Under a Dismal Boston Skyline

Exhibition Website

Sep 14 2018 - Oct 28 2018

Under a Dismal Boston Skyline examines the city as witness to intensely concentrated moments of artistic experimentation over the last several decades. The exhibition reexamines a group of practitioners working in the late 1970s and 1980s, collectively known as the Boston School. Considering resonances between this group and other iconoclastic artists working outside of Boston’s culturally conservative mainstream, the exhibition connects the Boston School to other artists in the city who have set their own terms for art, life, and community.

Taking its title from a photograph by the late Boston School artist Mark Morrisroe, Under a Dismal Boston Skyline proposes a loose lineage of artists from the late 1970s to the present, tracing affinities in materials and subject matter. With a particular focus on photography, video, and performance, the works in the exhibition challenge archetypes of identity, gender, and community. Across the decades, a rapidly changing city, at once dismal and beautiful, hostile and nurturing, cultivated Boston’s counter-cultural underground. Under the city’s skyline, and under different circumstances and time periods, the artists in this exhibition sought to represent their friends, families, haunts, homes, lovers, and selves.

Participating artists are: Art School Cheerleaders, Bobby Abate, Marilyn Arsem, David Armstrong, Creighton Baxter, Genesis Báez, Melanie Bernier, Dana Clancy, Dead Art Star, Óscar Díaz, Bonnie Donohue, Nan Goldin, Candice Camille Jackson, Maura Jasper, Cindy Kleine, Justin Lieberman, Steve Locke, Mark Morrisroe, Cobi Moules, Luther Price, Esther Solondz, Mike and Doug Starn, Gail Thacker, Shellburne Thurber, and Suara Welitoff

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

  • Various Media
  • American
  • Various artists

Exhibition Venues & Dates