BOCA RATON, FLA.- The contemporary artist Bonnie Lautenberg channels the creative zeitgeist between legendary filmmakers and iconic artists: intuitively pairing them in her new exhibition. On view at Boca Raton Museum of Art for the next two months until Aug. 21, “Bonnie Lautenberg: Art Meets Hollywood” is the museum premiere of Lautenberg’s new series of digital collages. In these 28 diptychs, she pairs scenes from famous films alongside iconic works of art (both created the same year). Watch the video here featuring Lautenberg in conversation with Irvin Lippman, the Executive Director of the Museum. “Lautenberg pulls together visuals she feels speak to each other, taking us along on her colorful trip to explore how these two art forms have amazing parallels and are beautifully paired,” says Irvin Lippman. “Through her careful considerations, she brings to life each moment in time and the spark of creativity these pairings might have shared. Lautenberg possesses a keen eye on the visual elements of humanity and culture that arise. The brilliance of these juxtapositions is how she illuminates the psychological connections between each film scene and artwork.”

Lautenberg plays matchmaker to the 1957 movie Funny Face by combining Audrey Hepburn’s bold pose with Clifford Still’s painting PH971 ‒ both majestic, and both glamorous. When viewed together this way in the museum gallery, the combination seems to make perfect sense, as if they were made for each other. In another work from this series, the terrifying scene she selects from the 1975 movie Jaws literally screams above a Willem De Kooning painting that conjures blood spilling into the water below. Her pairings can also be surprising and intriguing: who would have imagined the 1963 scene of Paul Newman from the classic movie Hud would look so ideal next to Warhol’s seminal painting of Elvis from the same year?

During the past five years she has worked on this series, Lautenberg made a crucial discovery: the artist Lucio Fontana was so moved by the Antonioni film Red Desert that he created one of his largest red paintings, influenced by what he saw up on the big screen. “This solidified my belief,” says Bonnie Lautenberg. “Throughout art history, artists have always been influenced by some force going on in the world around them. I started thinking about how artists who work in different art forms might have influenced each other. I decided to explore how one art form can influence another,” adds Lautenberg.


“American Beauty” is paired with James Turrell’s “The Light Inside” (both from 1999).

Bonnie Lautenberg is an artist, photographer and writer based in New York and Palm Beach. During the past 30 years, her works have been featured in gallery shows, museums and art fairs throughout the United States. Lautenberg’s work is currently on view at the New York Historical Society’s Center for the Study of American Culture.


Pictured above: Lautenberg’s “1952” pairing is in her exhibition at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, and combines a scene from “Singin’ in the Rain” with Yayoi Kusama’s painting titled “The Sea” (both from 1952). This year marks the 70th anniversary of Singin' in the Rain, one of Hollywood's most beloved films of all time. In honor of the film's milestone anniversary, Warner Bros. Studio is releasing a new 4K Ultra HD version of the movie. At the opening reception for Lautenberg’s exhibition at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, one of the special guests of honor that evening was Patricia Ward Kelly (the widow of Gene Kelly). She is the Creative Director of the Gene Kelly Legacy Project in Los Angeles. Lautenberg and Kelly discuss the visual connections between the film and the painting in this opening night video, recorded at the Museum.

Watch the opening night video at https://vimeo.com/723377529

Rave Reviews for Bonnie Lautenberg: Art Meets Hollywood

“The connections are often witty but are invariably imaginative” . . . “Lautenberg’s series is beyond clever; it also captures a synergistic zeitgeist -- conscious or unconscious -- between artists and filmmakers. If we’re lucky, we’ll be gifted with a Lautenberg mash-up for every year motion pictures have existed.”
― John Thomason, Boca Raton Magazine

“Lautenberg gets top marks for detecting connections we can only see in hindsight” . . . “Ms. Lautenberg has an intuitive process involving images that talk to each other. She plays matchmaker to the symbiotic relationships” . . . “The power of each frame remains in the connection shared by both.”
― Gretel Sarmiento, Palm Beach Florida Weekly


Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1” with “Grand Hotel” (both from 1932).

“This series by Lautenberg is extremely original, and I love the idea of what she is doing with the two art forms," said Jean Albano, whose gallery in Chicago has showcased Lautenberg's different series of works, mostly photography, for the past eight years. They're visually striking, but you can also engage with them intellectually. They're beautifully put together artistically but very clever and appealing to look at,” adds Albano.


“Pulp Fiction” is coupled with Kenny Scharf’s “Globe Glob” (both from 1994).

About the Artist
Bonnie Lautenberg is an esteemed artist, photographer and writer. Her work was recently shown at the Jean Albano Gallery in Chicago, and at David Benrimon Fine Art in New York, in the show Rethinking America alongside works by Warhol, Lichtenstein, Longo, Kass, and Ed Ruscha.

To view her artworks and photography, visit BonnieLautenberg.com where the artist showcases images she has taken in Israel, Antarctica, Cuba, and around the world for the past 25 years.

Lautenberg's work is in several private collections, and in the permanent collections of museums and institutions, including: The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture; The Boca Raton Museum of Art; The New York Historical Society; The Broad Museum in Los Angeles; The Newark Museum of Art; Portland Museum of Art; and Stillman College Art Gallery in Alabama, among others.

Shows at galleries, art fairs and institutions include: the 92nd Street Y in New York; Jean Albano Gallery in Chicago; Monika Olko Gallery in Sag Harbor; Sponder Gallery; the Art Miami fair; the Palm Beach Modern and Contemporary fair; C. Parker Gallery in Greenwich; Vertu Fine Art; the Turkish Embassy at the United Nations; the U.S. Embassies in Madrid and Berlin; Art Market Hamptons; The White Room Gallery in Bridgehampton, NY; Art Southampton fair, and RH Gallery in New York. Her series of portraits, How They Changed Our Lives: Senators As Working People, was exhibited at Mana Contemporary in New Jersey, and is now in the Library of Congress permanent collection, viewable online at www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/Lautenberg.html.


“Hidden Figures” with Mark Bradford’s “Tomorrow is Another Day”.

She is the widow of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg, one of Washington's longest-serving Senators. He served in the U.S. Senate from 1982 to 2001, and then again from 2003 until his death in 2013. She has been described as “having enough Washington insider stories to fill a book” (to be released by Rutgers University Press next year, which she is currently working on with co-writer Dick Olin, about her 25 years of political photography).

Lautenberg is co-producing a new Broadway musical about the life of Andy Warhol with her current partner Steve Leber. The show is in development, and is slated to be directed by Sir Trevor Nunn with book by Rupert Holmes.

In 2022, Lautenberg was appointed by the White House to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts (PACA). Established in 1958 by President Eisenhower, PACA also sustains and guides the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the National Cultural Center of the United States, see more at www.kennedy-center.org/Support/donor-listings/PACA/


“Funny Face” with Clifford Still’s painting “PH971”.

About the Boca Raton Museum of Art
Founded by artists, Boca Raton Museum of Art was established in 1950 as the Art Guild of Boca Raton. The organization has grown, now in its eighth decade, to encompass a Museum, Art School, and Sculpture Garden. As one of South Florida’s leading cultural landmarks, the Museum provides educational programs and a robust exhibition schedule to the community, and to visitors from around the world. Support for #BocaMuseumatHome and #KeepKidsSmartwithArt virtual programming is provided by Art Bridges Foundation and PNC Grow Up Great