This Week in Art 12.18-12.24: Ann Hamilton Asks Us To “Fly Together”

Ann Hamilton. Fly Together, 2017. Part of Creative Time’s Pledges of Allegiance series. Photo: Guillaume Ziccarelli.

Last Wednesday, Creative Time, alongside eleven other arts organizations across the U.S., raised the latest flag in their Pledges of Allegiance series—this one by Ann Hamilton. Entitled Fly Togetherthe flag features an image drawn from early childhood education books: two songbirds holding cloth between their beaks. The piece explores the potential made possible through our own mutual cooperation, and Hamilton says that to carry the cloth, the birds “must hold with gentleness and tenacity. They must work and fly together.”


Events & exhibitions

New York City

  • The work of John Baldessari and photographer Mario Sorrenti are the subject of a new exhibition entitled Noses, Elbows, and Knees. Reimagining the deconstructed human form through a pairing of the two artists’ work, the show is on view at Half Gallery through January 20.

Chicago

  • A major exhibition of Paul Pfeiffer’s work opens Saturday at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Including the museum debut of the artist’s two-channel video installation Three Figures In A Room, the show also includes works from the MCA’s permanent collection and will be on view through May 20, 2018.

Jackson, MS

  • A new exhibition at the Mississippi Museum of Art commemorates and celebrates the 200th anniversary of Mississippi’s statehood, and includes nearly 200 works by more than 100 different artists. Picturing Mississippi, 1817‒2017: Land of Plenty, Pain and Promise—on view through July 8, 2018—chronicles the state’s complicated history and features work by Carrie Mae Weems and Kara Walker among others. The museum’s director, Betsy Bradley, told the Observer that the exhibition is about “how we develop new models of living, for sharing prosperity in fair and ethical ways, and seeing the world anew by including those who haven’t always been included.”

London

  • The Royal Academy of Arts’ latest exhibition From Life, features Yinka Shonibare MBE (RA)’s first work in virtual reality. Examining the tradition of drawing from casts and live models, the exhibition is on view through March 22, 2018.