Fall Arts Roundup | Coming in hot 

The tone of this season’s most important art exhibitions is serious and at times heavy, offering one good opportunity after another to engage with some big issues we grapple with as individuals and as communities. That’s one of the best things about art — more than mere decoration, it provides an arena for saying what needs to be said, and saying it hot (to paraphrase D.H. Lawrence).

This season’s picks aim to prove that art can make a difference. It can move us, and move us to change. We recommend seeing these shows with your favorite thinker friends and unpacking the contents afterward, over your libation of choice. Keep it going.

The United States got its first Black president when Barack Obama took office in 2009. That same year, The New York Times published photographer Gillian Laub’s documentation of still-segregated social events, including homecomings and proms, in rural parts of the American South. Through Dec. 31 the George Eastman Museum (900 East Ave., eastman.org) is exhibiting Laub’s “Southern Rites,” a gutting, multi-decade examination of racism and its enduring effects in America. As Laub bore witness to segregated high school rituals, her project expanded to document the fallout after the police murder of Justin Patterson, the rise of the BLM movement, and the struggle of younger generations to overcome the trauma of the past and present. Accompanying the exhibition through Nov. 5 is the HBO original documentary film, “Southern Rites,” which is screened in the Multipurpose Hall twice daily.

And through Oct. 1 In its Gallery Obscura space, Eastman is exhibiting “Resistance and Rescue: Denmark and the Holocaust,” which tells an under-explored story. During World War II, people of Denmark rescued more than 90 percent of the country’s Jewish residents from the systemic brutality and murder by the Third Reich. The exhibition features Judy Glickman Lauder’s portraits, taken decades later, of Danes who protected or rescued Jews and of Jews who were rescued. Historic in subject matter, the show is a poignant reminder of the human responsibility to intervene in wrongs. Eastman Museum director Bruce Barnes said each portrait comes with a story – and they’re very compelling stories.

Rochester Contemporary Art Center (137 East Ave., rochestercontemporary.org) opens the season with “Unconditional Care: Listening to People’s Health Needs” (Sept. 1-22), an urgent exhibition of art that involves one of the most pressing political battlegrounds: our bodies. Curated by Ukranian-American artist and writer Katrina Majkut, the exhibition showcases recent work by 11 individual artists as well as the direct action group Gays Against Guns, with subject matter ranging from chronic illnesses to pregnancy, gun deaths, and sexual assault. Some of the artworks, including Majkut’s embroidered image of the abortion pill Mifepristone, were censored in the exhibition’s first showing in Idaho due to that state’s so-called trigger law.

The show is packed with complex, challenging works about navigating pressing health issues — often told through the lived experiences of the artists — which RoCo’s executive director Bleu Cease hopes will spark discussions tempered with respect. “In a world where health is entwined with politics and misinformation, this project serves as a call for empathy, understanding, and action,” he said. Also of note in RoCo’s new season is the 33rd Annual Members Exhibition (Dec. 1 through Feb. 10) — a great way to get to know more regional artists through their work on the walls and the associated days of artists’ talks.

This fall’s big, flashy show at the Memorial Art Gallery (500 University Ave., mag.rochester.edu) is the infinitely ‘grammable Yayoi Kusama installation, “Infinity Mirrored Room — Let’s Survive Forever,” which will convert the docent gallery into a deep multiverse of mirrored surfaces from Sept. 14 through May 5. You’re gonna see this piece all over social media, and CITY is definitely going to be among those posting. But the MAG is also launching “Represent: Great Women Artists at MAG,” an unapologetically woman-focused exhibition in its Forman Gallery from Sept. 14 through Apr. 14. It’s a celebration of female artists — who are still underrepresented in the art world — and the important perspectives of, you know, more than half of the population. The exhibition showcases recent acquisitions and works drawn from the collection, and links visitors to work by women artists displayed in the museum’s many galleries.



Rebecca Rafferty is an arts writer at CITY and the co-producer and host of art/WORK, an arts conversation video series created in collaboration with WXXI. She can be reached at [email protected].