Eliana Willis

What do the port cities of Venice and Mystic in Connecticut have in common? Both share a long seafaring history and world-class art. On October 15, Mystic Seaport Museum opens “Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano,” an exhibition organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum that features more than 115 artworks from over 40 institutions and private collections that explore how Venetian arts influenced American artists. The show debuted in Washington, DC, and stopped in Fort Worth before docking in Mystic, where it will remain through February 27, 2023.
Christina Brophy, Senior Vice President of Curatorial Affairs, told Artnet News that she had collaborated with the Smithsonian on a previous show, and jumped at the opportunity to host this art exhibition at the maritime museum.
The Mystic edition of “Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass” shifts the show’s sequence to highlight cultural connections between Venice, Mystic, and greater New England. For this edition, Rhode Island’s Tomaquag Museum is loaning a trade bead necklace and beaded top hat, both by Indigenous artists, to emphasize “the incorporation of Venetian and other trade glass into the vernacular of traditional work, which also includes elements of wampum, bone, and porcupine quill,” Brophy said.
Mystic Seaport Museum has also pulled rarely-seen works from its own collection, including glass-plate negatives taken in Venice by the whaler, merchant, and diplomat Henry Hiller, along with a diary documenting one mariner’s Venetian adventures. Lino Tagliapietra, a glass maestro from Murano, appears alongside other living legends he inspired, including Debora Czeresko, Dale Chihuly, and Kim Harty.
Local glass artist Jeffrey P’an also makes an appearance—museum members will have the opportunity to visit his studio for a live glassblowing demonstration. Other programming for the general public includes on-site tours and talks by glass and lacework experts. Throughout the duration of the show, visitors entering the lobby will be greeted by a 35.5-foot Venetian gondola from La Gondola in Providence. The Rhode Island-based specialist gondola tour company will also offer rides on the Mystic River in another of its vessels during the show’s opening weekend.
Since 1929, Mystic Seaport Museum has dedicated its 19 acres to America’s maritime past. Facilities include a 75,000-volume research library, a recreation of a 19th-century seafaring village, and the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard. It also has an extensive collection of film, photography, and over 500 different types of watercraft, as well as a choice selection of prints and paintings.
The museum has plans both to show more of its permanent art collection and to increase its engagement with living artists by commissioning site-specific works that address issues such as climate change and ecology. Rhode Island artist Sue McNally was commissioned to paint an on-site mural called Mystic Blue, and the museum has also commissioned Alexis Rockman to produce 11 paintings around the theme of climate change in the maritime industry for a show called “Oceanus”, which will premiere in May 2023 before traveling domestically and abroad—in true seafaring fashion. Brophy also mentioned a forthcoming call for artists to create an installation for its planned exhibition “Entwined”, slated for 2024, “on Indigenous, African, and African American Maritime Social History.”
Below is a preview of works to be featured in “Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass” before the exhibition sets sail.
Attributed to Società Veneziana per l’Industria delle Conterie (SVC), “Sample Cord with Flameworked Beads”, (Late 19th century—1904). Image courtesy of Illinois State Museum.
Maxfield Parrish, “Venetian Lamplighters” (1922). Image courtesy of National Museum of American Illustration, Newport, RI, and American Illustrators Gallery, New York, NY.

Francesco Toso Borella, Vittorio Toso Borella and Compagnia di Venezia e Murano, “Replica of a Renaissance Goblet (Campanile Cup)” (1903—12). Image courtesy of Iris and Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University.

Scuola dei Merletti di Burano, “Lace Panel with Lion of St. Mark” (20th century). Image courtesy of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Thomas Moran, “A View of Venice” (1891). Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

John Singer Sargent, “A Venetian Woman” (1882). Image courtesy of Cincinnati Art Museum.

