State of the Arts Category Archive: Museums

New light, and a new angle, for MIA sculpture

Posted at 12:41 PM on February 9, 2012 by Marianne Combs (3 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Sculpture

New research on a sculpture in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts has resulted in a shift of about 100 years and 45 degrees.

Saint Paul the Hermit, before restoration

St. Paul The Hermit was acquired by the MIA in 1973; at the time it was believed to be a work of Italian sculptor Francesco Mochi (1580-1654). But experts recognized the hermit differed from Mochi's other pieces.

And even those with an untrained eye had to ask - why does the hermit look like he's about to dive into a lake?

MIA curator Eike Schmidt began investigating the history of the sculpture in 2010, and it didn't take long to figure out that the hermit was NOT by Mochi, but by the lesser known Andrea Bergondi in 1775, more than a hundred years later than previously thought.

According to an article by Schmidt for an upcoming edition of the MIA's member magazine, a handwritten note in the MIA's old index-card catalogue bearing John Pope-Hennessy's attribution of the sculpture to Bergondi provided the clue for the correct identification.

It represents the first hermit saint of the Christian church, Saint Paul (not to be confused with the Apostle Paul), who in the third century retreated to the Egyptian desert near Luxor to live a solitary life dedicated to the worship of God.

That's right, he's worshipping - NOT swimming.

Over the past year and a half, with the help of the Midwest Art Conversation Center, the MIA has painstakingly restored the sculpture, removing blocks of stone that add been added by a previous owner in the 1960s to create a solid base. MIA staff then repositioned Saint Paul so that he stands more upright. Suddenly those hands aren't preparing for a dive - they're praying.

Saint Paul the Hermit, after restoration

Much better, don't you think?

Starting Saturday you can pay a visit to Saint Paul, and learn more about his restoration, and the church he came from. He'll be on display in the Cargill Gallery.

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Plains Art Museum lands major donation

Posted at 6:10 PM on December 15, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Funding, Museums

Editor's Note: This report comes from MPR's Dan Gunderson stationed in Moorhead.

The Plains Art Museum in Fargo is ready to start construction on a $2.8 million education facility. The Creativity Center will be in a renovated building attached to the downtown Fargo museum by a skywalk. It will have studios for ceramics, drawing and painting, sculpture and digital media as well as galleries to display students work.

Doug Burgum
Image courtesy Plains Art Museum

The idea is to expand art education. The museum has a deal with Fargo Public Schools to teach classes to 5,000 K-5 students starting next fall.

Museum Director Colleen Sheehy expects 12,000 students as other Fargo Moorhead schools send students to the center in the next couple of years. There will also be classes offered for adults.

The Center has been in the works for several years. Fundraising started about 5 years ago. It got a push over the top this week when the Katherine Kilbourne Burgum Trust and the Burgum family donated $500,000 to the project.

Sheehy says the family has given more than $800,000 to the project since fundraising started. The museum still needs to raise $200,000 to wrap up the capital campaign.

Doug Burgum built Great Plains Software in Fargo and sold the company to Microsoft. He says investing in art education is good for business.

Burgum says a creative workforce is an economic development tool. He hearkens back to the conversations about art he had with his late mother Katherine, whose name will be on the new center. He says those conversations taught him to be more observant and curious. He says those are traits that foster innovation.

Burgum says the Center for Creativity will be about more than kids having fun with a pottery wheel or paint and canvas. He expects the result to be a better trained, more innovative workforce.

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Edo Pop: a contemporary spin on an old art form

Posted at 1:00 PM on December 7, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

One of the great strengths of the Edo Pop exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts is that it doesn't simply present the art of the Edo period (1600-1868), but connects it to art being made today.

The final two galleries of the show are dedicated to contemporary artists whose work has been strongly influenced by the Japanese woodblock prints.

And it's not hard to see similarities between the Edo period of Japan and modern Western culture, including hedonism, consumerism, and escapism.

One for the Money, Two Faux the Show (Still Pimpin'), after Katsukawa Shun'ei's The Actor Ichikawa Komazo III, 2006
Iona Rozeal Brown

In her work "One for the Money, Two Faux the Show (Still Pimpin')," Iona Rozeal Brown explores what Hip Hop culture looks like when it's taken out of context. Brown spent six months in Japan, looking at how certain Japanese youth were darkening their skin and getting perms to give them afros. Brown says it wasn't hard to make the connection between hip hop and the ukiyo-e prints:

Ukiyo-e, or 'the floating world,' was a time of decadence: new art forms, high fashion, geisha, samurai - codes, honorifics, passages, accoutrements, style-flossing, whips, bling, rhymes, beats, cutting, scratching, fresh gear, dope ropes, b-boy stances, sampling.

Brown says there is a romantic ideal that we are all mirror images of one another; while on a good day the relationship is reciprocal, sometimes one culture is fetishized by another.

Crew, 2002
Gajin Fujita

American born Gajin Fujita got his start as a graffiti artist on the streets of East Los Angeles before attending art school. There he combined his American street art with Eastern techniques and elements in a way that presents modern culture through the lens of history.

In his piece "Crew," Fujita and his fellow graffiti artists are transformed into Kabuki actors sporting traditional attire with contemporary logos. However the emblem of the Oakland Raiders is changed to "ronins." Curator Matthew Welch explains:

In historical Japan, rōnin were masterless warriors whose lords had died, suffered defeat, or fallen from political favor. As a result, rōnin were disenfranchised from the military hierarchy yet unable to integrate into society at large because of their status and training. So Fujita is likening today's subcultures, like graffiti crews, to the disaffected warriors of Japan's Edo period.

Utagawa Hiroshige
Forest of Suijin Shrine and Masaki on the Sumida River, 1856
Color woodblock print

One of the most luscious works in the contemporary galleries is a series of back lit photo collages by London artist Emily Allchurch.

Allchurch pays homage to the works of Utagawa Hiroshige by transposing his distinctive style into photography. Using thousands of images taken in Tokyo, Allchurch creates collages that recall specific Hiroshige prints while using a distinctly modern vernacular.

"Tokyo Story 5: Cherry Blossom" (after Hiroshige)
Emily Allchurch

According to Welch this is Allchurch's first exhibition in the United States. And it looks like her work will be staying here; Welch says he expects the MIA to accession her works into its permanent collection in March.

"Edo Pop: The Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints" is on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts through January 8.

All images courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

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Walker Art Center launches new website

Posted at 10:00 PM on December 1, 2011 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Museums, Technology

The Walker Art Center's website is sporting a new look.

Olga Viso stands before a projection of the new website design
Image courtesy Walker Art Center

The redesign is the first major overhaul of the museum's website since 2005.

It's being overseen former Adbuster journalist Paul Schmelzer and, according to Executive Director Olga Viso, walkerart.org will be more like a news site about the arts than a typical museum website.

Resembling an online art magazine in its design and format, this new site provides a multifaceted publishing platform--unique among museums worldwide. Here you will find news and feature content about contemporary art as well as the Walker's own programs and collections. As a pioneer in developing new platforms for scholarship, publishing, arts journalism, and creative exchange with our audiences, we believe we can play an important role in offering alternative media infrastructures as arts coverage in the mainstream media outlets everywhere have been dramatically reduced in recent years. Our cross-disciplinary focus as an institution also positions us well to survey larger trends in contemporary visual arts, performing arts, design, and media culture.

The site showcases news stories, interviews and essays written by Walker staff as well as aggregated content, covering issues not just limited to the museum itself but to art around the world.

As a reporter, I find this shift particularly interesting, because it marks a significant step forward in an ongoing trend. Namely arts organizations, faced with a lack of media coverage, are creating their own coverage, and taking the dialogue directly to their audiences. Will arts journalists eventually be employed by museums and theaters, rather than newspapers?

While the redesign has been applied to most major sections of the site, some additional sections will continue to be updated over the next year.

What do you think of the redesign? Your thoughts are always welcome.

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Edo-Pop: the enduring appeal of Japanese prints

Posted at 11:31 AM on November 23, 2011 by Marianne Combs (2 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Printmaking

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is currently showing an exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints that date back to the Edo period (1615-1868).

The prints are known as ukiyo-e, or "images of the floating world," and they flourished at a time when a burgeoning middle class was taking an interest in the arts.

Kitagawa Utamaro, Love for a Farmer's Wife, 1795-96

The show is the culmination of ten years work by curator Matthew Welch, and showcases 160 of the finest prints in the museum's extensive collection.

Welch says the ukiyo-e artists were often the same people who painted signboards and banners for Kabuki theater performances. While it's hard to believe when looking at these prints, they were originally sold as popular street art - the modern day equivalent of posters.

They were popular because they reflected the transitory and up-to-the-minute interests and tastes of the chonin (townsmen). The more fastidious among them would carefully save their prints in small woven lacquer or wooden boxes. Others might paste them up to the paper of shoji doors. There is even a theory that people tacked images of their favorite Kabuki actors to the backs of their kimono before attending a play! Because they were mass-produced, momentarily fashionable, and cheap, they were appreciated but not particularly valued. Hence, it is thought that only a fraction of the total output has come down to us today.

The exhibition is divided into several themes, including Beautiful women, Kabuki, Pleasures and Pastimes, and Sightseeing and Travel. Like Pop artists of the 1960s and 1970s in Britain and the United States, ukiyo-e artists were interested in fashion and other trends. Thus the name of the show: Edo-Pop.

Katsushika Hokusai, Poppies, ca. 1832

During a tour of the exhibition, Welch recounted how a visiting Japanese dignitary couldn't believe some of the prints were originals, because they were in such outstanding condition. So how did the MIA end up with such an extensive and high quality collection of Japanese prints?

While many collectors have donated prints to the museum over the years, Welch says the majority of the MIA's approximately 3000 prints come from two collectors: Richard P. Gale and Louis W. Hill, Jr., grandson of James J. Hill.

Both men had a mania for Japanese art. Richard Gale was an extremely demanding collector and connoisseur who constantly sought to refine his collection by selling or trading up. Consequently, his collection of woodblock prints was relatively small, numbering about 240 works of spectacular quality. While Mr. Gale collected prints from early 18th through the mid 19th century, his holdings were particularly strong in 18th century material picturing the reigning beauties of the pleasure quarters and famous Kabuki actors.

Louis W. Hill, Jr., on the other hand, loved Japan and collected prints that reflected the Japanese landscape, especially those by Utagawa Hiroshige. Of the nearly 2,000 prints that Mr. Hill donated, over half are by Hiroshige and 75% of those represent landscape views.

Hakone--View of the Lake, by Utagawa Hiroshige
From the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road, ca. 1833

The final gallery of the exhibition focuses on the lasting appeal and influence of these prints on contemporary artists, including filmmakers and sculptors. I'll write more about that aspect of the exhibition next week.

Edo-Pop runs through January 8 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Welch says he hopes visitors are smitten by the sheer beauty and technical finesse of the prints, and amazed by their sophistication and richness.

Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa, ca 1834

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Artist takes up residence at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Posted at 1:57 PM on November 17, 2011 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Marcus Young meditates in the MAEP Gallery of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The area where the wall appears distorted on the left is actually a curtain leading to the video room where Young has slept the past several nights.
(C) 2011 Minneapolis Institute of Arts/Amanda Hankerson

When I walked into the lobby of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts earlier this week, a young man was quietly washing the glass doors, dressed in blue jeans and a pale blue work shirt. A woman with a camera stopped to ask him a question, in response to which he just nodded and smiled. She asked again - more nods, and more smiles. Slightly befuddled, she walked away.

The man in question was Marcus Young, and he is not on staff at the MIA; he's a performance artist, and for the last ten days he's taken the term "artist in residence" quite seriously.

As part of the museum's latest Minnesota Artist exhibition, titled "Semblances," Young decided to put himself on display.

"With nothing to give, I give myself," he explained in an artist statement. "I faced the stark realization that I can make no object worthy of the galleries of the Institute, so I decided to give myself. It will be a temporary loan of my life."

"
Young engages in "slow walking" each day at the museum, dressed in flowing blue robes.
(C) 2011 Minneapolis Institute of Arts/Amanda Hankerson

Young took the stipend offered to him by the MIA and divided it by minimum wage; the result was the number of hours he would spend in the museum - ten full days.

Curator Christopher Atkins says the performance art has challenged museum security. How do you allow Young to spend the night, and not trip the alarm system? Where and when will he bathe? What and where will he eat?

But those issues were resolved, and on November 8 Young took up residence in the MAEP gallery, sleeping in the adjoining video room.

Young divides his day between meditating, washing windows and "slow walking," a meditative practice for which he dons flowing blue robes. While Young is "on display," he says he does not want to become a spectacle.

I will be in a corner of a gallery most of the time. I will not talk, use the phone, or use the computer. Each morning, I will practice slow-walking and smiling. I will help clean the museum each afternoon. There is not much to see if you look for me, but seeing the world around me may be interesting. I will try to slow down and simplify life, not to aspire to much other than experiencing living in its most basic forms.

One MIA staffer remarked "our doors have never been cleaner."
(C) 2011 Minneapolis Institute of Arts/Amanda Hankerson

Young's residency culminates tonight in an artist talk - along with the other artists features in "Semblances" - at 7pm. There he will finally talk again after ten days of silence, and he'll share with the audience some of what learned from the experience.

Young is perhaps best known for his work as the Artist in Residence for the city of Saint Paul, where he created the Sidewalk Poetry Project. But he's also organized sing-a-longs at the State Fair, serenaded sleepers at the Walker Art Center for Northern Spark, and convinced people (Minnesotans!) to dance spontaneously in public.

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China's terra cotta warriors to stand guard at the MIA

Posted at 2:00 PM on September 20, 2011 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, was not a guy to go quietly into that dark night.

In fact having made so made many enemies in his lifetime, he thought it necessary to bring an army with him into the afterlife.

The tomb of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, is surrounded by four pits filled with terra cotta warriors, horses, and chariots.
MPR Photo/Marianne Combs

The emperor had over 8,000 warriors and 600 horses made out of clay and buried in the expanse surrounding his tomb. They are known today as the "Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses", and next fall a contingent of them will make their way to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

The exhibition will feature over 120 rare objects from the First Emperor's burial site, including ten of the warriors and horses. The selection represents all major types of figures found from the pits: an armored general, a military officer, an infantryman, a kneeling archer, a cavalryman, a light infantryman, a standing archer, a charioteer, cavalry and chariot horses.

The terra cotta warriors each differ in facial expression and physical characteristics. Each statue was constructed to be unique.
Photo: Peter Morgan, Wikimedia Commons

What makes these figures so interesting is the realism and detail put into the figures - they each have distinct characteristics and facial expressions - a stunning feat for a project so large in size.

MIA was one of the first museums outside of China to feature these figures in a small display held in 1985. Even now, Chinese archaeologists continue to dig up figures, and have yet to open up the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, in anticipation of new technologies that will help preserve what's found inside.

"Return of the Warriors: China's First Emperor and his ghost army" will be on view October 27, 2012 through January 20, 2013.

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Minneapolis Institute of Arts returns Greek pottery to Italy

Posted at 5:00 PM on September 15, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is handing over a piece of Greek pottery from 5th Century, B.C. to Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration in order to see that the object is returned to its rightful owner, the Italian government.

Athenian Red-figure Volute Krater
Attributed to the Methyse Painter, 460-450 B.C.
Image courtesy the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

The MIA purchased the Greek krater back in 1983 from a well known dealer. Since then it's held a prominent place in the museum's relatively modest antiquities collection.

But in 2006 a criminal investigation into another dealer, Giacomo Medici,
revealed a storehouse of images of looted objects. A few of those photographs depicted a krater that looked startlingly similar to the one in the MIA's collection.

Read about how the MIA traces the ownership of the art in its collection.

According to the MIA's director Kaywin Feldman, the staff at the MIA began looking into the ownership history of their Grecian krater to determine whether it might or might not be the object in question, but a change in museum leadership, and the departure of a department head resulted in the issue being dropped.

After I arrived here, sometime later, I started to notice that whenever these polaroid photographs were mentioned in books or in the media, Minneapolis was always listed among the cities that might have some of these objects. Out of curiosity I actually contacted the Italian ministry of culture a year ago.

Kaywin Feldman

That conversation led to an exchange of information which eventually determined the MIA's krater had likely been illegally excavated. The MIA's board of directors voted in March to deaccession the object and return it to the Italian government. The Italian government for its part has stated that it is thankful for the return of the krater.

Feldman says standards around provenance requirements have changed drastically since the krater was first acquired in 1983:

At the time we did ask for provenance and were told that it came from 'a private collection in Switzerland.' That was acceptable in 1983 - now it would not be acceptable. And in fact now we wouldn't acquire any excavated work of ancient art unless it had provenance showing that it had been out of its country of origin since at least 1970.

Feldman says due to American museums' increased rigor around provenance, the market for looted antiquities has all but dried up.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts returned Fernand Leger's "Smoke Over Rooftops" to the heirs of Jewish art collector Alphonse Kann.
Image courtesy of Minneapolis Institute of Arts

This is not the first time the MIA has had to give up an item in its collection. In October of 2008 the museum returned an early 20th century painting by Fernand Leger, after determining it was looted by Nazis during the German occupation of France.

Currently no other items in the MIA are a source of concern, but Feldman says determining the history of objects in the collection is a regular part of the museum's work.

We have 83,000 objects in our collection. Since we've been here for almost 100 years, there are objects that came to us in 1916 that may not have been fully researched, so determining the history of an object is always an ongoing process.

While the return of the Greek krater has been agreed upon, logistics are still being worked out. Feldman estimates the krater will remain at the museum for at least a month, possibly several months. The MIA is taking advantage of the opportunity to educate the public; the krater is currently on display with an accompanying explanation of the investigation.

Oh and if you're wondering why a Greek object is being returned to Italian authorities, Feldman attributes it to "early globalism." Evidently Romans and Etruscans were very interested in collecting Greek objects, including kraters, which were used for mixing wine. This krater was so valued that it was included in a Roman burial, in what is present-day Italian soil.

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Visa issues plague Walker Art Center's new season

Posted at 1:05 PM on September 13, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Music

One of the highlights of the Walker Art Center's performing arts season this fall was to be a mini-festival of new Congolese music and dance.

Unfortunately the music-half of the festival has had to cancel, due to "visa-related issues."

Staff Benda Bilili

Staff Benda Bilili, a group of street musicians who live in and around the grounds of the zoo in Kinshasa, has had to cancel its entire North American tour.

The documentary of their story, however, will still screen at the Walker on Thursday, September 22, for free.

The dance-half of the mini-festival, Faustin Linyekula and Studios Kabako's presentation of "more more more ... future" is set for September 23 and 24.

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Minnesota treasures on tour, and in new book

Posted at 2:40 PM on September 13, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts around the state, Books, Galleries, Museums

For a museum without a building to call home, the Minnesota Museum of American Art is certainly doing a good job of making its presence known.

Currently the museum is touring some of the finer pieces from its extensive collection to different galleries around the state. First stop: the Tweed Museum of Art on the Duluth campus of the University of Minnesota. The exhibition is titled "Our Treasures" and features work by everyone from sculptor Paul Manship and muralist Thomas Hart Benton to potter Warren MacKenzie and photographer Wing Young Huie.

