Lines of Influence: Artists Teaching Artists celebrates the longstanding tradition of artists educating and learning from one another. The exhibition illuminates diverse pedagogies of artmaking across generations, tracing networks of mentorship that include color theorist Josef Albers, plein air instructor William Merritt Chase, Abstract Expressionist pioneer Hans Hofmann, and feminist educators Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro.
Drawing from the Heckscher Museum’s collection, this exhibition brings together 54 works by 39 artists, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and ceramics that span the nineteenth century to the present. It showcases never-before-exhibited works such as drawings of plaster casts by Thomas Anshutz and a terra cotta sculpture by Mary Frank. Other key works include an early abstract painting that Elaine de Kooning created while studying with Albers at Black Mountain College, teaching sketches by George Grosz, and a luminous “mindscape” painting by Richard Mayhew. Lines of Influence highlights instances in which artists collaborated, apprenticed, and guided one another, revealing the vibrant exchanges that shaped their artistic legacies.
Embracing the Parallax: Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland showcases twenty-two gelatin silver prints from the Heckscher Museum’s collection that span key points in the photographer Berenice Abbott’s career, and pairs them with the writing of her lifelong romantic partner, art-critic Elizabeth McCausland. Centering photographs and text from the 1939 book Changing New York, this exhibition unpacks Abbott and McCausland’s prolific partnership and explores how it contributed to key moments in the crystallization of modernity. A part of the Heckscher’s 2025 Pride initiative, this exhibition raises questions about the politics of visibility and invisibility by examining Abbott and McCausland’s intellectual partnership and romantic relationship. Abbott and McCausland’s collaborative projects demonstrate how documentary photography can be used as a tool to foster civic responsibility by exposing the invisible social, economic, and political factors that shape our world.
Conflict and Context, the theme of the 2023 Arts and Cultural Management Conference (ACMC), is boundless. This exhibition explores how conflict intersects with, and is mediated by, the art world. The five artists included in this show not only contextualize specific conflicts, but call to action different ways of addressing them. When conflicts are exposed by artists, it can act as a catalyst for change. We aim to challenge perspectives, spur conversations often deemed difficult, and offer a space for reflection. Conflict and Context showcases works by five international artists who live and work in Vienna, Austria at Garage Grande, Vienna.
The five artists included in this show are: Maurício Ianês, Georgij Melnikov, Mirjana Mustra, Nur, and Ziliä Qansurá. Together, their pieces complement each other, examining a multitude of global issues, from critiquing colonialism and capitalism, to highlighting the rise of femicides, to examining the fears that come with new technologies. Despite being a localized show in Vienna, each artist has their own conflicts and contexts.
This show was co-curated by Grazia de Colle and Jessica Rosen.
Breaking down the barrier between photographer and subject, Larry Fink: Beyond the Gloves gives an intimate in-the-moment look into the electrifying, bloodthirsty, vulnerable, and glory-filled world of boxing. Looking beyond machismo displays, Fink’s black-and-white photographs are deeply complex, highlighting the tender homosocial interactions that permeate life around the ring. These bold photographs reveal how race relations and social inequality in America are on display through modern-day sanctioned violence, while simultaneously giving a glimpse into the gentle moments that are as much a part of the world of boxing as the fights themselves.
