Around the MAG
What's New
MAGazine has gone digital! The Gallery's annual member magazine is now Around the MAG, with headlines and features that change each month. Don't look for us in your mailbox, but do visit this site often. (If you're a MAG member, you'll still receive ARTiculate, our bimonthly calendar, by US mail.)
On October 15, the lively preveiw party for Paint Made Flesh attracted 1,200 people.
Defining Beauty
“In pop culture—in movies, on TV, in the pages of fashion magazines—the nude bodies we see are airbrushed, powdered, polished to perfection,” writes Susan Stamberg of NPR’s Morning Edition in a recent feature. But in the “sometimes brutal, sometimes stunning” canvases in Paint Made Flesh, she notes, “you’ll see a different story: scars, bumps, blots, bulges of fat.”
The show, on view at MAG through January 3, features works by such powerhouse artists as Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Willem de Kooning, Alice Neel, Philip Guston, Eric Fischl, Jenny Saville and Julian Schnabel. Their works, many of them larger than life, use paint to simulate the look and feel of flesh while delving into universal themes of sexuality, illness, aging, and death, Learn more
On the way to the show, stop by the Forman Gallery to see related works from the MAG collection.
On November 12, the 2000-year-old coffins of Egyptian official Pa-debehu-Aset were moved into new permanent quarters in the Helen H. Berkeley Gallery of Ancient Art (photo at left). When it opens December 16, this second-floor installation will showcase antiquities from Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.
On the first floor, the Gill Discovery Center (which formerly housed the coffins) is now closed for renovation, and traffic has been rerouted away from the former entrance.
Both upstairs and downstairs, some artwork adjacent to construction areas has been moved for safekeeping; please pay attention to signage.
From top: Head Fragment (Nigeria, 17th–18th c.). Yam Cult Mask (Papua New Guinea, 20th c.)
An intriguing new reinstallation on the Gallery's first floor explores the cultures of Africa, Oceania and the Americas.
Traditions and Encounters brings together objects created for both ceremonial and everyday use. Across cultures, these diverse works share common themes—masquerade, body modification, transformation, use of pattern, rites of passage and human relationships to the natural world. Bridging past and present, their makers often infuse the cultural traditions of their ancestors with references to contemporary society.
Related programs include an educators' inservice (November 18) and Dr. David Anderson's Origin of Life on Earth (November 22),
