C Magazine September 2015 by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

CRYSTAL BRIDGES MEMBER MAGAZINE

SEPTEMBER 2015

VOL IV ISSUE II

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CRYSTAL BRIDGES MEMBER MAGAZINE

SEPTEMBER 2015

VOL IV ISSUE II

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, FAY JONES, AND THE ARCHITECTURAL SPIRIT OF THE OZARKS

ARCHITECTURAL SCULPTURE

AN INTERVIEW WITH ALICE AYCOCK

Rauschenberg and Asawa

C MAGAZINE IS THE MEMBERSHIP PUBLICATION FOR CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART.

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DEPARTMENTS

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EXHIBITION SPOTLIGHT

COMING SOON

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MEMBER MAGAZINE

k n a r eF h t m en u p e o s o u t M e r o t t pa c e e e s r l f u p e o r e H I w t , As s igh guests r a h W n d Lloy ers and quisitio m. c u b a e m s s e i u M M th r t u c o a p n o m i d e a h h on t

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

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We are still growing, still evolving, still settling into that niche that gives the Crystal Bridges experience its unique flavor. Some things will never change, however. We will always welcome all to experience the power of art, the beauty of nature, and the wonder of architecture.

Don’t miss a thing. EDITOR Linda DeBerry

Environment friendly

ter

When Crystal Bridges was designed and then built here in Bentonville, Arkansas, the founders knew that the building itself was

id ns Iro li y Em aggs k Meg S

ress?

We now offer up the work of two American Institute of Architects Gold Medal winners: Moshe Safdie, designer of our Museum; and Frank Lloyd Wright. More than that, guests to our region can experience the work of three AIA Gold winners by visiting the nearby works of E. Fay Jones, such as Thorncrown Chapel near Eureka Springs and the Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel in Bella Vista.

enough to attract attention to the Museum. Its unprecedented design—at the bottom of a ravine, with water running through it—would have its own wow factor. With the addition of the Bachman-Wilson House, Crystal Bridges now recognizes and embraces architecture as part of our collection and mission. You’ll see “Art + Architecture + Nature” in our advertisements, and even on our shuttle, which was recently redesigned.

Ha n

The inclusion of an iconic Frank Lloyd Wright house on our grounds has really emphasized the importance of architecture to our Museum and indeed to our region.

na h

sto

Ana Aguayo Robyn Alley Anne Jackson Kaylin McLoud o urch nn M Jo-A

Send your email address to embership@crystalbridges.org

G N D A BRI

L M A A ST

MAT CRY

A T S IN ES

N E W S 03

D E

The Museum’s courtyard acquires a new inhabitant this summer with Louise Bourgeois’s Maman, (from French: mama), in the courtyard between the main lobby and the Museum Store.

This monumental sculpture—which represents an enormous, yet benign, spider—measures more than 30 feet in both length and height, and creates a dramatic experience for guests entering the Museum through the main lobby. Although the looming arachnid shape of the sculpture may appear fearsome to some, to Bourgeois the work was a symbol of protection, love, and benevolence, and appeared regularly in her work. “The Spider is an Ode to my mother,” Bourgeois explained. “She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitos. We know that mosquitos spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.” The earliest examples of the spider image appeared in Bourgeois’s work in the late 1940s as drawings. The first spider sculpture cast in bronze was made in 1990. In 2000, Bourgeois was commissioned to create Maman for the opening of Turbine Hall Gallery, part of Tate Modern in London. Bourgeois saw this as an opportunity to create the single largest and most elaborate spider in her career. In the years following the London exhibition, other casts of Maman entered the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; The Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; and Qatar Museums, Doha. An example of Maman is also in the permanent collection of the Tate Modern. While it was always Bourgeois’s ambition to see Maman, the largest-scale work she ever created, in a permanent collection within the United States, her home for more than 70 years, she died in 2010 with that dream unrealized.

KIDS: W h Mama at would n in colo look like r? picture Color this a it to ou nd upload r Faceb ook page!

“Crystal Bridges is honored to fulfill the late artist’s wish to have Maman exhibited in an American art museum,” said Executive Director Rod Bigelow. “The sculpture adds to our collection with sophisticated engineering and stainless steel armature, which will engage viewers and challenge our ideas of both architecture and sculpture.” 03

APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE Awards and accolades continue for Crystal Bridges, with a series of new awards during the first half of 2015.

AMERICAN ALLIANCE OF MUSEUMS

CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM STORE

Excellence in Exhibitions, State of the Art Crystal Bridges' ground-breaking exhibition State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now (Sept. 13, 2014 – Jan. 19, 2015) was selected as a winner in the 27th Annual AAM Excellence in Exhibition Competition.

2015 AIA Institute Honor Award for Interior Design The American Institute of Architects presented this award to Marlon Blackwell Architects for its design of the Crystal Bridges Museum Store. Jurors noted: “The store is sympathetic to the original architecture of the museum, yet has its own identity.”

Judges noted they were impressed with how the Museum “built an audience for contemporary/modern art in a deep, thoughtful manner,” and that “formative research was commendable, particularly in developing strategies to overcome obstacles and the innovative aspect of collaborating with a large number of living artists.”

2015 MSA Product Development Award The Museum Store Association recognized Crystal Bridges’ Store for excellence in product development with the architectural merchandise the team developed.

NORTHWEST ARKANSAS COMMUNITY COLLEGE QUALITY OF LIFE AWARD At the NWACC Foundation’s Plant A Seed Soirée this spring, Crystal Bridges Executive Director Rod Bigelow accepted a Quality of Life award, based on the Museum’s achievements in promoting arts/culture in the region.

JOHN COTTON DANA MEDAL FOR VISIONARY LEADERSHIP IN MUSEUMS

Gold Muse Award For Education And Outreach AAM’s Media & Technology committee awarded Crystal Bridges’ Distance Learning Program with a gold award for education and outreach for its online course Museum Mash Up: American Identity through the Arts, funded by the Windgate Charitable Foundation. This award is presented to institutions or independent producers who use digital media to enhance the museum experience and engage audiences.

Crystal Bridges founder and Board Chair Alice Walton received this inaugural award from the Newark Museum, Newark, NJ. The award was named for the museum’s founder, who believed in the museum “not as an elite institution, but as a cultural resource for all citizens.”

CRYSTAL BRIDGES, ONE OF 14 MUSEUMS TO LINK COLLECTION DATA 04

Students, teachers, scholars, and art enthusiasts will have a new research tool for American art, thanks to a consortium of 14 museums led by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Crystal Bridges is a part of the collaborative effort to develop Linked Open Data (LOD), a shared and searchable network of American art.

NEW ARTWORK IN THE SOUTH LOBBY

“

MY AIM IS TO HAVE A PICTURE THAT APPEARS ONE WAY FROM A DISTANCE—ALMOST LIKE A COSMOLOGY, CITY, OR UNIVERSE FROM AFAR—BUT THEN WHEN YOU APPROACH THE WORK, THE OVERALL IMAGE SHATTERS INTO NUMEROUS OTHER PICTURES, STORIES, AND EVENTS. Julie Mehretu

The goals are to simplify access to digital information across museum collections and to increase the understanding and appreciation of American art. This effort complements the Museum’s mission to welcome all, offering audiences new ways to experience and research art from all over the country. It’s a smart system that identifies and links related resources on a

In May, Crystal Bridges’ team of preparators installed a new painting in the Museum’s south lobby. Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation, by Julie Mehretu, measures 17 feet long and just over 8 feet tall. It’s one of the largest works on canvas in the Museum’s collection—so large that it could not fit in the art elevator, but had to be carried down to the south lawn in its crate to be brought in through the south entrance. Mehretu combines a base of architectural drawings of airports around the world with layer upon layer of abstract elements. She thinks of the various elements in her work as individual characters in a wide-ranging narrative: each with its own trajectory, its own story, and its own unique pattern and purpose of behavior.

topic across concepts, filtering out Internet “noise,” common in search results. The project is a monumental undertaking for these 14 museums because LOD requires a common language and each museum has digital catalogs with different data in different formats. Once that language is established, the next

phase will be transitioning the existing information into the new system. This will be happening over the next couple of years with the hope that as value is demonstrated, other museums will join and add to the database. Crystal Bridges is excited to be a part of this groundbreaking effort, and looks forward to making art more accessible to all.

LOUISE BOURGEOIS In addition to the monumental sculpture Maman (see page 3), Crystal Bridges has acquired a second sculpture and two paintings by artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010). Quarantania (1947–1953, cast 1990) was recently installed in Crystal Bridges’ 1940s to Now Gallery, in a focused area featuring artists’ depiction of the human form. The figures in the work likely represent the artist's own family at the time, with herself in the center carrying packages, surrounded by her husband and three sons. The hanging packages allude to the artist’s role as caretaker for her family and the burden of childcare. 06

Two landmark paintings from the 1940s, Connecticutiana (1944–45) (top) and Untitled (1947) (left), are also part of this acquisition. While the paintings of Louise Bourgeois have been widely acclaimed and exhibited in the United States and Europe, this marks the first acquisition of Bourgeois paintings by a museum in the United States. These paintings are now on view in the Museum’s 1940s to Now Gallery. YOU CAN READ ABOUT THE PLACEMENT OF BOURGEOIS'S PAINTING UNTITLED ON THE CRYSTAL BRIDGES BLOG.

