Detroit Art Review – Page 34 – Critical art reviews of Detroit galleries and museums weekly

Phillip K. Smith III, Flat Torus 4. Photograph by Lance Gerber Studio

This year, the Toledo Museum of Art added to its permanent collection Flat Torus 4, an ethereal light installation by multimedia artist Phillip K. Smith III. This work is the visual anchor of the exhibit Luminous Visions. Concurrent with this single-gallery show is a sprawling retrospective of the stained glass art of Judith Schaechter. As different as these two exhibits are in form and content, they both directly engage with centuries of art history, they both take luminosity as their subject, and they’re both visually mesmerizing. As such, these two separate shows compliment each other like the varied notes of a musical chord.

The centerpiece of Luminous Visions is Flat Torus 4, a series of wall-mounted concentric rings which, with the aid of computer software and LED lights, moodily project diffused light into the gallery space. It’s an instillation which recalls the atmospheric light sculptures of Dan Flavin. Flat Torus 4 is tactfully placed in conversation with an ensemble of other works from the TMA’s collection which literally or metaphorically take light as their subject. These include a 19^th Century painting by Sanford Robinson Gifford of Maine’s Mt. Katahdin, beautifully illuminated by a rising sun. And a 15^th Century sculpture of a seated Buddha speaks to the metaphorical and spiritual associations of enlightenment and illumination. The works in this exhibit span nearly 700 years, but Flat Torus 4 is the undisputed star of the show; its soft light bathes the whole room in its shifting colors which slowly and satisfyingly cycle over the course of 40 minutes. This micro-show is an interesting and visually satisfying vignette, and it seems like great starting point for what could be a larger exhibition addressing light and illumination in art across the TMA’s collection.

Phillip K. Smith III, Flat Torus 4. Photograph by Lance Gerber Studio

In contrast to the stately serenity of Luminous Visions, the glass works on view in the traveling show Path to Paradise are loud, irreverent, uncomfortable, and often violent. Yet they’re also undeniably beautiful and cathartic. Glass artist Judith Schaechter takes her inspiration in equal parts from Northern Renaissance art and the aesthetics of Mad magazine. Through January 3, the TMA is showcasing forty of her works, supplemented with original sketchbooks brimming with preparatory drawings which offer behind-the-scenes access into Schaechter’s creative process. Path to Paradise is her first survey exhibition, and given the impressive scale and scope of her body of work, it seems like one that’s long overdue.

The Battle of Carnival and Lent, 2010-2011. Stained-glass panel, 56 x 56 in. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, NY; Marion Stratton Gould Fund, Rosemary B. and James C. MacKenzie Fund, Joseph T. Simon Fund, R. T. Miller Fund and Bequest of Clara Trowbridge Wolfard by exchange, and funds from deaccessioning.

Beached Whale, 2018. Stained-glass panel, 27 x 40 in. Courtesy Claire Oliver Gallery, Harlem, and the artist.

Schaechter manages to take a medium that reached its apex in the Gothic era and masterfully translate it into a 21^st Century vocabulary. By applying a technique of layering glass which results in subtle gradients and shading, she lends her work a contemporary illustrative quality that you wouldn’t see in a 12^th Century rose window. It’s a tedious process—each work takes months to complete– but much like the Old Masters of the Northern Renaissance, Schaechter delights in the details.

This show presents her earliest works in conversation with some of her most recent, surveying the trajectory of her career. Among these include The Flood, a triptych which thrust Schaechter into the national spotlight when it was displayed at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery when the artist was 29 years old. The figures that populate her fabricated worlds often seem caricatured, but she demonstrates an impressive ability to switch back and forth between cartoonish imagery and lucid realism, even within the same work. New or old, all her works are rendered with astonishing detail. In My One Desire, the background is teeming with plants, animals, and dazzling kaleidoscopic bursts of geometric patterns that snugly fill every bit of negative space, recalling a Renaissance tapestry. The work’s theme of a dying unicorn also situates this work in the tradition of Renaissance art, though the story here remains characteristically enigmatic. This horror vacui recurs frequently in her work. In A Play About Snakes, we encounter an elaborate pattern of twisting, writhing snakes that mimic the ornamental patterns found in medieval illuminated manuscripts– the Cross Page from the Lindisfarne Gospels, perhaps. Regardless of the subject matter, all her works teem with ebullient detail; no wonder she describes herself as a “militant ornamentalist.”

