During the height of the 1960’s American Civil Rights Movement, a group of New York based art activists and collectors who were committed to the idea of public access to the visual arts decided engage Tougaloo College in Mississippi. The idea was not only to have art on the campus and use art as a teaching tool for students at college, but to engage the greater community by establishing an art center in the heart of Mississippi. In 1963, the Tougaloo College Board of Trustees approved the Art Committee for Tougaloo College, headed by art critic Dore Ashton. Between 1963 until late 1967, works of art were sent to the college. Joan Miro, Fritz Bultman, Robert Motherwell and Hans Hofmann are among many of the artists who represent the early shipment of works to the college and are represented in this exhibition, Access: Works from the Tougaloo College Art Collections, 1963-1967, organized Turry M. Flucker, a graduate of Tougaloo College.

On December 18th Nancy Hoffman Gallery opens “Cutout /Decoupage,” a response and homage to the Matisse cutouts now on view at MoMA.  The exhibition, which continues through January 24th, includes paper, plastic, steel and ceramic cutouts, as well as Asya Reznikov’s video in which a cutout bird lifts from the surface of a globe and appears to flutter and fly around the world, over land and sea.