THE ACKLAND: BECOMING A WOMAN IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT: FRENCH ART FROM THE HORVITZ COLLECTION
THE CARRACK: GABRIELLE DUGGAN: ROCKS THAT WON’T SINK
THE GREGG: BOB TROTMAN: BUSINESS AS USUAL
THE NASHER: ACROSS COUNTY LINES: CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE PIEDMONT
NCMA: YOU ARE HERE: LIGHT, COLOR, AND SOUND EXPERIENCES
Across County Lines In this companion exhibit to People Get Ready, one photo made me catch my breath. Depicting a bright green mosque surrounded by pine trees, it’s strongly reminiscent of a William Christenberry photo of a green barn in rural Alabama. But this shot, part of Christopher Sims’s “Theater of War” series, was taken in Eastern North Carolina at a simulation of an Iraqi village used to train soldiers. Sims offers little commentary, letting the building speak for itself, guilelessly framed by a sandy grove. Though the exhibit’s theme is geographical, other allusive through lines emerge. Several photos are concerned with costuming and mythmaking, or what critic Doreen St. Felix has called the “Southern thirst for domestic pageantry.” An immaculate spread of deviled eggs on a porch, by Margaret Sartor, suggests a loaded social code. In “The Roles We Play,” Heather Evans Smith depicts her daughter standing in a puppet theater, a nod to the cultural performances passed down between women. Another Sartor piece deals a distressing blow. Two boys crouch on a porch, a menagerie of plastic figures between them. Both boys hold plastic guns; one cowers, as if to either hide or get a better shot. These compelling photos reminded me of the darker side of playing pretend, and they’re still on view into February. —Sarah Edwards
Gabrielle Duggan In a year with many exhibits by and about women, from art-historical corrections to #MeToo protests to statements of defiant self-love and positive empowerment, Duggan’s Carrack show stood out. Fiber techniques and structures in works spanning several media expressed the complex tensions of navigating more interlocking patriarchal systems than a person can keep track of. The works were nuanced, ambiguous, even impenetrable. One consisted of a bathtub beneath a hanging network of thread and wire. A pump drew water from the tub and released it into the network, down which it dribbled unpredictably back into the tub, onto the floor, or onto a plastic sheet. It made a mess. You kept touching the network to tweak the flows. It was beautiful and ugly. It worked and it didn’t work. Nothing about it stayed the same or was easy. This aesthetically understated show required the kind of deep engagement that our social problems around gender require if we’re going to progress. Long looks see more. —Chris Vitiello
