Opening its doors in February 2011 in Miami?s Wynwood Art District, the Robert Fontaine Gallery offers a unique selection of internationally established and emerging artists, centered around genres of Pop Art, Urban/Street Art (translated into portable edition format), and contemporary photography. The Robert Fontaine Gallery, in its mission to provide viewers with an engaging, vibrant contemporary program throughout the year, is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in the US of British artist Nick Gentry.

Gentry adopts an approach to contemporary portraiture in the guise of photo-mosaic, in particular, using outdated or dissolved technological methods or objects. As a generation of young artists are stepping into the realm of ephemeral, mobile digital technology, individual elements such as VHS an cassette tapes, floppy disks and Polaroids become not only obsolete machinery, but memory triggers in and of themselves during their period of birth and subsequent death. This inaugural US solo exhibition will display Gentry?s contribution to contemporary art which comments on the rampant, irreversible path of human progression in dialogue with the life cycles of innovation.

Nick Gentry ‘Body Language’ (2011) Mixed paint and used computer disks on wood, 150 x 90 cm

At its core, Gentry?s work is a subtly aggressive inquiry into the technology leviathan: what happens to the people in the process of invention? The melancholy snapshots of Generation X act as a bridge between those faded personalities who had laid the foundations of present-day technology and the new consumers who may know of those antiquated objects only by rumor or a convenient browse on Wikipedia.

‘Base Jumper’ (2011)?Mixed paint, used computer disks on wood,?150 x 90 cm

Gentry is a graduate of Central St. Martins in London.?Notable exhibition venues include Art Paris, Verge Art Fair (Miami) and appearances at Bonham?s and Dreweatt?s Urban Art Auctions in London. International press for Gentry has included the Mirror, the Huffington Post, La Repubblica, Juxtapoz Magazine, Wired Magazine and the Wooster Collective. Gentry lives and works in London. Invicta Watch Group (having commissioned an exclusive model designed by Gentry) and Ocean Drive Magazine will act as sponsors for Gentry?s opening reception to kick off the contemporary art season in Miami.

The Robert Fontaine Gallery is located at 175 NW 23^rd Street in the Wynwood Arts District in Downtown Miami.

Photos courtesy of Robert Fontaine Gallery, Miami

AI WEIWEI: NEW YORK PHOTOGRAPHS 1983-1993 AT ASIA SOCIETY

Over 200 guests gathered at the Asia Society on July 27^th for a special viewing of the ?much-heralded? exhibition of photographic work by famed Chinese, activist artist Ai Weiwei.

The show, entitled Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993, showcased more than 200 unpublished photographs which captured, in unified monochrome compositions, the free-spirited events and creative personalities behind the protest movements which came to define New York?s East Vilage in the 1980s ? ?New York through the eyes of a Chinese artist.? Weiwei?s retrospective show provided its viewers with a portrait of the ?atmosphere? in New York throughout the 1980s.

Guests, including David and Carol Appel, Juliet de Baubigny, enjoyed a creator-led tour of the exhibition by the museum?s Associate Curator, Miwako Tezuka. The exhibition disclosed only a small proportion of the works present in Weiwei?s extensive private collection which accumulates to over 10,000 photographs.

The exhibition invited its viewers to re-acquaint and, in some cases, acquaint themselves with New York?s cultural past. Twenty years on from the snapshots of events in Weiwei?s photographs, his portrayal of New York in the 1980s ignited in his viewers feelings of detachment and dislocation. The New York then is not the New York now but the New York then did exist and does still exist, engrained deep within the fabric of contemporary culture. As Weiwei stated:

?In a flash twenty years have passed, and the New York I knew no longer exists. The appearance of the East Village has totally changed, and many of the people in my photographs are no longer in this world [?] Today, looking back on the past, I can see that these photographs are facts, but not necessarily true. After all, any reality is just a factor of change ? an unconfirmed moment in the slow march of time. The present always surpasses the past, and the future will not care about today.?Having recently been released from three months detention in China, the show marked the first ever showing of Weiwei?s work outside of China and presented its viewers with a truly unique experience, revealing records of his own personal experiences, thoughts, feelings and attitudes. His photographs of East Village poetry readings, riots in Tompkins Square Park, drag queens at Wigstock, as well-known artists and intellectuals from China, such as filmmaker Chen Kaige, composer Tan Dun and artist Xu Bing, also celebrate what came to emerge as Weiwei?s conceptual art career.

