The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Waterbury museum opening new art shows March 3
WATERBURY — Visitors are invited to a celebration of three new exhibits at the Mattatuck Museum, with a preview celebration March 3.
According to the museum, “the exhibitions feature works by a variety of artists with unique perspectives. La Onda Chicana features art by Chicanx and Latinx artists from the Civil Rights Movement to the present and demonstrates the power of art to communicate individual and collective identities. Cutting Edge: Connecticut Artists Explore Precisionism explores the artistic response to technological developments of the 1920s that fundamentally transformed American life. With her exhibition Femicide Florals/Flores de Femicidio, artist Natali Bravo-Barbee creates a memorial for women who were killed.”
The March 3 opening celebration is from 11 a.m.-4 p.m., offering discounted daily admission tickets of $5 per person and free admission for members. Mattatuck Museum Director Bob Burns, Curators Keffie Feldman and Natalie DeQuarto, and artist Natali BravoBarbee (Femicide Florals) will give remarks at 1 p.m.
The Litchfield Distillery will be at the Museum from 12–3 p.m. to provide cocktails specially designed and created for each exhibition, for guests 21 and older.
The Art of Yum Café @ The MATT will be open for meals, snacks, coffees, and treats available for purchase. Visitors are also invited to use the museum’s on-site app for an interactive, family-friendly experience. Visitors can scan a QR code on their smart device or borrow a tablet from the museum in order to use the app, which includes information about the exhibitions, family activities, and floor maps of the Museum.
Prior to the public celebration, members are invited to a special preview of these new exhibitions from 10-11 a.m., free of charge. To RSVP for the celebration visit the Museum website at mattmuseum.org/calendar.
Feb. 12-April 30: Femicide Florals/Flores de Femicidio. Femicide Florals is Natali Bravo-Barbee’s ongoing memorial for women in her native Argentina. There were 327 femicides in 2019 in Argentina alone. She begins by researching each woman’s story and gathering an archive for each victim that includes media stories and traces
found on social media. With an understanding of each woman’s history, Bravo-Barbee then hand crafts a unique 3D cyanotype flower using a camera-less process that incorporates shadow images of lace, flowers, and other vegetation. She completes each by attaching a hanging tag listing each victim’s name, honoring the woman, and recalling the ancient tradition of placing flowers at the grave of the dead.
Each flower can take as long as 10 hours to complete. The flowers serve as a physical manifestation of each lost woman and drive home the enormous scale of the loss.
March 5-May 28: La Onda Chicana: “The Chicanx Wave” is named after the multidisciplinary artistic movement that grew out of México (La Onda) and the Chicano movement (El Movimiento) in America inspired by Civil Rights activism of
the 1960s. Featuring artwork by over 30 Chicanx and Latinx artists from the Civil Rights Movement to the present, La Onda Chicana demonstrates the power of art to communicate individual and collective identities and to create new realities. Generously lent by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as part of Art Bridges’ Collection Loan Partnership initiative. Support provided by Thomaston Savings
Bank.
March 5-April 30: Cutting Edge: Connecticut Artists Explore Precisionis. In the 1920s, the United States entered the Machine Age. As cities and household interiors embraced new technology and became sleek and modern, a group of artists developed a style that captured the zeitgeist: Precisionism. This exhibition explores the little-known artistic movement by focusing on the work of Connecticut artists who employed fine art and design to speak to these technological and social changes.
New technologies developed and disseminated in the 1920s fundamentally transformed American life. American artists responded to this change with the development of a modernist artistic style called “Precisionism,” which grew alongside this urban and mechanical expansion. Marked by clean, sharply defined edges, flat, streamlined fields of color, and the presence of few or no people, the Precisionist style reflected the values and aesthetics of the Machine Age. As a fundamentally American modernist movement, Precisionism provides a window into this moment in American history.