Louise Howland King Cox, “May Flowers” (1911). Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Roman Empire, “Mosaic Glass Bowl”, (1st century B.C.E. – 1st century C.E.). Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Giovanni Boldini, “Portrait of James McNeill Whistler” (1897). Image courtesy of Brooklyn Museum.
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This week, the Museum of Design in Atlanta unveils “Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture,” a survey of temporal, reactive, and improvisational architecture, designed by scholar and architect Sekou Cooke.
“Hip-hop architecture had been talked about and debated at Cornell University in the mid-90s, after the legendary thesis project by Nathan Williams,” Cooke told Artnet News. The curator has since written a book on the topic, hosted a symposium, and organized this touring show. “Close to the Edge” outlines the movement’s 25-year rise through facade studies, urban development proposals, installation strategies, and building designs.
While on the surface hip-hop and architecture might appear at odds—one celebrates spontaneity, the other relies on structure—the combination of the two is an “anti-style” design movement that riffs off the music’s playful pastimes: deejaying, emceeing, b-boy dancing, and graffiti.
Sekou Cooke. Photo: Michael Barletta. Courtesy of Sekou Cooke Studio
Cooke has identified three categories that are particularly important to the movement: Identity, Process, and Image. Together, he said, these categories hold space for “designers with deeply rooted, hip-hop identities, those committed to processes extracted from hip-hop elements, and reflecting an image that may somehow be tied back to aspects of public consciousness attributed to hip-hop.”
Designing the show specifically for MODA’s sprawling galleries, Cooke sought to create intimacy through wall text and sonic environments. He met the museum’s mandate for interactivity with a turntable feature “where visitors can manipulate 3D prints in action.” He has also expanded the traveling show’s “If Ya Don’t Know…” glossary wall with “historical images of hip-hop’s elements, grounding them back to a Southern context.”
Altogether, the show asks how call and response can become an architectural imperative, in the same way hip-hop and its entourage activities are all based on flow.
“Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip Hop Architecture” is on view October 15 through January 29, 2023 at the Museum of Design in Atlanta. Take a sneak peek of the exhibition below.
“Close to the Edge” at the Center for Architecture in New York, late 2018. Photo: Erik Bardin, courtesy of MODA.
Ujijji Davis, The Bottega project (2015). Photo: courtesy of Sekou Cooke Studio.
Boris Delta Tellegen, Barlagelaan (2011). Photo: courtesy of Sekou Cooke Studio.
Wildstyle, a proposed new design for the Museum of Hip Hop in Brooklyn, New York by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students Jessie Christensen, Kate Greskoviak, Claudia Lu, and Michael Muchmore. Photo: courtesy of MODA.
ITN Architects, construction photograph from “The End to End Building” in Melbourne, Australia (2015). Photo: courtesy of MODA.
A view of City Thread by design duo SPORTS (Molly Hunker, Greg Corso), in Chattanooga, Tennessee (2018). Photo: courtesy of MODA.
Studio Malka Architecture, Bow-House in Heerlen, Netherlands (2014). Photo: courtesy of MODA.
Lauren Halsey, Crenshaw District Hieroglyph Project (2016). Photo: courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery.
4RM+ULA Architects, exterior perspective rendering of JXTA Arts Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota (2010). Photo: courtesy of MODA.
Maurer United Architects, Zedzbeton 3.0, with Zedz, project poster (2002). Photo: courtesy of MODA.
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Tyler Mitchell has unveiled his latest portraits of Black utopia at Gagosian Davies Street, marking his first solo exhibition in the U.K., and setting the stage for a busy season in London ahead for the artist. 
On view through November 12, the photographs in “chrysalis,” propose a counter-narrative for Black folks, which erases historical trauma, capturing youthful Black bodies in an idyll of nature and leisure, playfully surreal and serene.
From the Greek origin khrysallis, the name denotes the stage in a butterfly’s life cycle where, enclosed within a cocoon, a metamorphosis and maturation take place before it emerges in its final form.
It speaks to the essence of Mitchell’s show, which depicts Black men and women at the cusp of adulthood, and also finds a parallel in the artist’s career—Mitchell has rapidly matured since his debut as a commercial photographer in 2018, and is now a respected voice in conceptual photography, whose work will adorn walls at Frieze Masters, Saatchi Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum, all before the end of the season. 
Tyler Mitchell, Chrysalis (2022). ©Tyler Mitchell. Image courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, and Gagosian.
The photographs capture protagonists simultaneously poised and relaxed, whether in positions of rest, recline, and suspension, or mid-movement; swimming, splashing, and playing with the natural elements of land, sky and water. “Collectively, these become the figments of an imaginative and psychic state of being, one in which radiance, resistance, restraint, comfort, and full agency exist,” Mitchell said of his work in a press statement.
Part imagination, part reality, Mitchell’s cinematic dreamscapes create a space where Black-skinned bodies are free to exist in a way that they cannot always in contemporary America, positioning themselves joyfully in any scenario they please, unencumbered by social prejudice.
In Cage, a young Black woman lies, debonair, propped up by her elbows on the grass, legs crossed nonchalantly in the air, against a painted backdrop of garden enclosed within a white-picket fence. In A Glint of Possibility, a young male figure suspends from a tire swing, resting in equilibrium as he contemplates his reverberating reflection in the surface of a lake, while Treading shows a boy’s head emerging from the water, flanked by a cluster of balloons.
Tyler Mitchell, A Glint of Possibility (2022). ©Tyler Mitchell. Image courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, and Gagosian.
Though surreal, Mitchell’s illusory world constructs an optimistic vision, of subjects existing freely in the outdoor space, of a carefree and dreaming youth denied many due to historical, economic, and social exclusion. No work exhibits this quite like Mitchell’s Simply Fragile. Depicting a bare-chested young man leaning aback on a patch of grass near bordering water, he fixates a downward gaze, cross-eyed, on a beetle fleetingly settled on the tip of his nose, expressing a moment of harmony.
“Tyler grew up in Atlanta, so he’s thinking about Black relationships to the land, historically and present, and how those relationships are both real and mythic,” gallery director Antwaun Sargent told Artnet News, adding that the artist is thinking about “the duality around Black identity, and how different movements, Black gestures, have been interpreted in very different ways.” 
Tyler Mitchell, Tenderly (2022). ©Tyler Mitchell. Image courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, and Gagosian.
Indeed, juxtaposed with these images of subjects in harmony with nature are smaller ones set in diptych pairings depicting figures wading, swimming, and struggling in muddy waters, emanating a palpable sense of danger, that pervades the experience of green spaces, asserting the need to remain vigilant, and not, for example, tread in someone else’s yard. In the expressionistic The Heart, Mitchell depicts a boy half-submerged under a layer of sediment, lying horizontally with his eyes closed shut. In Rapture, a hand reaches out of rippling muddy water, implying a sense of struggle.
As for the triptych Protect from all Elements, it concurrently calls upon elements of both harmony and struggle, as a figure pulls a painted sky backdrop to shroud a coffin-like structure containing tilled earth.
The exhibition has positioned Mitchell, who has become an established name in the U.S., to break out in London. He will be one of the central artists in Sargent’s exhibition “The New Black Vanguard,” at Saatchi Gallery, and later this week will debut new works in Regent Park as ”the first contemporary artist to be commissioned by Frieze Masters,” according to Sargent. Along with curating a night of art and cinema at the V&A, these elements well set the stage for what Sargent calls the “London takeover of one of the defining photographers of his generation.”
“Tyler Mitchell: Chrysalis” is on view through November 12 at Gagosian Davies Street, London.
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With no shortage of world class museums, London usually boasts a good roster of unmissable exhibitions. For the art crowds that flock to the U.K. for Frieze Week, the city is putting its best foot forward with a bumper offering of Modern and contemporary art exhibitions.
Fairgoers who need a break the frenzied bustle and want to see more of what London has to offer outside of Regent’s Park and pop-up tents will no doubt feel spoilt for choice. Here is a round-up of nine of London’s must-see museum shows this week.

“Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics”Barbican Art Gallery, through January 8
“Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics” installation view at the Barbican Art Gallery, 2022. Photo: Lia Toby/Getty Images.
The first U.K. survey of radical American artist Carolee Schneemann, who died in 2019, introduces a whole new audience to her transgressive feminist practice. The Barbican Art Gallery has ample space to house more than 300 objects, including large-scale installations, that give a comprehensive overview of just how varied Schneemann’s output of films, paintings, assemblages, performances, scrapbooks and costumes was over her 60-year career. As the title promises, visitors will learn how Schneemann’s body was often her most enduring medium in a series of works that still serve today as bold challenges to a male-dominated art world.
“Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics”, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS.

“Hallyu! The Korean Wave”Victoria & Albert Museum, through June 25
Installation image of Hallyu! The Korean Wave at the V&A. Photo: Ⓒ Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
This exploration of South Korea’s vast and multifaceted international cultural influence takes its name from the 1990s phenomenon of “hallyu”, or “Korean wave,” which refers to the global popularity of Korean culture. An overview of the country’s modern history leads us from war through military rule and into an era of rapid industrialization. With objects ranging from a 1980s sculpture by the video art pioneer Nam June Paik right through to many viral sensations from very recent memory, including K-Pop superstars, the hit Netflix drama Squid Game and Bong Joon-Ho’s Oscar-winning film Parasite, the exhibition proves that this mania shows little sign of slowing down.
“Hallyu! The Korean Wave,” Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL.

“Kamala Ibrahim Ishag: States of Oneness”Serpentine South Gallery, through January 29
Installation view of “Kamala Ibrahim Ishag: States of Oneness” at Serpentine South Gallery. Photo: George Darrell, courtesy Serpentine.
For her first solo exhibition in London, the Sudanese artist Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, now in her 80s, returns to a city that has been woven into her practice since the start. The most historic works on show date back to the 1960s, when Ishag was a student at the Royal College of Art, while other objects relate to a period of self-exile in London during the 1990s and 2000s. Sudanese life, history, spiritualism and culture are the primary themes running through her art, specifically as those subjects relate to the experiences of women. Among the newest pieces are two paintings, Bait Al-Mal (2019) and Blues for the Martyrs (2022), which both reflect on the devastating loses of the Khartoum Massacre on June 3, 2019.
“Kamala Ibrahim Ishag: States of Oneness,” Serpentine South Gallery, Kensington Gardens, W2 3XA.

