Nick Cave's "Soundsuit" on Display at the Brooklyn Museum

Nick Cave (American, b. 1959). Soundsuit, 2008. Mixed media, 82 x 24 x 24 in. (208.3 x 61 x 61 cm). 

Nick Cave’s Soundsuit is an ornate inventive sculpture that is part of the Extended Family, Contemporary Connections exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Since the early 1990s, Cave has been fabricating such ornate sculptures out of scavenged materials that he often overlays with beadwork, stitching, and other sorts of embellishments. In this piece, he uses the human body to create an ornate still life. The Soundsuits, which allow the wearers to assume new identities, allude to a range of rituals, from ceremonial African dances to Christian liturgy. Cave was trained as a dancer. 

Kehinde Wiley's "Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps"

On display at the Brooklyn Museum is the 2005 oil on canvas painting by American artist KEHINDE WILEY. It is on view at the Martha and Robert Rubin Pavilion on the first floor of the museum. 

From the museum caption: Historically, the role of portraiture has been not only to create a likeness but also to communicate ideas about the subject's status, wealth, and power. During the eighteenth century, for example, major patrons from the church and the aristocracy commissioned portraits in part to signify their importance in society. This portrait imitates the posture of the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte in Jacques-Louis David's painting Bonaparte Crossing the Alps at Grand-Saint-Bernard. Wiley transforms the traditional equestrian portrait by substituting an anonymous young Black man dressed in contemporary clothing for the figure of Napoleon. The artist thereby confronts and critiques historical traditions that do not thereby confronts and critiques historical traditions that do not acknowledge Black cultural experience. Wiley presents a new brand of portraiture that redefines and affirms Black identity and simultaneously questions of the history of Western painting.

"Painting is about the world that we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them. This is my way of saying yes to us."

-Kehinde Wiley

Keith Haring: 1978-1982 Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum

Ongoing at the Brooklyn Museum is the first large-scale exhibition of Keith Haring, exploring the early career of one of the best-known American artists of the twentieth century. The playful exhibition traces the development of Haring’s extraordinary visual vocabulary from 1978-1982, and features 155 works on paper, numerous experimental videos, sketchbooks, journals, exhibition flyers, posters, subway drawings, and documentary photographs.

When Keith Haring moved to New York City, he started his studio practice and began making public and political art on the city streets. Immersing himself in New York’s downtown culture, he quickly became a fixture on the art scene, befriending other artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf, as well as many of the most innovative cultural figures of the period. The critical role that these relationships played in Haring’s development as a public artist and facilitator of group exhibitions and performances is also explored. Pieces on view include a number of very early works never before seen in public; seven video pieces, including Painting Myself into a Corner (his first video piece) and Tribute to Gloria Vanderbilt; and collages created from cut-up fragments of his own writing, history textbooks, and newspapers. The exhibition continues through through July 8, 2012. 


The museum is located at 200 Eastern Parkway at Prospect Park.

Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party", an Icon of Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum

Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" is an art installation consisting of place settings for 39 mythical and famous women in history, and 999 names inscribed in the Heritage Floor on which the table rests. The dinner table is triangular, a symbol of equality, divided by 3 wings, each 48 feet long. The "guests of honor" commemorated on the table are designated by embroidered runners, each executed in a historically specific manner. Upon these are placed, for each setting, a gold ceramic chalice and utensils, a napkin with an embroidered edge, and a fourteen-inch china-painted plate with a central motif based on butterfly and vulvar forms. Information from the exhibit caption and the Brooklyn Museum website.

Brooklyn Museum

"The Burghers of Calais" by Auguste Rodin near the entrance to the Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum opened in 1897 at 200 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. It has become one of the highlights of the city's cultural map, and a wonderful alternative to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibits are housed in a 560,000-square-foot, Beaux-Arts building designed by architect Stanford White. The collection includes Pacific, African and New World art, Asian art, Egyptian and ancient Middle Eastern art, and a vast collection of decorative art, European, American and contemporary painting and sculpture. For information about current exhibitions and hours, visit the website here.