Breaking news, upcoming events, and periodic musings from the Weisman Art Museum.
June 16, 2009
Free family day at WAM this Saturday 6/20
Henna tattoos, Somali cuisine, storytelling, and art-making are part of a free family day at the Weisman on June 20. The day celebrates the opening of Stories of the Somali Diaspora: Photographs by Abdi Roble, a new WAM exhibition.
Through more than fifty black-and-white photographs, the show chronicles the forced migration of Somali people from their traditional homeland to the U.S. Photographer Abdi Roble (and his project partner, Doug Rutledge) will be on hand at 1 p.m. on June 20 to meet visitors and sign copies of their book, A Journey Away. Refreshments and activities at the family day are free. Click here for a complete roster of activities. Stories of the Somali Diaspora continues at the Weisman through September 27.
Crews from the Weisman and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) installed Robert Rauschenberg's Currents at the Weisman. Currents, a 54-foot screenprint that is part of the MIA collection, is featured in the Weisman's exhibition Au Courant, which opens June 20.
Thirteen crew members from both museums collaborated on the installation, conditioning the print, installing plexiglass sheets and hoisting the print on four lifts to hang it on the wall.
From the Collection: George Grosz's Bagdad-on-the-Subway
This regular series offers a glimpse into the Weisman's permanent collection. Each post features an object currently on view in the galleries.
“Bagdad-on-the-Subway” reads like a bad newspaper headline, drawing forth images of a post-9/11 America. However, in 1935 the title alluded to a completely different set of assumptions, exotic and far away. For George Grosz, an immigrant from Germany fleeing the Nazi regime, this series heralded his new life in New York. The series, in content a radical departure from his former works, depicts six different scenes of New York life. It indicated a change and transformation of Grosz’s artistic goals, away from caricature and towards illustration. While in one vein the series depicts the New York of the short story author O. Henry, at the same time it documents the artist’s exploration of his new home. “Bagdad-on-the-Subway” describes a New York of a past generation, yet its streets, buildings, and personality still resonate clearly with viewers today.
Grosz is best known for his biting, sardonic caricatures of Berliners in the 1920’s. Strongly opposed to the ruling Nazi party, Grosz became a member of the Berlin Dada. Dada was a group of artists who engaged in anti-war politics through a rejection of established standards in art. These artists often created works that were extremely anti-art, at their root protesting cultural and intellectual conformity. While Grosz’s works differed in artistic style from many of the established Dada artists, he remained true to the anti-war, anti-Nazi Berlin Dada maxim. Grosz created scathing caricatures of what he considered the morally degraded citizens of Berlin, much in the same vein as Honoré Daumier in 19th century France. He attacked members of the government, soldiers, prominent businessmen, prostitutes, and the clergy, portraying them as brainless and corrupt. Many of his cartoons held this class of people responsible for the renewed warmongering in Germany.
A genetically-modified petunia is the centerpiece of Eduardo Kac: Natural History of the Enigma, a new exhibition opening April 17 at the Weisman Art Museum. The exhibition runs through June 21, 2009. The public is invited to meet the artist at an opening reception from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, April 17 at the Weisman.
The exhibition is the result of a three-year collaboration between artist Eduardo Kac and University of Minnesota scientist Neil Olszewski. Kac and Olszewski have created and propagated a new life form—a transgenic petunia—by fusing proteins from both a plant and from Kac himself. Kac’s DNA is expressed only in the flower’s red veins. The Weisman exhibition features the transgenic plant and prints based on the seeds produced for the project.
"The result of this molecular manipulation is a bloom that creates the living image of human blood rushing through the veins of a flower," Kac said. "This piece is a reflection on the contiguity of life between different species. It uses the redness of blood and the redness of the plant's veins as a marker of our shared heritage in the wider spectrum of life."
This regular series offers a glimpse into the Weisman's permanent collection. Each post will feature an object currently on view in the galleries.
Milton Avery’s Still Life is not a window through which we look to find a perfectly realistic scene, and if it were—oh, what a Technicolor world we’d live in! Instead, Avery (1885–1965) composed Still Life with bold blocks of deeply saturated colors that flatten the picture plane, simplify forms, and ultimately create a harmonious, dynamic composition.
A contemporary of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, and mentor to Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, Avery worked tirelessly to instill an appreciation of color and form in American art. As art historian Alfred Jensen noted, “Milton Avery brought color to America.” Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, Avery developed a style that used broad washes of bright color. He treated each shape as a single color area, flattening and abstracting his images.