"Indian Hunter and His Dog" by Paul Manship

Along with the touring exhibition, the MMAA has published its first ever catalog of highlights from the collection, also named "Our Treasures." Selected works of art are accompanied by essays by museum curators and other scholars. MMAA Director Kristin Makholm says the publishing of the catalog marks an important step for the museum.

Minnesotans need to recognize what a significant collection the MMAA has so they understand the need to get it back into the public eye. Most people have no idea of the riches this museum holds. For the first time, we've opened a panorama on the history of the MMAA and its collection, confirming our long-time commitment and dedication to the visual arts in St. Paul and to showcasing the best in American art since the 19th century. This is part of the message we need to deliver to bring people back as supporters (and lovers!) of a permanent and sustainable Minnesota Museum of American Art.

"Our Treasures" in on display at the Tweed Museum of Art through October 23. From there it travels to the Hillstrom Museum of Art in St. Peter and then to the Perlman Teaching Museum on the campus of Carleton College.

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Birds parade at the Walker Art Center

Posted at 8:25 AM on September 9, 2011 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Animation, Museums, Music, Sculpture

Sculptor Natalie Djurberg has produced a gigantic and uncomfortably human flock of birds.
Photo courtesy Walker Art Center

I imagine if Alfred Hitchcock were still alive, he and Natalie Djurberg would get along quite well.

Djurberg has just installed "The Parade" at the Walker Art Center, which consists of an uncomfortably human looking flock of 83 birds. I'll let MPR's Euan Kerr describe it for you:

Atmospheric music fills the room, interspersed with what might be nature sounds. The birds are so brightly colored, it's overwhelming at first. Each is intricately textured, and ripe for interpretation.

"When I was starting doing the sculptures, the more I looked at birds, and the more I looked at their behavior, some of their behavior so resembled human behavior and emotions," she says.

Some of the birds strut with pride, others bicker and fight. There are so many of them that Walker curator Eric Crosby finds them kind of intimidating.

"I mean the idea of the flock as a social group is that it has its own kind of consciousness, right?" he says. "One that is not about the individuals own ideas but about a collective that may bully and pester individuals, that may do violence to others. I think that's a theme that's running through the whole exhibition."

But remember these are sculptures, built from scraps of cloth and wire, and splashed with the paint still engrained in Natalie Djurberg's fingernails.

The installation includes not just sculpture, but some rather gorey animated films as well, with music composed by Hans Berg. You can find out more about the exhibition by clicking on the audio link below:

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Art after 9/11/01

Posted at 3:41 PM on September 6, 2011 by Marianne Combs (2 Comments)
Filed under: Education, Events, Museums

Editor's note: As we near the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, I asked a few curators for their thoughts on how the event has influenced art-making. Today's response comes from Walker Art Center associate curator Bartholomew Ryan.

We live in a post 9-11 world, and as such one could say a post 9-11 paradigm, where all art is implicitly or explicitly enveloped in the events of that day and its aftermath. Of course, depending on where you live or on your cultural-political background, you may also be living in a post-Hurricane Katrina world, or a post- Iraq War world, or a post-other-major-traumatic-event world. Deciding what works to write about in this context is not simple. Because of the size and impact of the event, any list of art that has some relation to 9-11 is naturally going to be deeply partial, subjective and personal. I am going to mention four pieces briefly, and leave it at that.

Ellsworth Kelly, Ground Zero, 2003
Image: Whitney Museum of American Art

American artist Ellsworth Kelly's Ground Zero, 2003 was exhibited at the Walker in 2010 in a Yasmil Raymond curated exhibition titled Abstract Resistance . It is also one of the few works that directly references 9-11 in the upcoming MoMa PS1 exhibition titled September 11 , organized by former Walker curator Peter Eleey. The work features a green triangle collaged onto a New York Times Arts & Leisure section reproduction of the Ground Zero site. It is the artist's response to different suggestions for memorials and buildings at the World Trade Center of all of which he disapproved. He proposed instead a "visual experience," a mound of green grass that could function as a space for public communion.

Red Alert, 2007
Video on plasma monitors
Courtesy of Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Germany
© Hito Steyerl

Kelly's abstract representation speaks to something very key about how many artists respond to trauma, not trying for a literal representation of reality, but something less tangible and somehow broader in vision and possibility. Another work that responds in a directed way to the post 9-11 paradigm is Red Alert, 2007 by Berlin-based artist and theorist Hito Steyerl. A triptych, it features three identical computer monitors hung vertically side by side on a wall. They each play the same looped video of a deep red color. To look at the work is to see three static glowing fields of color emanating from the wall. The piece relates to the artist's deep thinking through of the status of the photographic image, digital particularly, in contemporary life. In recent texts, Steyerl has pointed out, cable news and other media have begun to set a value on images where the lower the resolution, the more fragmentary they are, the more they can be seen to be representing the truth. And so the highly pixilated cell-phone image of a foiled bomber on a plane, or the virtually abstract live-video feeds broadcast by embedded journalists during Operation Iraqi Freedom, are perceived to be the most authentic documents of real lived experience: the less you can see, the more that is being revealed. This observation led Steyerl to imagine a final state for the documentary in pure abstraction, though perhaps not that pure. The chosen color for the monochromes is based on the color of highest terror alert determined by the Department of Homeland Security. So even though visually abstract, the color is coded with significance: It has been ingrained in the psyche of those of us who live in this country as a constant symbol of ongoing dangerous potential. At any moment, the color reminds us, we may be attacked.

EVENT FISSION (分裂 1980): Eiko & Koma at Hudson River Landfill from Eiko and Koma on Vimeo.

Eiko & Koma's Event Fission is a work that they performed in Manhattan's downtown Battery Park Landfill way back in 1980 when the Towers were spanking new. Japanese-American Choreographers who are no strangers to the Walker and the Twin Cities, Eiko & Koma's approach to dance has evolved over the years into a deeply subjective, personal style. In the video documentation of the performance, Eiko holds aloft a white flag on a pole. She dances along a ridge with the Downtown skyline in the background, seeming to joust with the buildings, most particularly the iconic towers rising steely from the ground. Herself and Koma join forces, move down the ridge, dance and dig a hole into which they fall creating a plume of dust. The work has an insouciant, innocent quality, but is also provocative, especially with hindsight. The exuberance and life of the dancers seems in strong opposition to the bold authority of the buildings in the background. For many people, many of them artists, the towers were symbolic of finance-driven values that they did not share, and while wishing them no material harm, they could critique the kind of world they seemed to represent. After the buildings fell, Eiko & Koma, New Yorkers since 1978, made a new work of mourning and commemoration titled Offering, 2002.

Michael Richards, standing next to his work "Tar Baby vs. St. Sebastian"
Image courtesy: The Studio Museum in Harlam

The last work I will mention is titled Tar Baby vs San Sebastian, 1999. A bronze sculpture depicting an air force pilot with multiple airplanes penetrating his body, the work memorializes the Tuskegee Airmen, a celebrated and segregated air force unit during WW2 made up of African American pilots. The allusions to torture in the work reference in part the famous U.S. Government medical experiment in which African-American sharecroppers from Tuskegee were told they were being cured of syphilis when in fact they were being observed to see how the disease would develop in their bodies. The sculpture is part of a series by the artist Michael Richards, who understood that history is beset by traumas and wanted to help reveal them and make sense of them. Richards was artist in residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council on September 11th. Their studios were on the 92nd floor of Tower One. Consequently he was one of the many tragic victims of that very tragic day.

What art resonates most with you when thinking about the events of 9/11? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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MIA hires new director of External Affairs

Posted at 4:10 PM on June 27, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Photography

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) today announced the appointment of Mary Jane Drews as its new Director of External Affairs. She assumed her new role on June 20.

Mary Jane Drews

Drews comes to the MIA from the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), where she was Vice President of Development. There she fielded the $412 million campaign for the new Modern Wing, which opened in May 2009.

At the MIA, Drew will manage the museum's departments of Development & Membership, Marketing & Communications, and Community Relations.

This addition comes just two months after the MIA announced layoffs to its staff, including membership director Ann Benrud.

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John Waters on Walker exhibition: "making his own mixtape"

Posted at 12:18 PM on June 27, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, People

John Waters peaks out of one of the works that are included in "Absentee Landlord," an exhibit he curated at Walker Art Center.
MPR Photo/Jeffrey Thompson

The Sunday New York Times profiled John Waters' exhibition at the Walker Art Center, titled "Absentee Landlord."

In it, Waters argues that this exhibition is just a natural extention of his other work:

Mr. Waters compared his stint as guest curator to making his own mixtape and said it was of a piece with his other work. "Ever since I started collecting art in the late 1980s, it's become another way I tell stories," he said. "I make movies, but I couldn't get a movie made right now with the economy, so I wrote a book," he continued, referring to "Role Models," his 2010 memoir. "In my book I wrote about art. I made the film 'Pecker' in 1998, which is about the contemporary art world -- I think a loving picture of it. It's all one career. I'm telling stories."

You can find out more about just what kind of story it is by listening to Euan Kerr's story:

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Walker Art Center hosts NHL draft prospects

Posted at 4:41 PM on June 24, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Events, Museums

This morning an unlikely pairing took place; the world of hockey paid a visit on the world of fine art.

As you may know, the NHL draft is taking place tonight and tomorrow in St. Paul at the Xcel Energy Center. Today, the Walker Art Center served as host for many of the young draft prospects attending pre-draft orientations and media events.

I asked the Walker Art Center's Scott Stulen why the art museum was playing host - he explained it's simply a popular rental venue. But Stulen says the event is fascinating:

In some ways it's a graduation for them, from being an amateur to a professional. All of the professional leagues have preparatory sessions like the one hosted at the Walker this morning. The session dealt with the world the players are about to enter, how to communicate with press and the fans, how craft an image and how to handle social media (be careful who you friend). The league has an interest, as do the players, in presenting a professional product to the public and this is one mechanism to assist. They often have past players speak to talk about financial planning, dealing with the pressures of high expectations and other unique challenges.

Stulen says, in witnessing the event, he wondered if there shouldn't be an equivalent event in the art world.

I was interested in how the art world prepares young artists for their professional career, and often the lack of "real' world orientation when they leave school. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned from these sports programs, or as in the case of Lebron James, a lesson to be learned as how not to present yourself publicly.

Interesting thought - a professional league training for arts grads?

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MIA hires new head of Asian Art Department

Posted at 11:35 AM on June 7, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Liu Yang

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has announced the appointment of Liu Yang, Ph.D., as the new curator of Chinese art and head of the museum's Department of Asian Art. Dr. Liu comes to the MIA from the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, where he has worked as senior curator of Chinese art since 1997. He begins work at the MIA this month.

The MIA also announced the creation of two new, mid-level curatorships in Asian art, spurred by a challenge grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to strengthen the "scholarship and presentation" of the museum's Asian art collection. .

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is home to 12,500 Asian art objects, ranging in date from 5000 b.c. to the 21st century. While the museum is best known for its Chinese art and antiquities, it also includes significant holdings in Himalayan, Indian, Southeast Asian, Islamic, and Korean art.

According to MIA director Kaywin Feldman, the two new curators will divide their time between the art of India, Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea. Those curators are exptected to be selected by the MIA in the coming year.

Liu arrives after the departure of longtime curator Bob Jacobsen.

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MIA questions what's real

Posted at 7:06 PM on May 26, 2011 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Technology

Seung-woo Back
RW001-001, 2004, from the series Real World I, 2004
Digital print
Courtesy Gana Art Gallery, Seoul

What is "reality?"

I mean, if a person spends hours of their time role playing on Second Life, isn't their experience still part of their reality?

And hasn't American political debate proven time and time again that there are people out there who have a completely different understanding of reality from your own?

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, under the direction of contemporary art curator Elizabeth Armstrong, is taking a look at how we perceive reality in the modern age.

The exhibition is still a ways out in the future - it will open at SITE Santa Fe in July 2012, then travel to the MIA in February 2013. But I know from past conversations with Armstrong that this idea has been on her mind for quite some time, and she's extremely excited to be putting the show together.

It's titled "More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness," a reference to a term coined by humorist Stephen Colbert, but which has since made its way into our English lexicon. The American Dialect Society defines truthiness as "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true,"

Armstrong says "the exhibition proposes that we now live in an 'Age of Truthiness,' a period in which the slippage between fact and fiction has become increasingly blurred. Today artists in all parts of the world are exploring the pervasiveness of "truthiness" in art, politics, and the culture at large."

One of the featured artists in the exhibition will be Ai Weiwei, whose own understanding of reality appears to be at conflict with that of the Chinese government.

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Walker celebrates Cunningham in new performing arts season

Posted at 12:01 AM on May 26, 2011 by Euan Kerr (0 Comments)
Filed under: Dance, Galleries, Museums

When the Walker Art Center announced its multimillion dollar purchase of Merce Cunningham materials, Philip Bither knew what part of his new season had to be.

"When we announced the purchase of sets props and costumes that have been part of Cunningham's works for 60 years a couple of months ago we also realized we have to bring the company back one last time," Bither said in his office yesterday afternoon.

Cunningham, who died late last year, first performed at the Walker almost 50 years ago, culminating with "Ocean," a huge production in the round performed in a granite quarry near St Cloud. His company will disband after one final tour with a show in New York on New Years Eve. Despite this long association, the MCDC has never actually performed at the Walker itself, always using other stages around the area, so this show will be both a first and a last.

Bither has build a 10 day festival around the MCDC performances. It will feature an exhibit of pieces Robert Rauschenberg made for Cunningham, the first of several such shows planned for coming years featuring other artists who worked with the choreographer. There will also be a Cunningham inspired performance by French choreographer Jerome Bel.

The centerpiece of the show will be the performances of three works from throughout Cunningham's career.

"It's a piece from 1958 called "Antic Meat" with sets and props designed by Robert Rauschenberg and costumes," said Bither. "A piece from '68 with sets by Andy Warhol and then a piece from '98 with a set by Roy Lichtenstein and music by Brian Eno."

The release of the Walker performing arts season is always a little daunting because of its size and scope.

"Our 2011-2012 season spans from experimental theater and performance art through contemporary dance in all its various styles into avant-guard jazz, experimental rock, new sounds from all over the globe, contemporary classical music and then all the hybrids in between," he said.

There are six commissions in the season, including a residency and new work called "Story/Time" by Bill T. Jones which is actually based on a piece called "Indeterminacy" created in 1959 by Cunningham's long-time collaborator and partner John Cage where he told 90 stories in 90 minutes. Jones, who is riding high with his Broadway hits "Spring Awakening" and "Fela" will perform stories he has written himself as members of his dance company move around him. (below)

Other highlights include: a festival of new music and dance from the Congo call "Despair Be Damned" and "Structures and Sadness" by Australian choreographer Lucy Guerin which was inspired by the collapse of a bridge in Melbourne and is likely to have local resonance given the I-35 bridge disaster.

'Out There 2012: New World Performance' will feature works from Tokyo, Buenos Aires, and Beirut, and "Untitled Feminist Multimedia Technology Show" by Young Jean Lee's Theater Company which explores feminism and gender fluidity with a cast of performers who are nude for the entire show.

There is a two day mini-festival featuring the work of jazz composer Vijay Iyer, and a multimedia collaboration between spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph and visual artist Theaster Gates. Contemporary classical darling Nico Muly will reunite with several of his collaborators in the 802 tour, and Seun Kuti, son of Fela Kuti, will bring his incarnation of Afrobeat.

Another Walker commission features Brooklyn indie band the Lisps, performing "Futurity" which imagines a correspondence during the Civil War between a
Union soldier and Ada Lovelace as they attempt to design a steam-powered brain to save humanity. The season rounds out with the return of indie band Tortoise to collaborate with Twin Cities jazz musicians, and then David Zambaro will turn the Maguire stage into a club with a performance of "Soul Project."

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Several Mn Museums offer free admission to active-duty military and families

Posted at 11:50 AM on May 23, 2011 by Euan Kerr (0 Comments)
Filed under: Arts around the state, Museums

Memorial Day is the official start-date for the second year of the Blue Star Museums program, where participating organizations offer free admission to active-duty military personnel and their families between Memorial day and Labor Day.

When the program launched last year there were some 600 museums signed up nationwide. That number has now grown to 1300 including 21 in Minnesota.

The Walker in Minneapolis participated in the inaugural year, and had 137 families take advantage of the program.

Here's the list of Minnesota museums in the program, listed in alphabetical order:

American Association of Woodturners Gallery of Wood Art, St Paul,
Becker County Historical Society and Museum Detroit Lakes,
Dakota County Historical Society South Saint Paul ,
Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum Minneapolis,
Freeborn County Historical Museum, Library & Village, Albert Lea,
Goodhue County Historical Society
Red Wing,
Grand Portage Tribal Museum in Grand Portage,
Hennepin History Museum in Minneapolis,
ITOW Veterans Museum in Perham,
The Landing - Three Rivers Park District in Shakopee,
Little Theatre of Owatonna in Owatonna,
Milaca Area Historical Society Milaca,
Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minneapolis,
Minnesota State Public School Orphanage Museum, Owatonna
Owatonna Arts Center, Owatonna,
Roseau County Historical Museum and Interpretive Center in Roseau,
Scott County Historical Society - Stans Museum in Shakopee,
Steele County Historical Society in Owatonna ,
Traverse County Historical Society Museum, Wheaton,
Walker Art Center in Minneapolis,
Wright County Historical Society in Buffalo

Listings of museums in other states can be found here.

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Native American shirt returns home after 300 years

Posted at 4:49 PM on April 22, 2011 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Culture, Museums

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has just acquired a new Native American shirt, and in doing so has returned it to its homeland after an absence of more than 300 years.

"It does not get any better than this - it's amazing," beams curator Joe Horse Capture.

Why?

"This is one of the earliest Native American objects from what we now know as Minnesota that exists. There's no other shirt like this anywhere," says Horse Capture. "But it's not in Europe, it's not in Brooklyn, it's right here at home. So if you're from the local Native American community, you can now see something created by one of your ancestors - something older than the United States of America - right here at the MIA."

While the details of the shirt's history are a little fuzzy, Horse Capture thinks he has a good idea of what happened to it.

"At one point when this whole area was known as New France," explains Horse Capture. "The royalty back home in France heard about Native Americans and their culture, and asked explorers to bring examples back with them."

Like many artifacts collected at the time, the shirt would have most likely been placed in a "cabinet of curiosities" (the private precursors to museums). Many of those objects were lost in the French Revolution. This shirt, like other items collected at the time, is coated in arsenic, which was used as a preservative.

In a soon-to-be published article written by Horse Capture about the shirt, he states:

There are less than 35 surviving objects from the early 1700s decorated with abstract painting from the Great Lakes and or Easterns Plains region, and they are mostly in European collections. This is the only shirt of this group known to exist.

Close-up image of the shirt collar

After being auctioned into various private art collections in France, Germany and Canada, the MIA purchased the shirt at Christie's in January for $362,500.

What makes the shirt so unique is its mix of imagery. Covered in abstract patterns, Horse Capture says the shirt would have been made by a woman for a man. The images themselves - which evoke shapes of thunderbirds and lightning bolts - are reminiscent of images uses in two different regions - the woodlands, and the plains.

Minnesota is known as the land where the plains meet the woodlands.

"Some people agree, some people disagree," says Horse Capture. "There's no other example of this pattern anywhere else in the world, so there's a certain amount of speculation. But in the Great Lakes Region and the Plains Region, both show similar imagery."