LEFT: Louise Bourgeois, Untitled, 1947, oil on canvas, 44 × 26 in. TOP RIGHT: Louise Bourgeois, Quarantania, 1947-1953, cast 1990, bronze, painted white with blue and black, and stainless steel, 80 1/2 x 27 x 27 in. BOTTOM RIGHT: Louise Bourgeois, Connecticutiana, 1944-1945, oil on wood, 11 × 42 in. All works © The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

A C Q U I S I T I O N S 06

SCULPTURE AND PAINTINGS

FLAG

JASPER JOHNS In 1954, a dream of an American flag inspired Jasper Johns’s first rendition of this subject. Thereafter, he created flag paintings, drawings, prints, mixed-media collages, and sculptures. For Johns, painting the flag went beyond the representation of the United States’ most famous icon. With a painterly style at odds with the crisp design of the actual object, he charges the viewer to look

past the familiar—something, he explained “the mind already knows”—to explore the paint itself as subject matter. Johns used the same basic composition for each flag, including 48 stars and 13 stripes, as his first Flag painting was created before Hawaii and Alaska joined the United States. This painting contains a silk flag, collaged on canvas, as its base layer. Johns then painted an image of the flag on top using encaustic, a medium of colored pigment mixed with hot wax. “From the 1950s, Johns’s art has vibrated along the division lines of modern art’s hierarchy, embracing and challenging ideas of abstraction, representation, subject matter, and the relationship of art to the personal and universal,” said Crystal Bridges Director of Curatorial Affairs Margi Conrads. “With the first flag painting, he offered a departure from Abstract Expressionism by reintroducing the use of conventional objects with a technique that stressed conscious control, yet includes accidents and suggests spontaneity. Johns’s work opened up the discourse of cultural symbols, inspiring several movements also represented in our collection, including Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptual art.”

FUN FACT: THIS VERSION OF JOHNS’S FLAG IS SMALLER THAN MOST OF THE OTHERS HE CREATED. THIS IS BECAUSE JOHNS MADE THIS PARTICULAR PAINTING SPECIFICALLY FOR HIS LONGTIME FRIEND MARK LANCASTER, WHO SERVED AS JOHNS’S PERSONAL ASSISTANT FOR 12 YEARS.

VA U LT 08

THE LIGHT FANTASTIC

LEDs replace traditional bulbs in Crystal Bridges’ galleries Over the past year, Crystal Bridges has been in the process of gradually replacing all of its tungsten halogen light bulbs with LEDs. LED (light emitting diode) lights are smaller, cooler, less expensive, and significantly longer-lived than incandescent models, and are slowly but surely replacing tungsten bulbs, leading to what Lead Preparator Chuck Flook calls an impending “lightbulb armageddon” for museums.

required of traditional gallery bulbs, they can also last for up to 50 years. Considering the fact that Museum staff replace as many as 30 bulbs a week, it’s easy to see how the LEDs can pay for themselves—in the cost of bulb replacement alone—within a few years. Removal of the hightemperature halogen lamps also results in a lower cost in keeping the Museum galleries cool.

Museums have been slow in adopting LED lights for a number of reasons. First is the reluctance of conservators to embrace a new light source without first being certain of its effect on works of art. Light—any kind of light—is damaging for many artworks over time. Fortunately, studies have now found LED lights to be at least as safe for sensitive artworks as the tungsten halogen lamps, and likely more safe, as LED light contains no ultraviolet and very low levels of infra-red radiation, both of which (but UV in particular) are damaging to light-sensitive works.

GE Lighting, a sponsor of Crystal Bridges since its opening, worked closely with the Museum throughout the process. GE Lighting’s expertise was vital in exploring options and advising solutions, ultimately resulting in a generous donation of more than 1,700 LED bulbs to effect the turnover.

However, once the safety of the lights was determined, another issue remains. LED lights are brighter and whiter than incandescents, and for some museum traditionalists, this difference is off-putting. “Any time there is an introduction of something new in the lighting industry, there’s a push-back that it doesn’t ‘look right,’” said Flook. “It’s a product of human nature. We’re used to seeing the artwork with the old lamps.” To test visitor reactions, Crystal Bridges installed LED lights in one side-gallery last spring. The results? “Nobody batted an eye,” Flook said. Museum guests perceived no difference, and in fact the new bulbs allowed for brighter lighting of sensitive works on paper. The final roadblock to replacing traditional bulbs with LED bulbs is, of course, the cost. LED bulbs are indeed more expensive than their tungsten halogen forbears. But there are a number of factors that make LEDs a more costeffective choice. Not only are the LEDs dramatically more energy-efficient, using less than 10% of the power

EDITOR Linda DeBerry

black/cobalt blue or black/white 13” wide by 60” long $45.00 (Members $40.50)

INSPIRED BY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

M U S E U M S T O R E 09

PRINTED SILK SCARF

EXCLUSIVELY AT CRYSTAL BRIDGES

In honor of the opening of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bachman-Wilson House, the Crystal Bridges Museum Store presents a new series of exclusive designs. The patterns found in these designs mimic the unique, hand-cut window panels of the Bachman-Wilson House.

Come browse these and many other Frank Lloyd Wright gift items in the Crystal Bridges Museum Store.

15 OUNCE MUG

black/white microwave and dishwasher safe $22.00 (Members $19.80)

These products are authorized by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA. Frank Lloyd Wright Collection and the Frank Lloyd Wright signature are trademarks of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and are used with permission.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, FAY JONES, &

THE ARCHITECTURAL SPIRIT OF THE OZARKS

A view of the scale model of Frank Lloyd Wright's Bachman-Wilson House made by fifth-year Design/Build students in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas.

Fecund, undulating hillsides break apart, revealing rocky extrusions; the topography of the Ozarks is uniquely marked and scarred with beauty.

CURATORIAL ASSISTANT Dylan Turk

When exploring the region, Crystal Bridges architect Moshe Safdie was greatly influenced by modern structures such as Fay Jonesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Thorncrown Chapel, among others. These structures influenced Safdie to integrate Crystal Bridges into its natural surroundings. Why does the landscape of the Ozarks have such a strong pull on architects who build here? How did the Ozarks become a great area of thought for architects in mid-century America? First came a landscape and a community that embraced optimistic innovation; The School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas espoused this spirit, launching its students into a national dialogue about design. From the late 1940s to the early '70s, a small group of architects made this region nationally recognized for its architecture by defining the Ozark Modern style. Some of the most influential and innovative architects in America built, lectured, taught, and inspired others here. The beginning of the U of A Architecture program prepared this region, maybe without our realization, for the moment when Wright would return to the Ozarks.

Marc Henning

An Architecture School is Born In the years following World War II, the US radiated optimism. Young men enrolled in universities across the country to learn the skills enabling them to build the nation of their dreams. In order to receive the maximum benefits of the GI bill, students were required to attend a university in their home state. Enrollment at the University of Arkansas rose from 1,411 in 1946 to 4,841 in 1947. Architecturally, America exploded into a new age of structural expression, embracing new materials and experimenting with new forms. The dramatic increase in building, particularly new building types, demanded skilled architects. It became clear to the university administration that they needed to offer every desired course, and thus created two courses in architecture. John Williams, a native of Van Buren and a young, excited teacher from Oklahoma State University, was hired as the new professor of architecture within the College of Engineering. After his first semester, Williams drafted a plan for a five-year 11

Walter Gropius, considered a founder of Modernism, set up certain principles that propelled architecture into the twentieth century. The primary goal of what came to be called the International style was to remove any local context from a building, to fully embrace the structure, and to remain unbound by nostalgia. After World War II, Modernism splintered. Principles established by Gropius were now translated through individual dialects by the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright and others. Students in the early days of the Architecture program at the University of Arkansas were exposed to many of these new variations of Modernism.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Bachman-Wilson House at Crystal Bridges is an example of what Wright called a Usonian house, a building type developed as Wright’s response to Depressionera social changes and problems. Wright, along with many architects building between the wars, believed that architecture could change society, because good buildings would impress happiness upon those who encountered them. Utilizing his guiding principles while reducing cost through smaller spaces, mass-produced materials, and streamlined modes of construction, Wright developed a democratic architecture for the USA—Usonian. Wright’s Principles, Adapted to the Ozarks One Arkansas architect in particular, E. Fay Jones, became enthralled by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Fay Jones studied under Wright as a fellow at Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio. Jones related to Wright’s emphasis on a building’s connection to site, as the Ozark landscape inspired Jones in similar ways. Wright accomplished this connection to site by building across the ground rather than up away from the ground. Fay Jones absorbed as much knowledge from Wright as he could, then reinterpreted it into his own style and generation. As Jones developed as an architect, he amplified Wright’s principles of architecture by further engaging the structure with its site and describing the topography of the Ozarks. Thorncrown Chapel gracefully articulates Jones’s deep understanding and appreciation of the landscape of Northwest Arkansas. Today it is listed as number four on the American Institute of Architects’ list of 20 best buildings in the twentieth century. It is safe to say that the Ozark spirit inspires great building.

