The Best of 1999/Art

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The Best of 1999/Art

Friday, December 31, 1999

By Mary Thomas and Donald Miller

If the closing year of this decade, century and -- by popular consensus -- millennium is any indication, the upcoming Pittsburgh visual arts scene will be engaging, frisky and thought-provoking, with a healthy balance of traditional venues and refined offerings, and alternative spaces brimming with the experimental and the progressive.

Major commitments to the region's cultural life continue to be made, in new commissions, exhibitions, and remodeling to support expanded missions and goals.

The Agnes R. Katz Plaza, an inviting and boldly whimsical public space at Seventh Street and Penn Avenue in the Cultural Distinct, was dedicated this month. It is the result of a collaboration by three internationally recognized artists: landscape architect Daniel Urban Kiley, artist Louise Bourgeois and architect Michael Graves, who also designed the just-opened, adjacent O'Reilly Theater. Also in the Cultural District, the first part of a lighting project that is as subtle as the Katz Plaza is bold, created by another prominent team -- artist Robert Wilson and architect Richard Gluckman -- was dedicated at the corner of Eighth Street and Penn Avenue.

The Silver Eye Center for Photography on the South Side, and the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, in Greensburg, completed extensive renovations this year that will allow them to exhibit a wider range of high quality work, increase programming, and reach out to a more varied and larger audience. This is already reflected in an extensive, fascinating exhibition of Harlem Renaissance photographer James VanDerZee at Silver Eye through Feb. 26, and an expanded, joyful annual holiday toy show at the Westmoreland through Jan. 16.

This fall especially, museums and galleries throughout the city and the region, possibly inspired by the November opening of the Carnegie International, presented a steady flow of excellent exhibitions -- exotic and local, group and solo, historically proven and edge-testing. Many stretched far beyond what they had previously shown in content, size and/or numbers of exhibitions.

Following are the exhibitions that we found to be the most notable of the year. Still holding out against conversion to the metric system, the top dozen of 1999 are listed:

1. "The Carnegie International"

The preeminent contemporary art survey in North America. With its interactive art, large film and video component and flaunting of the non-traditional, the International's become the place to be. At the Carnegie Museum of Art through March 26.

2. "Installations by Asian Artists in Residence"

Exhilarating work by 10 young artists from the Republic of China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand is energetic and full of surprises. At the Mattress Factory museum through June 30.

3. "A Victorian Salon by the Sea: Paintings from the Russell-Cotes Collection"

The Frick Art Museum hosted 36 rare and beautiful works from Bournemouth, a house museum on England's south coast, giving an exquisite look into a very curious collection. (D.M.)

4. "Watching From the Wings: Warhol and Dance"

This exhibition at The Andy Warhol Museum was the first exposure the public had to Warhol's depth of interest in an art form other than painting. It was complemented by a calendar of live dance events in the shows' gallery. (D.M.)

5. "Digital Traces: Navigating Interactive Domains"

Remaining true to its stated intent to show edge-pushing art, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts invited viewers into the virtual realm, and prepared Pittsburgh for the next Whitney Biennial, which will contain a large number of digital works.

6. "The Art of the Book"

Doing what it does best, The Society for Contemporary Craft displayed laudable artworks that combined concept with traditional craft characteristics like tactility and painstaking handwork.

7. "Fiberart International 99"

Sponsored by the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh, and held at The Society for Contemporary Craft and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, the biennial exhibition was correctly deemed by one of this year's jurors the "preeminent American forum for fiberart."

8. "Merchant Prince and Master Builder: Edgar J. Kaufmann and Frank Lloyd Wright"

This beautifully conceived and curated exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art Heinz Architectural Center fell into two themes -- Wright's plans for Kaufmann's now-famous country retreat, Fallingwater, and the architect's never-realized Point Park projects. (D. M.)

9. "Magic Realism: An American Response to Surrealism"

This large and impressive exhibition at the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loretto, made good argument for a uniquely American expression that combined surrealism's form with social content.

10. "Larry Bell"

The New Mexico artist's light-catching glass environments, minimal in style and technically sophisticated in concept, could be walked through in the Wood Street Galleries early in the year. (D.M.)

11. "Doble/Double: Felix de la Concha"

This exhibition, at Concept Art Gallery through Jan. 15, is the second opportunity to see the Spanish artist's extremely fine paintings that use Pittsburgh's neighborhoods as points of departure to explore variations on perception. Earlier this fall, his "One A Day: 365 Views of the Cathedral of Learning" were displayed in the Forum Gallery of the Carnegie Museum of Art.

12. "A Marilyn Memory"

James Douglas Adams, until recently a Pittsburgh artist and now of Philadelphia, brought his exceptional talent and high professional standards to this innovative body of work at the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Gallery.