Nathaniel Tetsuro Paolinelli: Downtown

June 11 - September 3

Timothy Duffy

May 5 - August 31

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Eugène Atget, E.J. BELLOCQ, Bill Brandt, Harry Callahan, Imogen Cunningham, Mario Giacomelli, André Kertész, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Edward Weston: Vision Past

July 1 - August 31

A summer exhibition featuring 20th century works by Eugène Atget, E.J. Bellocq, Bill Brandt, Harry Callahan, Imogen Cunningham, Mario Giacomelli, André Kertész, Roert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, and Edward Weston.

Opening reception: Friday, July 1, 6 – 8:30PM

On view on Sundays from noon to 4PM and by appointment throughout July and August, 2022.

Click HERE to see works from this show.

Press Release

Paul Mpagi Sepuya: 144 Powers

June 14 - September 30

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MULTITUDES

January 24, 2021 - September 5, 2022

Many minds, one project: the American Folk Art Museum is a collection of multitudes. Marking the occasion of the Museum’s 60th anniversary, the displays on view mine this figurative expression as a metaphor for the vast breadth of the Museum’s holdings and its many creators. From its inception in the 1960s and gathering momentum over the decades, AFAM developed as a “collection of collections,” a result at once unified and expressive of numerous perspectives.

Omnipresent throughout the exhibition is the concept of multitudes as reflected in the artistic process itself—from gestures of repetition and seriality, as well as organizing acts of systematization, memorialization, inventory-taking, and the creation of casts of characters. Meanwhile, across the galleries, groupings prompt consideration of art-making and collecting as aligned creative practices, each contributing to identity-formation and world-building. Presented non-chronologically, the works are visually clustered to reveal not only their individuality but also their commonalities and underlying patterns.

Moving across four centuries, AFAM’s collection brings together a rich array of voices, experiences, and mindsets, yielding a correspondingly diverse set of objects: community-based creations rooted in long-standing traditions; functional but highly aesthetic objects reflecting widespread popular practices; distinctive works by neurodivergent individuals made outside the purview of artistic peers; works as fragments entangled in lifelong private mythologies. Rejecting artificial and discriminatory boundaries prevalent in dominant art historical narratives, by which formally trained artists are often constrained, the identity of the Museum’s collection has been formed and reformed over the years by newly-added makers and fresh ideas. The idea of multitudes invites a meditation on the complexities of the Museum’s evolving and multifaceted collection as a larger whole, constituting more than the sum of its parts.

Black Every Day: Photographs from the Carter Collection

June 11 - September 11

This exhibition explores over a century of photographic representations of Black Americans as represented in the Carter collection. Instead of focusing on major historical events or contemporary images of strife and violence, Black Every Day explores the fullness and richness of Black culture, addressing themes of community, excellence, family, and labor.

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Wendy Red Star: Wendy Red Star: American Progress

April 6 - August 28

Wendy Red Star: American Progress presents work by the artist, Wendy Red Star, who was raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana. Red Star’s work is informed by her cultural heritage and engagement with many forms of creative expression, including photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance.This exhibition, installed throughout the first floor of the museum, explores the ideas of Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny through the lens of John Gast’s 1872 painting, American Progress. Gast’s painting exemplifies the justification of American settlers driving Indigenous communities off their land during the 19th century.

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Gideon Mendel: Watermarks

July 15 - August 13

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Joyce Tenneson: Draped and Veiled: 20×24 Polaroid Photographs by Joyce Tenneson

May 25 - October 10

Standing behind the substantial presence of the large format Polaroid 20×24 camera—weighing 200 pounds and the size of a refrigerator—artists peer through the viewfinder towards another world. The process of creating the unique large dye transfer prints imparts framing to a scene and quality to an image that balances subtlety with boldness, softness paired with an undeniable presence. The 20×24 Polaroid adds an additional layer of veiling and diaphanous softness to the imagery in Joyce Tenneson’s Transformations series, which she began in 1985 and engaged with through 2005.

Transformations features partially or fully nude figures poetically presented; Tenneson’s photographs have always been interested in the magic of the human figure, contained within bodies of all ages and emotions in a broad range that are both vulnerable and bold. She interweaves elements that feel vaguely mythological or symbolic, her figures embodying Classical sculptures of gods and goddesses, both mighty and mercurial. Elements such as shells, fruits, or daggers are expressions of inner journeys and self-discovery, and draped fabric and netting echo the shifting flow of time, energy, and identity. The ethereal quality imparted by the Polaroid process resonated with Tenneson, who stated: “I often felt like a channel—the images that had been part of my inner psyche for years emerged from some mysterious source.”

This exhibition is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and curated by Hilary Schroeder, assistant curator.

Richard Misrach, Guillermo Galindo: Border Cantos | Sonic Border

July 22 - October 24

Border Cantos | Sonic Border, a unique collaboration between American photographer Richard Misrach and Mexican American sculptor and composer Guillermo Galindo, uses the power of art to explore and humanize the complex issues surrounding the Mexican-American border through a transformative and multi-sensory experience.

Misrach, who has photographed the border since 2004, beautifully captures landscapes and objects, including things left behind by migrants. His large-scale photographs, along with grids of smaller photos, highlight issues surrounding migration and its effect on regions and people, and also introduce a complicated look at policing the boundary.

Responding to these photographs, Galindo fashioned sound-generating sculptures from items Misrach collected along the border, such as water bottles, Border Patrol “drag tires,” spent shotgun shells, ladders, and sections of the border wall itself. The sounds they produce give voices to people through the personal belongings they have left behind. The composition embraces the Pre-Columbian belief that there was an intimate connection between an instrument and the material from which it was made, with no separation between spiritual and physical worlds. Based on the Mesoamerican Venus calendar, Sonic Border plays for a total of 260 minutes and is separated into 13 cycles of 20 minutes. Within these cycles, the instruments play in small groups of two or more, or all together as an orchestra.

Presented in English and Spanish, Border Cantos | Sonic Border offers perspective on the challenges of migration, inviting us to bridge boundaries. When experienced as a whole, the images, instruments, and emanating sounds create an immersive space in which to look, listen, and learn about the complicated issues surrounding the Mexican-American border. While the artists do not seek to provide solutions to these issues, they do provide insight into a place where most people have never ventured, creating a poignant connection that draws on our humanity.

Border Cantos | Sonic Border is organized by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. Support for the national tour of Border Cantos | Sonic Border is provided by Art Bridges.

Cristina Velasquez: As If It Were the Sun

July 16 - August 27

Assembly is pleased to present As If It Were the Sun, new work by Colombian artist, Cristina Velásquez. This is Assembly’s debut exhibition at our brick-and-mortar gallery in Houston, Texas. As If It Were the Sun extends the artist’s inquiry into the photographic gaze against issues of identity, history, and colonialism through photographs and photographic weavings made with cardboard. 

Jeremiah Ariaz: Louisiana Trail Riders

August 6 - August 27

Blue Sky is pleased to announce Louisiana Trail Riders, an exhibition of photographs by Jeremiah Ariaz.

In-Person Artist Talk: Saturday, August 6, 2PM.

Jeremiah Ariaz examines Creole history and horse culture in Louisiana Trail Riders. Since 2014, Ariaz has been photographing various southwest Louisiana clubs’ weekend trail rides—the Crescent City Cowboys, Desperados, Buffalo Soldiers, and The Stepping In Style Riding Club, among other groups. Ariaz was raised in Kansas and is now a Professor of Art at Louisiana State University. He received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His artworks explore the West as both a physical space and a terrain for the imagination.