1708 Gallery’s InLight (Photo courtesy 1708 Gallery)
Creative Pursuits
Discover enriching experiences at local galleries
With a world-renowned art museum, a contemporary exhibition space and numerous galleries supporting regional and local artists, Richmond is an aesthete’s destination. Clear your calendar for the upcoming fall arts season to view multiple showcases around town.
From Nov. 3-4, 1708 Gallery brings the 16th InLight back to where it all began, the 200-400 blocks of West Broad Street. The cityscape has experienced many comings and goings since the illuminated art event first brightened the scene. This iteration of the invitational-curated, site-specific exhibition of multimedia works using light, sound, video and other artistic invention is appropriately titled “Reflection and Refraction.”
Pertaining to reflections of another kind, at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, the exhibition “Morgan Bassichis: More Little Ditties,” by the New York-based comedic entertainer and activist, is on display Sept. 8-Jan. 7. The pieces, created before and during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, utilize performance, video and text. Among Bassichis’ offerings is the installation “Quarrantunes,” consisting of 26 one-minute videos on five screens accompanied by Bassichis’ improvised songs. The tunes, the artist says, “fall somewhere between adult lullabies and practical spells, and will not include concrete policy recommendations but maybe they should?” Among two new works made for this exhibition is a young-adult anthology by 36 artists, activists, writers and rabbis, “Questions to Ask Before Your Bat Mitzvah,” which reconfigures the rite of passage for everyone to consider assumptions about ritual, nationalism and community.
The past is brought forward at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts through “The Art of Advertisement: Art Nouveau Posters of the Late 19th Century,” which runs until Jan. 21. This method of getting the word out crossed the lines between fine and applied art, and subsequent prints continue to brighten walls from dorms to homes. So, you’ve likely seen them but may not associate individual creators with the distinctive organic, flowing lines and patterns. Artists represented include Alphonse Mucha (who became a member of renowned French actress Sarah Bernhardt’s street team), Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (he of the much-reproduced “Chat Noir/The Black Cat” cabaret advertisement), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (think John Leguizamo in “Moulin Rouge”) and numerous others.
Art on View
Sept. 29-Nov. 10
At its 401 Libbie Ave. space, Reynolds Gallery offers work by ceramicist Laird Gough.
Nov. 3-Dec. 16
“Think Small 12,” Artspace gallery’s biennial group show of big ideas in little art, features pieces that are a maximum of 4 inches in any dimension.
Ongoing
On the mezzanine of the Science Museum of Virginia is a curious collection of photographs made by scientists, “BioArt: Finding Beauty in Research,” from a juried competition sponsored by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Included with museum admission ($10 to $17).