Why does the landscape of the Ozarks have such a strong pull on architects who build here? How did the Ozarks become a great area of thought for architects in mid-century America?

Wright Redefines American Architecture Like Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the architects who broke the revivalist process with his creation of the Prairie style, which embraced modernist principles and expressed it in Wright’s own individual dialect. His elegant horizontal articulation, open floorplan, and innovative use of materials redefined architecture forever. Wright never remained loyal to a particular aesthetic, instead holding to fundamental principles that guided his forms as they shifted to correspond to his epoch. The single principle that most defined Wright was nature. His emphasis on nature created a true American architecture, as land is something engrained in the deepest souls of Americans, rooted in the history of this country. Wright’s embracing of this idea served to redefine nature, ultimately as the

Frank Lloyd Wright’s influence spans great distances and influenced American residential architecture dramatically. What is unique to our region is the application of Wright’s principles in the formulation of our regional architecture. The Ozark landscape is an ideal landscape for experimenting architecturally, partly because of the legacies here, but more for the ingrained connection to nature. Architects, stemming from Frank Lloyd Wright and Fay Jones, have challenged traditional ideas of building within the typography of the area and are receiving national recognition for their work. Fay Jones was awarded the prestigious AIA Gold Medal in 1990, the only Taliesen Fellow to receive this honor. Wright himself received the Gold in 1949. This year, Moshe Safdie, the architect who designed Crystal Bridges, received this honor. The Bachman-Wilson House tells the story of American Modernism, and beautifully reflects the architectural heritage of the region. The House’s new location has embraced it with a rich architectural legacy.

RIGHT: © Timothy Hursley LEFT: ©Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ.

The Rise of Modern Architecture One of the most important notions associated with modern architecture as it developed in the early 1900s is its victory over revivalism—the practice of imitating past styles. Revivalism essentially defined public and private architecture in the early twentieth century, expressed in buildings that utilized neoclassical design motifs. Modernism was the reply to revivalism. Modern architects let the form embrace the structure, revealing the honest nature of materials. At the same time, due to the flexibility of new materials, space was no longer dictated by structure. Buildings grew taller as steel beams, which can support more weight and span greater distances than wood beams, allowed for greater structural expanses of space. Innovations in glass and steel persuaded architects to build walls, and eventually entire facades, filled completely with glass. A new emphasis on open spaces came to define an era whose culture was also no longer confined by the past.

spirit of the land in which a structure will reside.

RIGHT: Fay Jones (left) and John G. Williams (center left) greet Frank Lloyd Wright during a visit to the University of Arkansas in 1958. Fay Jones Collection, University of Arkansas Libararies. LEFT: Thorncrown Chapel, photo courtesy of Anirban Ray.

architecture degree to be reviewed by the Dean of the College of Engineering. The dean’s secretary accidently submitted Williams’s draft to the printers, so it was printed in the 1947-1948 course catalog without review. As no architecture program had previously existed at the school, Williams’s first-year experiment outlined a program free from the classically rooted Beaux-Arts teaching methods used in other architecture schools. Williams’s class wasn’t bound by traditional architectural theories, but instead was a lab for thoughtful experimentation.

Wright Sounds Off on International Style In a speech at the University of Arkansas in 1958, Frank Lloyd Wright expressed his rejection of what was known as "Internations style" in architecture. FLW: I don’t think it ever was a style or ever international—but such as the case may be, if you want to call it style, everyone is so darn sick of it, that I don’t think any of them want to see it anymore themselves. I see them now searching for something

new, a little better, a little richer, a little warmer; something more in accord with the human spirit—all of them, and of course, the ones chiefly responsible for it, were very bad painters, who were trying to be architects…and they didn’t succeed.

The single principle that most defined Wright was nature. Fay Jones in NWA Visit two of the architect's acclaimed projects THORNCROWN CHAPEL Eureka Springs THE MILDRED B. COOPER MEMORIAL CHAPEL Bella Vista

FUN FACT: The Durst House, a home in Fayetteville designed by John G. Williams in 1952, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in June, 2015. You can view a panorama of the interior of the home at atomicarkansas.tumblr.com.

HANGS IN THE BALANCE Calder studied engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology before his decision to pursue art. At Stevens he studied applied kinetics, descriptive geometry, and other subjects which gave him skills that eventually led to the creation of his innovative sculptures.

Kinetic sculptures were Calder’s greatest contribution to modern art. His artist friend Marcel Duchamp called these delicately balanced sculptures “mobiles” – a French pun meaning both “motion” and “motive.” Crystal Bridges’ standing mobile Trois noirs sur un rouge (Three Blacks over Red), 1968, is a classic example of Calder’s kinetic sculptures. Works like Three Blacks over Red demonstrate Calder’s talent to unite order and clarity with change and spontaneity. To achieve clarity, he usually limited his colors to black, white, and red, occasionally adding other primary colors like blue or yellow. To balance order and clarity he explored the possibilities of chance by allowing the air to randomly determine elements of the composition of his art. Throughout his career Calder explored many art forms: he designed jewelry, tapestry, theatre settings, and architectural interiors. His revolutionary invention of the mobile inspired many artists, especially Abstract Expressionists who appreciated the spontaneous elements of his kinetic works. Calder influenced generations of artists to further explore kinetic art, performance art, and abstract sculpture. CURATOR Manuela Well-Off-Man

A R T 1 0 1 14

ALEXANDER CALDER

“A MOBILE

IS A PIECE OF POETRY THAT DANCES WITH THE JOY OF LIFE.” Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder 1898—1976

Trois noirs sur un rouge (Three Blacks over Red) 1968 Painted sheet metal ON VIEW Early Twentieth-Century Art Gallery Bridge

T R A I L S & G R O U N D S 15

Visible from the Early Twentieth-Century Gallery bridge, and showcasing Mark di Suvero’s monumental steel sculpture Lowell’s Ocean, the Museum’s North Lawn is lovely, but difficult to reach, accessible only through two sets of long, steep stairs. Although not every area on the Museum grounds can be fully accessible, it seemed a shame that this large, level lawn could not be utilized and enjoyed by more Museum guests. Creating accessible ways of getting there presents a challenge, however. Considering the steep ravine that encloses the North Lawn, paved ramps were unworkable. An elevator was the only practical solution. A plan has been developed for construction of a north elevator tower that will be accessible from the lower north exhibition gallery. The new elevator will carry guests down to ground level on the North Lawn and will also provide a lift up to the level of Rock Ledge Trail. Safdie Architects will design the tower, integrating the structure into the existing Museum architecture through the use of shared materials such as glass and copper. The tower will also offer a nod to the environment of the North Lawn by including elements of natural stone. Local architects Hight-Jackson Associates, who assisted in the construction of the Frank Lloyd Wright house on the Museum grounds, will also be involved in the process, as well as Morrison-Shipley Engineers and TatumSmith Engineers, Inc. “The construction of the elevator tower creates access to the largest green space on the Museum grounds,” said Director of Operations Scott Eccleston. “Not only will our guests be able to come out here for picnics or a game of Frisbee, we will also be able to utilize the North Lawn for large outdoor events like festivals and concerts. Our guests—all of our guests—will finally be able to enjoy all that this beautiful space has to offer.” Construction is set to begin in the first quarter of 2016. Stay tuned for more details.

RISING TO NEW HEIGHTS

PLANNED ELEVATOR WILL GRANT ACCESS TO SCENIC NORTH LAWN This rendering envisions the new elevator tower as seen from the North Lawn.

EDITOR Linda DeBerry

E D U C A T I O N 16

Art Education Online: MUSEUM MASHUP

comfortable talking about art following the course. They also expressed an increased interest in learning about history through the arts. However, we also found out that, although the class is online, a lack of high-speed internet at home meant that many of the students were dependent upon class time in their school’s computer lab to view readings and other contextual information. This has led us to restructure the assignments. In addition, the final curated project was overwhelming in its scope. Rather than keep the theme as broad as curating an exhibition about American identity, students will work on developing their own clear thesis statement to organize selected artworks and interpretation.

AMERICAN IDENTITY THROUGH THE ARTS

This year Crystal Bridges has developed an online course for high school students; an ambitious undertaking that was acknowledged by the American Alliance of Museums when they awarded the project a Gold MUSE Award. The course, Museum Mashup: American Identity through the Arts, provides students with a fine-arts credit and fulfills a new requirement defined by the 2013 Arkansas Digital Learning Act: every high school student must take an online course for graduation. Each week, students in the online course learn about two works of art from Crystal Bridges’ collection. First they explore what they see, think, and wonder using software that fosters online discussion. Afterward, students gather contextual information through videos, readings, and primary and secondary sources. Students reflect upon how artists not only responded to historical and contemporary events, but also shaped interpretations of history through their art. Students also learn about the curatorial process and research by developing an exhibition that explores an aspect of American identity through the visual arts. They then create the exhibition themselves in a three-dimensional virtual rendering of one of Crystal Bridges’ galleries. Now that the course has launched, we have some time to reflect upon what was successful, and what we will change before the course is more widely available. In an observational evaluation conducted by Dennis Beck, PhD, Assistant Professor of Educational Technology at the University of Arkansas, students reported that they became much more

Screenshot from Museum Mashup: American Identity through the Arts Crystal Bridges' new online class for high school students.

