Juan Muñoz

The Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Avenue
September 14–December 8, 2002

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
5216 Montrose Boulevard
January 24–March 30, 2003

New Museum
235 Bowery
April 21–July 28, 2002

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Independence Avenue at Seventh Street, SW
October 18–January 13, 2001

Juan Muñoz’s series of cast-resin and bronze tableaux occupied a full floor of the Dia Center in New York in 1996–97, but the Hirshhorn exhibition comprises the Spanish sculptor’s first career survey in the States. It also takes on added poignancy in the wake of the artist’s untimely recent death at the age of 48. A cluster of Borgesian tropes—the balcony, the trompe l’oeil floor, the dwarf—run through Muñoz’s strange theatrical settings, featuring figures enigmatically assembled as if for conversation. The catalogue to the exhibition, which includes work made since the mid-’80s, includes essays by Art Institute curator Neal Benezra, Hirshhorn curator Olga Viso, and critic Michael Brenson.

— Frances Richard

Victor Brauner

The Menil Collection
1533 Sul Ross Street
October 12, 2001–January 6, 2002

Victor Brauner is less familiar than his Romanian compatriot Constantin Brancusi, yet his work in many genres—Cubist- and de Stijl–inspired abstraction, Dadaist collage, Surrealist furniture, and encaustic painting—has an ineffable Balkan pungency to it and should be better known. His great painting Force de Concentration de Monsieur K., 1934, is an unforgettable Botero-esque send-up of a porcine bourgeois seen in the nude, while his unique Loup Table goes Meret Oppenheim’s fur-lined teacup one better with its bland carpentry and snarling taxidermy. If at times his ’40s painting seems discouragingly esoteric—full of references to the Kabbalah and Novalis—perhaps such arcana is one way of dealing with the apocalypse Brauner survived.

— Brooks Adams

Vito Acconci: Acts of Architecture

Aspen Art Museum
637 East Hyman
June 7–September 1, 2002

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
5216 Montrose Boulevard
September 29–November 25, 2001

Miami Art Museum
101 West Flagler Street
December 2, 2001–March 3, 2002

Milwaukee Art Museum
700 N. Art Museum Drive
March 22–May 19, 2002

An innovator in the field of discomfort, Vito Acconci is nonetheless fascinated by furniture and the home, both of which are best when as comfortable as possible. The objects and installations he began to generate in 1980, the kickoff point for “Acts of Architecture,” force the body into interactions that at the very least provoke a heightened physical self-consciousness. Says curator Dean Sobel (formerly of the Milwaukee Art Museum, the show’s organizing venue), “It was surprising to me how little this work has been seen in a cohesive way.” Even so, Acconci is a progenitor for a whole school of younger artists working with architecture, sculpture, and design.

— David Frankel

Shirin Neshat

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
5216 Montrose Boulevard
September 6–November 2, 2003

Miami Art Museum
101 West Flagler Street
March 21–June 1, 2003

Walker Art Center
725 Vineland Place
June 15–September 8, 2002

Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal
Place Ville Marie - Niveau Galerie commerciale
September 29, 2001–January 13, 2002

Given her high-profile gallery career and participation in omnibus vehicles like the 2000 Whitney Biennial, it’s surprising that Shirin Neshat had, until now, yet to receive a major museum solo. All that has changed as six film installations and sixteen related photographs investigating the intensities of women’s lives in strict Islamic cultures are on view in Montreal. A catalogue with essays by curator Paulette Gagnon, critic Shoja Azari, and filmmaker Atom Egoyan is available.

— Frances Richard