Horse Capture says he believes the shirt belonged to the Dakota, and was probably made in the early 1700s.

As part of his work to verify the shirts authenticity, Horse Capture has examined it under infrared light, which allowed him to see that certain stitching on one cuff had been re-done within the last 100 years. It also renders more visible the scrape-marks made when the hide was being cleaned and stretched. One can even see where the artist doing the design work covered over a mistake on the sleeve.

"Looking at this, it really shows a sophisticated level of artistic abstraction," says Horse Capture. "This is not her first work, she knew what she was doing. Although it's nearly 300 years old, it still has a very modern feel to it. It's an unbelievable artistic legacy that has been left behind in these objects."

Horse Capture says the purchase of this shirt increases the strength of the MIA's Native American collection by several notches. But just as importantly, he says, the shirt helps the museum to meet its mission of reflecting the community in which it resides.

The shirt, which was accessioned into the museum's collection earlier this week, will be placed in MIA's Gallery 260 on Monday, when the museum is closed. The public will be able to see it as soon as doors open on Tuesday.

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Minneapolis Institute of Arts cuts staff, budget

Posted at 9:27 AM on April 20, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Funding, Museums

The MIA has announced it's cutting ten staff members as part of its plan to keep the budget balanced in the coming years. Here's the museum's official statement:

Minneapolis, MN, April 20, 2011--The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) announced that it is reducing expenses for the coming year by more than $1 million, through a combination of strategic cuts to departments and the elimination of 7 full-time and 3 part-time positions. The museum's goal is to ensure a balanced budget as it anticipates both increased costs for museum operations and reduced revenue for FY2012 and 2013. Through these proactive reductions, the MIA will be able to sustain its strong schedule of exhibitions and public programs.

"The museum is fortunate to have a highly capable staff, which makes any decision regarding jobs a difficult one," said Kaywin Feldman, Director and President of the MIA. "However, in order to maintain our high level of public service, through exhibitions, collections, educational and community initiatives, and to continue to offer free admission, it is important that the museum plan for the future and maintain a balanced budget."

The dip in revenue for FY2012 is in large part due to the way in which the museum calculates the income from its endowment, based on a three year rolling average. While the actual value of its investments is rebounding along with the financial markets, the endowment income for FY2012 will reflect the lowest average value since the crisis hit in 2007--2008. In addition, the MIA expects contributed revenue, from both public and private sources, to remain stable but not to increase enough to offset other declines.

According to an article by the Star Tribune's Mary Abbe, "seven full-time and three part-time posts were eliminated from a staff of 252" including associate curator of paintings Sue Canterbury and membership director Ann Benrud.

This is the largest staff/budget cut at the MIA since 2009. You can read about those cuts here.

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The evidence that remains

Posted at 5:10 PM on April 11, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Photography

Detail from "Evidence No. 10" by Angela Strassheim

Evidence remains long after a crime has been committed, often invisible to the naked eye.

In the case of domestic violence, a new family may move into a home with no knowledge of its violent history.

It's that dissonence between present appearances and past realities that photographer Angela Strassheim investigates in her recent body of work "Evidence" now on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Strassheim uses a chemical called "Blue Star" to reveal the DNA protein left behind in homes that were the scenes of domestic crimes. While the blood has been washed away, the protein often embeds itself into the walls and floors. Once sprayed with "Blue Star" the protein glows; the result is an eery, ghost-like apparition.

Angela Strassheim
Evidence No. 2 (BlueStar), 2009

Coupled with the black and white images is a series of exterior shots in color. In full daylight Strassheim photographs what appear to be ordinary, middle-to-upper-class homes. Only the titles reveals the building's gruesome past... titles like "small rod, kitchen knife" and ".357 caliber revolver." Viewers are left to wonder what exactly happened inside.

Angela Strassheim
Evidence, (small rod, kitchen knife), 2009

MIA Curator David Little says he chose Strassheim for the latest insallment of the museum's intimate "New photographs" series because of her exploration of two photographic traditions:

She's looking at this long tradition of both death, and photojournalism, and how photojournalists investigated real life crime scenes in their pictures. I'm interested in how she takes cues from both high art and regular old detective work, and combines them.

Little says Strassheim is part of a new generation of photographers who, rather than simply depicting a scene to accompany a reporter story, are actually conducting their own investigations, and telling the story through the camera lens.

Angela Strassheim
Evidence, (.357 caliber revolver), 2009

Little says there's an obsessive quality to Strassheim's work, and he's impressed with how she manages to treat what is a provocative topic - the crime scene - with a detached, respectful eye.

It's such a difficult subject to take pictures of without being exploitative or sensational - but I think she does a really good job of keeping a distance, somewhere between a documentary image and an art image. You could install this in a way that would heighten the sensationalism, could have had it all black or dramatic lighting. But I like the inclusion of the color. Color on the outside, black and white on the inside.

Angela Strassheim
Evidence No. 10, 2009

Little says Strassheim's images (there are only ten of them in the "Evidence" show) manage to starkly convey the everday quality of murder and violence in the United States.

Baby pictures on top of the wall where the murder happened - these spaces continue to function - but these traces of history are always there. How common and mundane and unnoticeable these places are. When you look at these places, they look like everyday homes you would see anywhere. And that's the truth of these images, - these crimes happen places you wouldn't expect, and we never know the details.

"Evidence" runs through October 9 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Strassheim, who used to work as a forensic photographer in order to support her more artistic pursuits, talks about her process in this video from the MIA:

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The changing face of portraiture

Posted at 1:33 PM on March 21, 2011 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Galleries, Museums

Vesna Kittelson (b. 1947), Giovanni, 2009, Oil on paper on silk, 28 x 22 inches, Courtesy of the artist

The portrait may seem at first glance a bland, straightforward genre of art. It's just a person's face, right? But an exhibition at the Minnetonka Center for the Arts reviews more than a century of portrait-making, and in doing so, holds a mirror to a fast-changing nation.

"About Face" is presented by the Minnesota Museum of American Art, which is bringing its art to various venues in the greater Twin Cities metro area while it continues to search for a permanent home. Executive Director Kristin Makholm, who took on her position little over a year and a half ago, says each show she puts together presents another opportunity for her - and the public - to get to know the MMAA collection better.

I just went through it and looked at which portraits stood out. Some were obvious from the beginning - works by Chuck Close, Gordon Parks, Andy Warhol. My goal was partly to highlight the top pieces of our collection but also help the public connect to that collection as a body of work. It's a portrait of the collection. So when you come in here you can see a variety of things that constitute the MMAA, because many people don't know the collection.

Nicholas R. Brewer (1857-1949), Portrait of Mrs. John Kiser, c. 1910, Oil on canvas, 43 ¼ x 33 ¼ inches, MMAA

Makholm says the collection has a strength in Minnesota artists past and present, including everyone from Paul Manship to Wing Young Huie, and the "About Face" exhibition places an emphasis on work by Minnesotans.

The earliest works, like the Portrait of Mrs. John Kiser shown above, are typically oil paintings of wealthy people of European heritage. The image is posed, the subject dressed and surrounded by objects that suggest their status as well as their pastimes.

As time passes, we see the inclusion of images of Native American Indians, either captured in photographs out of anthropological fascination (many people believed they were documenting a dying race), or portrayed in brightly colored pencil to advertise a burgeoning railroad.

Edward Curtis (1868-1952), Two Leggings--Apsaroke, 1908, Photogravure on Japanese paper, 15 5/8 x 11 5/8 inches, MMAA

Over the course of the twentieth century, the images and media continue to transform - from the paintings of Nicholas Brewer and the sculpture of Paul Manship to the pencil drawings of Chuck Close, the photographs of Gordon Parks and the video of Mike Hazard. The faces depicted change, too, from Caucasian land owners to elderly landladies to immigrant business-owners.

Makholm says today's portraiture presents a much more broadbased, democratic view of who we are:

It's a fascinating portrait of America, and how we present ourselves. Our culture embraces so many Americans - Native Americans, African-Americans, Asian-Americans. But even how we portray a young man, then and now - our image of ourselves has changed. We consider the huge variety of who we are now.

Frank Big Bear (b. 1953), Nuclear Portrait #2, 1996, Prismacolor pencil on paper, 22 x 33 ½ inches, MMAA

Perhaps even more important than who's depicted in the portrait is who's making the portrait. While in the past photos of Native Americans were taken largely by white Americans, now we Frank Big Bear's portrait paintings to consider, providing us with a very different view. Included in the exhibition are self-portraits by young Hmong-Americans, trying to figure out who exactly they are as they straddle two cultures.

Seeing the dramatic changes in portraiture made over the 20th century leads one to wonder, what will portraits look like in another hundred years?

"About Face" is on exhibition at the Minnetonka Center for the Arts through March 26.

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Vestiges of Merce Cunningham's dance find home at Walker

Posted at 10:52 AM on March 17, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Dance, Museums

Antic Meet, 1958
Costumes designed by Robert Rauschenberg

Dance is an ephemeral art... it exists in the doing. But some things are left behind: costumes, set pieces, music scores, props. And in the case of Merce Cunningham's dances, those costumes and sets were often made by high profile contemporary artists.

Today the Walker Art Center and Cunninham Dance Foundation announced that the Minneapolis museum is acquiring more than 150 objects that were part of Cunningham's performances. Starting in November, the Walker will display the work, including creations by such artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, John Cage, and Frank Stella. This exhibition coincides with Merce Cunningham Dance Company's final
engagement at the Walker, to be presented November 4 - 6, 2011, as part of the Company's farewell Legacy Tour. Merce Cunningham died in 2009.

"The acquisition of these works is groundbreaking for the Walker and for the museum field at large, affirming our longstanding commitment to bringing together diverse artistic practices to form a cross-disciplinary blend of programs," said Walker Executive Director Olga Viso in a written release. "We enjoyed a lasting relationship with Cunningham beginning in the early 1960s and look forward to inspiring future generations with programs, exhibitions, and new scholarship devoted to his legacy of innovation and collaboration."

The announcement was made to coincide with the New York Times annual museum section, which includes a piece on the acquisition.

"The interplay of the visual and performing arts has a long and rich history,
but few artists rival Cunningham in his sustained collaborations with leading
figures of the 20th century," said Walker Chief Curator Darsie Alexander.
"With this acquisition, we acknowledge his tremendous contributions as a
dancer and choreographer, while at the same time giving our audiences the
opportunity to see the work of acclaimed artists--Rauschenberg, Johns,
Lichtenstein, Stella--in a completely different light."

The acquisition is a gift made possible by numerous donors and foundations, as well as the T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2011.

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Minnesota Vernacular

Posted at 2:42 PM on March 20, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Siah Armajani, Closet Under Dormer, 1984-1985
wood, paint, shellac, mirror
Collection Walker Art Center, T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 1986

The Walker Art Center's exhibition Spectactular Vernacular focuses on artists who are using everyday, humble materials to reflect on and interrogate their environment... everything from raw wood to road signs to glitter.

Rather than do a tour of the entire exhibition, I thought I'd spend my time with the three works in the show made by Minnesotans, namely artists Siah Armajani, Aaron Spangler and Chris Larson. I recently met up with curator Darsie Alexander for a quick tour and a chat. She said the goal of the show is to provide viewers with a new understanding of ordinary objects.

The artists introduce the possibility of looking more critically and more deeply at those things that surround us in everyday life, that we ignore or find comfort in. They often look at those objects, symbols, but from a completely different perspective. So I hope viewers take away a new perspective on their own worlds, and how artists so creatively re-invent the most common objects in striking and profound ways.

Upon first glance, it's easy to see that each of the "Minnesota pieces" are strongly influenced by architecture and sculpture, and all share a common element - wood. But how they use the material, and the results, vary dramatically in tone.

For instance, says Alexander, Siah Armajani's "Architectural Closet under Dormer" is inspired by domestic architecture, but the result is totally abstract.

[Armajani's] always been interested in 19th colonial architecture, as well as poetry, literature.... and the environments in which we live. He's created a lot of social environments: gazebos, reading rooms, etc. In this instance he shows his attraction to a certain kind of architecture, but he turns it on his head, abstracts those notions - it can't be inhabited, there's no view, it doesn't do anything it's supposed to do.

The result - be-decked in red, white and blue - is a sort of patriotic Rubiks-cube, with no evident solution.

Chris Larson's "Unnamed Bridge" dominates the entrance to the exhibition, with its sweet smelling fresh wood structure creating a rural feel to Walker's more citified passageway. Patrons can climb onto the bridge, but only one at a time, allowing, says Curator Darsie Alexander, for a personal, medititative experience in a space that's meant to bring people together.

His pieces are often done in contrast to the environment; here, in a place to do looking and to be looked at, he creates a space where you can only do the looking, not be seen. It gives the impression of being inside the lens of a camera, with two apertures. It directs your view either into the museum or out into the natural world.

Alexander says while the bridge looks strikingly out of place in the museum, it enables patrons to see the building in a different way. And from the outside, the covered bridge appears to emerge through the exterior of the building and is then lopped off. While all covered bridges are traditionally named, Larson purposefully calls his bridge "unnamed."

Unnamed Bridge, 2011, by Chris Larson

Aaron Spangler has a trio of sculptures in "Spectacular Vernacular," all carved out of basswood and then painted black. Spangler recently moved back to Minnesota from New York, and lives on a 150-acre piece of land outside of Park Rapids, on the same land where he grew up. Curator Darsie Alexander says his work evokes a long art history:

He's doing something that's very specific to the narrative of living in Minnesota. At the same time, when you think of "black art" - as in pigment - it brings to mind everything from Frank Stella to WPA era painting and sculpture.

He addresses survival in the wilderness in his work, and the extremism it evokes - battles in the countryside, people running away from something. On the surface you see agriculture but there's a subtext of violence. At one level it may appear pastoral or craft driven, but it gets darker the more you look. It has an "American Gothic" sensibility to it.

"Government Whore," 2009-2010 by Aaron Spangler

Talking on the phone from his home in Two Inlets, Spangler says he originally intended the trio to all be part of a twenty-foot long carved mural.

I was working on an epic about hippies, that last pioneer time into rural America - the second time around from the early pioneers. It was the time of Mother Jones, Whole Earth Catalog, advertising "cheap land for sale." People started intentional communities; a lot of them didn't make, but a many people stayed around. You wouldn't know it now to look at them, but a lot of these people, that's how they got here.

Spangler found his muse in his longtime neighbor Bruce Brummit, while helping him dig an addition for his underground house:

My friend Bruce has been living with solar power and a hand pump in an earth house since the 70s. I grew up with him as a neighbor, so I've heard a lot of his stories, but as we worked together I learned more about the Vietnam war, the time after the war... as these stories were unfolding with Bruce I realized this is what this mural is about - it's about Bruce.

"I Owe My Soul to the Company Store" 2009-2010 by Aaron Spangler

"Government Whore" gets its name from a song Brummit wrote during the first Gulf War, about his experiences in Vietnam, in response to the cheerleading for the war he saw around him. You can read the lyrics, and more about his experience in rural Minnesota after the war here.

So why does Spangler paint all his basswood black? He says it's just a pragmatic decision:

It's really a way to just evoke the sculpture, the bas-relief; I started out with them being painted, but the color got in the way of the forms. It lends a darker tone thematically, but I also see it as being almost neutral, or a black and white photo where you know there's color there, but they're not giving it to you. It also brings up the texture and chisel marks.

"To The Valley Below," 2009-2010, by Aaron Spangler

Spangler says what he likes about "Spectacular Vernacular" is that it's dealing with some trends in the contemporary art world that haven't had much play at the Walker Art Center before now.

The materials are wide open, and art history are wide open, - all the lines of art history are there to fool with. Although you still have to battle certain pre-conceptions - for instance, being taken for a "chainsaw artist" and nothing more than that. It's how you articulate your position, how you make your argument, that makes it relevant to contemporary art.

For Spangler, the show is not so much about "vernacular" as it is about the democratization of materials. Everything is available for art-making, which makes it an exciting time to be an artist.

Spectacular Vernacular is on exhibition at the Walker Art Center through May 8.

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Students to have "A Continued Presence" at the MIA

Posted at 2:51 PM on March 11, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Education, Museums

Carla Rodriguez and Ethan Holbrook stand in the rotunda where they've created a sound piece for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

For two seniors at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, making the journey from student to "legitimate artist" involved a trek of just a few hundred feet.

Carla Rodriguez and Ethan Holbrook beat out 17 other proposals by their peers - including graduate students - for the opportunity to create a site specific piece for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. This is the first round in what is expected to be an ongoing collaboration between the school and the museum.

The piece, which is situated in the second floor Target rotunda (see image below), is a sound installation. Called "A Continued Presence," it features the sound of Rodriguez running around the rotunda with bare feet (Holbrook and Rodriguez were allowed into the museum after hours to make the recording). The sound is just loud enough that it doesn't seem like an intrusion, but gradually grabs your attention.

"It's an activation of the space," says Holbrook. "I'd like to think that it will make the viewer aware of this space, the architecture, of the building."

"I feel like a lot of people aren't going to notice it," says Rodriguez, "which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It depends on how aware they are in that moment."

Rodriguez is primarily a photographer, and Holbrook a filmmaker, so this project was a stretch for both of them.

MIA curator Christopher Atkins says the space the students chose is an area most people just pass through moving from one gallery to the next, but he believes the sound installation will get people to stop and notice their surroundings a little more.

"It's kind of creepy - you can hear it from all three floors," says Atkins. "And it's also breaking the rules - you can't run in a museum!"

The second floor Target rotunda in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Carla Rodriguez ran barefoot around the rotunda for 25 minutes while Ethan Holbrook recorded to create "A Continued Presence."
Image courtesy of the MIA

The students were also inspired by tales of certain rooms in the museum being haunted (ghosts?! plan to read more on that topic on this blog sometime soon), and liked the idea of creating a sound piece that was in essance an echo of what had once happened there.

While both Holbrook and Rodriguez have both shown their work in exhibitions organized by MCAD, this is their first real exposure to life as professionals. Their proposal was selected in December, and they've been working with the museum for the past two months to create and install the piece.

"I'm ecstatic that we could do something like this with the museum," says Rodriguez. "You get into kind of a bubble at MCAD, and things are easy - it's a safe environment, people are always there to help you. But in this situation there's this sense of professionalism, there's more riding on it. It's a well-known museum, it's a huge honor. We're graduating soon, now we have this on our resume; I feel like this makes us more legitimate."

Christopher Atkins predicts that after students see "A Continued Presence" installed, the MIA can expect even more proposals next year.

"It's gone really well - I think this will go a long way to get students interested in participating. It's been really nice to share our resources with MCAD, and work on this project together."

Atkins says MCAD president Jay Coogan brought the collaboration idea with him from the Rhode Island School of Design, where they had a similar program. Next year students will be encouraged to submit proposals for different locations in the museum.

"That was one of the coolest parts," says Rodriguez. "We could choose any part of the museum. It made me think outside of what I'm normally comfortable with, and look at the building differently."

"It's a great space," Holbrook adds, noting that the minimalist artwork on the walls in the rotunda partners well with the sound piece.

"A Continued Presence" is still in the final stages of installation, and will have an official opening reception on Thursday night. It will remain in the museum through May 22nd.

