Exhibiting Artists

Will Ellis, Richard Renaldi, Jessica Wolff, CMA’s Permanent Collection, Participants from Pop-Up Museum Sites

Click here to see more photos of the Focus: Artist As Observer exhibition.

Focus: Artist as Observer, an exhibition on view in the Cynthia C. Wainwright Gallery, explores the ways artists examine and celebrate various aspects of heritage, culture, neighborhood and personal identity.

A generous grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services funded CMA to curate and present three themed traveling exhibitions, or Pop-Up Museums, based on selected works from CMA’s permanent collection. Throughout the year, the Pop-Up Museums traveled to three distinct underserved communities in NYC. With the primary focus being identity, these three exhibitions were entitled, Places and Spaces (P.S. 124), Faces and Characters (Henry Street Settlement’s Urban Family Center) and Subjects and Objects (Broadway Housing Communities).

Focus: Artist as Observer merges these three exhibitions with the work of contemporary artists, including Will Ellis, Richard Renaldi, and Jessica Wolff, to communicate the importance of our individual and collective identities, and how we connect with the world at large.

As we look at the work in this exhibition, certain questions can be asked. How do artists represent the world around them? How do they choose to show people, places or things? Focus: Artist as Observer examines how art conveys identity through the lenses of symbolism, context, and each artist’s own perception of contemporary culture.