ACQUSITIONS HIGHLIGHTS

Roots

Rubén Trejo (American, 1937-2009). 1982. Steel, wood, metal, wood shavings, 59 ½ x 19 x 17 ¾ in. Purchased with funds from the Mark Sponenburgh Fund; 2020:9.1 This work by Rubén Trejo, the most important Chicanx sculptor in the Northwest, was initially borrowed for the JSMA’s 2019-20 “Common Seeing” exhibition, Resistance as Power: A Curatorial Response to Under the Feet of Jesus in support of the UO’s “Common Reading” assigned book, Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena Maria Viramontes. It is included in Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea, a major traveling exhibition organized in partnership with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Art Bridges, and three other museums in our region, which was presented at JSMA in fall 2022.

Im Flüchtlingslager Nikolsburg: Schlafraum (Dormitory)

Max Pollak (American, b. Czechoslovakia, 1886-1970). 1914-15. Drypoint, ed. 36/75, plate: 7 3/8 x 4 7/16 in.; sheet: 10 ½ x 9 in. Museum purchase with funds provided by Michael C. Powanda and Elizabeth D. Moyer; 2019:46.2

Jewish printmaker Max Pollak was born in Czechoslavakia and raised in Vienna, Austria. This image is one from a series of etchings Pollak made while on duty with the Austrian army in 1914 to capture the experiences of Galacian Jewish families enduring harsh conditions in a refugee camp in Moravia. This print and five others from Pollak’s In the Barrack Camp at Nikolsburg portfolio were on view in the Graves Gallery in winter 2022.

Pattern Seekers #1/ Select-o-View

Dan Powell (American, b. 1950). 1981. Gelatin silver print with graphite and colored pencil, 18 x 18 in. Gift of Jonathan Lampert; 2020:23.3

Dan Powell is Associate Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon and is the former head of the photography department . As an important figure in the regional history of the medium, Powell’s conceptual photography received as gifts to the museum complements our holdings of the artist’s more traditional landscape body of work.

In the Halls of Justice

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953). From the series Dreaming in Cuba , 2002. Archival inkjet print, image: 16 x 15 in.; sheet: 24 x 21 in. Gift of the PhotoAlliance Board of Directors in honor of the artist. 2020:22.1

Carrie Mae Weems uses photography, video, and installation to examine the African-American experience. In this image, the artist inserts herself as history’s ghost and witness, occupying the corridor of a once stately building. “A part of my project is absolutely inserting the black presence in the world, asserting it as the norm,” wrote Weems in 2003. “Not as the abnormal. Not as simply racial politics. But rather, embracing the breadth of this humanity that comes through this brown skin.”

Corona I (Crown I)

Lilliam Nieves (Puerto Rican, b. 1975). 2015. Iron and plush fabric, filling, and gold trim, crown: 8 x 8 ¾ x 8 ½ in; pillow: 2 ½ x 12 x 12 ½ in. Purchased with Funds from the Ford Contemporary Art Endowment; 2019:44.1

Corona I fulfills several strategic objectives to diversify the Latin American and Caribbean art collection—to acquire three-dimensional conceptual objects, to acquire works by women, to acquire works made in countries that are the subject of UO courses, but underrepresented in the collection. Corona I has the added benefit that students can interact with the work (as the artist intended) during class visits to the Gilkey Research Center, and discuss how Nieves’s work addresses gender politics and beauty rituals, the role of beauty pageants in Latin America and the Caribbean, Puerto Rico’s economy, politics, and status, and women’s work in the family and across generations.

Unnumbered Portrait III

Narsiso Martínez (Mexican, b. 1977). 2016. Linocut print and matte gel on cardboard box, 31 ½ x 17 ½ in. Gift of Michael Hames-García. 2021:4.1

Another of JSMA’s collections development goals is to acquire more works by Latin artists. Unnumbered Portrait III will serve classes in Printmaking, Latin American Art History, Contemporary Art, Indigenous, Race and Ethnic Studies, Environmental Justice, Romance Languages, History, Anthropology, Latinx Studies, Latin American Studies, and First Year Interest groups, among others. Drawn from the artist’s own experience as a farm worker in Wenatchee, Washington, Martínez’s work focuses on the people performing the labors necessary to fill produce sections and restaurant kitchens around the country. Farmworker portraits are drawn and printed on discarded produce boxes collected from grocery stores. In a style informed by inter-war Social Realism and its antecedent European Realism, Martínez makes visible the difficult labor and onerous working conditions of the American farm worker. Our former UO colleague, Dr. Michael Hames-García, now Professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, purchased and donated this work to the JSMA because it spoke to the experiences of many UO students and their families.

Rock Face and Circle, Ladakh, India

Linda Connor (American, b. 1939). 2016. Archival digital print from a 4 x 5 negative, 8 ¾ x 7 in. Gift of Linda Connor. 2020:13.2

Linda Connor’s work embraces spirit by a path that celebrates both the sacred and the profane. For more than 50 years, Connor has photographed distant places of devotional power and sites that resonate with significance, hidden and implied. The light seen in the prints—at times fleeting and suggestive, and at others defining and all-powerful—is both metaphoric and recognized as a translation of life force in its own right.

American Alien #3

Roger Shimomura (Japanese-American, b. 1939). 2006. Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 24 in. Museum purchase through the Hartz FUNd for Contemporary Art. 2020:7.1

In this tender painting artist Roger Shimomura depicts himself as a small child with his mother in the doorway of their World War II family home in Block 6 at the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Hunt, Idaho—one of ten U.S. internment camps in which 120,000 Japanese and American citizens of Japanese descent were incarcerated from 1942-45. While his mother is fully illuminated and smiles tenderly as she sweeps, young Roger grips a tiny baseball bat and is seen entirely in shadow, obscuring any expression of emotion. The warmth of this painted memory is undermined by two strands of barbed wire silhouetted ominously against the night sky beyond the barrack window.

Our Friends are All Over the World

SHEN Shaolun (沈绍伦/沈紹倫, b. 1935). Chinese; People’s Republic of China, 1964. Lithograph; ink and color on paper, 41 ¾ x 30 3/8 in. Anonymous Gift. 2019:59.1

One interesting facet of Chinese Communist propaganda is its incorporation of other revolutionary movements. Thus, in addition to posters featuring Chinese heroes and narratives, there are a number like this in which people of various cultures are depicted together. In the foreground, an African man and a Latin-American or European woman are shown clapping, cheering, and bearing bouquets of flowers alongside their Chinese female comrade. Behind and in the distance can be seen a large crowd of other flower-bearing celebrants representing Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America. The poster’s designer, SHEN Shaolun, worked in the Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House producing watercolor imagery of uplifting political themes.