped into Gallery 721 in Fort Lauderdale — the second and third times too — my immediate reaction was, This is the coolest place in the world. That may be exaggerating a bit, but not by much. Imagine 6,500 square feet of space, almost every millimeter…
I postponed seeing “William Kentridge: Five Themes” at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach longer than I should have, not because of any preconceived notions about the art but due to a generalized end-of-the-year, end-of-the-decade malaise. Don’t you dally similarly — this remarkable exhibition is nearing the…
As I made my way through “Time+Temp: Surveying the Shifting Climate of Painting in South Florida,” now at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, I realized that painting is alive and well, and that’s a great comfort. Although in recent years the Art and Culture Center has been more…
“I don’t think of myself as a painter,” Enrique Martínez Celaya said during a recent lecture appearance at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. This was no doubt news to the dozens of people crowded into the museum’s little auditorium. They had come not only to see the artist’s work…
For one of the best group exhibitions of the year, look not to the area’s museums and traditional galleries but to the alternative display space Girls’ Club in downtown Fort Lauderdale. There you’ll find “Set to Manual: An Exhibition of Works in Diverse Media Characterized by Intensive Hand Manufacture.” Clunky…
What do origami, giant squid, petri dishes, and a laundromat have in common? If you guessed the first New Times Broward/Palm Beach MasterMind Awards, you’d be right. Our paper recently held a contest to recognize movers and shakers in the local arts community. Thanks to a sponsor, the Amplitude Academy…
So you think you know Norman Rockwell, eh? I thought I did. Turns out there are multiple Norman Rockwells, not just the one whose hundreds of Saturday Evening Post magazine covers and their ubiquitous reproductions routinely prompt eye-rolling condescension among the terminally hip. As “American Chronicles: The Art of Norman…