Although her work is often thematically dark, it can at times be playfully whimsical. Specimens shows a grid of various imaginary creatures preserved in little jars as if on display in a natural history museum; they seem plucked from the world of Hieronymus Bosch…or perhaps Dr. Seuss. And her improvisatory Exquisite Corpse is an homage to the silly party game of the same name which famously originated at the dinner parties thrown by Surrealism’s founder Andre Breton.

But much of Schaechter’s work is unsettling. We encounter many images of violence and death, a surprising number of which are actually sourced in Renaissance-era paintings and illustrations. Some of these works directly speak to recent and contemporary events. Sister is a disquietingly calm work in which the pose assumed by its lifeless subject references the haunting Vietnam-era photograph of the “Napalm Girl.” But within the work, this young girl inhabits indeterminate space, and Sister (much like Picasso’s Guernica) comes across as a universal statement against wartime atrocity which could apply to any time and any place. And in Emigration Policy, we see a dog drowning as it desperately tries to catch up with a departing ship (or was it thrown overboard?). The violence in her work is never gratuitous, but rather serves to encourage empathy and compassion on the part of the viewer.

The Floor, 2006. Stained-glass panel, 36 x 34 in. Collection of Claire Oliver

The subject matter of Schaechter’s work runs the gamut between agony and ecstasy, and is Shakespearian in its scope. As to the question of why her work is often so uncomfortable, Schaechter responds on her website with a passage excerpted from James Poniewozik essay The Art of Unhappiness: “What we forget…is that happiness is more than pleasure sans pain. The things that bring us the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need someone to tell us that it is O.K. not to be happy, that sadness makes happiness deeper.” Bearing this in mind, as uncomfortable as many of her works might make us, it seems that the body of her work is– in the final analysis—ultimately life-affirming in its unashamed embrace of the totality of the human experience.

The Path to Paradise: An Interview with Artist Judith Schaechter

Toledo Museum of Art – The Path to Paradise: Judith Schaechter’s Stained-Glass Art — Jan. 3, 2021 | Levis Gallery

Mark Beltchenko @ MFSM

By Ron Scott

On November 4, 2020

In Sculpture

Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum at Saginaw Valley State University exhibits the work of Mark Beltchenko

Mark Beltchenko, Installation image, Images courtesy of MFSM.

The Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum conducted its 2018 Regional Biennial Juried Sculpture Exhibition, a state-wide competition for sculptors, and the first prize went to the Detroit Artist Mark Beltchenko. Part of that process resulted in a one-person exhibition at the museum. The Detroit-area sculptor is highly skilled in multiple media can be currently viewed online at marchshallfredericks.org The title of this virtual exhibition ‘SOS (or ***—*** in Morse Code) is often used to denote phrases such as ‘Save Our Ship’ and is comprised of six different series of works by Beltchenko: INSIDER, BIRTHWORKS, HISTORY LESSONS, NOT MY PRESIDENT, PEDESTAL, and DISTRESS, spanning from the year 2006 to the most recent works completed in May 2020.

Mark Beltchenko, MFSM, virtual exhibition at their website, 11.2020

Museums in Michigan and around the country have been hosting virtual exhibitions due to the Covid-19 regulations and have harnessed various technologies to assist in the process. The MFSM used MatterPort technology, allowing the viewer to begin at the open of the exhibition and proceed for a self-controlled visit through the virtual space. https://www.marshallfredericks.net/mb

Mark Beltchenko, HISTORY LESSON – 3rd STONE steel, limestone, brass 6 x 11 x 8 inches

As mentioned, Beltchenko’s work is sorted by what he calls series, and these stone pieces are cut from building parts and then combined with other material. Steel, brass, and limestone carved to look like concrete structures are the ghosts of a man-made world in decay. The metals protrude from and through the concrete-appearing objects as the sculptor reclaims the man-made world’s parts.