Weisman Art Museum:
Phuong, your self-portraits from Vietnam featured in Changing Identity represent complicated relationships: between you and your family, Americans and Vietnamese, and between viewers and subjects. We look forward to hearing you talk more about this series and about projects you have developed since. Could you give us a preview?
Phuong M. Do:
The self portrait work was a seven year process. While a sense of disconnect from my relatives doesn’t really go away, I have come to accept it for what it is...and that I will probably not ever feel familiar with them or they with me. Having known something about my family history—though fragmented—provides me context so that I can form own sense of self.
The "abandoned photographs" project [involving secondhand shop image collections] is an extension of the self portrait work in that the personal family photographs are lost and disconnected from their “family.�? They also provide visual snippets of narratives about peoples’ lives in a time and place that are part of the larger historical and cultural puzzle for not only Vietnamese in diasporas but for those living in Vietnam. They are also displaced by war. I haven’t had much time to work on the images but I have been thinking about ways to make the images accessible to people and perhaps become identified. I think the webspace is a great place for that but I need to conceptualize how they will be presented and if they are identified by their owners, how to integrate that into the narrative.
I brought some of my new, lacquered photographs to show at Sunday’s talk because the projected image does not really show the physical sensibility of the work. The lacquer work is more conceptual in terms of my feelings about a sense of place and space. It also integrates a process that is specific to Vietnam. Lacquer’s preservation qualities...can be likened to the photographic medium and process.
Weisman Art Museum:
Thank you, Phuong, we look forward to seeing and hearing more this Sunday at 2pm in your dialogue with Changing Identity curator Nora Taylor!
2008 Year in Review: The Big Picture for Minnesota Arts
Weisman curator Diane Mullin contributed the following to the 2008 Year in Review feature for <a href="www.mnartists.org> target="_blank">mnartists.org:
TRENDSPOTTING: PROLETARIAN ART, BLOGGING ARTISTS, SPOKEN WORD & DIY CRAFT
Northern Lights: This “roving, collaborative, interactive media-oriented, arts agency from the Twin Cities for the world” was founded by our own media arts impresario, Steve Dietz. This new style arts enterprise has already given us the city-wide “Unconvention�?—a collaborative effort to produce and support art in response to the RNC in St. Paul and by extension the state of our nation’s political theater/reality; Artists on the Verge—a new fellowship and mentoring program that supports Minnesota artists working experimentally at the intersection of art and technology, with a focus on practices that are social, collaborative and/or participatory; and what may be the most interesting blog on art and the public sphere out there. As Dietz noted about the Artist on the Verge program in the Daily Planet profile: “There are some exceptional artists here and there are some strong programs at MCAD and the U.; but there isn’t the strong environment of support you get in San Fran and New York.�? Bravo to Dietz and to Jerome, AOV partner and funder for helping our city to catch up with its artists.
West Bank Shop: Taking its name from an already existing sign in a storefront window on Cedar Avenue, West Bank Shop is a collective of 13 artists (Beth Jeffries Barnes, T.J. Barnes, Rebekah Champ, Adrian Freeman, Travis Freeman, Katinka Galanos, Jason Gaspar, Lauren Herzak-Bauman, Sam Hoolihan, Lisa McGrath, Peter McLarnan, Peter Haakon Thompson, and Brennan Vance)—many students or alums of the University of Minnesota—who temporarily took over a former tobacco shop on the West Bank to present art work and events that pushed the boundaries of what art is and how it can be presented and interpreted. The plan was to utilize the shop space as a place for art to happen. In a statement—a manifesto of sorts—the group declared; “We conceive our project as an engaged, fluid, critical and playful endeavor. A project that is open and experimental, collaborative and process-based, conceptual, and social.�? The project existed as scheduled for 50 days and included events such as an artists hair styling, an open record spin so that people who no longer have turn tables but can’t trash their vinyl could sonically revisit their albums, and my favorites—the baking and sharing of bread with artist Travis Freeman and Peter Haakon Thompson’s “Teach me Your Language,�? where the artist opened the door to the linguistically diverse community of the West Bank asking to be taught its many tongues—a brilliant reversal of the traditional museum conceit that it educates. Though the original space is now more permanently occupied by another entity, the collective is seeking new digs. Let’s hope they find some and give us another bright spot in 2009.