The evening closed with a drinks reception in the Asia Society?s Garden Court. Guests were welcomed into a party space which reflected the evening?s theme of floral d?cor accented with photographic equipment and discussed Weiwei?s work with the exhibition?s curators and the Society?s Director, Melissa Chiu, poet and writer, Bob Rosenthal and leading art critic, John Leobald Cohen

LYUBOV – PARIS F/W 2011 POP-UP STORE & PRESENTATION

In honor of Haute Couture week in Paris, Lyubov hosted a cocktail on July 7, 2011 at the “Pop-Up Lyubov” in the 1st?arrondissement.?Chanel and Colette put together this Pop-Up store on rue Saint-Honor? featuring Lyubov, the fashion house founded by Viktoria Bagryantseva in 2006. The Russian designer completed her training in Paris and also Florence at Cavalli.

The event was bubbling with drinks and chatty guests, even when the 5 models took to displaying different pieces throughout Bagryantseva’s collection. Even the models were laughing and joking not only with each other but engaging the on lookers as well. as they walked through the store and posed on the bed of a reformed Volkswagen bus.

The collection is light and at times flirty with flowing skirts, tulle mixed with thick brocade ?jackets. Bagryantseva herself even joined all the models for a finale atop the VW bus with laughter and bisous of thanks to the models.

-

Fashion week coverage directed by Indira Cesarine
Article by Amy Tabarly
Photos by Pascale V Marquis

The Pavement and the Beach Exhibit

Paradise Row Gallery

74 Newman Street
London W1T 3DB

8 July- 13 August

‘Sous les pav?s, la plage’

The group exhibition includes a range of works by twenty-three artists, including the exhibition?s curators, Guillaume Paris and Mick Finch. Among the artists present in the exhibition are the galleries longstanding artists, Margarita Gluzberg, Shezad Dawood and Mounir Fatmi - all of whom have exhibited their works in Paradise Row on a number of occasions. Nick Hackworth, Paradise Row?s founder, procured the title of the summer exhibition from a section of graffiti he found?scrawled on a wall in the central quad of University College London during the recent education protests in London. The phrase, he recalls, ?re-appeared in a ghost-like manner? having originally been used forty years earlier in France, May 1968, on a Parisian shop wall during the largest student protests in history.

The both thought-provoking and cynical phrase, Sous les pav?s, la plage - ‘Beneath the pavement, the beach’ acted as the starting point for the exhibition. It crucially defines an historical moment in history which can be seen to echo in society today.

The significance of the phrase lies within the dichotomy it sets up between the ?pavement,? and ?the beach.? On one side it brings to surface the critique of a society so exhaustingly contingent upon the manufactured world of power, efficiency, subjugation, work, consumerism and regulated thought which deposit on the symbolic ?pavements.? The nationally and internationally eminent image of Queen Elizabeth II?s head, present in Finch?s piece ?Constellations 3,? alongside the ransacked supermarket shelves in Jean-Michel?s piece ?Super #1,? provide subtle critiques of this aspect of society. In contrast to these pieces, the bold slogans present in Guillaume Paris? ?Kids? and Steven Le Priol?s ?Yes We Can? stand out as forthright propagandist works with a critical message against the exhibition?s metaphorical ?pavements.?

On the other hand, the exhibition?s ?beach? stands for the opposing utopian world of radical leisure, freedom and imagination. The task set up for the artists is to attempt to regain or draw on the notion of freedom wrapped up in the metaphorical ?beach? by provide critique of the causes of its loss. As the exhibition?s description point out, ?The sphere of leisure and entertainment has become an arena in which power insidiously dreams itself into new disciplinary forms.? Whether engaging with the phrase directly or with a symbolic approach, the exploration of perceptions of capitalism lodges itself in the forefront of the exhibitions aims. Each artist approaches the subject in hand from their own individual standpoint. To this end, as Nick Hackworth states, the accumulative collection of works ?leaves the viewer to decide whether or not the artworks succeed.?

Forty years on from the unprecedented protest events of ?68, Mick Finch and Guillaume Paris, place a political frame around the works of art present in the exhibition. In doing so, they work with the Situationist International belief that all artwork must have a political agenda. The exhibition reflects on the historical shift that has undercut the utopian hopes encapsulated in the slogans of May ’68.