Mark Beltchenko, PEDESTAL SERIES #2, limestone, steel

Another series is Beltchenko’s pedestals. This series is a dystopian view of what art could look like in a world void of artistic expression and freedom. The sculpture, Pedestal #1 has an engraved plaque that states “1 of 3 carved objects discovered on the North American continent of Earth.” Art encapsulates and makes possible reasonable communication throughout the history of humankind. The limestone has been carved to resemble human bone as the pedestals are made of steel vein structures that are bare, out of balance, and leaning uncomfortably on edge.

Mark Beltchenko, GOOD OLE NUMBER 45 – steel, 22 x 13 x 24 inches

Artists are people with political views, but few choose to bring those views into their art. Mark Beltchenko is a three-dimensional artist who decides to devote a small part of his work to his view of the United States’ 45th President. The artist uses thorns in this artwork represent the poisonous nature of the 45th President and his current administration; the hiring’s and the firings, the infighting, the tell-all book writing that now exists. So much so, it requires the museum to place a disclaimer upfront: CAUTION This exhibition contains subject matter and imagery that some may find difficult, disturbing, and uncomfortable. Museum staff is available to discuss the works and the artist’s intent.

“The views and opinions expressed in this exhibition are those of the artist and do not necessarily reflect those of the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum, Saginaw Valley State University, our funders or sponsors, including Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs.”

The director of MFSM, Megan McAdow, is quoted from a review, “Beltchenko is not a loud or verbose man, but his work screams at us with a dire urgency. That is not to say that his work is obvious; rather, it is not. It requires effort. One must spend time with the work and breathe into it. You may not immediately recognize the discourse; however, allow yourself to linger, and as one lingers, the layers begin to unfold and reveal its meticulous detail and dialogue. It affects and changes you.”

Equally comfortable working in stone, steel, aluminum, wood, and the non-ferrous metals, Beltchenko’s work serves as a meditation on the good and bad in our current lives: The environment, political hypocrisy, positive growth, greed, and human narcissism – not necessarily in that order, are all covered through his works.

His three-dimensional imagery communicates ideas in ways that are both primitive and profound.

The artist, through his work, is clear about his political views. Beltchenko states: “These works reflect extreme emotion because I’m highly affected by what is going on. I’ve never been politically motivated in the past, but we are at a point where we can’t take this anymore. I have a voice, and my voice is in my art.”

Mark Beltchenko earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Alma College, Alma, Michigan.

Marshall Fields, Sculptor, in his studio in the mid-1980s.

The exhibition at the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum, Mark Beltchencko: • • • – – – • • • (SOS) runs through January 16, 2021.

To plan your visit: https://www.marshallfredericks.net/mb

Tom Livo @ Image Works

By K.A. Letts

On October 26, 2020

In Paintings

Paintings by Tom Livo, Installation shot, All images courtesy of Image Works

Like many cultural institutions in the era of Covid-19, art galleries are struggling with economic pain that goes along with the physical peril of the pandemic. So it’s a pleasure to find an art venue that is both showing interesting work and managing to keep the lights on. Image Works is the brainchild of photographer Chris Bennett, a recent arrival to the Detroit area from Portland, Oregon. While the back portion of Image Works is dedicated to Bennett’s day job as a provider of fine art and photographic printing, the front features a small but pristine gallery where the paintings of Tom Livo are on display until November 27.

In the roomful of Livo’s images now at Image Works, the artist explores childhood memories, translating family snapshots into painterly compositions that recapture and give significance to fleeting recollections of times past. Born in Garden City, Michigan in the 60’s, the CCS graduate describes his method: “I revisited family albums, shuffling through stacks of old Polaroids and snapshots, choosing which to paint. The people and situations come alive again, reigniting fond, half memories and themes that, I suppose, resonate universally.”

Tom Livo, Walking My Gargoyle, Oil on Board, 12×12″, 2019

Two bodies of the artist’s work are represented in the gallery, each quite different from the other in scale, palette, composition and mood. By comparing and contrasting them, we can find a way into the artist’s mind and discover both his ambivalence and his affection for family, friends and his own childhood.

One side of the gallery is packed, salon style, with small, usually colorful, paintings of figures, many of them children. Derived from photographs of long-ago holidays and parties, the kids are routinely costumed and mugging for the camera. The compositions emphasize the outsize personalities of the subjects; often the children are disguised as monsters. The pictured adults are lumpy, unglamorous, almost as monstrous as their costumed offspring, but unembarrassed by their own imperfections. They boldly make eye contact with the viewer: while they know they are being watched, they are also watching us.

