4 New Exhibits Opening At Montclair Art Museum: See What's Coming

MONTCLAIR, NJ — The Montclair Art Museum will be hosting four new exhibitions, which are set to open in September and November.

The museum released the following details about each exhibit.

“Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale” (opens Friday, Sept. 15)

Inspired by a show at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in 2021, “Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale” will display 10 artworks from PAFA alongside foundational works from the Montclair Art Museum’s collection of American women artists.

According to the museum:

“This groundbreaking exhibition invites viewers to consider how space, size, scale, and repetition can be interpreted as political gestures in the practices of many women artists. Together, this comprehensive group of artworks reveal the varied approaches of women artists for whom space is a critical feature of their work, whether they occupy significant space on walls or engage three-dimensionally with gallery spaces through sculpture and installation. Also addressed is the visual power of seriality and repetition as spatial visual practices, as well as the diverse methods of asserting and reclaiming the spaces of women’s bodies. On view in Taking Space for the first time at MAM since 2018 is Kara Walker’s cut-paper silhouette installation Virginia’s Lynch Mob (1998).”

The array of artists represented in “Taking Space” includes: Mequitta Ahuja (b. 1976, Grand Rapids, MI), Edna Andrade (1917–2008, b. Portsmouth, VA), Jennifer Bartlett (1941–2022, b. Long Beach, CA), Nanette Carter (b. 1954, Columbus, OH), Lalla Essaydi (b. 1956, Marrakesh, Morocco), Eiko Fan (b. 1951, Tokyo, Japan), Hope Gangloff (b. 1974, Amityville, NY), Clarity Haynes (b. 1971, McAllen, TX), Barbara Kruger (b. 1945, Newark, NJ), Suzanne McClelland (b. 1959, Jacksonville, FL), Elizabeth Murray (1940–2007, b. Chicago, IL), Alice Neel (1900–1984, b. Gladwyne, PA), Betty Parsons (1900–1982, b. New York, NY), Jaune Quick-to- See Smith (Cree/Salish/Shoshone, b. 1940, Saint Ignatius, MT), Ana Vizcarra Rankin (b. 1977, Maldonado, Uruguay), Alyson Shotz (b. 1964, Glendale, AZ), Sandy Skoglund (b. 1946, Weymouth, MA), Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971, Camden, NJ), Kara Walker (b. 1969, Stockton, CA), Kay Walkingstick (Cherokee, b. 1935, Syracuse, NY), Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953, Portland, OR), Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota, b. 1976, Madison, WI), and Emmi Whitehorse (Diné [Navajo Nation], b. 1957, Crownpoint, NM).

The exhibition will run through Jan. 7, 2024.

“Siona Benjamin: Lilith in the New World” (opens Friday, Sept. 15)

New Jersey-based artist Siona Benjamin (b. 1960, Mumbai, India) will unveil the graphic-arts inspired banner “Lilith in the New World” this fall in the Laurie Art Stairway. This monumental piece – measuring 13 feet high by 30 feet wide – explores the joys, passions, and anguish of both time-honored and unfairly reviled women of the Hebrew canon.

According to the museum:

“A recurring figure in the artist’s oeuvre, Lilith was the mythological first wife of Adam, who stands as an icon of independence and courage. The artist has reclaimed this iconic figure by combining styles derived from comic books, Pop art, Bollywood, street graphics, Indian folk images, Persian miniatures, and Hebrew manuscripts. Lilith’s blue skin is ‘a symbol of being other … a woman of color,’ like the artist herself.”

The museum continued:

“Since immigrating to the United States in 1986, Benjamin has been pondering the meaning of belonging in her adopted homeland from the multiple perspectives of being South Asian, an immigrant, an American, a woman, and a Jew. She received an MFA in painting and another in Theater set design while in the United States after completing undergraduate art degrees in Mumbai. In 2011, Benjamin was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to India and in 2017 was awarded a second Fulbright Fellowship to Israel.”

The exhibition will run through Aug. 4, 2024.

“Inspired by the Weight of an Object–A Partnership with Studio Montclair” (opens Friday, Sept. 15)

For the third year in a row, the Montclair Art Museum is working in collaboration with Studio Montclair to present a juried show inspired by the museum’s fall exhibition.

According to the museum:

“Juried by Virginia Block and Ira Wagner, the MAM’s Executive Director, the exhibition will run concurrently at the Montclair Art Museum and Studio Montclair’s Leach Gallery at 641 Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair. Weight of an Object builds on the approaches and themes of the women artists being exhibited in Taking Space. While not limited to women artists, the works on view utilize the scale of both the works themselves as well as their subject matter, multiple media, depictions of the body, and abstraction to consider the many ways that space itself can be interpreted and incorporated in artistic expression.”

The exhibition will be on view through Oct. 28, 2023.

“Joel Meyerowitz: Photographs from Cape Cod (1976-1987)” (opens Friday, Nov. 10)

This November, the museum will welcome the first solo exhibition in the New York City-area in six years featuring photographer Joel Meyerowitz (b. 1938). Drawn from a trove of 201 Meyerowitz photographs anonymously donated to the Montclair Art Museum in 2021, the exhibition will feature 22 photographs taken by Meyerowitz of Cape Cod from 1976 to 1987.

According to the museum:

“During the summers of 1976 and 1977, Meyerowitz began to work with the light, landscape, architecture and people of the Cape, especially in the Truro-Provincetown area. These contemplative observations of space, mood, light, and color pervade the variety of subjects in the photographs on view. His beautiful, serene photographs convey the finest nuances of color and light on the Cape’s unique juncture of sky, sea, and land.”

The museum continued:

“Meyerowitz is an award-winning photographer whose work has appeared in more than 350 exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world. Celebrated as a pioneer, Meyerowitz was one of the first photographers to successfully transition from black-and-white to color in fine-art photography. After studying painting and medical drawing at Ohio State University, where he received a BFA in 1959, Meyerowitz taught himself photography in 1962. By 1976, he had turned primarily to color photographs of architectural light and space made with a large-format view camera.”

The exhibition will be on view through the spring of 2024.

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