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A past brush with King Tutankhamun

Posted at 2:59 PM on February 25, 2011 by Euan Kerr (1 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

The arrival of the new King Tutankhamun exhibit at the Science Museum reminded me of an earlier meeting I had with the Golden King. It also helped me remember how that experience changed the way I go to museums. You can read the commentary I wrote as a result here.

As ever we are interested in what you think too.

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D'Amico restaurant to replace 20.21 at the Walker

Posted at 9:38 AM on February 17, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Image courtesy Walker Art Center

So long pork pot-stickers... the Walker Art Center has announced that it's not renewing its contract with Wolfgang Puck when it expires. Instead, after six years, the museum is switching to the locally based D'Amico and Partners, who will take over the space in April under the name "Gather." 20.21's Asian-fusion will be replaced with fresh and locally sourced American fare.

According to a release, the restaurant will "offer a casual and convivial dining experience, with the look, feel and flavor of a world class restaurant."

The switch takes effect April 18.

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Walker's music and movies returns to Loring

Posted at 3:27 PM on February 15, 2011 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Film, Museums

Image courtesy of Walker Art Center

MPR's chief art hound Chris Roberts has this news on one of the most popular events of the summer.

Twin Citians take their beloved cultural traditions very seriously. Especially a particular warm weather event that pairs the brightest lights in local music with classic films. We're very protective. We're sentimental. So when the Walker Art Center put its longest running and perhaps most cherished program, "Music & Movies in Loring Park" on hiatus last year, we were sad and upset. Granted, City Pages admirably filled the breach with a summer surrogate, "4 Nights in Loring Park," but it wasn't the same.

Hallelujah!

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Art up close: Bassano's "Adoration of the Magi"

Posted at 5:08 PM on February 14, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Painting

The Adoration of the Magi, by Jacopo Bassano, 1542, now on exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

One of the true joys and privileges of my job is that I often get to see artwork in either the presence of the artist who created it or accompanied by an expert curator. They're able to share with me information that gives me a whole new understanding of a work. In turn, I get to share what I learn with you.

And in the case of "The Adoration of the Magi" by Jacopo Bassano, I've got lots to tell you.

I recently sat down with MIA curator Patrick Noon on a bench in front of this rich and glorious Venetian painting (which is visiting Minneapolis from Scotland's National Gallery as part of the Titian exhibition) and talked for a full hour about the images within it and the stories behind it. Here's what I found out:

Painted in 1542 by Jacopo Bassano, "The Adoration of the Magi" is also known as "The Adoration of the Kings" and is a depiction of the three kings paying their respects to the newborn babe Jesus Christ. It's a scene that's been caught countless times on canvas, and each telling serves to reveal as much about a particular period in art history as it does about the biblical event.

Gesturing to the left-hand side of the painting, Noon points out how Bassano uses religious symbology found in many works in the mid-16th century.

"The architecture is an allusion to the decline of the pagan world as a result of Christ being born, and the light comes through the architecture, hitting Christ's head - that's God the father making his appearance," explains Noon. "I believe the flowers [in front of the donkey] are columbine, thought to resemble winged birds, representing the Holy Spirit. The ox represents Christianity while the donkey represents Judaism, So the ox is recognizing Christ, while the donkey is not. The tree stump refers to the wood used for the true cross - that's why it's sticking in front."

Noon says while the painting depicts the celebration of the arrival of Christ, the tree stump serves as a foreshadowing of Christ's fate - death on the cross in sacrifice for humanity's sins.

Noon adds that by bringing together the Christ child, the beam of light (representing God) and the columbine (representing the Holy Spirit), Bassano in essence presents us with the Holy Trinity, while Joseph and Mary's status as saints is indicated by the halos surrounding their heads.

Compared to the space and order of the left third of "The Adoration of the Kings," the right hand side feels crowded and jumbled. People press in, trying to get a look at baby Jesus, but are blocked by servants and horses.

Noon explains that this scene is a variation on the theme of the sacra conversazione or "sacred conversation."

"The composition [on the right] is kind of a foil for the space he's giving the other people," says Noon. "Those with more space are the people with privilege. People on the other side of the horse are not privileged, they're being crowded out. Those facing in are those who have access, who are in conversation with the Virgin and Child. 'Sacred conversations' usually take place between the Virgin, Child and saints, and usually in a cloistered setting. It was the Italian painter Giovanni Bellini who first introduced the conversation into a landscape setting, and Bassano's doing the same here."

On the far lower right-hand side of the painting Noon points out damage the piece has suffered, muddling the images of both a dog and a man's face. Noon estimates there was originally two to four more inches of canvas to this work, but that it had to be removed after it was damaged. The reframing of the image serves to crowd in the people on the right even more. Still, considering the work is 468 years old, it's held up incredibly well.

It's the very center of the painting however which surprised and intrigued me most. For if the Holy Family are relegated to the side of the painting, who is this royal figure who gets to stand front and center, wearing the gold and green striped doublet?

I should have known; it's the guy who commissioned the painting.

Jacopo Gisi, Bassano's patron, wanted a painting for his estate - it probably would have hung in some large front entryway. The two youth behind him in red and blue are believed to be portraits of his sons. And notice that it's his gift that has the attention of both the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus.

But get this: Gisi never claimed the painting, and according to Patrick Noon it's even believed that he was refunded his money for the work. Why? No idea (I asked Noon if he thought it might have anything to do with the prominent horse's rear end, or the other derrières front and center in this work - he didn't think so).

Bassano also uses a few tricks and devices in putting together this scene. Many of the details are drawn from previous compositions and studies. The architecture is almost an exact copy - brick for brick - of a woodcut by Albrecht Dürer. According to the painting's didactic, Bassano lived in a provincial town 40 miles outside of Venice, so he kept up with artistic trends by studying prints like Dürer's.

Albrecht Dürer, Sojourn of the Holy Family in Egypt, c. 1501-2, woodcut, from Life of the Virgin, 1511, now on view in the "Venice on Paper" exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Also, in the center of the painting, just to the right of the column - do you see the villager gathering sticks off in the distance? Patrick Noon says that figure plays two roles; first, he helps set this "sacred conversation" solidly in a rural landscape - something Venetian artists didn't do until they felt the influence of painters further to the North.

"Domesticizing was the movement of the moment," explains Noon, "to make the saints more approachable and real. It's the movement that eventually leads to the inquisition, the counter reformation and the idea that mannerism is not acceptable in religious painting. Simple people need to be able to understand it; exotica and exaggerated mannerisms are not allowed."

Secondly, Noon adds, the figure draws our eye out and up, providing visual relief from the dense scene below.

"He doesn't want this to be just confined to the front planes - it would be too shallow. The background provides a release, getting you out of the foreground, and provides a sense of scale."

So does every image have some hidden meaning behind it? According to Noon, no. When I asked him about the pink banner that dominates the upper right-hand corner, Noon replied "oh, he's just filling in space and balancing out the crowd below." Sometimes a flag is just a flag, evidently.

Above all, Bassano's "Adoration of the Magi" serves as a testament to the painter's skill. Throughout the scene Bassano revels in what he does best; his clothing, from leather to fine silk, invites you to reach out and caress it (but, for the sake of the museum, please don't). Each animal's coat is clearly identifiable as horse, oxe, donkey and dog. While the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus both have alabaster skin, their companions vary by degree, based on their class and profession.

"It's one of his best works, one of his most spectacular paintings really" says Noon. "You would think it was made for a church, but it wasn't."

You can see "The Adoration of the Magi" by Jacopo Bassano for yourself at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. It's on view through May 1 as part of the "Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting" exhibition.

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Music and lights to mourn by

Posted at 2:25 PM on February 8, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Music, Sculpture

A detail of the installation of The Mourners, on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Image by Charles Walbridge

Upon beholding the 38 alabaster sculptures of "The Mourners" at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, it's hard not to feel yourself transported to an ancient cathedral, to hear the chants of the mourners themselves as they process.

Oh wait - that's not my imagination - there's music playing in the gallery!

In fact, considering that they're funerary sculptures, it's suprising what a celebration these somber characters have inspired.

In conjunction with the seven city, U.S. national tour of the tomb sculptures from the Court of Burgundy, The Rose Ensemble has put together an original music program featuring works from the Courts of the Burgundian Dukes on themes of death and mourning in French, Latin and English. The ensemble will perform on February 18, 19 and 20 at the Basilica of Saint Mary.

In addition to the music program, the diminuitive figures have also inspired their own light show. A projection of the mourner statues is illuminated at night on the façade of The Basilica of Saint Mary through February 19th, and for the Rose Ensemble's candlelight concerts artist Ali Momeni will orchestrate an elaborate visual display of the mourner statues using six different projectors.

A detail of the installation of The Mourners, on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Image by Charles Walbridge

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Museums of the world, up close

Posted at 11:05 AM on February 2, 2011 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Museums, Technology

If you've done a Google search this morning, you may have noticed the home page is promoting something called "Art Project." Well that's too tempting a title for me to resist, so I did a little exploring, and am pretty thrilled with what I found.

"Art Project" is basically a collaboration between museums around the world to upload their artworks online in extraordinary detail, as well as offer virtual tours of their galleries. Users can create their own collections of favorite artworks from the participating museums.

In short, it's an art lover's dream come true.

Currently there are 17 museums participating in the project, including the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, the Tate Britain in London, the Uffizi gallery in Florence and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The website promises more information soon on how other museums can join the project (the Walker and MIA, perhaps?).

According to the Art Project website, Google approached the museum partners with the idea, and each museum was able to chose the number of galleries, artwork and information they wanted to include.

As you might imagine, the images on the site are copyright protected, and Google owns the "Stree View" imagery used for creating the virtual museum tours.

Here's the current list of museum partners:

Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin - Germany
Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC - USA
The Frick Collection, NYC - USA
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin - Germany
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC - USA
MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC - USA
Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid - Spain
Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid - Spain
Museum Kampa, Prague - Czech Republic
National Gallery, London - UK
Palace of Versailles - France
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg - Russia
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow - Russia
Tate Britain, London - UK
Uffizi Gallery, Florence - Italy
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands

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Landscapes real and imagined

Posted at 4:13 PM on February 2, 2011 by Marianne Combs (2 Comments)
Filed under: Galleries, Museums, Painting, Photography

Margaret Wall-Romana
Memento Lucem (Remember the Light) [detail], 2010
Oil on panel
58 x 133 x 2 in.

Walk into the Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program galleries at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and you will find two very different bodies of work hanging on the walls. But spend a little time with them both and you may find yourself pondering similar questions.

Margaret Wall-Romana's work is lush and breathtaking to behold. Her giant canvases are rich with imagery - primarily plantlife - in various states of growth and decay. MAEP coordinator Christopher Atkins says Wall-Romana's work combines everything from naturalism to abstract expressionism, surrealism and color fields:

Margaret's work is really formal - she sustains a sense of history and technique that I don't see very often in painters in this town. She's very much a large scale studio artist, playing with scale, and creating these intricate structures from bones, wood and plants around her.

Margaret Wall-Romana
Towards & Away, 2010
Oil on panel
46 x 116 x 2 in.

Wall-Romana's work draws you in to explore her compositions that are both gorgeous and other-worldly. If you pay close attention you can even see the strokes of her palette knife across the canvas.

Peter Happel Christian, by contrast is a photographer who's work, while beautiful, is more conceptual and minimalist. In a series of photographs called "Blackholes and Blindspots" Happel Christian purposefully blacks out the very center of each image. By obscuring the focal point, he's actually making us look harder at an image of an urban landscape that we might otherwise take for granted.

Peter Happel Christian
Blackholes and Blindspots (No. 8), 2010
Chromogenic print
8 x 11 in.

For Happel Christian, the artwork is as much an embodiment of the artistic process and his own questions than it is a final product. For his work "Witness Tree" he went back to his childhood home and took a myriad of photographs of the redbud tree his parents planted around the same time Happel Christian was born. In essence the tree is a marker of his own life. But, according to Atkins, when it came to really capturing the tree and what it represented, Happel Christian felt any one photograph was lacking, so instead took a picture of all of the photographs bound together. He's basically saying "this is not the definitive image."

Christopher Atkins says it's that artistic inquiry that drives Happel Christian's work throughout:

He really takes an idea and explores it in depth in a variety of ways, whether it's through photography or installation pieces. You can look at his work and see beautiful photographs, but what's important for him is that the idea underneath is clear as well.

Peter Happel Christian
Witness Tree, 2010
Chromogenic print
15 x 13 in

So while Margaret Wall-Romana's paintings are sensual and expansive, Happel Christian's work is more of an intellectual pursuit, bringing our attention down to a single point.

Upon further contemplation, however, these two artists are similarly preoccupied with the natural landscape, and how we manipulate it. They both seek to capture the eye of their viewers - one by creating lush landscapes, the other by thwarting our initial attempts and making us look harder. Each are passionate about their pursuits - one through technique and form, the other in concept and method.

"Painting Before and After Words: Maragaret Wall-Romana" and "Ground Truth: Works by Peter Happel Christian" are both on view in the MAEP galleries of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts through April 3.

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Politics and positioning in Smithsonian debate

Posted at 4:30 PM on December 15, 2010 by Marianne Combs (8 Comments)
Filed under: Criticism, Museums

How is it that two Twin Cities museum directors are players in a story that takes place in Washington, D.C.? And what will be the consequences of their actions?

Earlier today I reported that Walker Art Center's Olga Viso has decided to screen the video "Fire in my Belly" at the Walker starting tomorrow. This after the same video was pulled from an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Last week the MIA's Kaywin Feldman, who is also head of the Association of Art Museum Directors, released a statement on behalf of close to 200 museum directors criticizing the actions of the Smithsonian.

A deeper look at the controversy, and their reactions, reveals more than just protest.

Kaywin Feldman, as head of the AAMD, had an obligation to speak to this incident, in part because it sets a scary precedent: namely, museum administrators caving to the opinions of politicians. In her statement she pointed to the particularly disturbing fact that those protesting the work of art had, for the most part, not even seen it.

Olga Viso, on the other hand, is joining in with several other museums across the country to show the video by artist David Wojnarowicz (now deceased). As the head of a contemporary art museum, Viso must regularly support work that is controversial. The former director of a Smithsonian museum (the Hirshorn), Viso felt an obligation to see the show and comment on the incident on her blog (she has turned down requests for an interview).

But showing the video is by no means a controversial act. "Fire in my Belly" has been around for almost 25 years and can be found in numerous places on the web. That fact makes the Smithsonian's action seem all the more questionable... and it makes the Walker screenings seem more like a bid for foot traffic than a genuine act of solidarity.

At this time what is needed is not another screening but a forum for an intelligent conversation, in which those who are offended by the work and those who are passionate in its defense can come to mutual understanding.

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Walker Art Center stokes "Fire in my Belly"

Posted at 8:50 AM on December 15, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Video

Walker Art Center Director Olga Viso traveled to D.C. earlier this week to tour the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. The exhibition is the ongoing source of controversy, after public reaction to the video "Fire in my Belly" prompted the Smithsonian to pull the video from the exhibition.

Viso, a former Smithsonian curator and museum director (of the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden), says the Walker will screen various versions of the film "Fire in my Belly" daily at the Walker Art Center later this week (see update below), pending arrangements with the artist's estate. In a statement on the Walker's website, Viso says:

Hide/Seek was organized by the NPG to "show how art has reflected changing attitudes toward sexual identity"... In every regard, the [National Portrait Gallery] should be applauded for organizing, mounting, and presenting this groundbreaking, scholarly exhibition and supporting the curators' well argued thesis that a powerful artistic and cultural legacy has been "hidden in plain sight for more than a century." Yet the NPG's and Smithsonian's surprising decision to remove a key work from the exhibition a month after its opening undermines this thesis as well as the premise and curatorial integrity of the exhibition in alarming ways. Indeed this action serves to sublimate or "hide" the very thing the exhibition attempts to make visible.

Last week the American Association of Museum Directors Association of Art Museum Directors, under the leadership of Minneapolis Institute of Arts' Kaywin Feldman, also condemned the actions of the Smithsonian.

The video in question, it should be noted, is easily found on YouTube:

Update: The Walker will screening the film beginning tomorrow through December 30 from 11:30-noon in the Lecture Room; and on Thursday evenings at 8:30 pm. It will be screening the original 11-minute film and the artist's excerpted 7-minute version, as well as the 4-minute version that was shown as part of the National Portrait Gallery exhibition.

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Artists take on the Bell Natural History Museum

Posted at 2:19 PM on December 9, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

The Bell Museum of Natural History has come up with yet another series designed to breathe new life into its aging dioramas.

It's called Bell Social, and it each month for four months it brings in a new artist to respond the museum's collection and space.

Last month Matthew Bakkom installed a "didactic intervention," replacing the usual exhibition text with something more akin to excerpts from a Raymond Chandler detective novel.

Tonight starting at 6pm, University of Minnesota assistant professor Ali Momeni will transform the museum's habitat dioramas through a light and sound show.

In addition, scientific experts will offer short presentations on the role light plays in our environment.

The Bell Museum is already known for its "Cafe Scientifique

Museums respond to Smithsonian self-censorship

Posted at 12:04 PM on December 7, 2010 by Marianne Combs (3 Comments)
Filed under: Funding, Media, Museums

It's been a bad week for the Smithsonian.

Last Tuesday the museum pulled a video by artist David Wojnarowicz from its exhibition "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture," after taking heat for the video's controversial subject matter (the video depicts a christ figure on the cross, covered with ants). Critics of the video claimed they felt it was anti-Christian.

Since the video was removed, many in the art world have protested the Smithsonian's actions, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art's own Kaywin Feldman, who heads the Association of Art Museum Directors. The AAMD released the following statement on the incident:

It is extremely regrettable that the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery, a major American art museum with a long history of public service in the arts, has been pressured into removing a work of art from its exhibition "Hide/Seek."
More disturbing than the Smithsonian's decision to remove this work of art is the cause: unwarranted and uninformed censorship from politicians and other public figures, many of whom, by their own admission, have seen neither the exhibition as a whole or this specific work.

The Smithsonian Institution is one of the nation's largest organizations dedicated to the dissemination and diffusion of knowledge--an essential element of democracy in America. We urge members of Congress and the public to continue to sustain and support the Smithsonian's activities, without the political pressure that curtails freedom of speech.

Other protests have included a man standing in front of the exhibition, playing the video clip on his iPod. Here's the controversial video in its entirety - easily found on YouTube:

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Looking at how people walk the Walker

Posted at 3:00 PM on November 12, 2010 by Euan Kerr (1 Comments)
Filed under: Events, Museums

With all its twists, turns, and unusual angles, navigating the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is never straightforward. It's a deliberate choice in the design.

However for the last 18 months or so the museum has been exploring how to make visiting a more pleasant, or at least accessible experience for patrons with additional challenges.

Courtney Gerber, who sports the title of 'assistant director of education, tour programs' says the Walker has been using a two year grant from the Met Life Foundation to explore whether its tours and hands-on art-making experiences are accessible to anyone who wants to use them.

Gerber says the grant is intended for programmatic improvements more than physical change, but the Walker knows that for people to feel accepted and welcomed in the building they need to be physically comfortable the moment they walk in.

So the museum bought lightweight but strong gallery stools which people can use to rest as they move through, or can even carry them along.