Tom Livo, The Hair Curlers, Oil on Board, 12×12″, 2019

Because the pieces in this collection are intimate in scale, the virtuosity of Livo’s brushwork surges to the fore–these small works are beautifully painted. Backgrounds are either (mostly) flat white or minimally detailed. The general effect of these paintings, while subtly menacing, is cheerful, even gleeful.

By contrast, the big monochrome paintings that make up the rest of the artworks in this exhibit are too chilly to be nostalgic. They are arms length recollections, replete with ambiguous meaning and emotion. The painting She’s Not There, is an exercise in mid-tone gray that recalls the low resolution, low contrast images of pre-color television. An elderly woman (the artist’s grandmother, as it happens) stands in a featureless room, next to a television that is as much an enigmatic presence as she is. The blank face of the turned-off set is echoed in the glare of the woman’s glasses, obscuring her eyes, and implying, it seems, the diminished presence of old age. The two companion figures, tv and woman, are relatively small within the blank expanse of the modest interior, a device the painter employs again in his painting N’Octover. In the picture, a young man reclines, apparently asleep in an armchair. The table lamp, centrally located, seems more sentient than the man. Here, the emptiness of the room suggests a barren psychic landscape where the inhabitants’ interior lives are unknown and unknowable.

Tom Livo, She’s Not There, Oil on Canvas, 64×48″, 2020

Livo explores a different compositional strategy in his portrait of a young, bespectacled girl. Her gray face fills the picture, like a woman in a particularly joyless Alex Katz painting, and we are hard pressed to penetrate the smooth surface of her skin to find the soul within. The artist’s lens zooms back out for his most engaging black and white painting, The Riviera. Unlike She’s Not There and N’Octover, The Riviera is set outdoors, in a neighborhood very much like the one outside the gallery walls of Image Works. A tidy brick ranch home with a lush yard provides the background for a sporty muscle car in the driveway. The two men in the picture seem relaxed and satisfied with their lot, comfortable at a time when the American Dream seemed like an entitlement. Today, the neighborhood remains, but the sense of ease has gone.

Tom Livo, The Riviera, oil on canvas, 48” x 60”, 2020

Livo’s paintings memorialize a time and place to which he can’t return, and it isn’t clear from the mood of the paintings if he even really wants to. Instead they provide a frame of reference for the present, to help us remember when things were different, if not better. The world we live in today is more consumer driven, more atomized, more diverse and less secure than ever. The past will remain forever out of reach, but with these paintings, Livo seems to be saying that, just sometimes, it’s a joyful and useful exercise to remind ourselves what those days, those people, those places–and we–were like.

Tom Livo, Polish Karen, oil on canvas, 48” x 48” 2020

During the pandemic, Image Works, located at 3726 Monroe St., Dearborn MI 48124, is open by appointment: call 313-768-5020 or email [email protected]

Moving Forward @ OUAG

By Ron Scott

On October 17, 2020

In Design, Drawing, Mixed Media, Paintings, Sculpture

Oakland University Art Gallery opens the fall season with a faculty exhibition

Installation image, Moving Forward, OUAG, 10.2020

Every fall since I can remember, the Oakland University Art Gallery, under the direction of Dick Goody, Professor of Art, Chair of the Department of Art & Art History and director of the Oakland University Art Gallery, has started off the fall season with a large curated show (supported with a four-color catalog) that would have required months in the planning and often brought in artwork from various parts of the United States and beyond. Given the current situation under Covid 19 restrictions, Goody has opted to curate a faculty show, including his own work, supported with information on the web site to provide a venue for his faculty members. I suspect he is waiting until later in 2021 to present the public with something more in keeping with his previous tradition. Nevertheless, the gallery is open to the public, with Covid 19 restrictions in place, noon – 5 pm, Tuesday through Sunday, closing November 22, 2020. It’s worth a visit.

Cody VanderKay, Flattening, 32 X 43 X 3 20, PAINTED OAK, 2020

The work of art that jumped out at me was Backstage, by the artist Cody Vanderkaay, an eclipsed shape object with a highly constructed surface of vertical squared planes painted in progressive shades of green. It’s a new experience. Not a figure, landscape, still life or photo image reference, but a newly experienced object. In the surge of artist returning to painting the figure, Vanderkaay stays on course with his abstract imagery presenting a consistent path for his work to expand and enlighten.

