To paraphrase a decades old television commercial: “This is not your father’s art exhibition.”
“Gateways to Awareness,” currently on display at the New Bedford Art Museum, aspires to explore the role of memory and the less obvious of the five senses as they relate to our collective perception, understanding and appreciation of art, gently prodding visitors to reconsider the very definition of art itself. All in all, it’s a pretty big ask.
As curated by NBAM Executive Director Suzanne de Vegh, it is a valiant effort, addressing an art audience likely more in tune with the traditional art forms of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and the like than with, as she explains it, “multi-sensory experiences across a variety of genres and media including disability, floral, olfactory and sound arts.”
De Vegh further describes the year-end show as “a veritable tasting menu of the experimental and experiential forms of art that the museum is scheduled to present over the next two years.”
The tasting menu is an inventive, eclectic and engaging sampling that will certainly not be to everyone’s taste. But to stay with the menu metaphor for a moment, those with a curious palate will be pleased, perhaps even sated, by the new offerings.
Due to the inventiveness and creativity of the eight exhibiting artists, “Gateways to Awareness” largely works as an intersectional point between art and science, vision and sound, private and public spaces and between the tactile and the ephemeral, while occasionally alighting on political and social concerns.
The first work seen in the exhibition as one enters the museum lobby is Marissa Chappell Massuco’s “The Living Chair.” It is a reclaimed Victorian-style armchair from which moss and a variety of succulents emerge. It is charmingly quaint and somehow otherworldly as one might expect Bilbo Baggins to be sitting in it, sipping a cup of tea. Next to it, there is a small table with a strong lamp attached to it to keep things green.
Bella Meyer is the granddaughter of Marc Chagall and she received her PhD in medieval art history from the Sorbonne. Her contribution to the exhibition is a large-scale installation called “Memories.” An assemblage of segments of white birch, reeds, cattails and more, it is an evocative work, in which visitors are invited to add to, by taking a flower from a nearby bucket and adding to the lush theatricality of the scene, leaving a memory behind.
Derek Hoffend received an MFA in Art & Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. He has two works in the exhibition. “Sonotron,” created in 2013, is constructed of steel, wood, fabric, RGB LED modules, computer software, speakers and amplification equipment.
In semi-darkness, under a dome of curved tubular steel, there is a mattress on which visitors are invited to lie down upon (after taking off shoes and putting down the prerequisite paper sheet). The acoustics and shifting lights are relaxing, if one is of the right mind.
In an adjoining dark room, Hoffend displays “Portal,” in which a large round cushion is on the floor, surrounded by four glowing towers and lowkey rumbling acoustics. A little time in there could turn an abject cynic toward a zen lifestyle.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is Rachel Rosenkrantz’s “309Hz.” A Providence-based luthier (guitar maker) and a beekeeper, she became aware that bees communicate through honeycombs at a 309 Hz frequency, which is also found within guitar range.
Captivated, she designed a specific hive/guitar soundboard bracing that guided the bees to create combs within the instrument where she needed them for resonance. Dubbed the Pawtuxet guitar project, Rosenkrantz and her apian friends formed a harmonious relationship between nature and artisanry.
Made of honeycombs, cedar, spruce, bubinga, mahogany and more, the guitar itself is enthralling, as is the music that fills the room.
Two of the artists work with scents.
Brian Goeltzenleuchter has been critically celebrated for expanding the olfactory potential for contemporary art. He displays five freestanding hand sanitizing dispensers, as industrial and drab and reminiscent of the pandemic as one could imagine. They are part of his “Scents of Exile” series, begun in 2019.
In each of the dispensers, there are sanitizers created by the artist using cosmetic-grade fragrances to reflect the “scent memories” of refugees and other immigrants. Odors often elicit emotional memories and he notes that with very particular fragrances — dirt for Maria from Bulgaria, incense for Qasim from Pakistan, and Turkish baklava for Pedram from Iran, for example.
Visitors are encouraged to squirt a bit in the palm of their hands and perhaps know something of someone else, if only for a fleeting moment.
The other olfactory art exhibitor is M Dougherty, a nonbinary Los Angeles multidisciplinary artist. In a small room in the museum their “Odor Organ” is on display. A small keyboard sits in front of a series of translucent vertical tubes. They are connected to an air pump.
On one wall is a series of diagrams that serves as a guide in the creation of a particular scent, much like an accord in a perfumery. Among the scents that can be created are grass, leather, rose, fig, chai, and apple pie. By pressing the right keys, the fragrance wafts upward from the tubes and lingers for a second.
As interesting as it may be, this particular artwork could just as well be in a science museum or a children’s museum, as it is right at a very particular creative crossroads.
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I happened to be in the room that housed it, when a young father came in with two young children and they were all a bit baffled. I showed the older child, a girl about 8 years old, how to elicit a scent of pineapple. She did and said “That’s cool.” And with that, she turned to her dad and said “I wanna see some art …”
The learning curve may be steep.
The exhibition is rounded out with Molly Joyce “Perspective,” a short video touching on a number of subjects connected to disability, and Lindsey Dunnagan’s “Land Developed,” a series of large hand-dyed cotton and silk organa hangings, suspended from the ceiling, creating pathways between the fabric “walls.”
“Gateways to Awareness” is on display at the New Bedford Art Museum, 608 Pleasant Street until Dec. 31.
Email arts columnist Don Wilkinson at dwilkinson@newbedfordlight.org
The reason this museum is always empty (despite sometimes having some cool art) is that it costs $8/person and the whole thing can generally been seen in 15-20 minutes.
I was pleased to read Don Wilkinson’s review. He has been an intelligent, thoughtful critic of the greater New Beford’s flourishing art scene for many years. I look forward to reading more of his contributions in the New Bedford Light.