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The $200 million renovation of this sprawling 1,000-room, Michael Dell-owned resort is just the beginning. 

What’s the deal? 

It began life, in 1926, as The Ritz-Carlton Cloister Inn: a Spanish colonial-style, 100-room property. Almost a century (plus several owners) later and The Boca Raton is a 337-acre hospitality behemoth with over 1,000 rooms, two 18-hole golf courses, a 50,000-square-foot spa, seven swimming pools, 30 tennis courts, a 32-slip marina, 13 restaurants and bars and 200,000 square feet of meeting space. The property is divided between its original buildings known as the “Cloister,” the “Bungalows,” the “Tower,” the “Beach Club” and the “Yacht Club.” 

Last year, the resort reopened following a $200-million refurb that changed the color of “The Pink Hotel” (as locals have dubbed it for decades) to a “coastal white” (proprietors’ words). The barrel tile roofs, archways, mosaics, and ceilings have been restored, and an injection of modernity given to a grand old dame of US hospitality in the form of modern, locally sourced furniture and rotating artworks, provided by the nearby SPONDER GALLERY.  But this is just the beginning, as even more costly upgrades are coming at a yet-unspecified future date. 

The Weisman Art Museum presents DOUG ARGUE: LETTERS TO THE FUTURE, which will be on view through the summer from June 17 – September 10, 2023. Doug Argue emerged onto the Twin Cities art scene in the early 1980s. At the age of twenty-two, he had filled a studio with sensational, larger than life paintings made on a scale for museums. Their enormous size aside, these gnarly, expressionist images stood apart from current art fashion. In place of the abstract or conceptual art of so many of his contemporaries, Argue’s early imagery featured intensified personal memories and the louche inhabitants of his imagination. 

In the ensuing years, Doug’s autobiographical tendencies found a wide range of expression. After becoming a parent he created a series of works that feature fathers and sons. Toned down in size and intensity, these works contain a childlike curiosity about the world that aligns with their subject. Once the artist returned to his studio, however, he again began to make work on a grand scale. In the mid-1990s, word spread about a new painting that was drawing attention in his studio. This canvas, which became known as the “chicken painting,” was a major tour-de-force. It soon went on loan to the Weisman where it became an immediate favorite of visitors to the museum. 

ARTFUL TOUCHES

Opening a location at The Boca Raton in 2009, Sponder Gallery has presented the resort with a wide collection of Post-War and Contemporary art featuring artists who display innovative techniques and a unique approach to materials.  Highlighting the work of Armenian-born and New York based artist, Tigran Tsitoghdzyan, two versions of “DS Mirror for Ukraine” are Sponder Gallery’s latest offerings to adorn The Boca Raton.

One big display, 365 spigots: Art exhibit taps into South Florida’s water woes 

By Jack Lemnus for the Sun Sentinel 

It was early April, and colossal floodwaters were ravaging parts of Broward County, engulfing streets and displacing residents. Just as the floods surged through Fort Lauderdale, sisters Dana Kleinman and Ruth Avra were debuting their art exhibit highlighting a different water crisis. 

“It was sort of art coming to life,” Avra said. They took it as a sign. 

Titled “Boil Notice,” their interactive art installation at the Pompano Beach Cultural Center illuminates chronic water quality issues, specifically the prevalent issuance of boil-water notices. 

The exhibit features 365 unique spigot sculptures, each representing a day in 2022. Some dispense a clear, plant-based resin, meant to represent a day when all of Broward County had clean drinking water. Out of these 365 spigots studding the walls, 270 are clogged with a murky ooze made from recycled concrete and debris, resembling dirty water. 

These symbolize the days when boil-water notices were issued in the county, the precautionary move over concerns of contaminants in the drinking water supply. “Broward County, as much as it’s an affluent, well-to-do area, we still have water access issues, and it’s not something that everybody is aware of,” Kleinman said. 