He says in his statement, “The artworks explore and consider how individuals, objects and spaces interrelate, and how relationships between these entities develops over time. The sculptures displayed in this exhibit signify various states of change: A circular plane of wood appears pleated and compressed to produce a variegated effect; a vertical square column bends in diverging directions under invisible force; a small-scale architectural relief implies stories behind the scenes.” Cody VanderKaay was born and raised in North Metro Detroit and graduated from Northern Michigan University with a B.F.A. in Sculpture and from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia with an M.F.A. in Sculpture.

Sally Schluter Tardella, Bulb, Oil on Canvas, 72 x 48”, 2020

The work of Sally Schluter Tardella, Bulb, also attracted this writer, a sort of melancholy oil painting that revolves around a painter’s favorite subject, light. This single bulb illuminates its surrounding vertical space filled with tones of red, brown and grey and a repeating motif of ellipses, lines and small shapes creating a somewhat mysterious abstract space. It is the idea that draws the viewer to the work of art highlighted by something we all recognize: a small domestic light bulb.

Tardella says in her statement, “A wall surrounds, encloses, immures. A barrier, it is a continuous surface that divides rooms, separates and retains elements. I see transparent and opaque layers of material from above and below, as I imagine cross sections of wood beam structures folding into new systems of wall. In Bulb the atmosphere is lit by the single light bulb, the space defined is both deep and blocked by surface texture, whereas in Light, the light source is transparent and the space is shallow. In Fan the screen is made of tactile architectural symbols.” Sally Schluter Tardella uses architectural tropes as metaphor to explore personal ideas of body, gender, culture, and politics. Tardella moved from New Jersey to study Painting at Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Susan Evans, Some Art From My House, Mixed Media, 2020

This eclectic collection of photo imagery, Some Art From My House, is exactly that, a mixture of small photographic images that vary in color size, format and subject, which is meant to demystify the taking of images and their content. There are images I like and others not so much, but it is a window into her perception of what photography is, at least for her.

Evans says in her statement, “ What we look at everyday becomes familiar and generally, familiar things become preferences which define ideas, beliefs and experiences. Although I have not made any of these works as a group these pieces become an intimate self-portrait. The true meaning of the piece is not about each image individually, instead it is about the sum, juxtaposition and connection between the different elements. Who then is the true author of the artwork?” Susan E. Evans received her B.F.A. in photography/holography from Goddard College, and an M.F.A. in photography from Cornell University.

The Moving Forward exhibition features the work of the full-time faculty of the Department of Art & Art History at Oakland University that includes the work of Aisha Bakde, Claude Baillargeon, Bruce Charlesworth, Susan E. Evans, Setareh Ghoreishi, Dick Goody, David Lambert, Lindsey Larsen, Colleen Ludwig, Kimmie Parker, Sally Schluter Tardella, Maria Smith Bohannon and Cody VanderKaay.

OUAG Hosts Faculty Exhibition Moving Forward closing November 22, 2020

Visual Citizenship @ MSU Broad Museum

By Jonathan Rinck

On October 12, 2020

In Photography, Printmaking, Prints

Visual Citizenship, installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2020. Photo: Eat Pomegranate Photography.

The exhibition Visual Citizenship, on view at Michigan State University’s Broad Art Museum through December 26, is a considered show that comprises politically-charged prints and photographs that snugly fill the museum’s trapezoidal Collections Gallery. Its title comes from scholar, author, and filmmaker Ariella Azoulay, who argues that image-viewing is an active civic engagement, and Visual Citizenship explores the implied moral, ethical, and civic questions and obligations presented when a viewer confronts images, particularly images of injustice. The show is thoughtful, timely, and visually satisfying, and it includes artists whose names carry some real weight in the art-world, such as Kathe Kollwitz, William Hogarth, Francisco Goya, and others.

The advents of photography and printing democratized the image to a degree unparalleled until the age of the internet. They’re both relatively inexpensive media, and they don’t rely on moneyed and powerful patrons. Furthermore, photos and prints are easily reproduceable, and together they helped introduce a new visual language of civic and political discourse.