"When you are in our galleries there tends to be an echo," Gerber says. "So we were able to purchase assisted-listening devices for those who are hard of hearing and just need a little extra amplification."

This particular development will likely interest attendees at the latest in a series of meetings which occurs Saturday. People with hearing difficulties are invited to an open house to learn what the Walker has done so far, but also to make suggestions.

"The goal is really we want to offer people what they want, not what we think they want," Gerber says. "So their feedback is invaluable."

The event is free, but patrons need to register in advance to help with planning. The event includes a light lunch, and a tour of the recently opened Yves Klein exhibit.

Gerber says she's been very happy with the project, and at how it's been embraced by the members of the public already involved.

"I think often when we are working on a project we forget to open up the lines of communication and ask the people who it is most readily going to effect, and just by inviting people in for conversation, the reception has been outstanding," she says.

One particular success has been "Contemporary Journeys," a program the Walker developed for people with Alzheimers and their caregivers. Gerber says she believes it's provided a new and relaxing experience.

"So there is somewhere where they can go and talk about something other than their disease and really be an active participant in life in a community," she says. "Just seeing the positive effects that an art museum can have on the lives of people living with that particular disease really, really blew me away. It was enlightening."

When I pointed out that many able-bodied people find the new Walker Annex a challenge, Gerber acknowledges the subject has come up at every session. She says they are looking at that issue too.

"At the moment because we don't have funding to physically change the building, we are working hard with people oh how we can better articulate paths through the building."

Ultimately, Gerber says, the Walker will have an accessibility guide, and she will develop curricula which she plans to share with other museums.

"Accessible design is good for everyone," she says.

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Artists in full "flourish"

Posted at 4:22 PM on November 5, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Drawing, Museums, Painting

Terrence Payne, Not So Much Lost As Less
oil pastel on paper, 60" x 48", 2010

Walk into the galleries of the Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and you walk into a richly colored, carefully detailed multiverse of the imagination.

Titled "Flourish," the show is filled with images that draw you in and hold you, some with the lure of comfort and safety, others with the promise of a fairy tale, minus the fairy tale ending.

Artist Terrance Payne says the group chose the name "Flourish" for their exhibition because they're not scared of being "pretty."

We draw the viewer in and tempt them to spend time contemplating the layers of meaning they can find once they get beyond the surface. To different degrees we are all using color, pattern, texture and line within our work to this end, creating narrative, commentaries and other worldly experiences to get our points of view across.

For MAEP Coordinator Christopher Atkins, "flourish" holds other meanings:

It's a short and picturesque word that highlights the colorful and organic nature that's in their work. I also think that this show is a big step for all of them so it's a moment of intense creative growth for their careers.

Erika Olson Gross, Lake North Star, 2010
graphite, gouache, and watercolor on paper

In the first room hangs the work of Erika Olson Gross. Olson Gross's work reflects her dual careers of art and motherhood. Her detailed graphite landscapes create a sense of both depth of field and the fragility of life, while flat colored designs evoke family tradition, and seemingly capture the moment in time. In one image a blanket of colored triangles is pulled over the detailed rendering of her two sons sleeping; in another, the pattern from a swedish bridal pillow appears to bless the lake and woods below.

Joe Sinness, Something Special, 2010
colored pencil on paper

On the opposite wall from Olson Gross can be found the equally comforting and richly detailed still-lifes of Joe Sinness. But in this case, much of his work also evokes an ironic smile. Sinness excels at botanical art, capturing the rich color and fragility of morning glories, fringe tulips and dahlias. It would be enough for some artists to stop there, but Sinness adds layers of art history and cultural commentary, incorporating images of Barbara Streisand, pink flamingos and Italian baroque paintings. He further challenges himself by placing images in curved glass or reflected in mirror tiles, creating mind-bending moments that recall M.C. Escher.

Jennifer Davis, Curious, 2010
acrylic, graphite,and charcoal on panel

Walk into the next room, and things start to get a little menacing. Jennifer Davis is well known in the Twin Cities for her playful yet haunting characters. Part human, part animal, the figures in her work go on picnics or ride their bikes, and yet the viewer is left unsettled. Christopher Atkins says it's as though the rouge on their cheeks was smeared on.

I think it's a combination of her mythology, anthropomorphic figures, and this easter egg palate, along with very soft features, and sense of textile and pattern that makes her work so distinctive and recognizable.

Dominating the room are a series of oil pastel portraits by Terrance Payne (see the top image in this post). The characters - women - are posed in classic portrait style, but the classicism stops there. Payne's fascination with pattern and form are evident in how he plays with both his backdrop as well as his subject, draping one women in fabric, and binding another in belts. Yet he also lets us see the circles he used to create the foundations for each face and limb - "showing his hand" as it were.

MAEP Coordinator Christopher Atkins says the "hand" of the artist is dominant in all of the artists' work. Whereas much modern tries to eliminate the sense of its being "handmade," these works revel in it.

Atkins notes this is the first completely two-dimensional show the MAEP has presented in a longtime, but it reflects a community of Minnesota artists working with pencils and pastels who are flourishing quite nicely.

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View art in 3D, on your laptop

Posted at 9:46 AM on October 27, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Technology

Ever been at a museum, and really wished you could get a better look at a piece, either by walking around it's backside (which is up against a wall) or by opening up a drawer or by just holding it and examining it in your hands?

Now technology is making it possible for museums to let you do just that - virtually.

The Getty Museum has a new feature on its website which allows the curious to explore the many facets of one of its most intricate pieces - a four-sided collector's cabinet from Augsberg, Germany.

Collectors' cabinets were basically the forerunners of today's museums, holding precious items in their many different compartments, and the cabinets themselves were often works of art in their own right.

So what work of art do you wish you could get your hands on?

[h/t Open Culture]

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Native American art is alive and beautiful

Posted at 4:38 PM on October 22, 2010 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Culture, Museums

The Ferns, ca. 1904
Scees Bryant Possock (ca. 1858-1918) Wa she shu (Washoe)
Photograph by John Bigelow Taylor

First, a confession: shows about Native American art don't really excite me.

That is, until now.

This morning I toured what is the most artistically exquisite and personally engaging exhibition of Native American art I have ever seen.

The more than 100 pieces are drawn from the Thaw Collection of North American Indian art, housed at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Eugene Thaw has distinguished himself as a collector in that he purchased items purely on their aesthetic merits, not for their cultural importance. As he put it in the exhibition catalog:

I want to stress that I look at Indian material culture as art. To me, it is co-equal to any of my own highest experiences in pursuing the arts of many nations, both as dealer and collector. It stands rightfully with ancient art, with masterpieces of Asia and Europe, as their equivalent, and I wish it would be looked at this way.

Polar Bear Figure, ca. A.D. 100-600
Ipuitak (Prehistoric Eskimo), made of ivory
Photograph by Richard Walker

Thaw's collection spans 1500 years of Native American history, and includes everything from carved ivory and wood to ceramics, weaving, beadwork, and metalwork. Each item stands on its own as an exceptionally beautiful piece of craftmanship.

Thaw collection curator Eva Fognell has presented the works according to their region of origin, which reveals startling diversity in both artistic themes as well as the raw materials used. The collection is on a national tour of major art museums, that includes not just the MIA but also institutions in Cleveland, Dallas and Indianapolis.

Here in Minneapolis you have a sophisticated audience and a large native community, but we didn't know where it would go when we put it together, so we tried to make it as accessible as possible, to show the very important regional differences in the art of Native American cultures.

Miniature Settee, ca. 1830, made from birch bark and embroidered moose hair
Wendat (Wyandot or Huron)
Photograph by John Bigelow Taylor

While the items in the collection are inherently beautiful, it is MIA curator Joe Horse-Capture's treatment that really brings the exhibition to life. Each room features a giant photograph depicting the landscape of the region. A wooden carving stands before the California redwoods in one room, while a piece of pottery reflects the colors of the Grand Canyon in the next.

I wanted our audience to get the sense of place. When we see objects from the Arctic region, we think in our mind that it must be cold there, but I think the very large blow-up photos really give the sense of where these great objects came from.

The exhibition also features several videos of interviews with young professional Native Americans in the Twin Cities.

I felt it was important to bring a local Native American voice (instead of my own) into the exhibition because I wanted our visitors to see that many of these traditions are very much alive. And what better way then having young, well-respected and professional Native Americans tell their stories? It illustrates that this knowledge has been passed down through the generations.

Interviewees include a choreographer, a lawyer who also does beadwork, and an urban developer who's revitalizing the Franklin Avenue neighborhood. Horse-Capture framed the videos so that they are almost life-size, and feel like they are in the room with you, not on a TV screen.

Horse-Capture says he's thrilled to have the Thaw Collection at the MIA, but it also raises the bar:

Each object is a jewel, and illustrates the strong artistic heritage of Native America. There aren't many collections that are consistently this high quality. Our #1 priority is to collect objects of beauty that, like the Thaw Collection, are the finest examples of Native American art. But when presenting this material it is difficult not to talk about the cultural aspects of the pieces since they embedded with cultural knowledge. Having the Thaw Collection here at the MIA, gives us a new standard to reach for as we continue to collect and present the finest works of Native American art.

Art of the Native Americans opens this weekend at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and runs through January 9, 2011.

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Judi Dutcher resigns from Museum of Russian Art

Posted at 12:28 PM on October 22, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, People

This just in from the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis: Executive Director (and former Minnesota State Auditor) Judi Dutcher is resigning her position at the museum to become Executive Director of the Bentson Foundation in Edina. The Museum's Board also announced that Bradford Shinkle, IV will rejoin the Museum, resuming the position of Executive Director that he previously held. The transition of Executive Director of the Museum of Russian Art takes effect December 1, 2010.

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Plains Art Museum unveils mural

Posted at 11:00 AM on October 7, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

James Rosenquist, The North Dakota Mural, 2010, oil on canvas, 13 x 24 ft., Gift of an Anonymous Donor in honor of Dr. Jovan Brkić, a world-renowned scholar of philosophy, gentleman, and friend; and made possible by an in-kind creative gift by James Rosenquist, © James Rosenquist.

As I write this, folks in the Fargo-Moorhead area are getting their first look at a new mural adorning the Plains Art Museum. The North Dakota Mural is a 13 x 24 ft. work by pop artist and North Dakota native James Rosenquist.

The completion and hanging of the Rosenquist mural completes a major leg of the Museum's capital campaign, "There's a Little Artist in All of Us." Another major goal of the campaign is the construction of the Center for Creativity and Lifelong Learning, a proposed central location for arts education for the entire community.

Rosenquist, who attended the University of Minnesota, worked alongside the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Barnett Newman in the 1960s. Now 76, Rosenquist will be in Fargo on October 20 to talk about the mural and the story of its creation.

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Walker to let teens in for free

Posted at 2:46 PM on October 1, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Education, Museums

Teen programming at the Walker Art Center

Teenagers no longer need to wait for Thursday nights to get into the Walker Art Center for free. Thanks to some funding from Wells Fargo, the museum has announced it's making itself free to teenagers during all regular hours.

The Walker Art Center already has several programs dedicated to getting teenagers more interested in contemporary art, and also operates a teen-centric web site. This new initiative will make it that much easier for young art lovers to walk in the front door.

The new policy takes effect on October 14, the night of the Walker student open house.

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MIA buys into contemporary art

Posted at 6:00 PM on September 21, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Funding, Museums

Rebecca Belmore's "Fringe" is one of several contemporary works the MIA is adding to its permanent collection.

It's a great day for Liz Armstrong:

"I was hopeful, but this goes wildly beyond my dreams and my expectations."

Armstrong is referring to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts' decision to acquire 24 pieces featured in the recent "Until Now: Collecting the New" exhibition that Armstrong curated. As the museum's first Contemprary Art Curator, these acquisitions will seed what's to become a whole new division of the MIA's encyclopedic holdings (for more on the exhibition, click here).

The most recent 11 of those items were acquired this afternoon in an Accessions Committee Meeting held at the MIA; collectively they're valued at $690,500.

This new move to collect contemporary art is mirrored by new, younger faces on the museum's board. One of those bright young faces belongs to 30 year old Eric Dayton, son of gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton and grandson of longtime MIA trustee Bruce Dayton (Bruce Dayton made his fortune working for his family's department stores; he and his wife Ruth are largely responsible for the MIA's vast Chinese galleries).

I grew up coming here with my grandfather, so a lot of the relationship he and I share was time spent here at the museum. My grandfather started collecting with impressionist painting, then Chinese art and furniture. I've never felt pressure to follow in his particular footsteps, but he did give me two pieces of advice. First see a lot of art, and develop your own taste through seeing as much art as possible. Second, much better to buy an "A" work by a "B" artist than a "B" work by an "A" artist.

MIA Trustee Bruce Dayton with his grandson, MIA board member Eric Dayton. Eric Dayton recently gave the MIA a modern sculpture by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in his grandfather's honor. The photograph behind them, by Thomas Struth, was added to the MIA's permanent collection this afternoon.

Since joining the MIA board, Eric Dayton has revived "The Circle," a social opportunity for young art enthusiasts that involves attending exhibition openings, paying visits to artist studios, and even some hands-on art-making. He's also helped update the museum's annual antiques show into what promises to be a hipper, more modern "Design and Antiques Fair " (happening this weekend).

Dayton says to him the "Until Now" exhibition presented an incredible opportunity for the museum to take a hypothetical question (what might a contemporary art collection look like at the MIA?) and turn it into a reality. And he felt that opportunity was too good to pass up.

This is something that only the MIA can do - to present contemporary art in a historical context. We have this huge historic catalog of art from various cultures, and now to take advantage of that as a context for contemporary art is just really exciting.

Dayton says he particularly enjoys how the contemporary pieces have illuminated the historic works, and given younger people an access point to learn more.

As for Liz Armstrong, she says she's already planning new installations of contemporary art, and contacting artists to commission works for the MIA.

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Ask a curator

Posted at 1:07 PM on August 30, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

"What's your favorite work of art?"

"How do you know that painting isn't a fake?"

"So why won't you give back those Elgin marbles, anyway?"

"Are you willing to steal a work of art for your collection?

"What's the ugliest thing in your museum?"

"Why do you always dress in black?"

Those are just a few of the questions you may see flashing across your Twitter screen if you follow #askacurator this Wednesday, September 1.

All day museum curators around the world - including those at the Walker, the Weisman, the MIA and the Science Museum of Minnesota - will be answering the public's questions in an attempt to show they're really much more accessible than you might think.

So what do you want to know?

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Have you cast your vote yet?

Posted at 3:44 PM on August 19, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Francesco Clemente's self-portrait is one of the many artworks that may garner enough popular votes to make it into the Walker Art Center's winter exhibition "50/50: Audience and Experts Curate the Paper Collection."

On August 1st, the Walker Art Center started accepting ballots in its own democratic election; it's letting the public cast votes on what works of art should be included in its upcoming exhibition "50/50." It's so named because the public gets to choose half the works, and the staff curators will pick the other half.

The voting remains open through September 15 (the exhibition opens in December) and already the museum has received more than 112,000 votes via its website, smartphone, or the on-site kiosk (in the "Benches and Binoculars" gallery). According to the Walker's public relations office, art works are averaging 600 votes each. But are they "for," or "against?"

So, what would you put in the exhibition? And what would you want to make sure stayed out of the show?

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Walker lets you pick the art

Posted at 4:08 PM on July 20, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

The Walker Art Center is looking a for a few good curators - and you could be one of them.

In a news release sent out this afternoon, the Walker announced that the staff and the public will co-curate an exhibition titled 50/50: Audience and Experts Curate the Paper Collection, slated for December.

Starting August 1, visitors to the Walker can cast their vote at a kiosk in the "Benches and Binoculars" gallery, or folks can curate from the comfort of their couch, by visiting the Walker online. Voting ends September 15.

So first the Minneapolis Institute of Arts wanted you to try your hand at curating, now the Walker Art Center wants you to help plan an upcoming show. What I want to know is, can we put this on our resumés?

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The delicacy of memory, and the eternal flow of time

Posted at 5:06 PM on July 16, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Flower Field (detail), 2008, Mayumi Amada
acrylic tubing, blue LED, wire, steel rods, washers
image courtesy of the artist

For the last several months the Minneapolis Institute of Arts' galleries dedicated to modern, Minnesotan art have been filled from floor to ceiling with "Foot in the Door 4," an open invitational for work that is no greater than a square foot in size. Since the MIA received close to 5,000 submissions, the galleries felt a bit like a rummage sale, with so many shiny objects to attract the eye.

Fast forward to the present, and those same galleries now feel light and airy by comparison. Where paintings and photographs were once squeezed in like cars on a Los Angeles freeway, now hang simple transparent bouquets in one room and precious, monochromatic fabric boxes in the next.

Welcome to the artistic visions of Mayumi Amada and Eun-Kyung Suh.

The two artists are the latest chosen for the MIA's Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program. They each were given their own room to fill with work, and moving from one room to the next one notices how many similarities they have between them. Their work floats, there is a deep sense of life's ephemeral nature, and both seem to take a broad view to our place in space and time. MAEP Coordinator Christopher Atkins says he's as interested in their differences as much as their similarities.

They both create very light and delicate work, but in the case of Amada, her materials are re-purposed and recycled; egg shell cartons and pop bottles are transformed into bouquets or fields of flowers.

Bouquets from Grandmas (detail), 2010, Mayumi Amada
plastic egg cartons, aluminum sheet

Amada's exhibition, titled "Kuon: Eternal Flow of Time" is a meditation on impermanence. One piece, an oversized doily, is cut with the words "OUR LIFE ON EARTH: A BLIP IN ETERNITY." As you walk into the gallery, you find yourself between two mirrors, placing you in the middle of what feels like infinite space. Atkins says Amada uses things we might typically view as trash to create works of beauty.

She's looking at our "blip in eternity" - but I don't think she's cynical about it, dour or morose, it's inevitable. Her use of materials for me show an interest in reincarnation - how things today may be transformed into something more beautiful tomorrow.

Yellow- (detail), 2010, Eun-Kyung Suh
silk organza, thread

Eun-Kyung Suh's exhibition, titled "The Voided" contrasts that of Amada's with its bright, primary colors, but is equally minimal. Three walls in Suh's gallery are covered with three series of fabric boxes, Red, Blue and Yellow, respectively. The boxes are inspired by traditional Korean wrapping cloths called bojagi, used to protect, store and carry personal posessions. By peering through windows in Suh's bojagi, viewers can see photographs of her friends and relatives transferred on to the cloth inside.

Several of the pieces in Suh's gallery deal with the recent death of her father, and almost seem to give physical form to fading memories. Atkins points to two pieces -"Black" and "White" - in which Suh stitched pieces of her daughter's clothing and her father's neckties into silk organza. There is a sense of the immense effort and time she spent hand-stitching these works together.

There's a vulnerability in her work, putting this information out there. It's quite personal but where some artists make it all personal, with Suh's work there's more to take away than just her personal narrative.

Both Suh and Amada manage to take us out of ourselves, and to consider such ideas as life and death and the passage of time. But while Amada's perspective on our mortality is detached and relatively lighthearted, Suh's work conveys the deep and profound loss felt by someone left behind.

"The Voided" and "Kuon: Eternal Flow of Time" are on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts through September 26.

