A couple of major art shows of note this spring: one at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the other out on the West Coast at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum.
Through May 14, MoMA is playing host to the masterworks of Diego Rivera in the blockbuster show Murals for the Museum of Modern Art. Iconoclastic and edgy, you feel the determination of revolutionary leaders like Mexico’s Emiliano Zapata as he prepares to take on his country’s establishment.
Perhaps especially apropos in this Occupy era of worldwide social revolt are renderings of New York’s urban working classes, and dead-on depictions of social stratification during the days of the Great Depression.
For the first time in almost eight decades MoMA brings together key works from Rivera’s first Museum of Modern Art exhibition back in 1931. Along with Rivera’s revered murals, see a slew of full-scale drawings, smaller working drawings, and archival material.
Meanwhile, out on the West Coast is one of this season’s edgiest exhibits, Deities, Demons, and Dudes with ‘Staches: Indian Avatars by Sanjay Patel .
The show runs through April 22 at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum. Patel’s images are almost DayGlo, lavishly dramatic, and occasionally demonic. You’ll find them on display in the Tateuchi Thematic Galley on the museum’s second floor.
If Patel’s depictions aren’t your cup of chai, there’s plenty else to see in the country’s best museum of Asian arts and artistic artifacts. You could spend days in this place and still come back for more.
The good news is that there are some decent deals out there just now on New York flights to San Francisco. Take in MoMO one day, Asian art the next.
Story by Jerry Chandler
(Images: © 2011 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, México, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, www.asianart.org)