All in all, these beacons of experimental social and public practice seem like a good turn for the Twin Cities. A welcome respite from the building campaigns of the last decade, it is hopeful that such entities can—even must—exist here.
—Diane Mullin, Associate Curator, Weisman Art Museum
Well, this is it, my final post. I’d like to thank the staff at the Weisman Art Museum for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts with the net-surfing public.
As the only artist on the museum’s inaugural blog team, I’m sure the folks at the Weisman were hoping I’d write a bit more about art. However, my allotted blog-time encompassed the ground-breaking 2008 election, the national economic melt-down, the Franken-Coleman senate recount, and the annual bitter-sweetness of the holiday season. My heart was in the street, not the studio.
What’s happening now in our country and communities is a paradigm shift of monumental proportions. This shift will bring changes and challenges that require our care and attention. No armchair quarterbacking. We’ve got to get in the game. Which underscores the premise I’d planned to make when I accepted this blogging gig last summer: that the personal is political, and that life – the personal – can be a work of art when approached with intention and creativity.
Though I am primarily an interdisciplinary and public artist, I also paint. Painting in the studio is, for me, a form of visual journaling and highly meditative. For ten years I have worked on various bodies of work but most of my paintings share one thing in common: the ongoing study of the horizon line as visual metaphor.
Night Seeds, Camille J. Gage, 2003
Readers of my earlier posts know that I lost my mother unexpectedly 27 years ago. This early loss inspired an ongoing interest in the dualities that form the core of our existence: life and death, day and night, good and evil, darkness and light. It is the tension, the shimmering place where these realities intersect, that compels me. Such sweet mystery!
The Uruguayan writer and social philosopher, Eduardo Galeano, once commented that art-making is our attempt to make sense of the inevitability of death and that its pursuit must never be reduced to a specialized practice exercised only by a handful of ‘experts.’ Like Thoreau, Galeano believed that we all have the ability – and perhaps even the responsibility – to make art of our very lives. It’s a utopian vision, but then what IS so funny ‘bout peace, love and understanding?
“Utopia lies at the horizon.
When I draw nearer by two steps,
it retreats two steps.
If I proceed ten steps forward, it
swiftly slips ten steps ahead.
No matter how far I go, I can never reach it.
What, then, is the purpose of utopia?
It is to cause us to advance.?
Last Sunday was the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year. There were 8 hours and 46 minutes of sun. It was the first official day of winter, but here in the upper Midwest winter has already made itself known. I’ve shoveled the snow off my sidewalk 3 times in the past 36 hours and its 6 degrees below zero as I write.
Its midnight, the house is silent, and I’m thinking about that weightless place between joy and melancholy. The holidays always do this to me.
I’ll admit I cried three times in the last 24 hours. Once for close friends who are struggling; once for my mom, who died 27 years ago and who I still miss every day; and once at the Pantages Theater during the musical play, All is Calm, about the World War I Christmas Truce of 1914.
All is Calm chronicles an event which took place on the battlefield in Germany on Christmas Eve, 1914. In the dark of night, under a star-filled sky, a German soldier laid down his arms, walked out of his trench and sang Silent Night in the so-called No Man’s Land between the British and German encampments. Following his soulful lead soldiers on both sides laid down their weapons for the night, sang together, exchanged modest gifts and helped to bury each other’s dead. It was this last that brought on the tears. I instantly thought of the U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though their in-country experience bears little resemblance to the trench warfare of the past, they still suffer the sight of wounded comrades and mourn their dead. Their sacrifice is enormous.
Untitled, 2007, from the series, War, Redacted, by Camille J. Gage
Loss occurs every day and everywhere, not just on the battlefield. Over the past year I’ve watched friends and family struggle to cope with life’s challenges: serious health problems, a child’s debilitating drug addiction, financial insecurity, job loss, and the death of partners and aging parents – of heart disease, cancer and suicide.
Why do we so often feel stranded in our sorrow and alone in our grief? The presence of loss and experience of pain, while intensely personal, is also extraordinarily common. It’s the tie that binds us but is often buried beneath a silent and soul-stifling stoicism.
The Christmas Truce of 1914 brought to mind a passage from Henry David Thoreau’s book, Walden. Thoreau wrote, “It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look…To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.?