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Schubert Club acquires composers' manuscripts

Posted at 10:12 AM on June 18, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Music

A signed photograph of Sergei Rachmaninoff is one of the 15 manuscript items just acquired by the Schubert Club Museum in St. Paul.

The Schubert Club has acquired fifteen manuscripts for its Gilman Ordway Manuscript Collection. The letters, autographs and signed photographs bear the writing of nine composers previously not represented in the collection, including Samuel Barber, George Bizet, Aaron Copland, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Dmitri Shostakovich. In addition, six letters have been added to the Collection that are written by composers already represented in the Gilman Ordway Manuscript Collection: Brahms, Debussy, Elgar, Hindemith, Liszt, and Respighi.

Five of the documents represent the last composer manuscripts from Gilman Ordway's personal collection. The other items in the acquisition represent The Schubert Club's commitment to expanding and growing the collection.

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American Swedish Institute reveals new annex

Posted at 10:30 AM on June 15, 2010 by Euan Kerr (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

The American Swedish Institute is throwing a celebratory bash to unveil its new extension (above) this morning.

The Nelson Cultural Center, as the new 34,000 square foot facility will be known, will include an art gallery, crafts workshop, an event space for more than 200, a café and museum shop. The extension will connect to the existing mansion which was home to the Institute's founder Swan J. Turnblad. The extension is due to be completed in mid-2012.

We'll have more details after this morning's announcement, but here is a peek at the renderings by HGA Architects and Engineers.The building is intended to reflect Swedish design and landscaping.

Today's event will also serve as an opportunity to announce the recent gifts in the $21.5 million capital campaign to pay for the facility. The ASI has raised some $11 million so far.

More than 74,000 people visit the ASI each year, and it boast members in 46 states and 5 other countries.

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Capturing the wild

Posted at 8:37 AM on June 15, 2010 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Painting, People

Egret in Florida Pond, by Francis Lee Jaques
Image courtesy of the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History

It is the curious charge of the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History (known to most people as simply "the Bell Museum") that it showcase both science and art as it pertains to the natural world. So while many associate the Bell Museum with the stuffed birds and animals that fill its glass display cases, Curator of Exhibitions Don Luce is particularly proud of the art on the walls behind those creatures - dioramas depicting different ecologies by the painter Francis Lee Jaques.

Part of our mission is to encourage people to study nature, and through Jaques' art you get an idea of how he did this, not as a scientist but as an artist. The foundation of science, and his art, is to observe carefully.

The Bell Museum owns approximately 20 dioramas by Jaques (pronounced "jay-kweez"), along with 100 paintings and scratchboard drawings, bequeathed by his wife Florence upon her death. His work is the core and foundation of the natural history museum's art collection, and is the subject of a new exhibition, "The Shape of Nature: The Art of Francis Lee Jaques," on display through September 5.


Lee and Florence Jaques, standing in the backyard of their North Oaks, Minnesota home in the 1960s. Photograph courtesy of the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History

It's fitting the largest collection of Jaques' artwork resides in Minnesota, for his drawings and paintings played a large role in the conservation of Minnesota lands. Born in Illinois, and raised partly in Kansas, Jaques moved with his family to Aitkin, Minnesota as a teenager. He fell in love with the Boundary Waters in 1913 while working on a steam engine, bought himself a canoe and began exploring the wilderness. He and a friend made some of the earliest maps of the lakes.

Over the years Jaques worked as a lumberjack, a taxidermist, a railroad fireman and an electrical engineer at the Duluth power company. He served in the first World War, returned to work in the Duluth shipyards, but soon left them in favor of a job as a commercial artist. He continued to develop his artistic talents, but wasn't inspired much by the subject matter. It was the memory of a diorama of a mule deer in a snowy forest he saw at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco while serving in the army that finally inspired him to pursue a career as a wildlife artist.

Ironically he first applied for a job at the Bell Museum, and was turned down. But he persisted, and was taken on by the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The Road West, by Francis Lee Jaques
Image courtesy of the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History

Don Luce says what sets Jaques' work apart from his peers is how he painted wildlife within the context of its environment.

Roger Tory Peterson said Jaques was the first bird artist NOT influenced by J.J. Audubon. Unlike most artists of the time, who were very interested in miniature anatomical detail of scales, feathers, etcetera, Jaques knew animals from experiencing the outdoors; he knew them in their environment, and in motion. He distilled the bird or animal down to its essential shape, and captured the experience of witnessing that animal in its environment.

Luce says Jaques is considered one of the top three diorama painters of all time. His job at the American Museum of Natural History took him all over the world. He sailed the South Pacific for months at a time, discovering new birds and painting them in their natural setting.

Mallards Dropping Fast, by Francis Lee Jaques
Image courtesy of the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History

When Jacques married Florence in 1927, he took her back to the Boundary Waters for their honeymoon. She later wrote the first book on "recreating" in the northern lakes, "Canoe Country" which Lee illustrated. Over the course of their marriage they partnered this way on several books, including a sequel titled "Snowshoe Country." The Jaques used proceeds from the sales of the two books to help preserve Susie Island in Lake Superior. It's now known as the Francis Lee Jaques Memorial Preserve in his honor.

A few years after Jaques retired from the American Natural History Museum, he and Florence settled down in North Oaks, Minnesota, and he joined the staff of the Bell Museum. Jaques soon became good friends with environmentalist Sigurd Olsen, and illustrated several of his books, including "The Singing Wilderness."

Caribou on Ice, by Francis Lee Jaques
Image courtesy of the James Ford Bell Museum of Natural History

Curator Don Luce says Jaques' artwork - in more than 40 books and on the walls of several natural history museums - did more than just convey what it was like being in the great outdoors; it planted the seeds for the environmental movement.

I think of Rachel Carson [author of "Silent Spring"]. Would she have been as effective if there hadn't already been this background of nature artists who helped people connect to the natural world? Jaques laid the foundation for a "wilderness ethic." By conveying their beauty, he convinced the public that these landscapes merited protection.

"The Shape of Nature: The Art of Francis Lee Jaques" is on display through September 5 at the James Ford Bell Museum on the University of Minnesota campus. If you're in Aitkin, you can see more of his artwork at the Jaques Art Center, located in the old Carnegie Library.

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Weisman: "ordinarily here," but not for long

Posted at 4:46 PM on June 18, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

"South Minneapolis Tags" by Jenny Jenkins
Image courtesy of the Weisman Art Museum

The Weisman Art Museum's latest exhibition, "Ordinarily Here" celebrates the work of local artists and everyday objects while preparing audiences for the museum's closing this fall.

The Weisman will close on October 10 (10/10/10) for approximately one year while it completes its expansion, designed by the building's original architect Frank Gehry.

For the past year the museum has been exploring the notion of what is "ordinary;" Curator Diane Mullin says this final exhibition in the series brings the idea closer to home, focusing on the work of artists who are "ordinarily here."

There's another meaning to "here;" these artists highlight that it's place and context which makes the ordinary NOT ordinary. It's talking about ordinary things in a new context or how we experience routine spaces.

"Bow, bow, bower, ower, bower" by Diane Willow
Image courtesy of the Weisman Art Museum

A perfect example is the work of Diane Willow, who transformed a hallway that many patrons rush through to get to the main exhibit halls. Using bamboo, plastic tie-backs, moss and bells, Willow creates a meditative space that encourages people to linger, and heightens their awareness of moving from one place to another.

Jenny Jenkins transformed the graffiti in her neighborhood into precious, framed stitchwork (see top image). What often serves as a backdrop to city life suddenly pops into view, and shifts from vaguely menacing to kitsch and comic.

Adam Caillier's work involves investigating the spaces in which people live, while challenging commonly held notions of privacy and trust. Caillier asks friends and relative strangers for the keys to their apartments. He then waits for a time when they're not home, and completely rearranges their posessions to create a sculpture. He photographs it, returns everything back to its original place, and leaves. Mullins says Cailliers work discovers people through how they live and what they own.

Pirate Play by Adam Caillier
Image courtesy of the Weisman Art Museum

In many cases the artists actually reference the Weisman and its expansion. David Lefkowitz took some bricks from the Weisman (saved from the expansion) and created an homage to architect Frank Gehry. The pile of bricks glints with silver; some of them are wrapped in aluminum foil, evoking Gehry's iconic exteriors. Mullin says the work reflects the importance of this moment, the museum that was and the museum that will be.

The bricks spiral out of the pile and turn into these "possible new Weismans" with their foil ornaments. It's like a representation of entropy; things go toward disorder, and then we constantly create order out of it.

Mullin adds the work also underscores the transitory nature of the bricks, and how they are both viewed and used. First they were individual building materials, then they became an integral part of the museum, then construction workers turned those bricks into rubble, and now they comprise a work of art. What will they become next?

Peter Haakon Thompson created a series of tents as part of his MFA at the U of M, and as part of the Ordinarily Here exhibition people will not only be able to view the tents, but check them out and use them. The only condition is that users must document (to the extent they're comfortable) the nature of the conversation they had while inside the tent. Their report forms will be posted on the walls of the museum and will accumulate over the course of the exhibition.

Haakon Thompson (co-creator of the Art Shanty project) says the project is inspired by his own desire to get to know new people.

I'm curious about people and love to hear their stories, but I'm a pretty shy person, so I couldn't do it without coming up with some tool. My medium is really conversation; that's what the art is, and the tents are the tools that facilitate that happening.

Haakon Thompson says there's something primitive in all of us that inspires us as children to want to create forts and hang out in them. And that magic of childhood back comes back when adults sit in his tents. And he says the group activity of setting up a tent sets up a certain connection between the people who are going to talk to each other.

"Ordinarily Here" opens tonight and runs through October 10 at the Weisman Art Museum.

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Japanese Consul commends MIA

Posted at 10:32 AM on May 26, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Culture, Museums

Consul Hiseida presents the MIA's Dr. Welch with a commendation and certificate of appreciation.
Image courtesy of the MIA

George Hisaeda, Consul General of Japan at Chicago, commended the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in a ceremony yesterday afternoon for its dedication to Japanese arts, and the acquisition of an important suit of armor.

Dr. Matthew Welch, Assistant Director of Collections and Chair of Asian Art at the museum was honored for his contributions to "mutual understanding and friendship between Japan and the United States of America."

Welch spent four years in the Department of Letters at Kyoto University, and is the author of both Untamed Beauty: Tigers in Japanese Art and Netsuke: The Japanese Art of Miniature Carving.In 1998, he expanded the display of Japanese art at the museum from two to nine galleries, and in 2006 he added six more galleries-making the Japanese art display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts one of the largest in the country.

Image courtesy of the MIA

The suit of Japanese armor (shown above) is made from hundreds of lacquered metal and leather plates laced together with red and indigo silk cords. It includes a face-mask, forearm sleeves, thigh and shin guards, and bear-fur boots. The set may have belonged to Tokugawa Yorinobu (1602-71), the feudal lord of Kii Province.

According to the MIA's website, "the suit's integrity, quality, artistry, and association to one of the leading fiefdoms of pre-modern Japan make it a prime example of Japanese armor."

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The Great Recession hits the Walker

Posted at 3:16 PM on May 20, 2010 by Chris Roberts (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

The Walker Art Center is cutting its operating budget by 8 percent in the coming fiscal year (from $19.1 million to $17.6 million) and eliminating nine positions.

The Walker says the cutbacks are due to the recession's impact on the museum's endowment, earned income and charitable contributions, which are flat or in decline.

The Walker didn't specify which positions were being eliminated, but a spokesperson says they span the institution, including programming and support staff. In a prepared statement, the Walker's director Olga Viso says

"The Walker will continue to provide a robust, ambitious, and innovative level of programming that highlights new partnerships across the institution. We will continue to advance the Walker's artistic mission and serve our community even following these reductions."

The Walker also announced that Viso will give back 10 percent of her salary and benefits in the upcoming fiscal year. The layoffs amount to 6 percent of the Walker's total workforce.

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G.P.S. - circa 1600

Posted at 11:05 AM on May 25, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Matteo Ricci's map of the world measures 5.5 feet by 12.5 feet, and was made using woodblocks.

With today's Global Positioning Systems, Google Earth and Yahoo! Maps, it's hard to imagine living in a world in which your exact location was a mystery. But a very rare map now on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts provides a picture of a time of great exploration and discovery.

The map, made in 1602, was created by Italian-born Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci, who was stationed in China for thirty years. It is now known to be the oldest surviving Chinese map to show the Americas. The map on display at the MIA was just recently acquired by the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota; MIA curator Rachel McGarry says this will be by far the most important piece in the library's collection:

The Ricci map is exceedingly rare; just six survive from the 1602 edition and just two from the 1603 edition, which is why it is popularly called the "Impossible Black Tulip." It is not the kind of thing a curator would put on their acquisition wish list because the possibility of finding a complete Ricci map seemed impossible. Just one was known in private hands in a collection in France before the discovery of the example purchased by the James Ford Bell Trust. This one emerged from a Japanese private collection and was previously unknown to experts.

Portrait of Matteo Ricci, 1610
In his thirty years as a Jesuit missionary in China, Ricci mastered the language, studied Confucianism, and adopted the dress of a Chinese intellectual.

McGarry says to understand the importance of the map, you also have to understand the context in which it was made.

The early 17th century is an exciting time. In 1602, Shakespeare had just completed Hamlet, Queen Elizabeth is in the last year of her life, Descartes is 6 years old, Rubens is living in Italy, and Caravaggio's career is flourishing in Rome. Jamestown was founded in 1607, Galileo published "Starry Messenger" in 1610, and the Mayflower would set sail in 1621.

China had newly learned of Europe, as and was wary that its neighbor might be a powerful enemy. But Ricci's map, with its detailed descriptions of stormy sea passages and massive mountain ranges separating the two cultures, helped put the Chinese aristocracy at ease.

Ricci and his colleagues were often suspected by the Chinese of nefarious intent (they particularly disliked the image of Jesus on the cross, thinking the Jesuit priests were intent on killing their king, too), But Ricci showed a deep intellectual curiosity and respect for the local culture. In 1601 he was invited to enter the Forbidden City, becoming one of the first Westerners ever to gaze upon its interior.

Detail of Ricci's map of the world, 1602

Ricci's map combines his own knowledge from Dutch atlases with the maps and charts of Chinese scholars. And Ricci filled the map with his own commentary, written in Chinese. His descriptions, which cover everything from astronomy to anthropology, reveal an imaginative, fantastical bent. For example:

"Country of Dwarves. The men and women of this kingdom are only a little more than one foot tall. At the age of five they already have children, and at eight, they are already old. Constantly devoured by cranes and hawks, they live in caves for safety. Here they wait until the third month of summer, when they come out and destroy the eggs of their enemies, riding on goats."

"In Monomotapa [modern-day Zimbabwe and Mozambique] there is an animal with a head like a horse, a horn on his forehead, and an extremely thick hide with scales all over; the limbs and tail are similar to those of a cow. One wonders if it is a unicorn."

Abraham Ortelius, Map of the World, Antwerp, 1570
Ricci brought with him to China Ortelius' map of the world, and relied on it heavily for certain parts of his own map. Meanwhile, Europeans had made many new discoveries, of which Ricci wasn't aware.

While we now know the animal of which Ricci spoke was a rhinoceros, not a unicorn, other aspects of Ricci's work have proved both factual and long-lasting. Many of Ricci's Chinese translations of place names are still used in China today, including Ya-ma-chia (Jamaica) and Ku-pa (Cuba).

Ricci's world map is on display in the Cargill Gallery of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts through August 29, accompanied by rare Chinese woodblock prints from an illustrated Bible published by a colleague of Ricci, western maps, and a select group of Ming dynasty objects.

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Walker Announces 2010-2011 performing arts season

Posted at 12:00 AM on May 21, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Dance, Museums, Music, Theater

In the wake of confirming budget cuts and layoffs, the Walker Art Center is now announcing its 2010-2011 performing arts season.

Despite the budget cuts, the Walker is commissioning five new works which will go on world tours after their premieres in Minneapolis. And the season continues the Walker's tradition of commissioning new works that test the boundaries of typical artistic genres.

2010-2011 features a five-part "Adventures in Puppetry" series, which, over the course of the season, brings together the work of artists from Canada, Britain, Slovenia, Latvia and South Africa, while also paying tribute to the Twin Cities' own dynamic "puppetry community." As part of the series, Open Eye Figure Theatre in Minneapolis will present an extended run of its Toy Theatre Festival.

The season also brings back many familiar names to the Walker to perform new works, including choreographer Ralph Lemon, the Kronos Quartet, the Gob Squad and Improbable Theater.

In November, Japanese movement artists Eiko and Koma will perform Naked, an installation piece in which they move in and among the Walker's collection every day for a month.

This year's Out There series consists entirely of European artists, performing mixtures of music, puppetry, film and theater, as well as a Belgian documentary on a small town in Colorado.

Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theater's Susana di Palma hosts this year's Choreographers' Evening.

The season also hosts an array of new music by percussionist Tony Allen, Wordless Music Orchestra and Tyondai Braxton, Violinist Jenny Scheinman, Copenhagen pop band Efterklang and the Brad Mehldau Quintet.

In addition, other performances blend film with jazz, and theater with ballet. And choreographer Lucinda Childs' minimalist piece Dance gets a remount 30 years after it first premiered in Minneapolis.

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MIA pours on the French charm

Posted at 2:42 PM on May 13, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

"Pot de Monsieur de la Bouexière," made at the French Royal Porcelain manufacture in Vincennes in approximately 1755-56.

The MIA's collection of mid-18th century French porcelain just got one piece bigger.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts purchased a new item at auction yesterday to pair with its French Grand Salon period room. The porcelain pitcher, called a ewer, is known as the "Pot de Monsieur de la Bouexière" and was made for the same man as the Grand Salon, Jean Gaillard de la Bouexière.

According to a statement from the MIA the ewer, which was made at the French Royal Porcelain manufacture in Vincennes, may have first been owned by Madame de Pompadour. "It masterfully articulates the essence of French porcelain from the period of Louis XV with its extravagant colors and superior ornamental refinement" the statement goes on to say.

The ewer will be displayed adjacent to the entrance to the Grand Salon.

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How do you like your art mixed?

Posted at 3:51 PM on May 4, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

A possible pairing of "remixed art" using the MIA's new website.

Ever thought you'd like to be in charge of hanging your own exhibition? Or has a work of art ever inspired a connection for you with another work from a different time, a different country, a different genre?

Well, now here's your chance to show the museum staff at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts just how good you are.

In conjunction with its "Art ReMix" project, the MIA is allowing you to take a work of art from its collection and pair it with anything else in the museum you like. They're calling it "ReMix Yourself," and each week are putting out a new work of art for people to experiment with. The first week featured Chuck Close's self-portrait from 1969 (shown above paired with a 6th century clay sculpture, per the "remix" of one Liz Short). This week, the museum has added Dale Chihuly's glass "Sunburst" which hangs in the main entrance of the building.

It's a fun idea, which is I'm guessing in part designed to get people to spend more time looking at the collection, both at the museum and online. Personally I like the notion of "trumping" the curators.

But after spending some time with the site, my primary impressions were a) it's cumbersome to navigate (including a lengthy sign-on section that demands, of all things, my postal code and birth date!) and b) it seems to be populated primarily with the pairings of staff members - i.e. people who already know the collection quite well and feel comfortable with the concept of playing curator (if they aren't one already).