?The Pavement and the Beach? will run from 8^th July to 13^th August.

?The Search for Outstanding and Undiscovered Fine Art Photography?

July 7th-17th, 2011

Now in its second year, The Curator supports nine artists in nine artistic categories paying honour to their skill, creativity, ability and individuality. Each artist received recognition in their individual practices. This year, the nine artistic categories were selected to encompass the following: Portraits/Nudes, Installation/Still Life, Abstract/Mixed Media, Nature/ Street Photography, Photo Essay/Reportage and Student Work. Between July 14th and 17th, Milk Gallery exhibited a selection of the winners? works from each individual category.?The Judges on the panel for the competition included: Brian Paul Clamp (owner and director of ClampArt), Gravette Pierre (founder of +Kris Graves Project), Julie Grahame (editor-in-chief of aCurator.com), Ariel Shanberg (executive director of the Center for Photography at Woodstock), Jeff Dunes (fine-art and commercial photographer) and Michael Zideis (landscape photographer).

The following nine artists were accredited the title ?Most Outstanding and undiscovered fine art photography?:

PORTRAITS/NUDES

Sophia Wallace

Sophia?s portfolio focuses on her portrayal and exploration of the figure of ?the dandy.? In her pieces she located the dandy as a versatile source of creativity, as Sophia states: ?The dandy is rather a space of creative possibility where men and women can perform a persona in ways which reach beyond the narrow binary constructs of masculine and feminine.? The figure of the dandy can thus be regarded as performative. According to Sophia, the dandy?s ?power and danger lies in the aestheticized androgyny? which it delivers to its interpreters.

ABSTRACT/MIXED MEDIA

Klea McKenna

Klea?s submitted project catalogued a selection of photographs she took of an installation of paper airplanes. Her interest in her chosen subject matter stemmed from her research and fascination with the careers of WWII air force soldiers. She attempts to capture the experience of ?watching planes fly over the horizon and across the sky all day and night? by shining light through her paper installation at different levels of intensity and at different angles. The installation includes a collection of 40 light sensitive paper airplanes which she exposed to the sun from dawn to dusk from a WWII anti-aircraft look-out post at Tennessee Cove, California. The resulting images produce a panoply of luminous abstract images and shapes.

NATURE/STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

Jane Fulton Alt

The inspiration for Jane?s series of photographs arrived from her observation of prairie burns; a process which she goes on to draw connections with the diagnosis and treatment of her sister?s ovarian cancer. As Jane explains: ?I was drawn to the quality of the moment when life and death are not contradictory but are perceived as a single process to be embraced as a whole. The parallels between the burn and chemotherapy were revealed. Both reduce invasive, unwanted growth.? Her photographs are resultantly poignant, highly perceptive and symbolic; a mixture of fire and smoke clogging up the landscape in the process of deconstructing shadowy remains and branches of trees.

INSTALLATION/STILL LIFE

Klaus Enrique

In his vibrant, colourful and nature-focused installations Klaus utilises leaves and other forms of greenery and vegetation to construct portraits and masks. Having researched his idea thoroughly, Klaus stumbled upon the work of artist Giuseppe Archimboldo, who construed similar creations in his paintings 400 year ago. He first created Giuseppe?s work and then began working on his own constructions. He plays continuously on the fact that many people don?t often recognise the works as portraits by experimenting with different objects and forms.

PHOTO ESSAY/REPORTAGE

Matt Eich

Focusing on the marginalisation of the black community in Mississippi?s Baptist Town, Greenwood, where ?the neighbourhood of 500 people is cut off on all sides by train tracks and where 50.9% of the black residents live below the poverty, as opposed to 16% of the white community,? Matt?s goal in producing his photo essay series was to remind people that racism still continues to impact people to this day in ?persistent and pernicious ways.? An additional purpose was to ?foster understanding amongst the community [?] by introducing the two communities as neighbours in order to dispel uncertainty and fear.?

STUDENT WORK

Christopher Patrick Ernst

Christopher?s increasing interest in photographing interiors lead him to focus more specifically on exploring and recording mural wallpaper. He backs up his series of photographs by revealing: ?I feel the murals say a lot about the spaces they live in and remind us that paradise is never too far away!?

