New Art Center (NAC)
61 Washington Park
Newton, MA 02460
USA
The New Art Center is excited to announce the 2015–16 Curatorial Opportunity Program selections.
The Curatorial Opportunity Program (COP) is an open-call curatorial platform that investigates contemporary culture through the visual arts. It makes possible diverse curatorial visions in a collaborative, non-profit and alternative exhibition space. Curators of selected group exhibitions receive a 1,000 USD stipend and administrative, promotional and technical support.
Decoys and Devices
November 6–December 19, 2015
Curated by: Liz Blum (Newburyport, MA)
Artists: Terry Conrad (Round Lake, NY) & Danny Goodwin (Delmar, NY)
Artists Terry Conrad and Danny Goodwin playfully transform raw materials to make objects, prints and photographs that are at once low-tech DIY and cool and clinical. Focusing on process and its potential for theatricality, the relations between image-making and sculpture are investigated.
You Are Here
January 8–February 20, 2016
Curated by: Pamela Campanaro (Salem, MA)
Artists: Darek Bittner (Portland, ME), Dan DeRosato (Salem, MA), Kevin Frances (Boston, MA), Mark Hoffmann (Salem, NH) and Emma Hogarth (Providence, RI)
This exhibition presents place as physical, geographical, liminal, or psychological spaces. Each artist will interpret the subjective phrase “You Are Here,” commonly found on directory maps, to present place through the scope of their practice.
Merz Framed: Sculpting the Photograph
March 4–April 10, 2016
Curated by: Jamilee Polson Lacy (Providence, RI)
Artists: Anthony Baab (New Orleans, LA), Miriam Böhm (Berlin), Kate Bonner (Oakland, CA), Joshua Citarella (New York, NY), Theresa Ganz (Providence, RI), Daniel Gordon (Brooklyn, NY), Jessica Labatte (Chicago, IL), Marina Pinsky (Los Angeles, CA), Frank Poor (Providence, RI) and Kate Steciw (Brooklyn, NY), among others
Merz Framed: Sculpting the Photograph features artists who use the illusive qualities of photography to manipulate the rich tradition of abstraction and the readymade in sculpture. The exhibition takes its title from the famous Merzbau, German artist Kurt Schwitters’s house-filling sculpture that was destroyed by WWII bombing. The Merzbau was never viewed by the public and could be experienced only through photographic documentation. Likewise, the artists in this exhibition all create or find three-dimensional configurations, and then present photographs of them as final artworks. In most cases, the original formations, often abstract sculpture or experiments with found objects, are never shown outside the studio or beyond their original location.
Obstacle Course
April 19–May 21, 2016
Curated by: Cathy McLaurin (Boston, MA) and Courtney McClellan (Boston, MA)
Artists: Joanna Tam (Boston, MA), Cathy McLaurin (Boston, MA) Garett Yahn (Boston, MA), Nicola Singh (UK), Ghana ThinkTank (US), Tal Gafny (Israel) and Alyssa Carson (US), Courtney McClellan (Boston, MA), and Caitlin Berrigan (Germany)
Obstacle Course performs, examines and critiques collaboration in art making today. Artists and viewers alike advise, adapt, demand, play, teach, listen and translate. Placing process before product, the exhibition questions the offerings and challenges of collaborative and delegated making.
The New Art Center supports the development of visual artists and cultivates a community that appreciates art. We offer a supportive culture that takes art and artists seriously. We serve over 2,500 students annually in hundreds of classes and workshops. Our faculty includes some of New England’s best art educators. In a setting that is welcoming and accessible by public transportation, we offer an inclusive, multi-generational approach to art education that has served children, teens and adults at all skill levels since 1977. We operate one of the few mid-sized nonprofit exhibition spaces in New England, which attracts over 4,000 visitors annually. The Curatorial Opportunity Program (COP) is an open-call curatorial platform unique to the region. It is a collaborative vehicle through which curators and artists present thoughtful and innovative contemporary group exhibitions. It is the foundation of our Connections program for gallery education, and is often connected with our invitational artist in residence program.
Read our full press release here.
Click here to see previously selected COP shows.
