Hawaiian-born artist Toshiko Takaezu was known for her genre-defining ceramic works with what she called “closed forms”—sealed vessels whose hidden interiors were meant to spark the imagination. Next month, Takaezu’s life and work will be the focus of a major retrospective at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens. “Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within” will feature over 150 works from private and public collections across the country, co-curated by art historian Glenn Adamson, museum curator Kate Wiener and composer and sound artist Leilehua Lanzilotti. (A 368-page monograph, published in collaboration with Yale University Press, will accompany the exhibition.) Visitors will be able to view a collection spanning seven decades of Takaezu’s career, from her early student work in Hawaii in the decade of the 1940s to the immersive, monumental ceramic forms she produced in the late 1990s to early 2000s. “Takaezu was also a weaver and painter and often made multimedia installations where her ceramics, textiles and paintings worked together Wiener says. To play with this idea, the curators organized the show chronologically, incorporating each of these media into different sections, inspired by Takaezu’s installations. Sound will also play a role. In her ceramic pieces, Takaezu often placed a dried lump of clay inside her closed vessels, creating a musical rattle. For this exhibition, Lanzilotti (finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Music) has developed a series of videos that offer insights into the sonic elements of Takaezu’s work — and visitors can hear these chimes firsthand through an interactive display . From March 20 to July 28. noguchi.org.
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A chef-owned farm shop opens in Hudson, New York
In 2015, chef and cookbook author Emma Hearst and her husband, chef and farmer John Barker, moved from Manhattan to upstate New York with the goal of growing restaurant-quality produce that was hard to source locally. They founded Forts Ferry Farm, a 100-acre farm in Latham, New York, with Barker’s brother, artist and photographer Jamie Barker. The farm now grows more than 250 varieties of vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers, which are included in the prepared foods, honey and spices sold at the Troy Waterfront Farmers Market and online. The next phase in the farm’s development is a physical store, the Farm Shoppe, a 50-minute drive south on bustling Hudson. The whimsical space, which opened in early February, has green seafoam walls and hand-hewn wooden stonework. Its shelves are stocked with seasonal produce and flowers, the farm’s popular hot pepper sauces, and a carefully curated collection of antique tableware, including terrines, serving platters, and ceramic pitchers. Later this summer, look for flea markets in the store’s soon-to-be-completed backyard. fortsferryfarm.com.
From the jungles of Brazil (Inhotim) to ranches in Montana (Tippet Rise Art Center) and historic estates in France (Château La Coste), art parks are popping up in unexpected places around the world. In Jaipur, India, the Madhavendra Palace Sculpture Park, which opened in 2017, debuted its fourth exhibition in late January. Peter Nagy, an American who has run the contemporary gallery Nature Morte in New Delhi for more than two decades, curated the show, bringing together a dozen artists to display their work throughout the apartments of the palace, which is set within the 18th century Nahargarh Fort. In the outdoor courtyard, Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade has installed “Superposition,” an arrangement of polished stone spheres, bronze chairs, and mirrors. Nagy says Kwade was intrigued by the architecture of the palace, which was completed in 1892 as a pleasure retreat for Maharajah Sawai Madho Singh II. There is a complex of identical apartments, each reserved for one of his multiple wives. Wandering through them is like encountering “a maze of architectural buffs,” Nagy says, noting Kwade’s frequent themes of reflection and illusion. The Fourth Edition of the Sculpture Park is on display until December 1st, instagram.com/thesculptureparkjaipur.
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A bright new hotel that evokes the history of Hyères, France
The seaside town of Hyères in the south of France may be best known as an incubator of fashion talent: for the past 39 years, it has hosted the International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Fashion Accessories. However, locals remember its history as a coveted destination for Europeans in the Mediterranean in the late 19th century – a destination that declined in the 1920s as the economy was rocked by World War I and interest shifted to then-emerging destinations such as Nice. When restaurateur and hotelier David Pirone opened Le Marais Plage, a beach club and Italian restaurant, in 2013 and La Reine Jane hotel in 2017, it was to meet growing demand from festival fans and bring his city back to travelers map. Next month, he plans to open the Lilou Hôtel in one of the last remaining original Hyères hotels from 1870. The interiors have been redesigned by Kim Haddou and Florent Dufourcq, winners of the Van Cleef & Arpels grand prize at the Design Parade Toulon 2018. The designers avoided the terracotta accents common in Provençal interiors, opting instead for soft-toned natural materials such as cork floors and hardwood furniture. The trellises evoke the winter gardens of the early 20th century and the use of arched doorways and boisettes in some rooms recall the city’s historic Moorish villa from the 19th century. Even the artwork has a local touch, with pieces chosen in collaboration with Jean-Pierre Blanc, founder of the fashion festival and director of the modernist residence turned art center Villa Noailles. Lilou Hôtel opens March 29, rooms from $130, lilouhotel.fr.
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Nine-to-five artists’ jobs take center stage at a Stanford University exhibition
Did you know that sculptor Larry Bell, famous for his poetic glass boxes, only started working with the material after a piece of glass fell on him while working in a frame shop in Burbank, California? Or that Jeffrey Gibson, the artist who represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in April, started out as a visual merchandiser at the Ikea store in Elizabeth, NJ? What about how minimalist pioneer Sol LeWitt worked as a receptionist at the Museum of Modern Art in New York while Dan Flavin ran the elevator? The impact that the traditional nine-to-five has on artists’ creative output is the subject of a refreshing, insightful exhibition that opened at Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center on March 6. (The show originated at the Blanton Museum in Austin, Texas, last year; the line-up has grown to include additional figures from California.) Divided into seven sections representing artist-inhabited disciplines such as fashion and care, the show presents an array of artworks, from a LeWitt wall drawing to Gibson’s “People Like Us” (2018), an elaborate garment hanging as if in a display case. To research the show, curator Veronica Roberts asked nearly 100 of her colleagues to piece together a history of art and work that had largely gone unwritten. “We make it really hard to be a creative person in this country,” says Roberts. “Being an artist is So not someone sitting in a beret, smoking, having an epiphany. Inspiration can come from truly mundane moments.” “Day Job” is on view at the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University through July 21. museum.stanford.edu.
If you’ve logged into TikTok recently or watched a fashion show, you’re probably aware of the current obsession with bows. Terms like “cottagecore” and “coquette” — referring to styles of dress that liberally use bonnets, corsets and, yes, bows — have become inescapable in some corners of the Internet, while bows have taken over screens and catwalks. (Prada’s fall 2024 womenswear show recently opened with a knee-length shift dress adorned with, by my count, at least 27 black bows.) “Untying the Bow,” a new exhibit at the Museum at FIT in New York, aims to trace the history and decipher the impact of the inevitable adornment. Curated by graduate students from the school’s graduate program in fashion and textile studies, the exhibition features 50 garments and accessories spanning the season. Silk brocades from around 1750 exemplify the bow’s functional origins as an easily untied knot to fasten a garment, while a pink Pepto Comme des Garçons dress from 2007 shows off its decorative potential with a pair of padded bows built into the front his bust. and right hip. The examples in it skew towards women’s clothing (as does the museum’s collection in general), although men’s clothing is represented by a variety of bow ties, an early 20th century straw hat tied with ribbon and English opera flats from the decade of 1930. Why are bows so powerful now? Olivia K. Hall, one of the students who curated the show, says, “It’s a pattern associated with girlhood and innocence — it’s like a reminder that in adulthood fashion can still be playful.” “Untying the Bow” runs March 1-24. fitnyc.edu/museum.
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