I think the "game," if that's what it's to be called, needs better technology behind it to make it easier to peruse the MIA's collection. Otherwise, many folks are going to feel lost swimming in the sea of 17,814 images (just a fraction of what art the MIA actually owns).

But if you have the time, and the inclination, give it a shot. You may find yourself empathizing with those museum curators and the challenges they face every day trying to put together an exhibition.

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MIA Curator Bob Jacobsen resigns

Posted at 9:33 AM on April 21, 2010 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, People

Bob Jacobsen in Guizhou Province, China, in April of 2008. Photo by Dan Dennehy.

After sheparding the MIA's Asian Art collection into national prominence over the course of 33 years, curator Bob Jacobsen is resigning his post.

Jacobsen, who started at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 1977 as its first curator of Asian Art, is recognized in particular for his work partnering with philanthropists Ruth and Bruce Dayton to expand the museum's Chinese galleries.

In an internal memo, MIA Director Kaywin Feldman wrote "Bob departs the MIA having established a lasting legacy through the museum's renowned collections, several scholarly publications, and the installation of two unique Chinese period rooms."

Jacobsen's last day is April 30. In honor of his contributions to the museum, Feldman has named him "curator emeritus." Jacobsen plans to continue working on an occasional basis - including writing about the MIA's collection - and so the departure is considered a resignation, not a retirement.

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A bold new look at the MIA

Posted at 4:57 PM on April 14, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Zhang Huan
1/2 (Text), 1998
Chromogenic color print

For a long time now, the Twin Cities has looked to the Walker Art Center for its contemporary art, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for a more historical perspective.

That's going to change.

"Until Now," the MIA's new exhibition opening Friday, and its accompanying exhibition "Art ReMix," present a strong case for the argument that contemporary art belongs in the MIA. And not just on an occasional basis.

Liz Armstrong, recently hired by the MIA to head up its new Department of Contemporary Art, provided the vision for both projects. She looked at it as an opportunity to assemble a strong array of works from the past 50 years that have both a place in history and stand on their own in today's more globalized artistic landscape.

It felt like it was important to set the parameters for what contemporary art would look like at the MIA as soon as possible. I had the benefit of hindsight, and so as I looked at the 50 years of work we weren't actively collecting, I asked what is the picture here that makes sense for this collection at the MIA?

Nick Cave
Soundsuit
2009
Mixed media

Rather than borrow works from other museums, Armstrong chose pieces for the show that are available for acquisition. Already the MIA's board has approved the purchase of a few of the more than 80 paintings, sculpture and videos.

Many of Armstrong's fellow curators at the MIA appear to not only accept the change in the museum's scope, but are excited by it. As Curator of Prints and Drawings Tom Rassieur said to Armstrong, "how can we be an encyclopedic museum if we don't collect volumes X, Y and Z?"

That excitement shows in "Art ReMix," which places contemporary art in a historical setting. Alec Soth's photograph of a woman leaning back on a bed hangs on a wall just feet from Gustave Caillebotte's painting of a reclining nude from 1880. Kehinde Wiley's Santos-Dumont - The Father of Aviation II hangs in a room filled with baroque paintings.

The fact that Wiley is African-American, and that his painting depicts young black men in a very baroque style, only heightens the experience. For years Wiley has worked to take black men off the street and put them center stage in an epic story. Now one of those paintings has found its place among the masterworks of European history.

It is that juxtaposition of works from both different eras and different cultures that capture the imagination, and invite the mind to connect to art in a whole new way. In the case of artist Willie Cole's "Ann Klein with a Baby in Transit," a sculpture which at first appears to be right at home in the African art gallery, is in fact made out of designer shoes.

Willie Cole
"Ann Klein with a Baby in Transit," 2009

The notion of women's designer shoes being imbued somehow with an almost animist power is underscored not just by the shape of the work itself, but in this case, by its location in the museum.

Curator Liz Armstrong says she's constantly asked "so how are you going to be different than the Walker?" She says that's not going to be hard; there is so much art out there to choose from, for a start. But also the MIA has the opportunity to put it in a historical context.

There's so much here that it can get lost. The job of a curator is to pull things out, to highlight certain objects and underscore different meanings. It's really about activating the power of what you have.

If "Until Now" and "Art ReMixed" are any indicaiton, Armstrong has a vision for contemporary art at the MIA which will not only give it a prominent place in the collection, but go a long way to bring older works to life for new audiences.

"Until Now: Collecting the New" opens Friday April 16 and runs through Sunday, August 1 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

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A weekend in London, or in the Twin Cities? You choose.

Posted at 3:45 PM on March 23, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Music

This installation piece at the Barbican Centre is just one of the many lovely things you could be seeing or doing in London this weekend. But then you'd miss out on all the lovely stuff going on in Minnesota.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to bop on over to London for the weekend? Then we could check out the Henry Moore exhibition at Tate Britain or the Arshile Gorky retrospective at the Tate Modern. We could wander amongst the West African carvings and Mexican prints on display at the British Museum.

Of course we'd have to see what's up at the Barbican Centre. Oh look, Macbeth is playing! And so is 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane (so much for getting a good laugh). Of course for a good ghost story we could always go see "The Woman in Black" at the Fortune Theatre. And we'd dine on fish and chips and beer. Sigh...

I have to admit I started off this post in a wistful, "if only" kind of mood. But the more I looked at what was on offer this weekend in London, the more proud I became of what I knew I could see any weekend in the Twin Cities. London may have its Tate Britain and Tate Modern, but we have the MIA and the Walker. And frankly a look at what's currently on display in our museums and theaters gets me much more interested in taking a little "staycation."

What would I do on my "staycation?"

I'd check out the Modernism exhibition or the "Drama in the Old Testament" exhibiiton. And I'd go to the openings of "1964" and "Recollection: Lorna Simpson" at the Walker Art Center. With the weather warming up, I'd definitely take a stroll through the sculpture garden. And after the Walker, I'd walk over to Groveland Gallery to check out Jean Gumpper and Michael Karaken's work.

For theater, I'd check out "Welcome to Dystopia" at Bedlam Theatre. And for dance, I'd go see Diavolo at the Ordway. For music I'd head over to the Dakota to catch Nachito Herrera at his monthly gig.

So a weekend in London or a weekend in the Twin Cities? I choose the Twin Cities. I'll miss shopping the food halls at Harrods, but I can always pick up an Old Speckled Hen at Bryant Lake Bowl.

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A museum without walls

Posted at 3:15 PM on March 11, 2010 by Marianne Combs (2 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Henry Pearson's "Mochizuki" is one of several works of abstract art from the Minnesota Museum of American Art's collection now on display in the College of Visual Arts gallery. All photos courtesy Rik Sferra

Just over a year ago the Minnesota Museum of American Art, based in downtown St. Paul, shut its doors. Its annual deficit had grown steadily for years, and despite moving to a street level location in downtown St. Paul, it was not able to draw in the crowds big enough to offset costs.

But that doesn't mean the MMAA is gone. Instead, it's transformed into a sort of "museum without walls" under the leadership of new director Kristin Makholm.
Starting tonight, you can see a collection of the museum's abstract art on display at the College of Visual Arts. According to college president Ann Ledy, MMAA's exhibition allows the school to expose its students to a wide range of art it doesn't otherwise have on hand. Ledy says the exhibition will not only provide inspiration, but also start a conversation that will help students to communicate about more abstract ideas and relationships.

George Morrison (1919-2000)
Untitled, 1955
Watercolor on paper

Generation Abstraction: Selections from the Minnesota Museum of American Art features a range of media, including prints, paintings, collages, and sculpture. It features local artists (such as Kinji Akagawa and Eugene Larkin) paired with artists that influenced them (such as Herbert Bayer and Louise Nevelson). The images, combined with the accompanying didactic material, takes you on a wonderful journey through the myriad iterations abstraction can take.

Herbert Bayer (1900-1985)
Untitled, 1968
Acrylic on cardstock

For Kristin Makholm, directing a museum without a home presents a challenge. While she no longer has the costs a building entails, she no longer has the visibility, either. So she's looking to find new and intriguing venues to show off the collection. This fall, for instance, Makholm will be installing an exhibition of ceramics in the Drake Gallery at Saint Paul Academy. For now she's taking the educational tack, and it's a good one. By providing a service that helps the hosting institution, the MMAA can continue to be relevant and engage people in a dynamic conversation, perhaps reaching people it wouldn't have had it stayed in its old home.

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Foot in the Door installation at high speed

Posted at 11:55 AM on March 3, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Kudos to all those hard working folks at MIA who put up all the artwork submitted in Foot in the Door 4. They arranged 4,800 works of art in 4 galleries in just 4 days. Not bad.

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If you are on Twitter you can follow Foot in the Door

Posted at 6:57 PM on February 11, 2010 by Euan Kerr (0 Comments)
Filed under: Galleries, Museums, People

A quick Foot in the Door Update: If you are wondering about what's happening with all those Foot in the Door artworks at the MIA you can follow the action on Twitter through the #fitd4 hashtag.

Reports from this afternoon suggest that after filling two galleries, there may be need for another. Originally there had been a plan just to spill out into the atrium.

You can also see pictures of the progress, such as this one which also gives you access to a plethora of images gathered during the submission process and during the hanging.

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The Art of the Ordinary

Posted at 11:15 AM on February 2, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Joseph Beuys, German, 1921-1986
Noiseless Blackboard Eraser,1974
felt, ink on paper

An eraser... a pair of salt and pepper shakers... pieces of cardboard. These are just some of the objects you'll find on display in the Weisman Art Museum's latest exhibition, "Common Sense: Art and the Quotidian."

There are no royal portraits here; the most glamorous piece is a sculpture by Minnesota artist Judy Onofrio, studded not with jewels but sea shells.

Curator Diane Mullin says "Common Sense" celebrates a particularly American artistic trait; that is, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary.

A sense of the ordinary person--meaning not royal or aristocratic--is at the heart of the American experiment. Americans and their democratic, European kindred spirits like Poland and France were citizens not subjects--all equal before the law. What better art subject than picturing this new modern person, life, environs? Of course, this belief manifested itself in different ways.

Lewis Hine, American, 1874-1940
Fresh air for the baby, Italian Quarter, New York City, 1910

The exhibition begins in the late 1920s and early 30s, with etchings and photographs of everyday people going about their daily lives. There are Walker Evans' WPA portraits, and Lewis Hine's photographic documentation of the conditions of poverty. Mullin says used his work for a new sort of "political evangelizing."

[Hine] believed that showing people the lives of immigrants, whom he felt were getting an unfair deal, would inspire the ordinary person to use his or her own voice (vote) to help make it better for these fellow Americans. Though this seems like it maybe is an obvious strategy, that was not always so. Hine fought for equal treatment and opportunity for all, not noblesse oblige.

Mullin says you can see similarities between the political activism of the 1930s and that of the 1960s. Andy Warhol became famous for his pop art, which took things like a Campbell's soup can and raised them to the level of hight art. Mullin says Warhol used ordinary objects to call into question the public's expectations around what art should be.

Andy Warhol, American, 1928-1987
New England Clam Chowder, 1968-1969
screenprint on paper

Mullin says while some people might think that such treatment of commonplace objects makes art more mundane, she argues it has the reverse effect.

One can see this sort of celebration of the ordinary person--the songs of ourselves--as a plea to free the average life from its categorization as the banal, uninteresting, and trivial, setting it free to be as marvelous as each person inevitably is.

Nina Katchadourian, American, born 1968
Untitled (salt and pepper shakers), 2007
glass, metal, plastic shavings

Common Sense offers a particular lens on American art, picking out objects for their commonplace subject matter or the materials with which they were made. But Mullin admits that all art is ultimately related to everyday life.

I think that is the power of art. When we engage with a work of art, we make that work relevant and a part of our everyday lives. When we engage with the work--another's viewpoint--some are spurred to action--like those who after viewing Hines's images lent their voices and their votes to change childhood for the better in America. Or the transformation can be more personal, which is just as important really. In the end I believe all art we truly consider and actively engage is relevant to our lives.

"Common Sense: Art and the Quotidian" opens to the public at Weisman Art Museum on February 6, and runs through May 23. The public is invited to attend a free preview party on Friday, February 5, 2009 from 5 to 8 p.m.

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A place to sit and look

Posted at 4:38 PM on December 15, 2009 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

The Walker Art Center has pulled out some of the older pieces from its collection for patrons to enjoy in a more tradition salon-like setting. Image courtesy of the Walker Art Center.

Not long after the Walker Art Center opened it's its expanded building in 2005, criticisms started to filter in about the new design. One of the main complaints was that, while there were benches in the common spaces between galleries, there was no place to sit in the galleries themselves while looking at the art. Those people who tire easily can sign out a folding chair and carry it with them throughout the museum. I've always found this confusing, because it was my impression that museum's want their patrons to spend more time with the art, not less.

While the lack of seating remains true for most of the museum, one gallery presents a delightful exception. The "Benches and Binoculars" exhibition features more than 90 paintings from the Walker's collection, hung on the North and South walls much as they might in an art collector's home (as they did in lumber magnate T.B. Walker's original collection).

The floor, unlike in most other public areas of the museum, is carpeted with the same deep purple fabric that covers the multiple benches. Attached to each of the benches are two sets of binoculars, which visitors can use to hone in on any one particular work of art (some are at knee level, while others hang at about 20' high).

One of the Walker's not-so-contemporary gems now on display: Lyonel Feininger's "Church of the Minorites II." Image courtesy of the Walker Art Center.

The Benches and Binoculars exhibition features works that while, once "contemporary," are now more likely to hang in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts than the Walker. Artists include Georgia O'Keefe, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Chuck Close, Franz Marc, and Edward Hopper.

On a personal note, I'm looking forward to making several return trips to the gallery because the exhibition includes one of my favorite paintings, "Church of the Minorites II" by Lyonel Feininger (see above image). It's a lovely study in line and light, and it's a delight to see it up on the Walker walls again. It will be a pleasure to be able to sit and contemplate Feininger's work, and others, for an extended period of time.

"Benches and Binoculars" will be on display at the Walker Art Center in the Linda and Lawrence Perlman Gallery through August 15, 2010.

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Two MCAD alums in 2010 Whitney Biennial

Posted at 2:55 PM on December 14, 2009 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Education, Museums

The people behind the Whitney Biennial - a high profile exhibition which takes the pulse of the art world - have released the names of the artists who made the cut for its latest incarnation. It's an unusually short list, down from 100 artists in 2006 to 81 artists in 2008 to now just 55 artists in 2010. Two of the artists got their training at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design: Jim Casebere (BFA '76) and Kelly Nipper (BFA '93).

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Art of the White Clay People

Posted at 1:46 PM on December 9, 2009 by Marianne Combs (2 Comments)
Filed under: Culture, Museums

Minneapolis Institute of Arts' Joe Horse Capture has the unusual distinction of curating a show that features his own great great grandfather.

Joe Horse Capture is the Associate Curator of African, Oceanic and Native American Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Horse Capture has been continuing the work of his father to track down all of the artifacts of his tribe - the A'aninin (the White Clay People) - now scattered to museum collections around the world. Some of the results of his search are now on display at the MIA. Horse Capture says it was a moving experience.

It is a way for me to connect with my ancestors - which happens rarely. And I'm really lucky to be in this position to make those connections.

I stayed pretty objective throughout this entire exhibition, dealing with the objects my ancestors created...until the objects started showing up. This is the first time I've seen all of these objects together, out in the open. These used to be ours. And in a certain sense they're still ours - we don't have the title, but we have the intellectual property and the emotional connection.

Horse Capture is working on creating a database of all the objects he found, which he plans to copy to cds and send back to the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in North Central Montana.

The tribe will be able to see the objects their ancestors created. Because many people don't ever get to see them - they're all gone, in museums. So part of this project here at the MIA is we're not only featuring this exhibition on the White Clay people, but we're also giving back to their community.

Moccasins, c. 1880-1910
Animal hide, beads
A'ani/Nakoda (Gros Ventre/Assiniboine)

Because the A'aninin are a very small tribe, Horse Capture says their art was influenced by many other tribes they encountered, creating a style that is unique to the region. The exhibition is divided into two rooms - objects created by women, and objects created by men, or for men. Much of the exhibition features moccasins with richly colored beadwork.

I have a real affection for moccasins because as native people were being forced to convert over to western clothing, that's the last thing they hung onto. You look at these historical photographs - they'll be wearing these suit coats, and pants and hats, but if you look at their feet, they're wearing moccasins.

Detail from muslin teepee liner. Image courtesy of the MIA.

Covering one wall of the gallery is an 8' x 14' muslin teepee liner decorated with pictographs documenting the feats of warriors. In a rare turn of luck, Horse Capture was able to locate a key made for the pictographs created by the man who originally purchased the piece back in 1903.

Scenes are labelled "F3" or "C2" - the letter corresponds to a person, while the number corresponds to a battle or deed. It's the scenes G1 and G2 that are of particular interest to Joe Horse Capture.

This is where it gets a little bit kooky...these two are pictures of my great great grandfather Horse Capture. I've always seen him in sepia-toned photographs (taken by non-natives) and to now see him as his own people saw him, based on his accomplishments...it's nice to see those two things come together.

The images depict a warrior in yellow body paint charging on the enemy amidst a hail of bullets. It's quite different from the stillness in this portrait by Edward Curtis.

Edward S. Curtis, American, 1868-1952
Horse Capture - Atsina, 1908, Photogravure

Joe Horse Capture is a bit of a rarity in that he's a second-generation Native American museum curator. But he hopes more Native Americans will choose his career path.

One way we can continue our tradition is to care for the objects our ancestors created. I like to think projects like this will encourage young Native American people to think about working in museums. Because in the past we've always had non-native anthropologists interpret our ways. And now as we're incorporating more native people in museums we're able to tell our own stories. I think this exhibiiton is a good example of that.

"From Our Ancestors: Art of the White Clay People" runs through March 7 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

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WWBFD? (What Would Benjamin Franklin Do?)

Posted at 8:30 AM on November 26, 2009 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

"Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World" opens Friday at the Minnesota History Center

Starting tomorrow, the Minnesota History Center is presenting an exhibition on the life and work of Benjamin Franklin. And certainly no founding father is more deserving of his own touring show.

Exhibit developer Ros Remer put the show together originally in 2006 to mark Franklin's 300th birthday, and has retooled the exhibition for a second tour, beginning at the MHC. Remer says Franklin was several years older than his fellow founders (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, et al), and as such was really their elder statesman. He was not just a witness, but a player in both the political and scientific revolutions of the 18th century.

Benjamin Franklin's legacy is very profound. Every day around us we see things like "Franklin Plumbing Co" and "Franklin Investment Funds," and a lot of Franklin memorabilia, not to mention the 100 dollar bill. So he's very much present in our minds and our subconscious.

But his real legacy has to do with the things he improved upon in his own life - and I say improvement because he wasn't an inventor, he looked around and saw things that could be done better and found ways to do that.

In his 84 years, Franklin was a master printer, a diplomat, a scientist and a philosopher. He improved how street lamps worked, developped a method for keeping boulevards clean, figured out how a city should respond to a house fire, came up with bifocals, established the first American lending library, created the "Franklin stove," and of course experimented with the properties of electricity (and this is not an exhaustive list).