Event Photography by Jeffrey Gamble exclusively for XXXX Magazine

]]> http://www.xxxxmagazine.com/blog/events/the-curator-photo-district-news/feed 0 http://www.xxxxmagazine.com/blog/art/factory-project-presented-by-west-london-art-factory-graffik-gallery http://www.xxxxmagazine.com/blog/art/factory-project-presented-by-west-london-art-factory-graffik-gallery#comments Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:20:05 +0000 XXXX MAGAZINE BLOG http://www.xxxxmagazine.com/blog/?p=10591

FACTORY ? PROJECT

JULY 8TH

PRESENTED BY WEST LONDON ART FACTORY & GRAFFIK GALLERY

6PM – 10:30PM? RED BULL STUDIOS,155-171 Tooley Street, London, SE1 2JP

A NIGHT OF CONTEMPORARY ART EXTRAVAGANZA, ENTERTAINMENT & A CHARITY AUCTION

FEATURING A VIDEO ART INSTALLATION BY?INDIRA CESARINE of XXXX MAGAZINE

LIVE PAINTING BY ARTISTS: STIK ? FIN DAC ? BEN SLOW ? COSMO SARSON – MAC1 ? DANIEL EMO

AUCTION FEATURING CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS:

INKIE ? MILO ? JEWEL ? JOANNA SCISLOWICZ ? ATA ? BELINDA FRIKH ? STUDIO PHILLY ? DS ? LAURA TINALD ? LEEKS ? ALEC
MONOPOLY ? LUCY SPARROW ? DREW & ELI ? AMAR STEWART ? GEORGE MORTON -?CLARK ? CARNE GRIFFITHS ? OTTO SHADE ? ZEUS

AUCTION PROCEEDS TO BENEFIT THE “PAINTINGS IN HOSPITALS” CHARITY PATRONED BY THE PRINCE OF WALES

Paintings in Hospitals is dedicated to reducing sickness, anxiety and stress, through the display of art, in healthcare facilities across the UK. Our charity improves the clinical outcomes of patients by offering healthcare facilities access to a diverse art library and specialised artist-in-residence services.
Art displayed in clinical environments can improve the outcome of treatment and the well-being of staff and the general public. The work of our charity supports the lives of many thousands of people each year by bringing interest, warmth and colour into clinical environments which might otherwise appear cold and sterile.?Paintings in Hospitals receives no regular public funding and relies on grants and donations to continue its services.

6PM – 10:30PM

RED BULL STUDIOS, 155-171 Tooley Street, London, SE1 2JP

AFTER PARTY

THE HOSPITAL CLUB: 24 Endell St, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9HQ

For More Information or to RSVP for the event please email: EVENTS@XXXXMAGAZINE.COM

THE BIG SCREEN PLAZA & XXXX MAGAZINE SUMMERSCREENING LAUNCH – JULY 5TH

FEATURING OVER 20 ORIGINAL PRODUCTIONS OF VIDEO ART & FASHION FILMS BY CONTRIBUTING DIRECTORS & ARTISTS

This summer, The Big Screen Plaza (BSP) will present a selection of XXXX Magazine original productions on its 30x 16 ft HD, LED screen overlooking its 10,000ft² Plaza in Chelsea, Manhattan. BSP strives to enrich the cultural center of Manhattan through the screening of video art. The 1 hour XXXX Magazine screening includes a selection of some of the best video art and fashion film productions published to date, curated by Adriana Farietta for the Big Screen.

Featured productions include:

Anne Koch “That Night”; Benjamin Marlowe “Self Portrait”; Bo Sul Kim “Cocoon”, Catherine Anyango “Vanity & Shame”, Dimitri Hyacinthe “Waiting”, Elisa Sighicelli, “The Party is Over”, ?Indira Cesarine “Ambient Energy”, “Pop”, “Punk”, “The Spell”, “Kaleidoscopic” & “Only You”, John Paul Zuviate “The Face”, Karine Laval “Inferno”, Monika Elkelv “Hope & Fate”, Morgan O?Donovan “Modern Ruin”, Patricio Guillamon & Jesus of Notion Artes “Subliminal Reality”, Patrik Andersson “Fire Dancer”, Paul Windridge “I Turned and Walked Away”, Peter Luckner “Breakthough”, Phantasmic Tv “Danse / Florae”, “The Spell” and Sophia Deininger “Automenagerie” & “Ruins of Statsis”.

