Spring Exhibitions at Monterey Museum of Art-Pacific

When: Thursday, May 10, 2012, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Monterey Museum of Art-Pacific, Monterey
Cost: Free - $10
Age limit: Not available
Categories: Art (ongoing), Art (opening), Museum exhibits

The Monterey Museum of Art doesn't do things small. Take this new round of four exhibitions at its Pacific Street space, for instance, which reaches back in the not-too-distant past to pull together works by an impressive array of artists. A New Deal: Art of the Great Depression resonates with the economic climate today, gathering lithographs, etchings, woodcuts and more by artists who created work under President Franklin Roosevelt's storied Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the 1930s. Then, the unemployment rate reached nearly 25 percent, but through progressive government spending and pure people power (and World War II), Americans were put to work on building projects—and art projects that depicted those building projects, as seen here—that restored the perseverance and spirit of this country. Monterey Modernism revisits the era in which American artists moved away from the prevailing Impressionist mode and into a more bold and different direction, sparked by the International Exposition of Modern Art in New York (aka the Armory Show) in which the European avant-garde movement was introduced to the States, exemplified by Picasso, Matisse and Duchamp. This one serves as a "natural juxtaposition" to the MMA-La Mirada exhibition of California Impressionism. Urban Life: Photography in the City portrays a young country's infatuation with metropolitan life; and Water/Brush/Paper tells another part of the story of Monterey and California in watercolors. We have met the exhibits and it is us. [WR]
11am-5pm Wed-Sat; 1-4pm Sun; runs through June 17. Monterey Museum of Art-Pacific, 559 Pacific St., Monterey. $10/general admission; $5/student, military; free/child 12 and under and museum members. 372-5477, www.montereyart.org.

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