Five favorite summer sights

Five favorite things I saw over the course of the summer...
 
1.) Two super installations at the Akron Art Museum, which is taking full effect of its striking new Coop Himmelblau building: Upon entering the museum's smart new post-war galleries, visitors are greeted by an enormous Lari Pittman: Thankfully, I will have had learned to break glass with sound (1999). While Pittman is one of the most important American painters of the last 25 years, his work is rarely on view in permanent collection galleries (perhaps because museums shy away from the intensity of Pittman's imagery). Akron, whose director Mitchell Kahan is one of just a handful of openly gay American museum directors, doesn't just exhibit Pittman, he does so in the most fantastically confrontational way imaginable. It's the first thing you see when you enter the museum's post-war galleries.

2.) Later on in Akron's finely-detailed new space: This Alma Thomas, 1972's Spring Awakening, is one of the best Thomases I've seen. (It's been in the museum's collection since 1976.) Across a gallery is an El Anatsui, Dzesi II (2006). It's a fairly typical El Anatsui, complete with flattened aluminum bottle caps. The juxtaposition of the Thomas and the El Anatsui really works: All that division and layering comes together to form a powerful whole. (Incidentally, art ghettoists who scoff at the idea of the alleged hinterlands are really shooting themselves in the Moleskine by not appreciating or visiting places like the Akron Art Museum. Its Doris Salcedo is haunting and perfectly installed. Its Kusama chairs are the best I've ever seen in a museum's collection galleries. Akron's 1966 Bontecou is wonderfully frightening and war-like. And on and on.)

3.) The trompe l'oeil wall at the Brandywine River Museum. George Cope, John Haberle, William Hartnett, and more. I live in a city (Washington) that doesn't have much American trompe l'oeil painting, which is too bad. The more I see the more I want to see more.

4.) Francisco de Zurbaran's Jesus and Mary in Nazareth at the Cleveland Museum of Art. This is really about ten paintings in one: A floral still-life, plus seemingly self-contained presentations of a basket, a bowl, books, pears and birds. (Oh -- Jesus and Mary are there too.) There also appears to be an unlikely indoor weather system affecting the scene. It's all quite surreal -- and rollicking good Catholic fun.

5.) Trevor Paglen's Active Military and Reconnaissance Satellites of the United States of America at the Berkeley Art Museum. Picture a darkened room, a large globe, and four projectors projecting 'satellites' onto the globe. Where you see the dots on the globe is where the satellites are. Thoughts: Why are American military satellites going over us?! Why do the satellites flicker in and out, like fireflies? Why is there only one satellite over China -- aren't they a potential enemy? There are none over Iraq or Iran! (I looked at North Korea, but it was so small...) After I walked around the globe a few times, a few satellites finally flew over all of those places. Which made me feel better. But should that make me feel better? Or do I have some kind of latent militarisitic streak that just popped out?