NEXT STEPS We are now developing ways to widely distribute the course to teachers in any state or country. This will include the development of an online training course and professional learning community. Any teacher, school, or district can become certified to teach this course and receive ongoing support. Many districts, particularly small districts with limited human capital, are eliminating enrichment and arts opportunities, widening the gap between large wealthy schools and small, high-poverty schools. Crystal Bridges has developed a model to become a central content provider with the aim of closing that gap so all students have access to culture and high-quality arts education. Crystal Bridges' Distance Learning Project is sponsored by the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

K I D S 17

LIK G N I D L I U B

PUBLIC PROGRAMS MANAGER Janelle Redlaczyk

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in 1867. His mother was a school teacher, and when he was nine years old, she gave him a set of wooden building blocks. These inspired him to build structures and to draw designs made of simple shapes. Wright was also inspired by summers he spent at his uncleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s farm on the prairie in Wisconsin, where he learned to love the wide, flat horizon and gentle roll of the prairie landscape.

In Crystal Bridgesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Experience Art Studio you will find an assortment of building blocks in many different styles and shapes. You can use these blocks to build a Frank Lloyd Wright-style structure of your own. Think about the design elements that Wright loved as you build: Straight horizontal lines Structure close to the ground, building out instead of up Opening up to nature

When he grew up and became an architect, Wright never forgot these early lessons. He created a new style of architecture that used simple rectangular shapes and horizontal lines. Because he wanted his buildings to be a part of the landscape, Wright preferred to make his houses long and low instead of tall, and he used earthcolored materials in building. He wanted people to be able to enjoy nature when they were in their homes, so he included glass walls and beautiful views of lawns, trees, and water whenever he could. Frank Lloyd Wright's Bachman-Wilson House has many of these elements: it is built close to the ground and has long, flat roofs that make strong horizontal lines. The house also has a full wall of glass in the living room, so you can see out to the beautiful landscape of Crystal Bridges.

Which of these block houses looks more like a Frank Lloyd Wright home to you?

BUILD A FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOUSE YOU CAN EAT Graham crackers make perfect materials for creating a house inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. Build your house on a piece of cardboard so you can move it, and use cake frosting to hold the pieces together. After your house is built, be sure to add some nature elements, too: granola or rice crispy treats make good rocks and dirt. Green gumdrops can be

Dero Sanford

bushes, and pretzel sticks can be trees!

L A R U T E C R E U T T I P H L C AR SCU ENBER&G Robert Rauschenberg, The Tower, 1957, oil, paper, fabric, tin cans, painted wood, broom, umbrella, rubber, wire, metal, dried turf, cigar box, electric lightbulbs, wiring, and spray enamel paint on wooden structure, 119 1/2 in. × 45 in. × 35 in. © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photo: Stephen Ironside.

H C S RAU

OFF THE WALL: ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG’S COMBINES

A W A AS

CURATOR Chad Alligood

An open umbrella perches improbably atop a sawhorse and a stack of side tables, while a blinking green light bulb illuminates a floating orb. Nearby, a broom stands on end, its bristles painted green, red, and gold. The entire apparatus glows from below, a neon green hue that seems to emanate from Beyond. Images from a fever dream? No, I’m describing Robert Rauschenberg’s The Tower (1957), a major recent acquisition now on view in our 1940s to Now Gallery. In this work, the artist assembled two human-like figures from everyday objects. Rauschenberg called The Tower and other similar assemblages “combines” because they brought together painting, sculpture, and seemingly unrelated objects to spark new ways of looking. Rauschenberg began creating combines in New York City in the early 1950s, a time and place in which the grand gestures of Abstract Expressionist painting held popular and critical sway. Painters like Jackson Pollock and Joan Mitchell emphasized juicy brushstrokes and gestures in their large-scale paintings, investing the canvas with the possibility for personal and psychological meaning. Rauschenberg, who had trained as a painter under the tutelage of renowned color theorist Josef Albers, ultimately pushed the boundaries of painting beyond the frame and into three dimensions—into the real, lived space of the viewer. He intended to activate the murky space between the art object and the human body; as he explained: ”Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)” The combines achieve this goal by expanding beyond the flat plane. Some of his combines hang on the wall and incorporate elements that extend into space, such as taxidermied animals and found objects. Others are fully disengaged from the wall, allowing viewers to walk around them. Rauschenberg continued making the combines into the early 1960s. As a body of work, they were incredibly influential for other artists seeking to expand art making beyond traditional norms of painting and sculpture. At the same time, the combines point to the abundance of everyday stuff consumed by postwar Americans. Positioned

in our 1940s to Now Gallery in a grouping that focuses on prosperity and popular culture in post-World War II America, The Tower shares space with other works that use a similar visual and material language. For example, across the gallery you will find The Bathers, a painted, carved wood sculpture by Marisol, a Venezuelan-American artist working in New York City in the 1960s. In its rough-hewn carving, which harkens back to folk-art traditions of the Americas, this sculpture radiates an everyday familiarity, like something you would find in your own home. Likewise, when you examine the various parts of Nancy Grossman’s wall relief Car Horn, which hangs nearby, a similar everyday texture emerges: belts, horse bridles, and metal flared horns come together in an explosion of everyday materials. In all three of these works, a new attention to the stuff of daily life emerges. As a further testament to Rauschenberg’s interest in working the gap between art and life, The Tower did not originally function merely as a passive art object. The artist constructed the work as a set piece for a dance performance by the Paul Taylor Dance Company in New York City. The performance, also titled The Tower, featured music by John Cooper, and was performed at the Kaufman Concert Hall on February 10, 1957. The theme of The Tower centered on the mythological story of Adonis and Persephone, with two dancers playing these key roles. Given this theme, the figures in Rauschenberg’s sculpture could represent these two mythological characters. Some art historians have interpreted the figures as male and female, which would seem to lend credence to this possibility. Or perhaps they reference the artist’s own life: during this period, Rauschenberg was intimately involved with fellow artist Jasper Johns, whose work is shown nearby. “We gave each other permission,” Rauschenberg once said, without further clarification. Together, as a towering pair, they gave each other permission to work beyond the gestural, Abstract Expressionist painting that dominated art in New York in this period. Moving into three dimensions and incorporating the stuff and substance of life, Rauschenberg’s combines introduced a new, iconoclastic idiom in American art. 19

DRAWING IN SPACE: THE ART OF RUTH ASAWA Ruth Asawa’s organic, free-floating wire sculpture Untitled (ca. 1958) is airy and light. Qualities of transparency and opacity, interior and exterior, and positive and negative shapes play in and around the surfaces. The elongated, round forms—nestled within one another and connected vertically—evoke gourds, seeds, barnacles, or sea sponges. Asawa’s art questions boundaries between fine art and craft, two and three dimensions, drawing and sculpture. Asawa was born in 1926 in the small farming community of Norwalk, California, to Japanese immigrants. Like other Japanese-Americans during World War II, Asawa and her family were removed from their home in 1942 and relocated to internment camps by the United States government. The Asawa family was moved to the Rohwer Relocation Center in Desha County, Arkansas. While in the camps, Asawa, who was still in high school, learned to draw by studying with artists, art students, and Disney animators who were also at Rohwer. In 1943, she was permitted to leave the internment camp to attend Milwaukee State Teachers College in Wisconsin. A few years later, after no one in Wisconsin would hire Asawa for the required practical teaching experience due to her ethnic background, she 20

left Milwaukee and attended the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where artist and color theorist Josef Albers was teaching. Albers taught her many lasting lessons, but one in particular translates to her wire sculptures—each material has qualities that can be drawn out and given new meaning, while also honoring the medium’s inherent characteristics. Asawa transformed common hardware-store wire into an object of beauty while still respecting the wire’s flexibility and strength. Asawa studied at Black Mountain College through 1948. The art instruction that included fine art and craft practices and an emphasis on problem-solving and experimentation with materials and form—as well as the communal living—had a lasting effect on Asawa. She later employed similar concepts in San Francisco in the late 1960s through the 1980s while she was active in arts education and civic arts initiatives. For example, she advocated for expanding art experiences and gardening in public schools. Asawa initially had no intention of becoming a sculptor, but instead had focused on drawing and painting. After a visit to Mexico with her

Ruth Asawa, Untitled (5 detail views), ca. 1965-1970, bronze wire, 38 x 38 x 12 in. © Estate of Ruth Asawa.

