Westchester museums

May 10, 2015; New York Times

Seven museums across New York State and Connecticut are collaborating to produce seven shows, each one focused on one of the seven deadly sins—lust, greed, gluttony, pride, envy, sloth, and wrath. We are pretty much all guilty as charged, but if you would like to revisit a bit, here is your chance!

The Fairfield/Westchester Museum Alliance makes it well worth your while to wildly immerse yourself in all this depravity by providing free admission to any member of one of the eight museums in the alliance as long as the visits happen all in one day. Sounds like a day trip!

One of the shows is adults-only, and pretty predictably it is “7 Deadly Sins: Lust” at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. It includes painting, photography, sculpture, installations and “all manner of sexual desire is on display.” The venue, however, balanced all of that with another show, “Love: The First of the 7 Virtues,” while managing to convey that in fact the two occupy some of the same space.

The Bruce Museum in Greenwich presents art from five centuries in “The Seven Deadly Sins: Pride”; the works “will offer a gamut of interpretations of hubris, vanity and arrogance.” At the Hudson River Museum, the multimedia artist Adrien Broom is featured in a “Web of Envy.”

At the Neuberger, “Greed: GOLD,” will appear. (This show was originally entitled “GOLD” and was presented at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami.) Gluttony will take its place of honor at the Katonah Museum, and “Wrath—Force of Nature,” wherein twelve contemporary artists are featured with pieces that focus in part on the “ramifications of an endangered earth,” will be at Wave Hill.

Finally in a pièce de résistance, “Sloth” will be at the Aldrich and will enable visitors to experience firsthand the sin of sloth by providing a multichannel video installation so guests need not travel to the other museums. Bob-O-Pedic recliners will be provided.—Ruth McCambridge