“Under New York Skies: Nocturnes by Yvonne Jacquette,” Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY. Through May 4.
For 30 years, Yvonne Jacquette has made night paintings from aerial vantage points of such cities as San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, Hong Kong, and Tokyo�along with bird�s-eye views of Maine and Midwestern farmland�but her paintings of New York City presented by the Museum of the City of New York are the best known. In Newsday, Ariella Budick reports that Jacquette’s paintings glory in the lights, the colors, and the vitality that leaks from downtown windows even after midnight. “A native of Pittsburgh who came to New York via Connecticut in the 1950s, she started as an abstractionist. It wasn’t until the mid-’70s when she discovered her m�tier by transforming herself into an aerialist. She has scouted and sketched the outlines of her oversized canvases from real places, enduring many lonely nights in empty offices at the World Trade Center. But though her magnificent vistas seem real, they are more like meta-views of a metropolis that’s been slightly remapped to serve her compositional requirements.” Read more.