Part of the interactive multimedia presentation from the Benjamin Franklin exhibition

Remer says Franklin was the consumate communicator, keeping numerous correspondants. She says if he were alive today he'd probably be a lover of Facebook and Twitter, allowing him to share his pithy quotes with the world on a moment's notice. Can't you just see it?

@PoorRichard: Hancock, might I remind you: Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.

@PoorRichard: Hey George! Don't throw stones at your neighbors if your own windows are glass.

So who is the modern day Benjamin Franklin? Remer says whoever he or she is, they're probably not in the United States.

Benjamin Franklin was living in a developping country. He was living at a time of enormous and rapid change. And when you look around the world today you see countries that are developping, changes that are related to the environment and the economy. These are the people who are innovating and improving and being the most entrepreneurial right now. So I think looking for a modern day Benjamin Franklin involves looking a little more globally.

Franklin himself wished he could see the future, and just how much things would improve:

I have sometimes almost wished it had been my Destiny to be born two or three Centuries hence. For Inventions of Improvement are prolific, and beget more of their Kind. The present Progress is rapid. Many of great Importance, now unthought of, will before that Period be procur'd; and then I might not only enjoy their Advantages, but have my Curiosity satisfy'd in knowing what they are to be.

--Benjamin Franklin to Rev. John Lathrop, 1788

An excerpt from the front pages of "Poor Richard's Almanac"

Ros says she hopes visitors to the Benjamin Franklin exhibition at the Minnesota History Center come away with a better sense of all that Franklin accomplished and a better sense of the man. But most of all she hopes people are inspired by his life to look at how they can improve their own world.

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A case of "Museum Legs"

Posted at 5:05 PM on November 24, 2009 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Right now author Amy Whitaker is giving a talk at Macalester College about her new book "Museum Legs: fatigue and hope in the face of art." But just a short while ago she was in an MPR studio. I talked with her about the book, the exhaustion people feel when confronted with museum exhibitions, and how she thinks museums need to change in order to cater to modern day art lovers.

Whitaker says she was initially inspired to write the book by a quandry she experienced in her own work with museums. Museums are reporting better attendance numbers than ever, but at the same time, whenever she went with friends, everyone seemed to have glazed eyes. tired feet and a numb brain within the hour.

You know when you go to a museum that everything is really important - that's why it's there. And so you start 'box-ticking' in your mind "yep, saw that, saw that" as opposed to having open-ended curiosity toward the objects.

Think about the way that you go into a bookstore or a library - it's humbling - you have to confront your own mortality, that you will never have time to look at everything there. It's just that the nature of looking at a book is so different from looking at art - because images are so immediate - that you feel that you can see everything. So it's a question of re-training your habit, going to museums to just look at a few things, accept that you won't see everything, enjoy it and then leave.

Whitaker says this is not just a problem resulting from our expectations, it's also basic economics.

Museums increasingly charge for admission, and they purposely price it similarly to a movie ticket. The result is they're sold as all-you-can-eat buffets but meant to be experienced like perfume counters. Plus people are more overworked and busy than they ever have been, and so the quality of "looking" has changed...

We live in one of the most visual cultures of all time and imagination and creativity are important to fields far far outside of art. I would really like for museums to be free so that people can just drop in and see a couple of works of art. I would like for people to feel a sense of public ownership and for museums to invite many more people into the conversation around art. If museums, for example, feel a need to expand their footprints architecturally, that they should have studio art making space. People would be able to relate a lot better to art if they had a physical experience of making a work of art at any level. The same way someone who took Suzuki violin lessons at the age of five is better able to enjoy a symphony performance.

Whitaker thinks you local museum should be like your local library. You might stop off on your way home from work for a half-hour, or go on your lunch break and just sit in front of a couple of works of art. She says they need to work on hospitality as much as anything. Rather than expanding their buildings to create more gallery space, or throwing seemingly non-art-related parties to get new people in the door, Whitaker suggests they work on telling people more about what's already there, and making sure they know they're welcome.

I wouldn't write a whole book to point a finger at museums - I would write a whole book to invite people to think about what's possible and to think about how museums can have a closer relationship to creativity. They (modern art museums) did when they were first founded, many of them were created as artist studios. Then they grew and became public institutions. Now they have a choice about resisting or embracing commercialization.

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Artists vote in four new representatives at the MIA

Posted at 2:55 PM on October 28, 2009 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is an encyclopedic museum - that means it tries to cover just about everything artistically, from design to ancient pottery to the great impressionists. The most modern stuff it tends to leave to the Walker Art Center.

However the MIA does dedicate some gallery space to the work of contemporary Minnesota artists. That space is curated by a panel of artists, who are elected by the community. The panel is comprised of 7 members; each year, either 3 or 4 members rotate off to preserve some continuity of leadership. This last Saturday four new panelists were voted in, and I thought I'd find out just why they're interested in the job.

The new panelists are Megan Vossler, David Petersen, Andy Sturdevant, and Brian Frink.

All of them underscored the importance of the MAEP program, because it gives emerging artists the opportunity to show their work in a truly professional and high-profile setting, alongside world-class masterpieces.

Andy Sturdevant adds:

Another important piece is the fact that the MAEP is almost 35 years old. That makes it one of the oldest venues in Minnesota for working artists to exhibit new work. Most currently existing gallery spaces and nonprofits open to working artists don't go that far back. When you trace the MAEP shows and exhibiting artists back through the decades, you can follow a very clear line of lineage that tells you a lot about the sort of art that has been made in Minnesota. That sort of institutional memory is really valuable.

Megan Vossler says being in an MAEP show was such an incredible experience for her, she's eager to give something back, and to participate in the program in a different role.

The duties of panelists include attending monthly meetings at the MIA, selecting exhibitions from submitted proposals, and working with the MAEP Coordinator to guide the overall direction and development of the program. Panel coordinator Chris Atkins says current development includes connecting with artists and institutions around the state, and integrating the MAEP even more into the programming of the museum, so that the artists can take full advantage of the museum's resources.

Brian Frink sees the MAEP as "the hub of a large cultural wheel." He says for the panel to do its work well, it needs to be in constant dialogue with artists and with the MIA.

About a year ago the previous MAEP coordinator left abruptly, making many artists question the MIA's oversight of the program. So Andy Sturdevant thinks it's crucial the panel is transparent in everything it does.

While all the panelists give kudos to the MAEP for what it's accomplished, some also see more work that can be done. Vossler states:

I think restoring the number of exhibitions back to five- currently reduced to four - is important to maintain a diverse selection of shows and provide adequate opportunity for the artists to receive a show.

David Petersen sees lots of potential for creating new connections, engaging more artists to participate, and develop new sources of funding.

That's a lot to accomplish in two years. I think I'll check back then and see what they were able to get done...

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A Night at the Museum

Posted at 3:55 PM on October 19, 2009 by Marianne Combs (6 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

When a big exhibition comes around, a museum likes to throw on a big party to celebrate it. Such was the case this past weekend at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts as it marked the opening of "The Louvre and the Masterpiece."

Now I don't often make opening parties - by that time I've usually gone to a press preview of the show, have reported on the exhibition, and am ready to move on to the next story. But I know that many people have their notions about museums and galleries, and the kind of people who show up to their events. "Too snooty for me" some friends say, or "boring!" So, armed with a Flipcam, I decided to attend Saturday's opening and bring back tangible proof of what one of these events is like. Maybe I'd do some myth-busting, or maybe I'd simply confirm those preconceptions.

I have to say, when I first walked into the MIA Saturday night, I was surprised. There was a bass beat booming that was audible from the coatcheck, and the regular museum lights had been replaced with violet flourescents that made the main halls feel more like a downtown club than an encyclopedic museum. There were drink stations EVERYWHERE, as well as dancers clad in 18th century French frocks performing on little stages. People were kicking back in comfy furniture next to centuries old roman sculpture, and watching light shows around the fountain.

The people-watching was worth the price of admission, in my opinion. Just seeing how folks dressed up, some with a French flair, was fun. But take a look at the clip and tell me: does this look like a fun party to you? Are you now more or less tempted to go to a museum opening? Why? Would you feel comfortable at a party like this? Entertained? Bored? And how does it compare to the image you had in your head? If this isn't your cup of tea, what kind of art party would you rather attend?

My little revelation of the evening: museums don't serve red wine. It's just trouble waiting to happen.

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A conversation with the director of the Louvre

Posted at 9:16 PM on October 16, 2009 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Henri Loyrette, Director and President of the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Louvre Director Henri Loyrette is in town this weekend for the opening festivities of the "The Louvre and the Masterpiece" exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to talk with him.

When asked about bringing masterpieces from the Louvre museum to Minneapolis, Loyrette demurred:

You cannot say only it's the Louvre coming to Minneapolis because so often Minneapolis came to the Louvre you were so generous in lending your works and we were so proud to have it in our exhibitions. It's a kind of exchange which is important.

Loyrette singled out a few different works at the MIA which he wouldn't mind having in his own collection, notably a portrait by Degas. He said the MIA has a collection with not just the "standards" but also some really nice surprises. It's a collection the community should be proud of, he said.

As the head of arguably the most famous museum in the world, Loyrette holds a powerful place in the global arts and culture scene, and it's a position he handles with enthusiasm. Just last Sunday Loyrette was the subject of a lengthy profile in the New York Times. In his 8 years at the Louvre (he previously served at the Musee D'Orsay for 18 years), Loyrette has gained a reputation for shaking things up a bit.

One of his major projects was to take on a three year collaboration with the High Museum in Atlanta. Here's Loyrette's explanation of the project, and what each of the museums got out of it:

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It was that collaboration with the High Museum that paved the way for "The Masterpiece and the Louvre" exhibition coming to Minneapolis. While Loyrette is seeking out partnership with American museums, it should be noted the Louvre holds hardly any American art, a fact Loyrette deplores:

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Some people might not know that the Louvre has a very particular place in France's national museum structure, alongside the Musee D'Orsay, Centre Pompidou, and others. That's why it's collection will never include anything more recent than the mid-19th century:

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Finally, I asked Loyrette about the challenges facing his, and all museums - that is, to get people to linger longer over the artwork.

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Director Loyrette is in town through Sunday, during which time he'll get to know the MIA's collection, and pay a visit to the Guthrie Theater. The Guthrie was designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, the same man behind the design for the new Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi.

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A mini-Louvre in Minneapolis

Posted at 2:57 PM on October 15, 2009 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Georges de La Tour, French, 1593-1652
The Card-Sharp with Ace of Diamonds, 17th century, Oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre, Department of Paintings, RF 1972-8
Photo: Gérard Blot. © Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY

There's a lot of excitement in the air at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts this week. Its new exhibition "The Louvre and the Masterpiece" is, according to at least one curator, taking the MIA to a whole new level of museumship.

While the exhibition does not include Mona Lisa or Winged Victory, it's not a bunch of leftovers from the storage room, either. The exhibition is the result of a multi-year collaboration between the Louvre and the High Museum in Atlanta, Georgia. It was just weeks after her arrival as Director and President of the MIA that Kaywin Feldman stunned her staff when she announced the Louvre exhibition would be making it's wasy to Minneapolis, as well.

What the more than sixty works of art on display offer is an opportunity to reflect on what actually constitutes a "masterpiece."

The Blue Head, 20th-century forgery in the style of the late 18th Dynasty, blue glass, Department of Egyptian Antiquities, E 11658. Photo (c) 2008 Musée du Louvre/Georges Poncet.

For example, The Blue Head, shown above, was in the Louvre's collection for almost a century before it was determined that the glass sculpture could not have possibly been made in the 18th Dynasty. But when it was "discovered" in the 1920s, Egyptomania was all the rage, and everyone wanted to believe it was the real thing. Even today, the Louvre poster featuring the blue head is one of the museum's best sellers. So is it a masterpiece, or isn't it?

Leonardo da Vinci, Italian, 1452-1519
Drapery Study, 1470-1479, Brush and tempera on linen
Musée du Louvre, Department of Graphic Arts, RF 41905
Photo: J.G. Berizzi. © Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY

Then there are those masterpieces which represent a simple sketch in a painter's notebook, but are such beautifully accomplished renderings that they make the viewer gasp. The above study by da Vinci appears almost three dimensional, so exactly does he convey the folds of the cloth. The drawing is not a "finished work" but time and artistic criticism have deemed it a masterpiece nonetheless.

The exhibition inspired MIA curators to hunt through their own departments looking for equivalent masterpieces (and pseudo-masterpieces). Their findings are on display in a side gallery, and include work by Jasper Johns, Francis Bacon, and William Blake.

"The Louvre and the Masterpiece" opens to the general public Sunday, and runs through January 10.

Check back tomorrow for an interview with Louvre Director Henri Loyrette.

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New Walker season tests limits of performance

Posted at 6:00 AM on July 10, 2009 by Marianne Combs (1 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Theater

Image from "Call Cutta in a Box: An Intercontinental Phone Play," courtesy of Walker Art Center

The Walker Art Center has released its 2009-2010 performing arts season (although as of this writing it's not posted on the Walker website), and it's as ambitious as ever. It highlights artists from around the world along with those here at home. In many cases the Walker has commissioned new works that involve collaboration across disciplines, and international borders. American guitarist Bill Frisell is paired with an Iraqi oud player, while a Brooklyn dance company is collaborating with another troupe from West Africa.

I spoke with curator Philip Bither about the season. He described many of the performances in detail. Among them, one really caught my attention. It's a performance by a German group called Rimini Protokoll, which will run for a month during the Walker's Out There Festival. It needs to run that long because each performance is limited to two people: you, and a call worker in India. I'll let Bither explain the rest:

...you go into a room and you get a cell phone call from a call worker in Calcutta. You end up going through a series of structured conversations and you get to know this person very well. You end up drinking some tea that they're able to turn on all the way from Calcutta. You taste some spices from India, and by the end of 'the show' you're in front of a computer screen and moving a mouse that's hidden under a planter, and you see each other. It's a remarkably different kind of theater. You and what you bring with your life and stories is as much part of that theater experience as what's happening 'on the stage,' which in this instance is in Calcutta, through the computer.

Part script, part improv, part cultural exchange, this one-on-one drama is an example of how artists are playing with our everyday experiences (such as the computer service call that ends up connecting us with someone on the other side of the planet) to tell stories of human connection and disconnection. It's just that in an era of globalization, what constitutes an "everyday experience" is changing rapidly. In today's world technology has the power to transform a desk with a computer and a cellphone into a theater. I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

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Weeping Barbie syndrome strikes Walker Art Center

Posted at 4:15 PM on July 6, 2009 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums

Image of Joseph Beuys' Stempelplastik, one of the two items actively deteriorating, courtesy of the Walker Art Center.

Recently Slate.com's Sam Kean wrote on the challenges of preserving plastic art. It's a startling piece, detailing how a handful of unstable plastics are breaking down, wreaking havoc on museum collections worldwide. Symptoms include flaking, peeling, discoloration, and as Kean explains, smell:

Often the only clue a plastic is degrading is its odor. Some begin to smell like ammonia or take on a sickly new-car smell. PVC weeps chlorine, giving it a swimming-pool smell, and any plastics with acetate eventually give off whiffs of acetic acid, which is found in vinegar. Other plastics are redolent of burnt milk, burnt hair, celery, cinnamon, raspberry jam, or camphor "muscle rub."

I checked in with the Walker Art Center to see whether its collection has been suffering from any of these symptoms, and if so, what they're doing about it. Here's what Walker associate registrar Joe King had to report:

The Walker has two works in the collection, both by Joseph Beuys, that are actively deteriorating. Both are made of PVC, as the Slate article discusses. The plasticizer is migrating out of the plastic, making the surface wet and sticky. This has been called weeping Barbie syndrome as Barbie dolls from the 1950s suffer from the same deterioration. We have had the works conserved, cleaned and wrapped to slow the loss of the plasticizer. The works are stored in isolation to prevent damage to adjacent works. At this point there is nothing further that can be done with them, except to freeze them. We are hoping that as additional research is done, a solution for the preservation of these works will emerge.

For now, those artists who choose to work with plastics are encouraged by curators and conservationists to read the directions carefully, especially as a number of "green" plastics are coming on the market, made specifically to be biodegradable.

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A builder of floating worlds suddenly finds himself in one.

Posted at 3:20 PM on June 10, 2009 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Photography

MPR's Euan Kerr reported this morning on Tomas Saraceno's new exhibition Lighter Than Air at the Walker Art Center. Saraceno likes to create floating worlds that challenge our notions of what can and cannot be. What didn't make the radio story was an account of the natural world taking Saraceno by surprise. He had travelled to Bolivia to shoot a movie out on the salt flats, and it started raining.

We were super tired and I was falling asleep in a small tent that was like a swimming pool - it was all wet, very shallow - two or three centimeters of water. A friend of mine said "come come!" I said "what's going on?" We ran outside and there was no moon - all the stars were reflected on the water and you couldn't see the water anymore. It was super crazy - stepping on the three Marias and the cosmos! It was the best 3D massive cinema I've ever been in - in real scale. It was a super great experience.

By day the salt flats became an immense mirror to the clouds and blue sky, and Saraceno found himself walking around in the floating world he so often tries to create through his work.

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Your personal tour of a Pre-Raphaelite painting

Posted at 10:37 AM on June 10, 2009 by Marianne Combs (3 Comments)
Filed under: Museums, Painting

The Minneapolis Insitute of Arts new exhibition "Sin and Salvation: William Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision" opens this Sunday. While many people are drawn to pre-raphaelite paintings for their fair skinned beauties and Shakespearean settings, at the heart of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood was a moral narrative. According to MIA curator Patrick Noon, who was kind enough to give me a sneak peek of the exhibition, it was William Holman Hunt who stayed true to that moral vision more than any other of his peers.

Let's take Holman Hunt's classic work "The Awakening Conscience" (shown above). What's your first impression? We see a woman who's stood up from the lap of her suitor, and is looking out an open window - we can see the window in the reflection of the mirror behind her. But what else can we figure out about this story by looking closely at the image?

The biggest clue comes from looking at her hands. You'll notice that the young lady has rings on all of her fingers except one - her RING finger. That's right - she's single, and sitting in the lap of a young gentleman! Not only that, but the garment she's wearing is a sleeping gown. So we now know that this young woman is actually the man's mistress, not a young maiden he's courting for marriage.

Secondly, we're given some symbolism in the painting as well. Note the cat that's toying with a little bird. The cat's been distracted by something (probably the young woman standing up so abruptly), and the bird has a chance to escape. The position of the bird and the cat mirrors the position of the young man and his mistress. In essence, he's a cat toying with his prey, but she may have some hope of escaping him.

Finally, what's at the center of this painting? It's not the young woman's face, it's the view out the window - a view of natural beauty that makes the small apartment feel claustrophobic in comparison. In Pre-Raphaelite paintings, nature was often seen as a symbol of morality and truth. The natural world, in all its splendor, is calling to the young woman with an offer of redemption. Thus, the title: The Awakening Conscience.

There are plenty more symbols throughout the piece underscoring the main theme. And just as interesting as what's on the canvas is the story behind the painting. The model for the image of the young lady was actually Holman Hunt's own mistress, Annie Miller. Holman Hunt was hoping to convince Miller to leave behind her life as a mistress, and reform herself into a good woman of society he could marry with dignity. She didn't take to his idea of a good wife however, and they eventually broke up.

Image courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

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