Bloomberg News, March 9, 2007. Muse Arts: "Wall Hole, Blossoms Delight in Art Academy's Invitational Show."
By Carly Berwick

A riverbed is hanging from a ceiling in Manhattan's Washington Heights. Strung-up plastic cups bound by chain-link fence dangle river rocks in Soo Sunny Park's dreamlike contribution to the American Academy of Arts and Letters invitational exhibition, an indispensable annual sampling of contemporary American art.

The show opened yesterday in the academy's McKim, Mead & White and Cass Gilbert buildings on upper Broadway.

This is one instance where decisions made by committee actually work. The 250 members of the American Academy -- writers, composers, artists and architects -- suggested artists to the nine-member selection committee, which then chose the 34 in the show.

The result is broad-ranging yet intimate -- and blessedly free of the theory-driven assemblages or saleable, vaguely salacious paintings that dominate biennials and art fairs. The show brings together floral still lifes so out of step with the contemporary art world that they seem almost to comment on it, paintings by established names such as David Salle and Dana Schutz, and a self-referential sculpture by Joe Fig of his own studio -- with a mini-artist inside making a sculpture of his studio.

It also offers some genuine surprises, such as Juan Gomez's green and pink painting of a mother and child rendered in easy, sweeping brushstrokes. The figures are stretched like Gumby, unbearably light inverses of Fernando Botero's massive nudes. Like Botero, Gomez is from Colombia. Now a New York resident, he is the winner of the academy's $5,000 award to a “young American painter of distinction.”

Academy Awards

In addition, Sally Hazelet Drummond won the $5,000 Jimmy Ernst Award for lifetime contribution to a consistent vision (for abstract paintings), while five other artists won $7,500 Academy Awards: Bryan Hunt, for aerodynamic sculptures; Jackie Gendel, for blocky portraits; Schutz, for a large figurative painting; Julian Hatton, for loose landscapes; Sarah Oppenheimer, for a negative-space sculpture.

The academy also spends $100,000 to $200,000 annually from a fund established by painter Childe Hassam to buy works from the invitational, which it then donates to museums.

This year, works by 14 artists were purchased. Nearly every major museum in the country, from the Metropolitan to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has accepted a piece -- except for the Museum of Modern Art, because it does not want to submit to the academy's stipulation that it be notified if the museum wants to sell the work.

Strong Sculpture

Overall, the show's sculptures and installations are strongest, perhaps because the paintings split between traditional representation and more conceptually informed abstractions and chunky figuration. The two approaches clash in ways that suggest parallel but never converging art worlds.

It's easy to find favorites: Oppenheimer's ovoid opening in the exhibition wall; Grace Knowlton's cannonballs of Styrofoam and concrete; Hatton's colorful landscape ``Tree Line'' (2006).

A wheezing and fluttering noise from an alcove in the academy's grand beaux-arts south hall announces Charlotte Becket's ``Wishing Well'' (2004). Mechanical pulleys hoist cans and cardboard-box pieces to the top of a trash heap, then dump them to the bottom of the pile. The futile cleanup effort would be funny if it weren't so sad.

The academy's regal setting provides respite from the real garbage-and-noise routine on the streets outside and is reason enough to visit. Somewhere between Inigo Manglano-Ovalle's massive carbon-fiber and aluminum ``Black Jack'' (2006) and the high French windows overlooking an old cemetery, the city's racket fades away.