Fri 10/26 @ 6-9PM
The Akron Art Museum is throwing a party to mar the openings of two new exhibitions.
Jeff Donaldson’s Dig gives local viewers a window into the AFRIcobra movement art movement, founded on the south side of Chicago in 1968. Its co-founders (of whom Donaldson was one) wanted to make art that reflected the black pride sensibility driven by the civil rights movement, to explore black culture and society for a black audience. Donaldson’s paintings, prints and mixed media works are bold, brilliant and complex, and feature African motifs. This is his first museum retrospective.
Allison Zuckerman’s Pirate and Muse refers to her practice of plundering art history — Picasso, Lichtenstein, Cezanne — and recontextualizing it in bits and pieces, adding shards of images drawn from pop culture and cartoons (Disney!) Her digitally assembled images — as complex and overflowing as Donaldson’s but in a completely different way — steal from male artists to almost mockingly explore how they’ve used women’s images and propose another approach.
You can dress up or down for the opening, and since it’s going on Halloween, you can even wear a costume. There’ll be food, music and special guests. Members get an advance look from 6-8pm; then it’s free and open to the public from 8-9pm.
