CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/1/2019

'Louise Nevelson: I Must Recompose the Environment' is a welcome, historical deep dive

In the spring of 1967, the Whitney Museum of American art gave Louise Nevelson her first major museum retrospective. (She was 68 years old.) Afterwards, the show traveled to the young and hungry Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, where the artist was given total freedom to go big. "Everything, upstairs, downstairs, even the stairwell," was turned over to the artist, according to a September, 1967 review in the Boston Globe. "Everything except a measly little desk by the door which was glared by sunshine had been stripped to allow Nevelson’s work to be the sole thing in the place, to BE the place. I must recompose the environment, she had said. Windows had been blocked out, permanent unmovable exhibits covered, decorations obliterated, walls repainted." This refreshingly concise volume, published by Inventory Press and Rose Art Museum, does an excellent job of bringing that historic show to life. Called a "welcome, historical deep dive," by Ursula editor Randy Kennedy, it is "the product of an adventurous faith in artists that more museums should revisit today."