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Manchester, NH: Grand Re-Opening for Currier

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That sense of aesthetic stop-time was reinforced by seeing Gregory Amenoff's 1980 expressionist abstraction Down by the Pylons, Jonathan Imber's strong 1984 self-portrait, and my old friend the late Neil Welliver's 1980 landscape Blue Pool. Poor Neil! Even in death his methodical approach to modernizing the art of landscape paintings is misunderstood. "Paint by numbers," one gentleman quipped as I walked by.

Among the Currier's recent acquisitions are a bravura print by pop-art star James Rosenquist and a sculpture installation by Marisol Escobar. Rosenquist's 1989 print House of Fire, with its arsenal of lipsticks and bag of groceries, speaks to the go-go years of the 1980s, now alas given way to the desperate years of the early 21st century. Marisol's (she went by only her first name until recently) mordant 1963 The Family, a blocky wooden construction of father and mother with children and baby carriage, was wonderfully apropos on a day when visitors to the museum were kept busy dodging strollers.

No complaints, though. It was great to see the Currier come back to life, full of art lovers, sightseers, and the just plain curious. I made a mental note to return to Manchester in a few months when the hoopla has died down and the art can be properly seen and contemplated. Folks from out of town once again have a good reason other than cheap flights at the airport to go to Manchester.

Currier Museum of Art,150 Ash St.,Manchester, NH. 603-669-6144; www.currier.org