Free seating is available in the plaza, or for a good view over cocktails or dinner, make reservations at Bar Basque.

JULY Screening Times:

JULY? 5 : 9PM & 10PM

JULY ?8 : 12PM & 1PM

JULY ?14 : 9PM & 10PM

JULY 19 : 9PM & 10PM

JULY ?22 : 12PM & 1PM

JULY 28 : 9PM & 10PM

AUGUST Screening Times:

AUGUST 1 : 9pm & 10pm

AUGUST 5 ? : 12pm, 1pm, & 3pm

AUGUST 7 ? : 4pm

AUGUST 9 ? : 3pm

AUGUST 11 : 10pm

AUGUST 12 : 10pm

AUGUST 16 : 9pm & 10pm

AUGUST 19 : 12pm & 1pm

AUGUST 21 : 4pm

AUGUST 23 : 3pm

AUGUST 25 : 10pm

AUGUST 26 : 10pm

AUGUST 30 : 9pm & 10pm

BIG SCREEN PLAZA
6TH AVE BETWEEN 29TH & 30TH
NEW YORK, NEW YORK

On June 13th, Valentino sponsored the Junior Spring Benefit for the Lincoln Center?Institute for the Arts in Education. ?The event, chaired by Rightor Doyle, Mamie Gummer, Zoe Kazan, Carey Mulligan and Lily Rabe took place on the rooftoop of the Gramercy Park Hotel, and featured a sit down dinner followed by a special musical performance by Karen Elson as well as tunes by DJ?Chelsea Leyland.

The Lincoln Center Institute brings ?brings dance, music, theater, and visual arts from diverse cultures into public school classrooms across the curriculum.??and uses it to teach kids important skills like imagination and critical thinking.

The event was attended by a hit list of young talent including ?Zoe Kazan, currently starring in?A Behanding in Spokane; Lindsey Lohan,?Mamie Gummer and her fianc?, Benjamin Walker, who’s stars in?Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Nina Freudenberger, Lily Rabe, who’s currently in rehearsals with Al Pacino for the Shakespeare in the Park production of?The Merchant of Venice, Actor Paul Dano,?as well as XXXX Magazine contributing artist Andrea Tese among many others.

-

Event Coverage by Indira Cesarine

Photography by Jeffrey Gamble exclusively for XXXX Magazine

AOL and Friends of the High Line invited XXXX Magazine to the opening celebration on?Tuesday, June 7, ?2011?of High Line Section 2 and the exclusive preview of Rainbow City, an interactive public art installation of vibrant air-filled sculptures. Created by Friends With You and presented by AOL, the event took place at the 16,000 square foot outdoor space at 30th St. and 10th Avenue in Chelsea.

The High Line, once an above ground feight railway up the West Side of Manhattan, lay unused for decades before the Friends of the High Line formed and began petitioning to reclaim the space. After nearly ten years of working to convert the High Line into a public park, the High Line is now open to the public.

To celebrate the success of the complete opening of the park, Friends With You brought their brightly colored scuptures to New York City. Friends With You is a collective that specializes in creating playful and imaginative larger-than-life worlds. The two founders, Sam Borkson and Arturo Sandoval from Miami created a playful inflatable garden in New York City that invites guests, both adults and children to enjoy the lighter side of life, and according to Sandoval and Borkson, to reach a euphoric and “spiritual” realm through the return to play. Each piece can be bounced, bobbled, or at times, even entered.

“Built for adults and kids alike, FriendsWithYou has created a set of minimalist forms that borrow aesthetics from toy-like geometry and design, with each element towering over guest at heights from ten to forty feet. The space will be open daily, free to the public, and will create a unique summer destination spot for New Yorkers, students, and tourists alike. Additionally, Rainbow City will serve as the site for a variety of educational programs, organized by AOL and FriendsWithYou, geared toward developing children’s creativity and engagement in an artistic environment. AOL’s support of the High Line and partnership with FriendsWithYou is the latest affirmation of AOL’s commitment to empowering creativity and engaging the community.”

The Lot and Rainbow City are located at 30th Street and 10th Avenue.

