Cultural Events — Edgemont Art Department

Martha Diamond is among the most perceptive painters of the last five decades. Her work’s formal concision and painterly bravado reflect an inner dialogue with generations of abstract artists, and the results are exceptional: an inimitable handling of gesture and space that reimagines the landscape tradition while deftly sliding between abstraction and representation. Comprised of paintings, works on paper, and monotypes, this focused survey of Diamond’s career proposes “deep time” as a new way of understanding her contribution to American painting.

As a concept, deep time has two histories: Enlightenment scientists, poets, and theologians have theorized it to trace symmetries and parallels across the development of human civilization, and geologists use it to describe cycles of stability and upheaval across many millions of years on this planet. In conversation with both ancient monuments and the modern skyscraper, and carrying its own distinctive psychology and ecology, Diamond’s art thinks about time and across time.

This exhibition spotlights the architectural and compositional fascinations that define Diamond’s singular vision. It emphasizes her unswerving commitment to capturing the emotional character of built space, tracking throughlines across mediums and methods to reveal a process that combines spirited experimentation with perceptive observation. The exhibition features rarely seen pieces from the Lower Manhattan studio Diamond occupied for fifty-four years, from the little-known “single-picture” images of the 1970s to the vertiginous paintings of her native New York City during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s to the vivid abstractions that increasingly characterized her later work.

The exhibition is accompanied by the artist’s first major monograph, an amply illustrated catalogue that includes an original essay by the exhibition’s co-curators, a chronology, and texts reprinted from some of Diamond’s most insightful critics: New York poets steeped in the visual arts. Martha Diamond: Deep Time documents the inspirations that converge in, and are transformed by, Diamond’s enigmatic and utterly original work.

This exhibition is co-organized by The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and the Colby College Museum of Art, and co-curated by The Aldrich’s Chief Curator, Amy Smith-Stewart and Colby’s Katz Consulting Curator, Levi Prombaum.

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum: November 17, 2024 to May 18, 2025

Stories of Syria’s Textiles: Art and Heritage across Two Millennia highlights textiles’ outstanding contributions to Syrian culture during antiquity and between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, as well as today.

Syrian textiles are remarkable for their artistic, social, and economic significance. Finely woven clothing and furnishings are the work of highly skilled weavers and other artisans. They are also important markers of status and identity that reflect the local traditions of Syrian cities, villages and nomadic groups, and valuable luxury goods that were traded widely. Syria’s climate is ideal for silk production, and historically it was a major crossroads on the Silk Routes that connected East and West.

Since 2011, Syria has been embroiled in conflict that has resulted in the deaths of over 300,000 civilians. Millions have been displaced both internally and as refugees in other countries. Numerous archaeological sites, historic monuments, and museums have also been damaged or destroyed. With respect to textiles, longstanding traditions and knowledge are at risk of disappearing. Many Syrians are now working to preserve their tangible and intangible heritage for current and future generations, despite these exceptionally difficult conditions.

Stories of Syria’s Textiles aims to contribute to these efforts, and asks us to consider what heritage means, in its broadest sense, and why its protection merits intense commitment.

Stories of Syria’s Textiles: Art and Heritage across Two Millennia is curated by Blair Fowlkes Childs, Adjunct Professor, Columbia University and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, in collaboration with consulting curator Deniz Beyazit, Curator, Department of Islamic Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and with organizational support from Emily Handlin, Associate Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, Katonah Museum of Art.

For more details about upcoming events and programs, download a copy of the Fall 2023 newsletter.