This holiday I will aim to channel the artistry of that German soldier, who walked on to the battlefield and sang Silent Night – who was willing to be shot at, to die – to bear witness to our shared humanity and yearning for connection.
For everyone who has lost a loved one – and that is most of us – the holidays are a bittersweet time. May we find the strength to abandon our trenches and sing together to the stars.
A bitter cold evening became downright balmy for the forty-odd members who attended the December 11 Art Mob at Fred’s Glass in Downtown St. Paul. Guests were treated to an evening of glassmaking and more as they became immersed in the work of glass artist Fred Kaemmer.
Once a small fire station, Fred’s Glass is a work of art in itself. Art Mobbers arrived and began the evening with wine, hors d’oeuvres, and conversation while strolling through the expansive second-floor gallery and living quarters.
After introducing his work, Kaemmer led guests downstairs to his hand-built glass studio, where he demonstrated the glassmaking process step-by-step.
For many Art Mob members, this was their first chance to observe glassmaking in person. In a field where one usually only sees the finished product, it was also a rare opportunity for all of us to observe art being made before our eyes.
From the Collection: Robert Motherwell's Mural Fragment
This regular series offers a glimpse into the Weisman's permanent collection. Each post will feature an object currently on view in the galleries.
Controversy, rejection, love, hate, and confusion—all words that describe the history and reception of Robert Motherwell’s Mural Fragment. The painting, an early example of abstract expressionism, has generated much debate about its artistic merit over the years, particularly within the university environment.
For many, the painting poses a challenge to preconceived notions of art: there is no obvious realist depiction, no overt message. Instead, the work focuses on the interplay of color and shape, the choice of each brushstroke. Motherwell urges the viewer to consider the work for itself, to contemplate how the painting’s aesthetic qualities influence viewers’ own perceptions of their surroundings. The Weisman’s Mural Fragment is an important example of abstract expressionism and a revealing illustration of Motherwell’s early artistic development.
Robert Motherwell was the youngest of the American abstract expressionists, a group that included artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem De Kooning. The abstract expressionists aimed to contest the existing order in art, particularly the American social realist movement of the 1930s and 40s. The abstract expressionists broke away from formalism to express a more fundamental truth about art and the artist: they wanted to create a personal visual language that conveyed emotion, particularly as manifested through the artist’s unconscious. In so doing, they emphasized the artist’s direct relationship with the surface of the canvas, stressing the importance of each mark and brushstroke. Many, including Motherwell, achieved this through the development of automatism, where the hand and the mind are freed, allowing for an unpremeditated expression to manifest itself on the surface – in essence, doodling. It is a direct, immediate, and intuitive process, one through which Motherwell created many of his works.
It has been just over four weeks since the election, and like many people I have been paying close attention to the news, analyses, and commentaries as President-elect Obama assembles his cabinet and begins to elaborate his vision for governing the country. Political scientists are typically concerned with trying to understand and analyze contemporary events and issues, but Luke DuBois’s work in Hindsight is Always 20/20 has me thinking about retrospective analyses and evaluations, in particular about what “hindsight? from the year 2020 will illuminate about Barack Obama's administration and about American politics more generally.
This regular series offers a glimpse into the Weisman's permanent collection. Each post will feature an object currently on view in the galleries.
It’s the holiday season and gifts and packages come flying at your door. In your excitement you scoop them up and bring them into the house. But one package in particular catches your eye—one marked Peter Norton Family Christmas Project. Immediately you realize that you are one of 3,000 or so lucky art enthusiasts who is about to receive a gift of art commissioned by Peter Norton, the American software publisher turned philanthropist and art connoisseur.
The tradition started in the early 1990s and has continued every holiday season since. Each year, Norton commissions an artist (sometimes two or three) to make small, unique art works that can be reproduced by the artists’ workshops. For Norton, the gifts are a way to make contemporary art accessible. His gifts allow friends, coworkers, and colleagues to learn from and enjoy an art object in an intimate setting, as opposed to a museum or gallery.
In 1995, Norton chose a particularly compelling artist to design his gift: Yasumasa Morimura. Morimura has made a career out of inserting himself into famous portraits and paintings. For Norton’s Christmas project, Morimura created Ambiguous Beauty. The gift, a traditional Japanese fan tucked safely into a wooden box, came with a typical holiday greeting card from the Norton family, but the standard message is not a fair indicator of the eyebrow-raising object inside. Weisman director Lyndel King received the gift and later donated the piece to the museum.
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