Open until July 5, 2011, you can view the installation during the following hours:

Mon – Wed: 11AM to 10PM
Thurs – Fri: 11AM to 11PM
Saturday: 11AM to 11PM
Sun: 11AM to 11PM

In Chicago, Illinois on June 2, 2011, a spectacular golden textile, conceived and created by Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley in Madagascar from silk thread collected from over one million Golden Orb spiders (Nephila madagascariensis), was the breathtaking highlight of a special preview and dinner party at the Art Institute of Chicago last night, to celebrate the opening of the new galleries of African art and Indian art of the Americas.

Hosted by the Art Institute’s President and Director James Cuno, Simon Peers and Nicholas Godley, the inaugural celebration was attended by museum trustees, curators, notable Chicagoans and other luminaries of extraordinary achievement including philanthropist Marjorie Benton, powerhouse couple Eric and Cheryl McKissack, Chicagoans of the Year Ernest Wong and Gunny Harboe, pre-eminent architect Ronald Krueck, marketing guru Denise Gardner, Dr. Anita Blanchard (who delivered President Obama’s children), art dealer Douglas Dawson and notable art historian and film maker Susan Vogel, who produced a series of two-minute, three-channel projections to complement the African art collection in the new galleries. New Yorkers Lady Liliana Cavendish, Geraldine Paz, Maya Stendhal and Susan Shin rounded out the exclusive guest list.

Guests enjoyed Gossamer Dream champagne cocktails and delectables by Bon App?tit, against the backdrop of the Morton staircase as they previewed the spectacular Spider Silk textile before the new galleries open to the public and before a seated dinner. Event designers Morgan & Heffernan transformed the Trustees Room in the Modern Wing, by suspending webbed scrims bathed in gold light which cast patterned shadows on the amber lit walls and configuring diagonally, the long dinner tables which were adorned with bespoke light boxes covered in gilt filigree and Gloriosa lilies in slanted mini-vases, interspersed with tendrils of burnished gold painted ferns and fronds — all evocative of spiders and their webs. Philippe Starck ghost chairs completed the sleek and yet rich atmosphere, an apt metaphor for the interdisciplinary nature and universal appeal of the unique Spider Silk textile.

Nicholas Godley, co-creator of this remarkable work of art mused that “it is art, fashion, culture, anthropology and science. What one object can encompass all those things?” Co-creator Simon Peers added, ” … imbued with metaphor and poetry, with nightmare and phobia, with tales and myths that resonate within us all, the Spider Silk textile encompasses an extraordinary history with contemporary resonance, embodying diverse meanings and associations that inspire and fire the imagination.” On that front, a wonderful surprise awaited the guests, as the artists unveiled a stunning satin Spider Silk opera scarf created specifically for the opening celebration – providing a visceral experience that thrilled everyone who touched the delicate and yet incredibly strong cloth, with tassels that were slightly sticky to the touch, evincing more than a frisson of awe. The only other existing piece made of spider silk is the shawl which was made for the debut of the Spider Silk textile at the American Museum of Natural History and which now is part of an exhibition organized by Fondazione Giorgio Cini on San Giorgio Maggiore during the Venice Biennale.

Drawing upon an eccentric and little known history of attempts to use the silk of spiders in weaving that began in?early eighteenth-century France and then evolved in places as distant as Paraguay and Madagascar, Mssrs. Peers and Godley have revived and reinvented the process of collecting and carefully extracting by hand the lustrous, golden- colored silk from living spiders, which are then released into the wild. It took almost 5 years and thread from more than a million spiders for the artists to create this dazzling brocaded textile that is hand woven with the beautiful motifs and patterns of historic royal weaves from highland Madagascar. To imagine a cloth made from the gossamer threads of spiders has long been the stuff of dreams and fairy tales. Mssrs. Peers and Godley have taken the impossible from the realm of myth and turned it into the warp and weft of a unique and fabulous cloth. This extraordinary work of art casts its own spell and fascination on the viewer, leaving no one indifferent.

Having completed a very successful showing at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where it was regarded as one of the most popular stand-alone exhibitions in recent years, the Spider Silk textile is on special loan to the Art Institute and will be displayed in Gallery 137 from June 3 through October. It will be the last opportunity to behold this extraordinary textile before it leaves the United States.?Often referred to as the “8th Wonder of World” the Spider Silk textile will be exhibited next at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London beginning January 2012.