CURATOR Mindy Besaw

older sister in the summer of 1947, Asawa began to experiment with three-dimensional forms. In Mexico, Asawa had learned to crochet with wire from the Mexican villagers who made wire baskets. She described her technique of crocheting wire into sculpture “like drawing in space.” She built her sculpture as if through calligraphy; the airy space surrounding the form played just as important a role as the three-dimensional shape. Asawa started making tied wire sculpture (Untitled, ca. 19651970) after a friend brought her a plant from the desert. To better understand the tangled branches, Asawa created a wire sculpture of it, which launched her into a new way of working with wire. In these sculptures, described by Asawa as “branches” or “trees,” thick interior masses expand outward into splays of thinned strands like frizzled roots or snowflakes.

. G N I O D S Y I L T T R C E “A R I D S L A E D IT ” E F I L WITH sawa Ruth A

LEFT: Ruth Asawa, Untitled, ca. 1958, iron wire, 86 1/2 in. × 32 in. × 32 in. © Estate of Ruth Asawa. RIGHT: Ruth Asawa, Untitled, ca. 1965-1970, bronze wire, 38 x 38 x 12 in. © Estate of Ruth Asawa.

BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE

Asawa had her first solo exhibition in New York City in 1954 and she received much critical attention throughout her career. Yet she was often misunderstood or marginalized for her gender or ethnicity. Sometimes her work was demeaned as “craft,” or characterized as “feminine handiwork,” because of her working method, but Asawa saw no division. “Art is doing,” she wrote, “It deals directly with life.” As a mother of six children, art was integrated as a normal part of her home life. Work and family were not mutually exclusive for Asawa, who saw no hierarchy among art, dishwashing, laundry, cooking, and love. Today, Asawa’s sculpture enjoys a prominent position in American art, and in the Crystal Bridges galleries, with two of her works on view in the 1940s to Now Gallery.

For further reading, please see the exhibition catalog from Ruth Asawa’s retrospective exhibition at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, available in the Crystal Bridges Library. Cornell, Daniell, The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air. San Francisco: Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 2007.

Both Ruth Asawa and Robert Rauschenberg attended Black Mountain College. Nestled in the mountains of western North Carolina, the college was experiencing a boom during their tenure. Founded in 1933, Black Mountain College was a unique and experimental learning environment that provided an alternative to conventional education. It was a liberal arts college with courses in design and color, drawing and painting, sculpture, dance, weaving and textiles, writing, and architecture, and farm work and kitchen duty were also part of the curriculum. It was a communal lifestyle, where teachers and students dined together and were equally responsible for the governance and upkeep of the school. In the summer of 1948, Asawa’s final year at Black Mountain College, guest faculty included Merce Cunningham (dance), John Cage (music), Willem de Kooning (painting), and Buckminster Fuller (architecture). That summer, Fuller attempted to raise his first geodesic dome, but the construction was made from too-flimsy Venetian blind strips and it failed. Black Mountain College closed in 1957, yet its powerful influence continues to reverberate. 21

E L E V E N 22

EXPECTATIONS

IN AUGUST, CHEF LYLE INTRODUCES A NEW TASTING MENU AT ELEVEN. THIS THREE-COURSE MEAL (COURSES ALSO AVAILABLE Á LA CARTE) IS INSPIRED BY THE WORK OF ANDY

Visit CrystalBridges.org/eleven to learn more about CR(EAT)E and other culinary events.

Today, no matter what is happening at Crystal Bridges, the culinary team can certainly draw inspiration from it: new exhibitions, staples from the permanent collection, the architecture of Moshe Safdie and Frank Lloyd Wright, and even Crystal Spring, whose waters run through the heart of the Museum valley. We embrace that inspiration as the “next big thing” to grace the food landscape of our institution, and so do our guests, as luck would have it. Wednesday Over Water (aka, WOW) and Chef Bill Lyle’s monthly tasting menu both allow our team a proverbial canvas from which guests have come to expect to be simultaneously entertained, educated, and nourished. The latest, and most exciting, layer to our growing culinary program is the CR(EAT)E Food Series, hosted by Chef Bill Lyle, which allows a two-hour glimpse into just how the process of inspiration works in the Eleven kitchens. Chef Lyle offers a multicourse experience featuring the edible culture of the Ozarks, and often including live discussions from local farmers, artisans, chefs, and even brewmasters. The CR(EAT)E food series examines these intimate, behindthe-scenes moments four times a year, with opportunities for guests to ask questions and leave with recipes and, perhaps most interesting, insights into the creative process for developing food that is inspired by art. CR(EAT)E uses simultaneous video projection to give guests a virtual chef’s-eye experience as each dish is prepared, and guests and chefs alike leave the Great Hall vibrating with an experience that promises to continue to inspire. DIRECTOR OF CULINARY Case Dighero WARHOL AND JAMIE WYETH AND FEATURES FRESH SEA SCALLOPS.

E X H I B I T I O N S P O T L I G H T 24

BUILDING

CRYSTAL BRIDGES The exhibition Building Crystal Bridges: Art, Nature, and Architecture will explain how a major American art museum emerged in an Ozark forest. DIRECTOR OF EXHIBITIONS AND INTERPRETIVE PRESENTATIONS Robin Groesbeck

Museum Architect Moshe Safdie's initial concept sketch for Crystal Bridges, known as the "Napkin Sketch," is also featured on a T-shirt available in the Museum Store.

Members and frequent visitors to the Museum are familiar with the narrative, but now first-time guests and regulars alike can explore the surprising stories behind the conception, design, and construction of this unique place. Presented in six cases in the Great Hall Corridor, Building Crystal Bridges explores specific features of the buildings and grounds through text, images, photography, drawings, plans, and more. Since 2012, the Museum has presented two exhibitions about the work of Museum architect Moshe Safdie: Global Citizen: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie, and Moshe Safdie: The Path to Crystal Bridges. Now, it’s time to focus on the evolution of Crystal Bridges— from initial conversations, visits to other great museums, and a sketch on a napkin—to the institution we know today.

The exhibition takes visitors on a journey along the construction timeline with aerial images and photos taken from cranes. It explores engineering challenges, such as coaxing Town Branch Creek through weirs to form the Museum ponds, developing the custom-shaped beams and intricate cable system that support the Great Hall, gallery bridge, and Eleven, and the painstaking process of forming architectural-quality concrete structures by pouring the material into massive, wax-coated forms, then hand polishing each one to a gleaming finish. Surprising connections to Arkansas are revealed, from the sourcing of southern yellow pine for the beams, to sources of architectural inspiration. Safdie cites architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, Louis Kahn, and Arkansas native Fay Jones as inspirations. After a visit to the Walton family home (designed by Fay Jones) he explained, “I had no idea that the Waltons had a Fay Jones house, and a fantastic, wonderful house at that. It impressed me…that Fay Jones had put a dam across the ravine and created a body of water, and that stayed in my mind.” His imagination was also sparked by the swinging bridges and “old mill towns of Arkansas,” as well as cable-span bridges he encountered in Bhutan. Building Crystal Bridges tells the story of a museum embedded in an engaged and growing community in the Arkansas Ozarks. A place to experience art, architecture, and lifelong learning in an inspiring natural setting, Crystal Bridges has become a destination for people from the region as well as for art lovers from around the nation and the globe.

C O M I N G S O O N 26

ART ON THE EDGE OCT 10, 2015 – JAN 4, 2016 CURATOR Manuela Well-Off-Man

Crystal Bridges will host an exciting exhibition this fall in the Early Twentieth-Century Art Galleries: Alfred Maurer: Art on the Edge. The exhibition is a survey of this pioneer of American Modernism’s 35-year, wide-ranging career. Among the first of American Modernists who traveled to Paris to study the newest art trends, Maurer spent nearly 17 years in the art capitol (1897–1914). Through his friendship with vanguard collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein, Maurer became one of the first Americans to experience the work of Matisse, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Picasso. He in turn introduced other Americans, including Edward Steichen, to the Steins’ inner circle. Steichen then introduced many of these European avant-garde artists to the American art world through his partnership with art dealer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. Maurer also helped organize the European art submissions for the ground-breaking Armory Show that introduced international Modernism to American audiences in 1913. Maurer’s earliest paintings, inspired by William Merritt Chase’s painterly realism and James McNeill Whistler’s Aestheticism in muted colors, demonstrate Maurer’s keen eye for dramatic composition. These elegant fin-de-siècle figure paintings brought Maurer considerable critical acclaim, including the gold medal for An Arrangement (1901) at the prestigious Carnegie International exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1901. Before returning to Paris the following year, Maurer re-connected with Robert Henri and other members of the Ashcan School. The movement’s new sense of candor is clearly visible in Jeanne (ca. 1904), in the 26

Crystal Bridges collection, as well as in dynamic portrayals of contemporary life in Parisian cafés and dance halls which feature areas of energetic paint handling and bursts of bright color that foreshadow the radical Fauvist style Maurer would adopt by 1906 and continue to explore for the next two decades. Maurer painted in a Fauvist manner when the style was actually still en vogue in Paris, unlike most American Modernists who experimented with it much later. His work was even exhibited along with Matisse’s at the 1905 Salon d’Autonome in Paris. Maurer’s Fauve paintings of the early 1900s represent his mature period, uniting daring paint handling with a dedication to free color from a naturalistic, descriptive role to emphasize its emotional qualities. By the 1920s Maurer expanded his repertoire with exuberant florals, geometric nudes in fractured, tilting environments, and head studies that exude a haunting aura of mystery. As he increasingly investigated the visual language of Cubism, his heads and figures grew in complexity and abstraction. In the last years of his life Maurer created striking Cubist still lifes, whose invention and mastery secured his place as a painter of the best of American Cubism. In the end Maurer emerged as a pioneer of American Modernism, a visionary artist who created a rich and varied body of work guided by a strong and independent spirit. His ability to convincingly work in a variety of different styles of the early twentieth century is one of the most fascinating aspects of this exhibition.