“Hyundai Commission: Cecilia Vicuña”Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, through April 16
Installation view of Hyundai Commission: Cecilia Vicuna at Turbine Hall, Tate Modern. Photo by Matt Greenwood; © Tate.
The latest artist to take on the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, one of London’s hottest annual commissions, is the Chilean artist and poet Cecilia Vicuña. Using the same ancient Andean-influenced methods, her works range in scale from the tiny sculptures that make up the Precarios series to her vast textile installations, including Quipu Womb, an exploration of feminine energies which was recently acquired by the Tate. This latest commission, Brain Forest Quipu, uses found objects like plant fibre, rope, cardboard and wool to reflect on the destruction of the rainforest both as a driver of the climate crisis and as an act of violence against indigenous communities.
“Hyundai Commission: Cecilia Vicuña,” Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG.

“Maria Bartuszová” Tate Modern, through April 16
Installation view of “Maria Bartuszová” at Tate Modern. Photo: courtesy of Tate Modern.
In another of many firsts for London this week, the Slovakian abstract sculptor Maria Bartuszová receives her first substantial exhibition in the UK, just coinciding with the inclusion of her work in the “Milk of Dreams” curated exhibition at the 59th Venice Biennale. Giving a sense of the breadth of her exploration into sensual, suggestive and organic forms, more than 80 plaster works have been staged beside bronze casts and aluminum reliefs. The show also sheds light on how Bartuszová’s life was affected by totalitarianism and the Cold War, crucial context that highlights the considerable struggles that she overcame to establish herself as a pioneering woman on the international art scene.
“Maria Bartuszová,” Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG.

“Lucian Freud: New Perspectives”The National Gallery, through January 22
Lucian Freud, Bella and Esther (1988). Photo: © The Lucian Freud Archive. All Rights Reserved 2022/ Bridgeman Images.
In celebration of the centenary of the birth of one of the greatest 20th-century British artists, the National Gallery has brought together more than 65 of his best known works from the 1940s up to the 2000s, including portraits of his children, various lovers, the financier Jacob Rothschild, artist David Hockney, performer Leigh Bowery and Queen Elizabeth II. The location is especially apt because Freud had a special pass to enter the National Gallery during closing hours, sometimes even visiting in the night, and many of his historical influences, including Holbein, Rubens and Velázquez, can be found just a short walk away.
“The Credit Suisse Exhibition—Lucian Freud: New Perspectives,” National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN.

“Christopher Kulendran Thomas: Another World”ICA London, through January 22
Still from Christopher Kulendran Thomas’s film The Finesse (2022).
A new film, The Finesse, produced in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann, is the centerpiece of Christopher Kulendran Thomas’ solo show at the ICA, a variation of which is also running at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. Existing across multiple screens and a projection, the work takes us back to the early years of the internet, when the Tamil Liberation movement set up an alternative, cooperative global economy during the Sri Lankan Civil War. By combining archival footage with A.I.-generated avatars, the show prompts us to imagine radical alternative uses for technology in the present day.
“Christopher Kulendran Thomas: Another World,” ICA London, The Mall, SW1Y 5AH.

“Zadie Xa: House Gods, Animal Guides and Five Ways 2 Forgiveness”Whitechapel Gallery, through April 30
Installation view of Zadie Xa: House Gods, Animal Guides and Five Ways 2 Forgiveness at Whitechapel Gallery in London. Photo by Andy Keate.
A new immersive installation by Zadie Xa continues the artists long time interest in her country of heritage, Korea. Housed within a traditional “hanok” architectural structure, a range of sculptures, paintings and textiles revive many of the traditional Korean legends, ideologies and Buddhist shamanic practices that were left behind during the country’s rapid industrialization of recent decades. Among the highlights are the “Animal Guide” marionettes, including tigers, foxes and seagulls, who each have their own spiritual and cultural resonances.
“Zadie Xa: House, Gods, Animal Guides and Five Ways 2 Forgiveness,” Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, E1 7QX.

“Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924-Today”Design Museum, through February 19
Salvador Dalí, Lobster Telephone (1938). Photo: courtesy of West Dean College of Arts and Conservation; © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, DACS 2022.
The huge impact of Surrealism on art is well known, from Dalí’s clocks to Max Ernst’s experiments with frottage, but although the Surrealists were very interested in creating uncanny objects, their influences on design remain an area that has been under-explored. In a major new survey, the Design Museum brings together examples of interiors, fashion, film and photography—including the work of fashion photographer Tim Walker, design Christian Dior and musician Björk—to show how the same preoccupations with dreams, the absurd, subversion, and desire have tantalized and amused creatives throughout generations.
“Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924–Today,” Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, W8 6AG.
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