War And Discontent

This exhibition highlights three exceptional historical works in the MFA's collection and nearly twenty recent works examining artists' responses to contemporary world events. The picture shows Airplanes, 2002, the author is Suara Welitoff.

Edouard Manet's extraordinary "unfinished" canvas of the Execution of the Emperor Maximilian (1867) which closely followed the posthumous publication of Francisco y Lucientes Goya's unsettling, graphic series of etchings Disasters of War (1810-20; published 1863) and, painted a century later, Pablo Picasso's Rape of the Sabine Women (1963) will be brought together in the contemporary galleries with recent work by artists critically engaged in the present who have created art that is both provocative and subtle while facing the time in which we live.

Among recent works will be paintings such as Andy Warhol's Statue of Liberty (1986), Richard Artschwager, Tank (1991), as well as Dinos and Jake Chapman's graphic portfolio Disasters of War (1999).

Suara Welitoff's video projection of appropriated images, Airplanes (2002), as well as Anri Sela's Natural Mystic (Tomahawk 2), (2002) and Phil Collins' installation they shoot horses"¦ (2004), which acknowledges the triumph of the human spirit through embattled surroundings, will also be included. War and Discontent is comprised of objects from the MFA's collection, work from The Broad Art Foundation, and loans from private collections.

The exhibition runs from April 10 to August 5, 2007 at Foster Gallery. -- www.mfa.org