The Art Scene: 05.03.12

Guild Hall’s Members Show

    On Saturday from 5 to 6 p.m., Guild Hall will have a free opening reception for its 74th annual artist members exhibition. The show will remain on view through June 9.

    Lilly Wei, an independent curator, essayist, and critic who writes regularly for Art in America and is a contributing editor at ARTnews, will serve as guest juror. She will award prizes such as best in show, best representational painting, best abstract painting, best sculpture, best work on paper, best mixed media, best photograph, and numerous honorable mention citations.

    Michelle Klein, a curatorial assistant at Guild Hall, organized the show, Christina Mossaides Strassfield, the museum’s director and chief curator, will supervise the installation. Select works will be available for sale.

Harnicks Outside

     “The Outdoor Museum” is a group of photographs taken by Margery Harnick and included in a book of the same title with poems by Sheldon Harnick, a selection of which will be on view at Guild Hall’s Boots Lamb Education Center opening Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m. through July 29.

     The couple, who have had a second home in East Hampton for decades are typically known for other mediums. Margery is a painter and actress who has taken up photography relatively recently. Sheldon is a famous Broadway lyricist, who received a Pulitzer Prize for the musical “Fiorello!” and a Tony Awards for such musicals  as “Fiddler on the Roof.”

   The exhibit will feature, as the book’s subtitle states, “not your usual images of New York” and will include some 15 works with accompanying verse. It is an unexamined view of the city that is by turns gritty, graceful, melancholy, and romantic.

Birth of Feminist Art

    Gail Levin, a scholar and curator whose most recent book was a well-received biography of Lee Krasner, will speak about “1960s Los Angeles and the Birth of Feminist Art” on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. at the Parrish Art Museum.

    Ms. Levin will discuss how the all-male scene at the Ferus Gallery, antiwar protests, demonstrations against a curator who showed no women’s work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and conflicts over the expression of sexuality in art gave rise to the feminist art movement in Los Angeles. The author of “Becoming Judy Chicago,” Ms. Levin will draw upon conversations with those who were there, such as Eleanor Antin, Chuck Arnoldi, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Vija Celmins, Mark di Suvero, Henry Hopkins, Allan Kaprow, Arlene Raven, and Judy Chicago.

    Ms. Levin is a distinguished professor of art history, American studies, and women’s studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and is the acknowledged authority on the American realist painter Edward Hopper.

    The lecture is presented in conjunction with the Southampton museum’s show “EST-3: Southern California in New York — Los Angeles Art From the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection.” Tickets cost $5 for members, $10 for nonmembers.

“Realism/Abstraction”

    The Crazy Monkey Gallery in Amagansett will present the work of Beth Barry and Joyce Silver in “Realism/Abstraction,” opening tomorrow.

    Ms. Barry will supply the abstraction. She studied painting at Connecticut College and the Pratt Institute and works as an art therapist. Her landscapes have been likened to Milton Avery’s. Ms. Silver, who has been a psychotherapist and a fabric designer, attended Cooper Union and the University of New Mexico. She paints in a figurative style.

    Artwork by Lance Corey, Jim Hayden, Jana Hayden, Wilhelmina Howe, Cathy Hunter, June Kaplan, Diane Marxe, Daniel Schoenheimer, Ellyn Tucker, and Mark E. Zimmerman will also be on view.

    A reception will be held on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. The show will be on view through May 28.

“Seven Deadly Sins”

    The Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor will open “Tonalism, Trompe l’Oeil, and the Seven Deadly Sins” on Saturday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. It features the art of Kevin Sanders, Colin Berry, and Chad Fisher along with Stephen Bauman, Melissa Franklin, Jimmy Sanders, and Thomas Shelford.

    According to the gallery, the show continues a long American fascination with tonalism, which often depicts landscapes at dawn or twilight with some evidence of human presence, and trompe-l’oeil paintings while showcasing Mr. Fisher’s bronze sculptures, “The Seven Deadly Sins.”

    The beauty of nature will contrast with the beastliness of humanity in this show, which is on view through June 3.