LEFT: Alfred Henry Maurer, An Arrangement, 1901, oil on cardboard, 36 3/16 × 32 1/8 in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Hudson D. Walker 50.13. Photography by Geoffrey Clements. RIGHT: Alfred Henry Maurer, Café Scene, 1904, oil on canvas, 36 x 34 in. Photography by Tim Thayer.

Alfred Maurer

YOU CAN READ MORE ABOUT THE LIFE OF ALFRED MAURER ON PAGE 35.

ALICE AYCOCK IS A SLIGHT WOMAN, BUT FIERCE.

AYCOCK HAS THE SORT OF CONFIDENCE THAT COMES FROM BEING GOOD AT WHAT YOU DO AND NOT REALLY GIVING A DAMN WHAT ANYONE ELSE THINKS OF IT.

Alice Aycock in front of her sculpture Maelstrom. Photo: Stephen Ironside.

She’s earned this attitude of self assurance. Aycock has been making architectural sculpture since the 1970s, working often at a grand scale with hefty media such as steel or wood. Her work plays with the shared generative and destructive forces of both manmade machines and natural elements. Her monumental sculpture Maelstrom, on loan from Galerie Thomas Schulte and Fine Art Partners, Berlin, and currently installed on the Museum’s front lawn, embodies these powers: evoking both a collection of spinning turbines and a tumbling bundle of gigantic blossoms, caught by the wind. Aycock visited Crystal Bridges in February to oversee the siting of her sculpture, and editor Linda DeBerry captured an hour of her time to ask a few questions. LD With its seemingly sharp edges and points, there is a slight sense of menace to Maelstrom, and yet there’s also a playful quality to it. AA I don’t like to make art that is about aggression or violence. However, some of the most seductive experiences I have had are thrilling, and they’re thrilling because they are a little scary. So in my mind my best pieces have a quality about them ... I don’t know if the word is thrilling, but they’re both a little terrifying—that’s too strong a word—and they can be beautiful as well. I mean, why do people chase tornados? Or go outside during a hurricane? Why do they like to be out in huge waves? Why do people climb mountains? Those experiences are euphoric because they’re also challenging. LD In addition to the repeated spiral pattern in the work, there’s also something almost like a roller coaster.

AA Yes, I spent a lot of time in amusement parks as a child and I’ve designed a lot of pieces about super-duper loopers and roller coasters, so that’s there, absolutely there. LD Are you a fan of roller coasters? AA I look at them. I used to go on them all the time. I don’t go on them anymore, but I have books and books on roller coasters— books about the design, particularly the super-duper loopers. I grew up near Hershey Park and they had that old-fashioned wooden roller coaster. It’s absolutely there in the work, so you’re right on. I am interested in the relationship between the machine, the human body and the attempt to defy gravity – to propel oneself into outer space. LD So the industrial materials that you’re using—big things made of heavy, difficult material, with this mechanical aspect—what is it that attracts you to that? AA Sand/Fans, 1971 was an early work of mine. It was as simple as sand being blown around by industrial fans. I’m interested in a kind of underlying metaphor for the energy that propels both nature and human industry. I think it is a vortex configuration, because that seems to me to be a generator. It sounds like a cliché, but all the great gods in history and mythology were creators and destroyers, they were just big energy machines. And the two forces are wrapped around each other like the double helix, like the structure of DNA. Along with that dynamic I am also interested in the relationship between causality and chance. We are all surrounded by energy. Human beings, from the very beginning, were in awe of the forces in the universe. And now we’ve created energy that we can’t control. Also I grew up in a construction company, so I was surrounded by large machinery and construction from the time I was very little, so it was very normal for me. I also grew up right after WWII, right after the atom 29

“I’VE ALWAYS

BELIEVED THAT THE WORLD IS A PRECARIOUS & UNSTABLE PLACE.

“

bomb and that whole sense that we had created this energy and we wanted to use it for good purposes. That was the environment I came into as a child. It was about tussling with that. LD How does that work metaphorically with the new threats: global warming, technological isolation? AA I have always believed that the world is a precarious and unstable place. We create these illusions of security bubbles around ourselves...but they really are bubbles. I like the phrase “Any moment, something else…” I don’t think that there was ever a time in history when the world was stable - things are always in a state of flux. But right now we appear to be playing an end-game scenario, we all know that. That word “global” is terrifying, because...it is global. Everything is interacting and intersecting with everything else at a faster and faster rate. LD Speaking of landscape, a lot of your work is site specific. This piece was designed to go into New York City. What’s the difference in the impact of the work when you move it here? AA New York City is turbulent and full of invisible energy. I was playing to the grid of the city and to the rectilinear structures of the buildings along Park Avenue. Whereas of course that’s not what the [Crystal Bridges] site is about. Nature is an entirely different environment. On Park Avenue the piece was a counterpoint to the rigorous structure of the built city. At Crystal Bridges, Maelstrom plays to the seemingly haphazard and random organization of the vegetation along the pathway. Looking from the distance at the entrance to the museum the piece is having a conversation with the rise in grade of the hill and with the curvilinear pathway and with the forest along side.

Alice Aycock, Maelstrom (3 details), 2014, powder-coated aluminum, 10 1/2 ft . × 66 ft. 7 in. × 17 ft. Courtesy of Galerie Thomas Schulte and Fine Art Partners, Berlin, Germany, and Salomon Contemporary, New York. © Alice Aycock.

Alice Aycock

LD Will it have that kind of conversation with the architecture of the Museum as well? AA I certainly hope so. The museum building is really quite beautiful and those types of forms—swooping, curved, wavelike— they’re geometric mathematical forms, but they’re also related to the natural environment...it’s just really marvelous way the way that the building weaves and embeds itself into [the landscape] on the various levels. LD Tell me about your interest in architecture, how does that factor into your work? AA You could go inside much of my early work and I used architecture, particularly historical architecture, as a muse. My later work is more sculptural in the sense that sculpture is an object that you don’t inhabit, but the work has architectural scale and is very cognizant of the site and how it is experienced by the viewer from multiple points of view. I wrote a master’s thesis on the highway system, so I did a lot of thinking then about how one moves on a pathway and how one encounters objects in space and how one’s perceptions are directed. So I think in the last 40 years the pieces have become more object-like than when I started out, but that scale aspect and relationship to the human body is still very much part of it. Of course, lately many architects have approached buildings as though they were sculpture. And I’m probably more jealous of architects than I am of artists. LD How so? AA Because they’re getting to do really extraordinary things in the world. I think architecture can embody the culture and the culture’s aspirations in a way that no other art form can. I think that’s why a lot of architects really want to make museums, because it’s the new cathedral. If you think of art as “not useful”.... a museum is for things that are useless and so it is spiritual in the way a cathedral once was.

you work on it and you’re exhausted by it, and it’s no good, you’re going to tell yourself it is because you’re just so invested in it. When somebody else does it and I come back and look at it three or four weeks later, it’s not whether their craft is good, it’s whether my idea was good or not, and it’s much easier for me to go “throw that away, that’s no good,” than it would have been if I had been doing all of it. LD How about the engineering, how much engineering goes into it? AA Well, a lot of engineering, and now we hire engineers to do the structural calculations. You just don’t want to take chances. However, I do think that I instinctually [I know what will work]... even when everybody who works for me tells me “you can’t do that Alice.” I don’t fight them anymore; I just say, “Yes I can. Just do what I say because I know that I can get the engineer to show me how I can do it.” And after all we are not making rockets, just sculpture. LD Do you approach a piece of work differently if you know it’s in a public space than you would for a museum setting? AA Well, there’s the scale. And I think the advantage of a museum setting is you can really, for the most part, control the point of view. You have more control and you can speak about art in a much more pure way, because you can be a little more confrontational. I think you have a more informed public inside the walls. You have the audience that already believes that art is valuable, whereas when you’re outside, not necessarily on a museum grounds, but with the general public, you have an audience that is skeptical, that doesn’t see the usefulness of art at all. Whereas in general the people who come to a museum, whether they like one thing or another, believe that art should exist. But I like them both, and I would never want to exclude one for the other. However, in the end I’m an artist who is an elitist... LD What do you mean by that?

LD How hands on are you with fabrication? AA Not so much anymore. In the beginning, the first 20 years or so, I was. When you start out you have to do everything yourself, although I always had help. But what I perceived at a certain point was that I would never have the skill set to do the kind of job on the level that I aspired to. I could have spent my life just learning to be a fantastic carpenter but there were tons of different skills that I wanted to use in my work. But I was never going to be as good as the people who just did whatever it was for a living. And I thought, “I want to be up against my brain, not up against my hands.”