Francisco Goya wasn’t the first artist to harness printmaking to document social and political injustice, but he’s certainly among the most famous. His series of just over 80 prints which comprise his Disasters of War relay in first-person perspective and with unrelenting honesty the gritty and violent events that transpired when Napoleon’s army invaded Spain. The show’s informational panels aptly compare Goya’s etchings to the photographs captured by a modern-day war correspondent. On view is an etching from his Disasters, showing hangmen leading prisoners to a makeshift scaffold where several dead bodies already swing. There are also several etchings from his satirical Follies series. These images, never published in Goya’s lifetime, are freighted with dark and surreal imagery that seems to anticipate by a hundred years the style of the early 20^th century symbolists. Goya’s work is rarely pleasant, but it’s a welcome foil to much of the fawningly polite Napoleonic propaganda produced by the likes of Jacques Louis David or Antoine-Jean Gros.

Duro es el paso! (The way is hard!), from The Disasters of War, 1810-14. Etching and aquatint, 9 1/2 x 12 7/8 inches. MSU purchase, funded by the MSU Development Fund 64.76

Perhaps the most arresting and uncomfortable ensemble of images in the show is the Erased Lynchings series by conceptual artist Ken Gonzales-Day. Gonzales-Day scanned images from actual postcards spanning from 1870 to 1940, all of which depicted photographs of the lynching of Lantin Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. He then digitally erased the victims, leaving only the spectators, who now become the subject of the image. The series addresses the role that bystanders and spectators play during social and political atrocities, and also the erasure of uncomfortable moments from our national narrative.

Erased Lynchings, installation view at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, 2020. Photo: Eat Pomegranate Photography.

Lynching of Frank MacManus, Minneapolis, MN, 1882, from Erased Lynchings 2006-2019. Archival inkjet print on rag paper mounted on cardstock, 6 x 4 ½ inches. MSU purchase, funded by the Nellie M. Loomis Endowment in memory of Martha Jane Loomis, 2019.17.1-5

A generous selection of photographs of significant political marches, rallies, and protests highlights the role that documentary photography played in making people aware of the Civil Rights Movement, perhaps something easily taken for granted now that anyone with a smartphone and a social media account is a potential lay-photojournalist. These images include an ensemble by Leonard Freed, a photojournalist whose seminal work Black in White America (1968) documented the Civil Rights Movement with sensitivity and empathy, emphasizing the humanity of his subjects rather than the acts of violence and brutality they endured—the reverse of what Susan Sontag referred to in On Photography as the “atrocity exhibition,” which have a danger of becoming counterproductive to their cause. Here, a selection of Freed’s photographs variously document a civil rights protest in Brooklyn, the historic 1963 March on Washington, and the 20^th Anniversary March on Washington in 1983.

1963, Washington D.C., USA (March on Washington, 8-28-’63), 1963. Photograph 11 x 14 inches. Courtesy Special Collections, MSU Libraries, Michigan State University

Finally, a quartet of engravings by William Hogarth adds some levity to the exhibit, as Hogarth’s wry, satirical works always tend to do. His characteristically tongue-in-cheek series Humours of an Election, based on an actual 1754 Oxfordshire election, implicates both the Whigs and the Tories in trying to hijack the election through any means necessary. Hogarth’s humorous approach to political critique is about as far from Goya’s nightmarish visions as one could possibly get, though both artists certainly shared a jaundiced perception of those in political power.

Four Prints of an Election: Plate II, Canvassing for Votes, 1757. Hand-colored engraving, 15 3/4 x 21 1/4 inches. MSU purchase 64.16

Visual Citizenship is a rewarding show, and each vignette of photographs or prints could easily be the starting point for a subsequent exhibition. It’s certainly relevant and timely, and not just because this happens to be an election year. After all, in the age of social media, the smartphone, and the viral video, images have become the primary way we gather news and process information, which certainly seems to underscore Ariella Azoulay’s original point that image-viewing is a civic act.

MSU Broad – Visual Citizenship, on view at Michigan State University’s Broad Art Museum through December 26, 2020

Luminous Visions and Path to Paradise @ Toledo Museum of Art

Mark Beltchenko @ MFSM

Tom Livo @ Image Works

Moving Forward @ OUAG

Visual Citizenship @ MSU Broad Museum