Description

The Project :
 
As part of a new, museum-wide critical approach to project work, which entails a keen self-awareness of institutional choice/bias, the MFAB is undertaking an exhibition of the work of the mid-century Boston-based American painter Hyman Bloom.  Although the MFA curators have for some time contemplated mounting a Bloom show, Matthew Teitelbaum’s new commitment to Boston artists and to revisiting accepted historical narratives accelerated thinking around the project. 
 
As a figurative painter and a Jew, Bloom experienced the exclusionary tactics of a traditional New England institution—the MFA—and an art market fixated on the macho-fueled phenomenon of Abstract Expressionism.  The exhibition sets out to demonstrate the depth and power of Bloom’s production, recuperating an oeuvre that was effectively sidelined by curators and critics of the period.  The exhibition will delve into Bloom’s subject matter, which was considered by many to be excessively and gratuitously morbid and sensational.
 
 
The accompanying exhibition catalogue, for which funding is sought, will consider the deeper sources and meaning of Bloom’s subjects and style, and the trajectory of his career and reputation.  Beyond a consideration of Bloom, the project will present a model of the type of revisionism that requires a questioning of the impact of institutional support and influence—or lack thereof–on the formation of art historical canon.
 
 
Rationale for Funding :
 
The power of Bloom’s work, and the seriousness of this inquiry—on a monographic level as well as in terms of institutional critique–led the AAP to invite the MFA to submit a proposal for catalogue funding. (The timeframe for the exhibition was such that it precluded an application for the entire project in the category of the loan exhibition competition.)  One might ask why the MFAB has been invited, again, to apply for support. The AAP always seeks to support the best work in the field, and it happens that at this time there is a significant range of excellent work happening in American Art at the MFAB.
 
In the case of this project, the compelling nature of the art and the biography, and the clarity of the critical consideration of institutional history, sets this project apart as a model for a modestly-scaled effort with profound relevance for the museum and its Boston audience, as well as for the broad fields of American art and modernism.  The project is particularly timely in that the artist’s widow is soon to celebrate her 80 th birthday.