Your April visual-arts round-up

We have a great new venue for visual arts! Thanks to a beautiful bequest and some volunteer love, the Harold Stevens Gallery has been established at WCUW , 910 Main Street. Photographer Stephen DiRado produced its first exhibition: fittingly, an assemblage of photographs of Harold Stevens taken over three decades. If you’re unfamiliar with Stephen’s work, this is a great introduction to some of his projects. WCUW, in addition to being a community radio station, also houses the Front Room for performances and film screenings, and I’m thrilled to add it to this visual arts round-up. (On view Wednesdays, 1:00 to 4:00 PM, until May 5)

You have exactly two months to go see the current exhibitions at the Fitchburg Art Museum , which are stellar. On Her Own Terms is a group show of New England artists who foreground the body–mostly, women’s bodies–in their work. Among other works, you’ll see alternative-process photographs of “intimate pleasure appliances,” laser-etched images of Iranian political protesters, and wall sculptures that draw from both Victorian hair weavings and the techniques and materials of the Black hair industry. One of the galleries is a visual symphony of gray, cream, pink, and black, and is hands-down one of the most beautiful installations I’ve ever seen. (On view until June 2)

You’ll also catch Ria Brodell’s Butch Heroes, to which my previous mentions did not do justice. Brodell combines short biographical studies of gender non-conforming people across centuries and continents, a tour de force of historical research, and creates, in their honor, perfect gouache portraits in the style of Catholic holy cards. The illustrative precision and imagination on display are both extraordinary. It is also a book, available for purchase, which I enjoyed even more than the exhibition; the book affords more leisure to consider these lives, in all their variety, and revel in Brodell’s artistic detail. (On view until July 14).

Juxtaposed against all this female empowerment is Portrayed by Eakins, a fascinating study of Ella Crowell, the subject of a Thomas Eakins portrait–her uncle–which FAM discovered in storage, had conserved properly, and now exhibits, alongside photographs, sketches, and related material. Crowell’s life was short and unhappy but guest curator Elizabeth Athens dug deep in the archives to unearth the ways Crowell worked to assert her own agency, and to tell Crowell’s story on her own terms. Also on view at FAM are Capital Vice and Africa Rising: 21st Century African Photography–two exhibits with which I haven’t had sufficient time yet–but suffice it to say: so much to see at FAM, all of it brilliant and beautifully exhibited. Get there before June 2, when most of these will have closed.

At ArtsWorcester , April 10, from 5:00 to 7:00pm, is Art On The Line, best described as the area’s fastest exhibition and sale. Hundreds of artists, some from all over the country, donate 5x7” works on paper, all kinds, all styles, all approaches. We string them from the ceiling to create a floating installation of artworks, all sold for $20 each, no matter how expensive or well-known the artist might be. Tickets are $10, available online, and all proceeds support ArtsWorcester member exhibitions. Guests arrive sometimes over an hour in advance to queue up inside the building for the moment when we open the gallery doors–for those of you who remember Filene’s, think “Running of the Brides”--and snatch up to four of the pieces they want the most. It’s a great way to begin buying real art, to find beautiful gifts, and a fun, budget-friendly way to support our exhibitions.

Meanwhile, ongoing in the ArtsWorcester galleries are Feast, the 2024 call-and-response collaboration with the Fitchburg Art Museum, with 104 artists showing a work inspired by the FAM loan and the theme of food and dining, and the Twentieth Annual College Show, with seventy-two outstanding works by student artists at our local institutions and from schools farther afield in the Commonwealth. (Both Feast and the College Show are on view through April 21.)

Opening at the Worcester Art Museum April 6 is New Terrain: 21st Century Landscape Photography. In this exhibition, thirty different artworks using a range of photographic processes take on and reinvent the idea of landscape. In the capable hands of curator Nancy Kathryn Burns , New Terrain promises 3-D printing, weaving, embroidery, collage, and the use of nontraditional materials like rusted cans and lake water, all employed to reinterpret the traditional practices of landscape photography. (Through July 7)

Appropriately enough, since this is Easter Monday, the Worcester Art Museum is hosting the international tour of Leonardo DaVinci’s Last Supper, installed next to the Hunt Mosaic at the Salisbury Street entrance. It makes only a brief stop here this month, and then goes on to the MFA. Tickets are available on the WAM website.*

Very last call for “Step Right Up,” at Worcester State University’s Dolphin Gallery, Brad Chapman Bleau ’s exhibition of paintings and sculptures. One of the most interesting and skilled artists in the region, Brad works with vintage objects of the most everyday kind–Rolodexes, Marlboro cigarette lighters, McDonald’s merchandise–and builds surrealist scenes around them and the associations we have with them. His techniques, from figural painting to cabinet construction, are all top-notch. (On view through April 13)

*#checkthedate