Exhibition Archive

The Art of Contemporary Puppet Theater
February 28 - June 13, 2010

Once considered the exclusive province of shamans, puppets have been used for centuries to bring stories to life. The Art of Contemporary Puppet Theater performs such magic, illuminating the power of puppet theater to give form to the internal and otherwise invisible worlds of emotions and ideas. Puppet theater fuses the visual and performing arts, incorporating painting, sculpture, text, music, movement, and technology. The exhibition features sophisticated and often daring work by contemporary puppeteers, painters, film, and media artists, including Eric Bass/Sandglass Theater, Janie Geiser, Liz Goldberg, Chris Green, Dan Hurlin, William Kentridge/Handspring Puppets, Ralph Lee, Mabou Mines, Roman Paska, Brian Selznick, Julie Taymor, and Hanne Tierney, with short films by Genevieve Anderson, Laura Heit, and Scott Shoemaker.

Puppetry Around the World
February 28 – June 13, 2010

Classic puppet forms, including marionettes, shadow puppets, and hand puppets, are on view in the Learning Center as reference to the contemporary puppet tableaus in the main galleries. Young visitors can see such classics as Bil Baird’s Flannel Mouse and an original Jim Henson Muppet. Families are also invited to create their own puppets and perform in the Learning Center’s puppet theater.

May 2, 2009 – March 1, 2010
Chakaia Booker

In the early 1990s, Chakaia Booker began constructing sculptures from discarded rubber tires, using the various tread patterns and colors as visual palette and social metaphor. For Booker, the resilience of the rubber symbolizes the strength of African-American identity in the modern world, while color nuances evoke a range of black skin tones. The tire grooves also reference the scarification practices popular in certain African cultures.

Photograph: Margaret Fox

February 7 - February 14, 2010
Young Artists 2010

Marking its 27th year, the Young Artists exhibition showcases the extraordinary talents of seniors from the Museum’s member high schools. This year features the work of over 300 students from 34 schools in Westchester, Putnam, Rockland, Dutchess, and Fairfield counties. Concurrently on view in the Project Gallery is Thinking Through Art, an exhibition of student work created during a year-long collaboration between the KMA and six area elementary schools. Together, the two shows and their related programs have become an annual celebration of community, family, and children’s art.

October 18, 2009 - January 24, 2010
Bold, Cautious, True: Walt Whitman and American Art of the Civil War Era

This landmark exhibition takes its themes from a troubled era in American history and its title from a Walt Whitman poem. Whitman’s elegiac words introduce the portraits, landscapes, battlefield scenes, and genre pictures that depict the heroism of the common soldier, the flight of escaped slaves, and the courage of the women and children left behind. Bold, Cautious, True features the work of some of the most important American artists of the mid-19th century, including Frederic E. Church, Sanford Gifford, Winslow Homer, Eastman Johnson, John Frederick Kensett, and Worthington Whittredge.