AA I mean I got into this because I think there are certain things that artists should pursue that may not be enjoyed or understood by everybody, but that we need to be able to pursue anyway because that is fundamentally what changes the world. We need to be able to pursue ideas and ask questions that are not popular and that may seem irrelevant. That’s what scientists need to do, too. Many real breakthrough ideas have been hard to swallow—in science and in art—but the really good ones changed everything. And if you’re always appealing to the masses – to what is already known and understood - where are you? You’re never getting Alice Aycock out of the starting gate.

CAN SPEND YOUR LIFE “ YOU ENDLESSLY MAKING SOMETHING,

I grew up with a man who said to me at the dinner table—a lot of things that challenged me—but one of them was: “you can always find a way to do something, Alice, but the idea has to be good enough.” And he was right. You can spend your life endlessly making something, but so what if it’s not a really breakthrough, challenging, fantastic idea? I kept thinking it’s the limitations of my brain, not the limitations of how skilled I am with my hands. The other thing is, if you do it and

“

BUT SO WHAT IF IT’S NOT A REALLY BREAKTHROUGH, CHALLENGING, FANTASTIC IDEA?

LD I find your titles interesting as well. You have The Thousand and One Nights and the Mansion of Bliss, which refers to this fantastic, magical story, and then, on the other side of that: The Uncertainty of Ground State Fluctuations, referencing hard 31

AA A long time ago when I was in college I read a book called The Savage Mind [by Claude Lévi-Strauss] and he asked a really interesting question and I’ve continued to think about it. I also had a history teacher ask this question when I was in high school: “what was the greatest thing that ever happened in human history?” And he said it was the domestication of plants and animals. Which means that from the outset human beings were possessed of scientific inquiry and scientific observation. And that what we have come to admire so much, which is science, was always there. At the same time, you could build the most beautiful canoe, say, that could take you from one island to the next...and you could figure out how to engineer it by experimentation and trying this and trying that. But what you couldn’t predict was if a horrible storm came up. And that’s where the magic thinking comes in because there are still tons of things that we can’t control. Now has that ever changed? I don’t think so. Every time I fly, I have a magic mantra. I say: “The plane’s going to crash,” therefore it won’t. In other words, have we ever given up magic thinking? Maybe it isn’t as primary as it once was, but when everything is out of your control, that’s when you start wishing and hoping and praying— and so magic thinking has never gone away. They’re side by side, so what Lévi-Strauss observed was that human consciousness was always interweaving between magic thinking and scientific observation, causality and chance. Human beings didn’t create pottery by accident. It happened through careful scientific observation and experimentation and curiosity about the world—all of the things we base our civilization on. In the twentieth century science got to the point where it sounded a bit like magic thinking again: quantum physics, string theory, parallel universes - all that stuff. I like to bring things together like that and play but of course, ultimately, I am on the side of scientific inquiry. On the other hand magical thinking is about desire and imaginative projection and without that, nothing can come into being. LD So you’re hoping to spark that moment of wonder in your viewer? AA Yes, and fantasy and imagination. I think that the thing that we get to be as artists is... we can lie. We can make believe. We can be like children. That’s the wonderful part of being an artist. LD So those titles: where do they come from? Are you thinking about the title as you’re creating the work? AA Sometimes I do. Sometimes I’ll come up with a title before the piece, sometimes it comes after. Thousand and One Nights obviously came from the Arabian Nights and it was sarcastic. I spent a thousand and one nights with an extraordinary man, whom I married, who was... it was crazy. It wasn’t exactly all bliss but it was definitely a

thousand and one nights of wonder. As for The Uncertainty of Ground State Fluctuations, at that point I was looking at a lot of weather patterns and diagrams - a lot of wave formations and turbulent air movements, tornado and hurricane diagrams. Sometimes, in a poetic way, I will take a phrase from one place, and something from another and put them together in a surrealist juxtaposition to create a title that provokes you to find something in the sculpture that you might not find without the title—the title kind of leads you into it. LD I heard you once compared your career to Tom Waits’s “Waltzing Matilda.” (“Tom Traubert’s Blues”) Can you elaborate on that? AA What I like about “Waltzing Matilda” is, from an artist’s point of view, you’re almost like an addict. And you’re saying “just give me one more chance to try to do this next piece. I think I got it the last time but I’m not quite sure, just will you give me one more chance to get out there on the stage, could you just give me a few bucks to try this new idea.” You’re almost panhandling. And when you get to a level of vulnerability and desperation—if you’re really good, I guess—it’s not about being famous, it’s this incredible need to beat yourself, to be better than what you thought you were, to try one more idea, one more time. Artists are like that. I guess it was that thing. And then in the end he says “Goodnight Matilda, goodnight,” in which he’s trying to come to terms with this addiction and get peace—which of course, you never do—but it’s both the thing that gives you enormous peace and solace and also, you know, constantly drives you nuts. “Is it good enough? Am I working hard enough?” So that’s what it’s about—why I love the song. Just let me try it one more time.

TOP: Alice Aycock, The Uncertainty of Ground State Fluctuations (for Clayton, Missouri), 2007, structural and spun aluminum, fiberglass, thermo-formed acrylic, 19" x 20" x 20". Fabricator: Dover Tank and Plate Co. Photo: Richard Sprengeler. BOTTOM: Alice Aycock, The Thousand and One Nights in the Mansion Of Bliss, 1983, steel, aluminum, lights, 30' x 22' x 80'. Photo: Wolfgang Staehle.

science. That juxtaposition is not just in the titles, but also in the work itself: there’s this industrial-based material and then there’s this whimsy and this magic.

Stephen Ironside

â&#x20AC;&#x201C;Tom Waits, "Tom Traubert's Blues"

LIBR ARY 34

Crystal Bridges recently welcomed Valerie Sallis to the staff as Archivist and Cataloger, and she is currently serving as Interim Library Director. Valerie came to the Museum after working with the archives of the Society of the Cincinnati, a non-profit educational organization founded in 1783 located in Washington, DC.

ARCHIVES The Crystal Bridges Library acquires and maintains archives that relate to our mission, including personal documents, photos, and ephemera from prominent American artists, art historians, and collectors. Our archivist works to make the records usable for researchers. This involves research on the collection’s creators, sorting the material, and weeding out unnecessary items—after all, archives are about storytelling and every story needs a good editor. Once the materials are organized, a finding aid is created that describes the materials and where researchers can find them. A finding aid may be a very specific listing of individual items, or a more general listing that points researchers to a box or folder of material, without listing specific items within that box or folder. The finding aid for Crystal Bridges’ collection of letters written by Winslow Homer, for instance, includes a listing of each individual document, to whom it was written, and a brief idea of the subject matter. Other finding aids may only detail the holdings by folders or boxes, leaving the researchers to look through the materials for themselves to determine if any of them relate to their subject of inquiry. The level of detail for a finding aid depends The finding aids currently available for Crystal Bridges’ Library Archives can be accessed on the importance online: Check out the Library's webpage. To view the actual materials, set up an appointment of the subject as well by calling or emailing the Archivist (Valerie.Sallis@CrystalBridges.org, 479-418-5756). as the size of the collection—larger collections take longer to sort, so it’s more time-consuming to describe down to the item level.

A portion of the Library’s current archival holdings were acquired in a single large purchase before the Museum opened, but the Library continues to collect archival materials through purchases and donations. Only a fraction of the materials in Crystal Bridges’ archives have been fully processed. CATALOGER/ARCHIVIST/INTERIM LIBRARY DIRECTOR Valerie Sallis 34

Stephen ironside

Crystal Bridges’ holdings also include institutional archives including original plans for the Museum and information on its subsequent development, exhibitions, programs, and staff. Stewardship of our institutional archives is crucial because the archives tell the story of Crystal Bridges for future generations. The institutional archives are currently open only to staff, but in time, portions of the archives will open to the public for use in studying the evolution of the Museum.

TOP: Alfred Henry Maurer, Cubist Still Life (detail), ca. 1930, oil on board, 12 3/4 x 16 1/4 in. BOTTOM LEFT: Alfred Henry Maurer, ca. 1931/unidentified photographer, Bertha Schaefer papers and gallery records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. BOTTOM RIGHT: Photography by Dwight Primiano. Louis Maurer, from the archives of The Old Print Shop, Inc.

B A C K S T O R Y 35

The Midst of a Cyclone THE LIFE OF ALFRED MAURER

Alfred Henry Maurer was born in 1868. His father, Louis Maurer, was also an artist and made his living working as an engraver, first with Courier and Ives, and later forming his own company. Louis was a critical and domineering father, who expected his son to follow in his footsteps. He withdrew Alfred from school at the age of 16 and put him to work in the family business. Despite his father’s pressure, in 1897 Alfred left for Paris, where he remained for nearly 17 years. In Paris he was introduced to the work of European Modernists such as Matisse and Picasso, and his work gradually changed from the realistic depictions of his early career to Fauvist abstraction and bold colors.

The advent of the Great War forced Maurer to return to New York in 1914, leaving behind some 250 paintings in his Paris studio. In 1925, his French landlord sold Alfred Henry Maurer, ca. 1931 the entire collection for back rent. Some 45 of these paintings were later discovered in various flea markets. Most of the others vanished from history. In New York, Alfred returned to his family home. He was encouraged by a few friends such as painter Arthur Dove and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz; but endured harsh criticism of his work from his father. Maurer’s biographer, Elizabeth McCausland, wrote that Louis would “take the brush out of Maurer’s hand to improve his work.... He would go into the room, to stand in front of Alfy’s paintings and vituperate them.” In 1924, gallerist Erhard Weyhe unexpectedly purchased every painting in Maurer’s studio—more than 200 works—to exhibit in his New York Gallery. Though the work sold well, it received lukewarm

responses from critics. One, flummoxed by Maurer’s Cubist still lifes, wrote that they looked “as though they had been assembled by a highly nervous person in the midst of a cyclone.” In April, 1932, Alfred was admitted to the hospital for a Louis Maurer, From the archives of The series of surgeries, concluding Old Print Shop, Inc. with a prostatectomy, and was discharged in late June. Louis Maurer, then age 100, died on July 19. On August 4, Alfred hanged himself. The reason for his suicide was never known. Whatever shadows troubled him, Maurer never ceased in the pursuit of his artistic vision. Upon his death, he left behind more than 600 paintings. EDITOR Linda DeBerry 35

ART NIGHT OU T APRIL 25, 2015 Art Night Out explored the experimental art movements of the 1950s and ‘60s with art-making à la Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg, plus a Grateful Dead music experience on Walker Landing with The Schwag. Sponsored by AMP Sign & Banner, Blue Moon Brewing Co., Arvest Bank, and Saatchi & Saatchi X.

SUPER ICON IC PARTY MAY 1, 20 15 Crystal Bridges’ College Ambassadors celebrated the exhibition Van Gogh to Rothko with a party featuring live music by Goose and National Park Radio, art-making, and talks with art professors from the University of Arkansas. Sponsored by Stephen and Claudia Strange. 36

C E L E B R AT I O N S 37

DÍA DE LOS N IÑOS A P R I L 19, 20 15 The Museum celebrated Children’s Day with Latin American music, dance, art, and fun for all ages! Sponsored by Rockline Industries.

FAMILY SUN DAY JUNE 21, 2015 Trail Mix, part of the Walton Arts Center’s annual Artosphere Festival, brought Australia’s highly acclaimed circus daredevils, The Fruits, to Crystal Bridges as part of this annual Family Sunday event. Family Sunday is sponsored by Rockline Industries and the Northwest Arkansas Naturals.

M E M B E R S H I P 38 Dear Members, It’s a great time to be a Member of Crystal Bridges! As a Member you enjoy free admission to exciting exhibitions such as Warhol’s Nature and Jamie Wyeth on view now through October 5. You will also be among the first to see the reconstructed Frank Lloyd Wright house! Watch your Members’ Extra emails for ongoing details. We want to hear from you! Each year we strive to bring you art content that will not only inform, but delight you through C magazine. I invite you to share your ideas and thoughts about this publication by participating in our C magazine survey, which will be emailed to Members later this month. When you find the survey in your Inbox, please take a few minutes to fill out this simple questionnaire and let us know what you think of the magazine and what you’d like to see in future editions. Finally, we are excited to celebrate our fourth anniversary with you this November!

Thank you for your continued support of Crystal Bridges’ mission and programs. Your membership helps make our family and public programs, art classes, lectures, and more possible for free or low cost so that all can enjoy the beauty of art and nature. As many of you consider renewing your support this year, I invite you to take your membership to the next level. By upgrading your level of membership, you will help your Museum continue to have a meaningful impact on our community while enjoying unique Member benefits designed to deepen your engagement with the arts. You can review each level's benefits online at CrystalBridges.org/get-involved/membership. Once again, thank you for being a Member of Crystal Bridges and ensuring your Museum continues to be a vital source of art and inspiration for generations to come. Here’s to another extraordinary year together!

DONT FORGET TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THESE GREAT MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS

» » » »

Express lines in the lobby (for admission) and Eleven (for lunch) Access to the Member Priority Phone Line for event and membership needs 479.418.5728 Opportunity to travel regionally with Crystal Bridges 10% off gift memberships

Sincerely,

NEW MEMBER PRIORITY PHONE LINE HOURS!

MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM MANAGER Ana Aguayo

Mon | Tues | Thurs » 8am – 5pm Wed | Fri » 8am – 9pm Sat | Sun » 10am – 4pm

DAIZY & JORGE BONILLA How many times do you visit Crystal Bridges each year?

We visit the Museum frequently. We enjoy looking at all the art, but we are also avid runners, so we run the trails daily. We enjoy the miles of natural beauty just outside the Museum and even lounge under the trees.

Why did you become a Member?

We enjoy all the artinfusion events. We love the opportunity to attend any social events around Northwest Arkansas.

What Member benefits do you most enjoy? We are excited to receive free admission to exhibitions at the Museum. They are very unique, as well as informative.

We enjoy the miles of natural beauty just outside the Museum Are there particular artworks or galleries that are special to you?

One particular sculpture that we have enjoyed is Luis Jimenez’s Vaquero. We were able to attend its debut to celebrate the Hispanic culture featured at Crystal Bridges.

Why do you feel art is important—for individuals, families, communities?

Art brings positive thoughts and allows us to slow down and appreciate the work on display. It is fascinating how each person, culture, and region of the world has their unique expression of art, from the medium they utilize to the style of art they create. Museums and exhibitions allow for people to come together in a space where art from different parts of the world can be on display.

Stephen ironside

Do you have a particular story or memory you would like to share about your experience at Crystal Bridges?

During Valentine’s Day weekend we attended Black Hearts Ball. It was an interesting twist to our usual Valentine’s Day plans. Two days after the event, we got engaged right outside Crystal Bridges near the LOVE sculpture.

P H I L A N T H R O P Y 40

At Crystal Bridges, our mission extends beyond celebrating the American spirit through art and nature. We also aim to perpetuate the honored tradition of sharing and hope to inspire others to give. Philanthropy is as much a part of our culture as any work of art, and private giving has allowed the Museum to become an integral and valued part of our community.

CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER Jill Wagar

KINDRED SPIRITS OF CRYSTAL BRIDGES LAUNCHES TO RECOGNIZE DONORS

The name is likely familiar to you; it is also the title of the renowned Hudson River School painting by Asher B. Durand—a centerpiece of our permanent collection. The expression “kindred spirits” also beautifully conveys our supporters’ shared goal of promoting Crystal Bridges and shared belief in a museum’s power to transform lives. The financial support provided by these donors positively impacts Crystal Bridges’ ability to increase awareness of American art—on local, national, and international stages. In addition to benefits corresponding to the level of giving, Kindred Spirits receive invitations to special programs in Bentonville, Dallas, and New York City. As the program grows, so will the list of offerings and locations. For more information about belonging to Kindred Spirits, contact Jill Wagar at Jill.Wagar@CrystalBridges.org.

Asher Brown Durand, Kindred Spirits (detail), 1849, oil on canvas, 44 x 36 in.

In a show of gratitude for leadership gifts, we have launched the Kindred Spirits of Crystal Bridges donor recognition program for individuals who contribute $10,000 or more annually through Guild membership or sponsorship of an exhibition or program.

L A S T W O R D 41

Big changes are taking place at the Museum: from the future addition of an elevator tower to provide our guests with access to the North Lawn, to installation of Louise Bourgeois’s monumental sculpture Maman in the courtyard... new projects are moving from concept to realization. And there are more to come. It’s a pattern we’re accustomed to at Crystal Bridges. We have been in a constant state of movement, change, and growth since the Museum opened in 2011, and that’s unlikely to slow anytime soon. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Rod Bigelow

Innovation and adaptability are woven into the culture of our Museum. Our board of directors, our team, and our volunteers are all dedicated to thinking of ways to adapt our processes, procedures—even our facilities—to improve your experience or enhance our ability to achieve our mission. We are committed to embarking upon new and exciting projects that may never have been attempted by other museums. All while continuing to keep our Members and guests at the center of every equation.

WE ARE INTENT UPON BLAZING NEW TRAILS ON A NATIONAL SCALE. Whether these trails lead us to the creation of an unprecedented exhibition like State of the Art; or take us to the vanguard of technological advancement in the museum world—as with the Linked Open Data initiative or Distance Learning project—we want to be out in front, pushing the envelope of what it means to be an art museum community and what we can achieve when we band together. We don’t always know exactly which innovations will present themselves, or where they might lead us in the future. But there are two things we are sure of: we will continue to embrace those opportunities as they arise, and we couldn’t do it without the support and engagement of you, our Members. Thank you for accompanying us on this journey.

600 Museum Way â&#x20AC;˘ Bentonville, AR 72712

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