Saya Woolfalk: The Empathics

September 28, 2012 – January 6, 2013

Saya Woolfalk: The Empathics, the second exhibition in MAM’s New Directions series of contemporary art, is a multimedia exhibition of new work by the Brooklyn-based artist. Woolfalk’s art questions stable conceptions of racial, ethnic, and gender identity. Her exhibition at MAM will spotlight her current, science fiction-inspired project, The Empathics. The titular Empathics are a fictional group of women who, the artist imagines, strive for a condition of cultural and biological hybridization, blending racial and ethnic identities and gradually transforming from humans into plants. Mimicking a natural history museum display, the exhibition will document the Empathics and their material culture; it will include installation, painting, sculpture, textiles, prints, video, and an interactive website, and will culminate in a series of performances in December 2012. Saya Woolfalk: The Empathics will take place across multiple locations throughout the Museum, including the Roberts Gallery, the Laurie Foundation Art Stairway, and the outdoor video monitors on the Museum’s grounds, and is organized by Alexandra Schwartz, curator of contemporary art.

New Directions, the Montclair Art Museum’s series of solo exhibitions, spotlights emerging and mid-career artists working in all media.

Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico:

Architecture, Katsinam, and
the Land

September 28, 2012 – January 20, 2013

This exhibition, originated by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, will reveal the little-known breadth of Georgia O’Keeffe’s interest in northern New Mexico and will more particularly illuminate her keen sensitivity and deep respect for the Native American and Hispanic cultures of the region. From 1931 to 1945, O'Keeffe created numerous drawings, watercolors, and paintings of Katsina dolls (katsintihu), carved representations of Hopi spirit beings. The exhibition will include sixteen of these Katsina depictions, together with actual Katsina dolls and dozens of her paintings of New Mexico landscapes and architecture.

Also on display will be a selection of classic O’Keeffe flower and shell studies from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and private collections.

Image: Georgia O’Keeffe, Kachina, 1934, oil on canvas. Private Collection.