Visual art
FABIOLA JEAN-LOUIS: HISTORY IS NOT STATIC In its little Fenway Gallery, the Gardner Museum hosts this pocket-size exhibition of the work of HaitianAmerican artist Fabiola JeanLouis, who deploys shopworn signifiers of feminine wealth and influence — extravagant gowns, jewelry, general finery — to magnify the absence of such glorifications of Black women in art history. Accompanying her series of photographs is one the gowns she makes out of paper for her subjects to wear — a symbol of fragility, ephemerality, and their unlikely depiction as the heroes of a story from which they’re most often excluded. Through Jan. 15. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way. 617-5661401, www.gardnermuseum.org
FORECAST FORM: ART IN THE CARIBBEAN DIASPORA,
1990S–TODAY Amid the tumult of the 1990s — the dissolution of the Eastern bloc, transnational trade agreements, the internet — Caribbean society found itself in rapid transformation, like most everywhere on the planet. Folded into the upheaval was increased attention in the cultural world to fluid notions of identity, whether national, racial, or otherwise, and artists from the Carribbean, this exhibition suggests, were in the spotlight as never before. Calling itself the “first major group exhibition in the United States to envision a new approach to contemporary art in the Caribbean diaspora,” “Forecast Form” explores the mutability and uncertainty seeded in a fertile decade, still growing today. Through Feb 25. Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, 25 Harbor Shore Drive. 617-478-3100, icaboston.org
FASHIONED BY SARGENT John Singer Sargent, perhaps the most famous of Bostonian artists (or Bostonian-adjacent; Sargent lived much of his life in Europe), made his mark as a society portraitist largely of well-to-do women like Isabella Stewart Gardner, who became his close patron, confidante, and friend. Inevitably, this meant developing a formidable gift in rendering elaborate gowns and the pernicious drape and glow of an array of fine fabrics, of which Sargent became an established master. This show, organized with the Tate Britain, celebrates that gift, but reaches for deeper contemplation about wealth, social position, the relationship between an artist and the prominent person he was painting, and, of course, how fashion choices become an outward signal of all of these things. Through Jan. 15. Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 465 Huntington Ave. www.mfa.org, 617-267-9300.