The Venus of Willendorf, dating to the Upper Paleolithic age around 28,000 BCE, is one of the oldest sculptures known. The small figurine can fit in one’s hand and yet it transports its viewers to a time and place unknown to any modern mind. This is the power of sculpture – it is a creation that allows the challenge of our realities and further proposes an essence of truth that no other human medium has been able to attain. From ancient Egypt to the Renaissance, the physical manifestation of the world has been thoroughly exposed.  

In 1913, however, artist Alexsei Gam and his peers changed the course and use if sculpture as a defiant measure. At once declaring an “uncompromising war on art” - in an effort to curry support for revolution – constructivist sculptors scoffed at the paintbrush and instead created works that defied scale. Industrial and unrelenting, this form of sculpture helped to define an entire art movement.  

Jane Manus is a modern-day abstract sculptor and minimalist carrying the torch of those that came before her. Born in 1951 in New York City, Manus was inspired by the industrial materials and aesthetics of early constructivist revolutionaries. Working with an enticing type of geometry, gravity, and asymmetry, Manus’ sculptures are welded from metal and incorporate jewel tones of deep blues, reds, and yellows. Manus had her first exhibition in the 1970s and continues to be exhibited and showcased all around the world due to the strength of her exhibitions.  

In the spring of 2022, Max-Steven Grossman was invited to Gloria Steinem’s 3-story apartment in NYC to photograph her extensive personal book collection.  The resulting bookscape is a piece of art that highlights Gloria’s work in activism, feminism and human rights. This collaboration is a fundraiser for GLORIA’S FOUNDATION whose primary goal is to support and nurture the feminist movement. Since 1968 Gloria’s home has served as a center for activism, thought, creativity, security and planning. The vision for the future of the apartment is that it shall continue to be what it always has been.

 Somewhere in the Middle: Donald Martiny sets the stage for a new dance by Amy Hall Garner and the Paul Taylor Dance Company

The Paul Taylor Dance Company’s new commissioned dance, Amy Hall Garner’s Somewhere in the Middle, with set design by Donald Martiny, will have its World Premiere at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on November 3, 2022 at 7pm. A second performance will take place November 11 at 8pm.

JANE MANUS “Undaunted” exhibition at the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA

 Jane Manus celebrates change through the illusion of geometric forms. Her bold abstract sculptures are now on display at the Georgia Museum of Art  in its Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden in the exhibition “Jane Manus, Undaunted” through February 12, 2023. Five large works show a variety of balance, movement and abstraction, and smaller maquettes are on view inside the museum, allowing visitors to follow the artist’s dynamic creative process.

In conjunction with the seasonal King Tides, The City of Delray Beach and the Office of Sustainability organized a climate education outreach event to raise awareness about the impacts of climate changes and the need to proactively adapt. The weekend invited organizations from around the city to be involved and programs included artist talks, art exhibitions, in-person panels and environmental activities.  As a coastal city within a larger coastal area, Delray Beach hopes to share the realities of the climate crisis, rising tides, and ultimately how it can directly affect us and the local neighborhoods in the future.

Two works, “Tide Markers” and “Obstructed Flow” by Kx2 (artist duo Dana Kleinman and Ruth Avra) were included in the exhibit “Waves” at the Arts Warehouse in Delray Beach, FL. 

By Karen Hedeen Choudhury for Splash Magazine

 In her new exhibition “Art Meets Hollywood” showing at the Boca Raton Museum of Art through August 21, 2022, Bonnie Lautenberg compares art as it captures the mood of a particular time period. It is a visceral examination of two artistic presentations via a snapshot in time though a creative use of diptychs, an ancient writing tablet form using two flat plates which make a pair often attached by hinge. It is a history of art from 1928 to 2020 seen though film and painting.

Through these 28 diptychs, Ms. Lautenberg compares a film and a painting created within the same year as each depicts the culture, fashion, and emotional tenor of that year. Although it is just the moment in time that they share, the viewer can see the influence on both the filmmaker and the painter. Three examples: