JSMA Summer/Fall Magazine 2022

JORDAN SCHNITZER MUSEUM OF ART SUMMER/FALL 2022

Patron Circle Reception celebrating Many Wests Evening of Friday, October 21

Member Reception celebrating Many Wests Afternoon of Sunday, October 23

Stay tuned for more details!

Over the past two years, as the pandemic rolled on, the museum has shifted increasingly to the use of digital communications to convey up-to-the-minute information about our programs and events. Increasingly, it has become clear that the best use of paper media, particularly this magazine, is for what I’ll call editorial coverage of our exhibitions and for news items relating to our collection, the museum membership and community partners, and staff news. Moving forward, we plan to publish two issues of the JSMA magazine per year. This issue offers a retrospective look at our summer shows, and coverage of our major fall show, Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea, plus an exciting staff update and other newsy items . In the winter, you can look for the next issue, which will cover the Winter and Spring exhibitions and additional news. Special events such as visiting speakers, Patron Circle and Member openings, and related programming will henceforth be announced and covered primarily in electronic communications such as our e-News. We will continue to produce paper-based invitations to major openings, but will supplement those with e-News announcements as well. We hope these changes will provide timely information, a lasting record of our exhibitions and major activities, and consume fewer trees.

Our major exhibition this fall is a collaboration between four western museums, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM), and the Art Bridges Foundation. It is a four-year project that was announced right around the time I was appointed as director here, in the summer of 2019. JSMA McCosh Curator Danielle Knapp spearheaded our participation, and the show includes artworks from the JSMA collection, as well as works from the Boise Art Museum, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, the Whatcom Museum, and SAAM. I am delighted to have Many Wests here and congratulate Danielle for helping to shape a deeply meaningful, truly groundbreaking exhibition that offers a genuinely new picture—in fact many of them!—of “the west,” bringing Black, Indigenous, Asian American, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ voices to the forefront. I’m happy, too, that a number of those voices are those of artists in our collection.

We have exciting staff news here. I am thrilled to report that Dr. Adriana Miramontes Olivas began work on August 1 as our new Curator of Academic Programs and Latin American and Caribbean Art. After an international search, Dr. Miramontes Olivas came to us from the University of Pittsburgh, where she completed a doctorate in art history with a focus on contemporary art at the U.S.-Mexico border, and research interests that encompass global contemporary art, Latin American Art, Latinx art, and modern and contemporary art

from Mexico. She has taught art history in both the United States and Mexico, and has worked with faculty and students on objectand exhibition-based teaching and incorporating exhibitions into curricula. Previous to her work and study at U. Pitt, she earned an M.A. in art history at the University of Texas, San Antonio, where she also worked in the gallery, and completed internships at the El Paso Museum of Art and the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Arts. We were pleased to welcome our new colleague to the JSMA, the UO, and Lane County in August. My thanks to our search committee, including Professor Gabriela Martinez and JSMA colleagues Anne Rose Kitagawa, Hannah Bastian, and Elizabeth Larew. We had an exceptionally strong pool of candidates to fill Cheryl Hartup’s shoes, and we are thrilled to be working with Adriana.

Now, we have even more exciting news! With Adriana’s appointment, I am doubly pleased to announce an anonymous gift to support the museum’s Curator of Academic Programs and Latin American & Caribbean Art in perpetuity. The gift includes an endowment that will fund the full costs of staffing and benefits and support curatorial work and public programs, community engagement, and activities which further the Museum’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and engagement with the Latinx community. The gift will also support the position and programming for the 2022-2023 academic year, before the endowment distributes earnings. This generous gift recognizes the JSMA’s long-standing commitment to the museum’s academic mission and its engagement with the Latin American community in Oregon and beyond. For all of us at the museum, this is a dream come true.

As if that were not enough, I am also beyond thrilled to announce two additional major grants. The first gift is a $350,000 donation from the Tykeson Foundation over four years in support of our Art Heals programs. It will support the range of online programs, research work with OHSU, off-site collaborations, and staff needs for Art Heals, as well as a new effort to document and publicize the groundbreaking work we are doing in this area. I could not be

Dr. Elizabeth Lahti of Oregon Health Sciences University, one of the Art Heals partners, tours with JSMA's Lisa Abia-Smith and John Weber.

Opposite: Angel Rodríguez-Díaz (American, b. 1955), The Protagonist of an Endless Story (detail), 1993, oil on canvas, 72 x 57 7/8 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible in part by the Smithsonian Latino Initiatives Pool and the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program, 1996.19. © 1993, Angel Rodriguez-Diaz

prouder of the work our Director of Education Lisa Abia-Smith and her colleagues Hannah Bastian, Jessica Zapata, and our partners at OHSU and Good Samaritan in Corvallis are doing together, and this grant is a testimony to their vision. This is an utterly distinctive aspect of the JSMA’s work, and we are thrilled to push it forward with this support. My profound thanks to the Tykeson family for making this possible.

The second gift is a $1,000,000 donation over five years from the W.L.S. Spencer Foundation, the family foundation of Jack and Susy Wadsworth and the Wadsworth family, supporting our work with the collection of contemporary Chinese photography donated by them in 2019. Their generosity will assist us in renovating our building to house the Wadsworth Collection in a new Collections Lab storage and teaching space; cover framing and crating costs for the photographs; and underwrite the launch of an exciting series of exhibitions that we will offer to tour nationaly. To make that possible, the grant will also provide five years of funding in support of a new Curator of Chinese Art, and we will fundraise to make that position permanent. Through the exhibitions and pedagogies this grant will support, the ways it will allow us to engage new Chinese art, and the means it has provided to transform our physical space to support our teaching goals, this funding from the Spencer Foundation is making a dramatic and transformative impact on the museum. I truly cannot thank Jack and Susy and the Wadsworth family enough.

On pages 14 and 15 of this issue of the JSMA magazine you can read about two truly exciting donations that have transformed the museum’s holdings of Japanese art. In the past year, Eugene collectors Lee and Mary Jean Michels and Portland collector Irwin Lavenberg have donated nearly 650 19 th and early 20 th century prints to the JSMA, with promises of more to come! I can’t thank Lee, Mary Jean, and

Irwin enough for their generosity. Congratulations also to JSMA Chief Curator Anne Rose Kitagawa for her work to bring these gifts to fruition. Lee and Mary Jean have long been associated with the JSMA, and Lee is an honored and highly active member of the museum’s Leadership Council. Irwin recently joined the Leadership Council Collections Committee, too. I know that for the Michels and Irwin, the work we do with UO students and faculty members such as Akiko Walley, History of Art and Architecture, and Glynne Walley, East Asian Languages and Literature, is at the heart of their decision to bring their treasured prints to the JSMA. Indeed, as the article makes clear, both collectors have offered not only their art, but their time, generously sharing experiences and knowledge with students. Their donations significantly deepen and broaden our holdings in Japanese art history, making the JSMA’s the largest collection of Japanese art in the state of Oregon. Lee, Mary Jean, and Irwin, a HUGE Thank You again from all of us at the JSMA!

In the museum’s curatorial staff meetings we’ve been thinking about our permanent collection, and how we can use our contemporary art in new ways. On Earth: A Fragile Existence, currently on view in the Schnitzer Gallery, emerged from that dialogue. It is a team curatorial effort led by Danielle Knapp, our McCosh Curator, and Thom Sempere, our photography curator, with contributions by Anne Rose Kitagawa, chief curator, and me looking over their shoulders and kibitzing now and then. On Earth brings together a wide variety of works to ask questions about nature, humans and other animals, the land, and the ecologies that knit everything together. While not a “climate change” show per se, On Earth was nevertheless conceived to create a space for reflection and rumination on the larger issues of human impact on the biosphere and non-human creatures. It

From right: Anne Rose Kitagawa, Irwin Lavenberg, Lee Michels, Professor Akiko Walley, and graduate students Brit Micho, Shan Ren, Andrea Fowler, and Kaoru Tamura.

is also an opportunity to show off some wonderful new acquisitions, and take some old friends out of the vault. We were also pleased to collaborate with faculty member Emily Eliza Scott of the History of Art and Architecture and Environmental Studies programs, whose graduate students wrote short gallery texts for the show. On Earth will be on view through April 16, 2023.

I’m happy to salute our recent show by Lewis Watts, and refer readers to the article on it in this issue of the magazine (page 10) and our new virtual tour of the show. It was a particular pleasure to have Lewis’s work on view in a show curated by Thom Sempere. Lewis is a longtime colleague of Thom’s from their time working with the Bay Area PhotoAlliance (sic). Lewis was on the faculty at UC Santa Cruz when I was there, too, where we collaborated on several projects—notably bringing Carrie Mae Weems to campus shortly after she received her MacArthur Fellowship.

I offer my profound thanks to last year’s Leadership Council President Ellen Tykeson, and Sarah Finlay, our LC Vice President, for helping shepherd the JSMA through the pandemic these past two years. Thank you, Ellen and Sarah, from all of us at the museum! You have been true partners and such a pleasure to work with. Looking forward, I’m delighted to welcome Patti Barkin as our new LC President, working with Sarah Finlay, who will again serve as our Vice President. You’ll be a great team, and I look forward to working together in the coming year and beyond. I also want to say a warm thanks and farewell to Randy Stender, our former LC President, who helped guide me through my first year here.

Finally, a big thanks to all of our members who have come flooding back to the museum and renewed your memberships! It is great to see you here.

John S. Weber

$1,000,000 GRANT supports Chinese Photography Collection

The JSMA is honored to announce a $1,000,000 grant over five years from the W.L.S. Spencer Foundation to support the framing and crating, exhibitions, publications, and space renovations needed for the storage and teaching use of the Wadsworth Collection of Contemporary Chinese Photography. This grant also supports the first five years of a new curatorial position devoted to Chinese art, with a specialty in contemporary art and a capacity to curate traditional art.

Grant-funded activity began in summer 2022 and included the beginning phases of framing and crating the collection and preparations for the first major exhibition of the collection, Framing the Revolution. It will open in the Barker Gallery in January 2023.

With support from the grant, the JSMA has begun converting the former Ford Lecture Hall to a new, secure Collections Lab with space for crates, art storage, and classes to engage directly with art. The Wadsworth Collection of Contemporary Chinese Photography will be housed on moveable storage racks, with additional racks open for future growth of the JSMA collection. The new Collections Lab will offer the museum a powerful new means to teach with works from the Wadsworth Collection when they are not on view, and from other areas of the collection as well. Additional space renovations include converting the indoor café seating space to the new Ford Lecture Hall. With a nearby restroom, and the Faculty Lounge serving as a foyer to the space, it will be an excellent venue for lectures, programs, and receptions. The café will reopen in the future as a pick-up counter, and plans are underway to cover the south courtyard to provide comfortable year-round outdoor seating.

The JSMA is deeply grateful to the W.L.S. Spencer Foundation, Jack and Susy Wadsworth, and the entire Wadsworth family for this significant investment in the museum’s teaching mission. This support strengthens our foundation as an East Asian artfounded academic art museum and opens new opportunities for meaningful curatorial, academic, and visitor engagement with the contemporary art of China, while contributing to the museum’s overall teaching mission and capacity.

Stay tuned for more information in the months ahead about the curatorial position, exhibition details, and the launch of the Collections Lab!

Lewis Watts in his exhibition, with portraits of Angela Y. Davis, Ramekon O'Arwisters, Mildred Howard, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Barker

Ideas about the American West, both in popular culture and in commonly accepted historical narratives, are often based on a past that never was, and fail to take into account important events that actually occurred. The exhibition Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea examines the perspectives of 48 modern and contemporary artists who offer a broader and more inclusive view of this region, which too often has been dominated by romanticized myths and Euro-American historical accounts.

Featuring artwork from the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and four partner museums in the western region of the United States, Many Wests is the culmination of a multi-year, joint curatorial initiative made possible by the Art Bridges Foundation. Along with JSMA, the SAAM’s collaborating partners include the Boise Art Museum (Boise, Idaho); the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Salt Lake City, Utah); and the Whatcom Museum (Bellingham, Washington). “This nationally touring exhibition, organized through a deeply collaborative process with our colleagues, presents the opportunity to see the West anew through the eyes of diverse modern and contemporary artists,” said Stephanie Stebich, the Margaret and Terry Stent Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. “Thanks to the generous support and encouragement from Art Bridges to think differently about how art is seen in communities across the United States, we see this as a model for both collection sharing and better understanding the rich and varied, and sometimes contradictory, stories of the American people and their histories.” The artists featured in this exhibition reveal that “the West” has always been a place of many stories, experiences, and cultures.

Gallery | September 28 - December 18, 2022

Above: James Lavadour (American, Walla Walla, b. 1951). Fire and Bones , 1990-91. Oil on linen, 31 x 62 in. Boise Art Museum Permanent Collection, Museum Purchase, 1993

Opposite: Wendy Maruyama (American, b. 1952). Minidoka (detail), from the Tag Project, 2011. Paper, ink, string, and thread, 132 x 24 in. Boise Art Museum Permanent Collection, Collectors Forum Purchase, 2015

2022 Winner of the Western Museums Association's Charles Redd Award for Exhibition Excellence!

Many Wests presents an opportunity to examine previous misconceptions, question racist clichés, and highlight the multiple communities and histories that continue to form this iconic region of the United States. Working in various media, from painting and sculpture to photography and mixed media, the artists featured bring a nuanced and multifaceted history to light. Many Wests highlights many voices, especially those of artists who identify as Black, Indigenous, Asian American, Latinx, and LGBTQ+. Artworks are organized around three central themes: Caretakers, Memory Makers, and Boundary Breakers. “Caretakers” examines how artists can redefine what it means to take care of themselves, their communities, and their futures. Featured artists include Ka’ila FarrellSmith (Klamath Modoc), Awa Tsireh/ Alfonso Roybal (San Ildefonso Pueblo), Patrick Nagatani, and Marie Watt (Seneca). “Memory Makers” explores how artists act as transmitters of cultural memory as they bring forth neglected histories of the West through their work, and includes artists Jacob Lawrence, Roger Shimomura, Christina Fernandez, and others. “Boundary Breakers” includes artists whose representations break away from myths of the West and assert their continued presence despite centuries of omission and erasure by mainstream culture. Featured artists include Angela Ellsworth, Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke/Crow), and Angel Rodríguez-Díaz.

JSMA is pleased to share works by Rick Bartow (Wiyot), Ka’ila Farrell-Smith, V. Maldonado, Rubén Trejo, and Marie Watt from the permanent collection. Our museum was selected to participate as the Oregon representative in this project after a site-visit by SAAM staff in 2018 to learn about our exhibition programming, collections, and commitment to academic engagement. Phase 1 of this collaboration was an invitation for JSMA to select two major works (Farm Workers’ Altar, 1967, by Emanuel Martinez and Braceros, 1960, by Domingo Ulloa) from the SAAM’s collection for loan to our 2019-20 Common Seeing exhibition, Resistance as Power: A Curatorial Response to "Under the Feet of Jesus."

"For Phase 2, we had the opportunity to share works from our collection of Pacific Northwest art that represent the excellence and important perspectives of artists working in our region," explains Danielle Knapp, JSMA’s McCosh Curator and Many Wests project lead. "Of the five works selected from JSMA for this exhibition, four were recent acquisitions in support of our annual Common Seeing programming at JSMA—demonstrating the cross-cultural and crossdisciplinary connections between these artists’ practices and our academic mission."

Knapp’s colleagues in organizing Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea were Amy Chaloupka, curator of art at the Whatcom Museum; Melanie Fales, executive director/CEO of the Boise Art Museum; Whitney Tassie, senior curator and curator of modern and contemporary art at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts; E. Carmen Ramos, former curator of Latinx Art and Art Bridges Initiative Project Director at SAAM (now Chief Curatorial and Conservation Officer at the National Gallery of Art), and Anne Hyland, the Art Bridges Initiative curatorial coordinator at SAAM.

Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea national tour: Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID (July 31 to February 13, 2022)

Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA (March 19, 2022 to August 21, 2022)

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR (September 28, 2022 to December 18, 2022)

Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (February 4, 2023 to June 11, 2023)

Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. (July 28, 2023 to January 14, 2024)

Danielle Knapp, JSMA McCosh Curator, with Amy Chaloupka, Whatcom Museum Curator of Art, in front of Bitterns by Alfredo Arreguín in Many Wests at Bellingham, WA, in March 2022.

What is the current state of the natural world, and what is humanity’s responsibility to our environment?

How does art record the impact of human activity, including industrialization and extraction practices, global trade, and migration, on our climate and environment?

How do human and animal interactions take place today in the ecology we share?

What is the relationship between ecological shifts and human rights issues, including food justice, spatial justice, access to clean water, and environmental racism?

Where do art and science intersect, and what can be learned from art that documents or responds to our most pressing environmental issues?

What can humans do to change course?

Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Gallery | through April 16, 2023

Above: Installation view of On Earth including the full view of Claire Burbridge's Insect Universe

Right: Claire Burbridge (British, b. 1971). Insect Universe (detail), 2015. Pen and ink on Arches paper, 35 1/4 x 35 1/4 in. Museum purchase through the Hartz FUNd for Contemporary Art

On Earth: A Fragile Existence presents works from the JSMA’s permanent collection that reflect a multi-layered understanding of humanity’s role in our shared ecology with the non-human, or more-than-human, world. In our current geological age, the Anthropocene, human activity exercises a dominant influence on the natural world, creating a time of staggering environmental change produced by incredible discovery, technological innovation, population growth, and industrialization. The works on view are presented as guideposts in considering these complex and urgent issues, and as a means to encourage reflection on our place, individually and collectively, within a shared global ecology. As witnesses and participants in this era, artists observe, record, interpret, advocate, and imagine. Along with their voices, the label texts in On Earth include perspectives from the exhibition’s curators and students focused on art, art history, environmental studies, and related topics. We thank the following undergraduate and graduate writers who contributed to the discussion in the gallery labels: Margaryta Golovchenko, Megan Hayes, Katrina Maggiulli, Morning Glory Ritchie, Raechel Root, and Joseph Sussi.

Featured pieces range in date from Eadweard Muybridge’s late nineteenthcentury collotype photographs of a pelican in motion, to Vanessa Renwick’s nine-color lithograph, printed in 2019, depicting a multi-generational wolf pack in Yellowstone National Park. Artists of ten different nationalities are included. A number of the works are new acquisitions to the permanent collection, including Berlinde de Bruyckere’s poignant and challenging sculpture K21 and a gift of nine photographs from the PhotoAlliance Board of Directors, on view at JSMA for the first time.

On Earth: A Fragile Existence was organized by JSMA curators Danielle Knapp (McCosh Curator) and Thom Sempere (Associate Curator of Photography), in collaboration with John S. Weber (Executive Director) and Anne Rose Kitagawa (Chief Curator of Collections & Asian Art and Director of Academic Programs), and with assistance from Morning Glory Ritchie (Mildred Bryant Brooks Student Intern in American Works on Paper). This exhibition supports the goals of the JSMA’s Faculty Engagement Working Group and the University of Oregon’s Environment Initiative, a campuswide coordinated effort to create an intellectual and active hub focused on higher education’s role and contribution to a just and livable future.

Spotlight on Vanessa Renwick’s disperse:

Developed using images of wolves from Yellowstone National Park (procured from biologists), Vanessa Renwick’s disperse draws a circle around where we are within the universe and the universe outside, the wolves and their shadows moving across the borders between life and death. But some of the wolves also transgress other boundaries: The small black wolf inside the circle, as described by Renwick, is the first wolf killed by federal government employees in the park once it became too friendly with humans—accepting sandwiches from tourists in cars.

Wolves in Yellowstone have a dynamic history, extirpated from the area in 1926; their presence there today is the result of one of the most successful reintroduction programs known to conservation. Often referred to as “rewilding,” the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone had massive impacts on the ecology of the region because of the wolves’ role as a keystone predator species. Their predation impacts on deer and elk altered the numbers and behavior of those grazing and browsing animals, returning foliage to the region and restoring habitat for numerous other species of wildlife— from birds to beavers. Relationships between humans and predator species have never been simple, making these types of restoration success stories few and far between. In most areas, these animals are never given a chance to establish before they are killed for perceived (or actual) threats to livestock or humans. How can we reconcile potentially divergent interests such as these? What kinds of common ground can we find between humans and wolves that might rebuild connection and avoid unnecessary death?

Katrina Maggiulli (PhD student, Environmental Sciences, Studies, and Policy and Department of English)

Vanessa Renwick (American, b. 1961). disperse, ed. 12/18, 2019. Nine-color lithograph with gold leaf, printed at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Pendleton, OR (Collaborating Master Printer Judith Baumann and Press Assistant Jaime Durham), 22 1/4 x 22 1/4 in. Museum purchase through the Hartz FUNd for Contemporary Art

Lewis Watts

Likeness or Not: Reflections from the African Diaspora

Focus

West Gallery | through September 4, 2022

Lewis Watts is a photographer, archivist and professor emeritus of art at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a longstanding interest in the cultural landscape of the African diaspora in the U.S. and internationally. He is the co-author of Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era.

The exhibition highlights an impressive grouping of photographs by Watts, gifted to the JSMA, that includes portraits of artists, activists, authors, and musicians, along with his sourcing of important historical publications acquired from archival holdings of African American cultural institutions.

“For more than 50 years, the thrust of my photography practice and research has been grounded by an interest in the culture, history, and migration of people of the African diaspora. This comes from my roots as the offspring of Southern born parents who traveled west as part of the Great Migration of the Twentieth Century. The work has evolved into a variety of related series, two of which are represented in the exhibition: portraits of folks who I have been drawn to photograph because they are not letting outside forces determine how they present themselves to the world and who seem to be comfortable in their own skins, and historical African American book covers and pages as both objects and reflections of the narrative of history and in some cases briefs for White supremacy.”

Lewis Watts

Organized by Thom Sempere, JSMA Associate Curator of Photography

Lewis Watts (American, b. 1946) Delphine Sims, Oakland, California, 2020. Archival pigment print. Gift of the Artist

Lonnie Graham’s A Conversation with the World

Artists Project Space

October 15, 2022 – April 3, 2023

Lonnie Graham is a photographer, installation artist, and cultural activist investigating methods by which the arts may be used to achieve tangible meaning in people’s lives. Based in Philadelphia, he is a Professor of Visual Art at Pennsylvania State University and has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trust, and the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts. For more than three decades, he has created a series of photographs titled Conversation with the World. Last year Graham generously donated seventeen prints from the series to the JSMA.

A Conversation with the World comprises work done in Africa, Asia, the Pacific Rim, Europe, and the Americas. Graham meets individuals and, through mutual trust, makes a portrait and records a conversation. Regardless of age, gender or nationality, all were asked the same eight questions pertaining to origins, family, life, death, values, tradition, and thoughts on Western Culture. Their individual portraits and responses make up the content of the project that the artist hopes will “delve beneath the superficial patina of cultural differences to explore the essential and fundamental motivations of human beings in order to clearly illustrate the bond that is inherently our humanity.”

Drawing Connections: Raymond Saunders with Laura Vandenburgh

Morris Graves Gallery | through December 18, 2022

The JSMA’s recent acquisition of Untitled by Raymond Saunders (American, b. 1934) marked the first work by this esteemed Bay Area painter and installation artist to enter the collection. Untitled combines many of the visual and thematic elements Saunders has repeated throughout his long artistic career. His work often references his public school education in Pittsburgh and his own role as an educator: as professor (now emeritus) at California State University in Hayward (now CSU East Bay) and as a core faculty member at the California College of Arts, from which he had received his MFA in 1961. Saunders was awarded a Rome Prize Fellowship (1964), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1976), and two National Endowment for the Arts Awards (1977, 1984). His 1967 pamphlet titled “Black Is a Color” challenged the notion of “Black art” as an identifiable, fixed category of art-making tied directly to an artist’s racial identity. In Saunders’ rejection of an easy reading of his own works, he celebrates the possibilities provided by jazz-like improvisation, multiple references, and layered meanings.

Untitled is presented in context with special loans of three drawings by Saunders from the collection of Laura Vandenburgh (Director, UO School of Art + Design; Associate Dean; and Professor of Art), and two works from Vandenburgh’s own drawing-based practice. The two artists have known one another for nearly five decades; Drawing Connections includes a reflection from Vandenburgh on the significance of this friendship and Saunders’ role in the development of her own artistic practice.

Raymond Saunders (American, b. 1934). Untitled , n.d. Mixed media on plywood, 60 1/4 x 48 1/8 in. Museum purchase with funds from the Edna Pearl Horton Memorial Endowment Fund, the Hartz FUNd, and the Museum Director's Fund

Lonnie Graham, American, b. 1954. Left: The Oracle, Leh, Ladakh, India , n.d.; center: Westphal, Harar, Ethiopia , n.d.; right: Man with Medallion, Westinghouse High School, Pittsburgh, PA , n.d.; all: gelatin silver prints, 20 x 16 in., gift of the artist

Works on view in our Korean and Japanese galleries

Fit to Print II: Constructing Japanese Modernity in Action and Body

Preble/Murphy Galleries | Opens August 20, 2022

This exhibition is the result of a Winter 2022 art history course taught by Professor Akiko Walley and Chief Curator Anne Rose Kitagawa that examined the transitional history of late 19th- and early 20th-century Japanese woodblock prints. The undergraduate and graduate students who took the course learned about prints of the Edo (1615-1868), Meiji (1868-1912), and Taishō (1912-1926) periods from the Irwin Lavenberg and Lee & Mary Jean Michels collections, including works formerly loaned for our first Fit to Print exhibition (closed July 3) and subsequently donated by the collectors. The course focused on the expressive and technical changes brought about by the introduction of Western print and photographic mediums and Japan’s mobilization of art for education, entertainment, and propaganda during the Meiji period. Students also learned about exhibition planning and design in order to collaborate on this installation and contribute original didactic materials addressing the historical context, content, and style of prints exploring themes of modernity, gender, war, and colonialism.

This is the first JSMA exhibition celebrating the extremely generous donations of 520+ Meiji prints from the Lavenberg Collection and the first group of over 150 Japanese prints from the Michels Collection. Together, these magnanimous gifts have transformed the JSMA into a major resource for the study of Meiji graphic arts (see pages 14-15). The exhibition also includes a selection of materials related to the Ainu (indigenous people of northern Japan) organized by Mac Coyle, Post-Graduate Curatorial Fellow in Asian Art (see next page for additional information).

KOBAYASHI Kiyochika (1847-1915). Japanese; Meiji period, 1895. Illustration of a Visit by the Empress to the General Staff Headquarters . Woodblock-printed vertical ōban triptych; ink and color on paper, 14 5/8 x 28 ½ in. Gift of Irwin Lavenberg, The Lavenberg Collection of Japanese Prints

YŌSHŪ Chikanobu (1838-1912). Japanese; Meiji period, 1891. Woman’s Public Speech, from the series Competition of Magic Lanterns Projecting the Heart . Woodblock print in vertical ōban format; ink and color on paper, 14 3/8 x 9 ½ in. Loan from the Lee & Mary Jean Michels Collection

Windows to the Ainu World

Digital Exhibition in Development | Available Fall, 2022

The Ainu are an indigenous people who, for centuries, have lived in diverse communities throughout the Sea of Okhotsk region, facilitating crosscultural contact and exchange until 19th-century colonial expansion carved their traditional homelands into Japanese and Russian territories. Although the colonial policies of the Ainu’s neighboring imperial powers had a devastating impact on numerous cultural practices, since the 1960s many activists have worked to revitalize traditions and petition the Japanese government for official recognition of their status as indigenous peoples, which was finally granted in 2019.

This upcoming digital exhibition highlights works at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, and draws from the collections at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History and the University of Oregon Special Collections and University Archives to survey, document, and unite the numerous Ainu-related materials at the University of Oregon. Comprised largely of paintings, prints, sketches, and glass lantern slides, many of these objects were created by secondhand observers, such as Japanese, British and American artists and travelers. These works offer a unique look at how the Hokkaido Ainu and their culture have been understood and represented by others throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and open conversations about the history of northern Japan, indigenous rights and agency, and colonialism as they relate to Ainu culture and society. This project is based primarily on the research of Mac Coyle, Post-Graduate Curatorial Fellow in Asian Art.

Devout Prayers: Korean Religious Paintings of the Joseon Dynasty and Beyond

Huh Wing/Jin Joo Gallery | through April 30, 2023

The JSMA owns a remarkable Korean painting of the Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha and the Ten Kings of Hell that was donated by museumfounder Gertrude Bass Warner (1863-1951). A bodhisattva is a compassionate Buddhist deity that postpones its own enlightenment to assist others along the same spiritual path, and Ksitigarbha who is always depicted with the shaven head, robes, and staff of a Buddhist monk is the merciful deity who saves those suffering in the underworld. In this painting, he is attended by the Ten Kings of Hell, fearsome judges who, based on the deceased’s activities in life, decide upon which Karmic path they will be reincarnated. This elegant painting was created circa 1600 but suffered damage over the ensuing centuries. Thanks to a generous 2014 grant from the Korean National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage (NRICH), it was expertly conserved and remounted at the Gochang Conservation Institute in Yongin, Gyeonggido. This is the first time the painting has been displayed since that treatment. This exhibition also features a selection of dazzling loans and gifts from the Portland-based collection of Robert and Sandra Mattielli. Colorful Buddhist, Daoist, Shamanistic, and auspicious folk paintings represent 18th, 19th, and early 20h-century Koreans’ devout wishes for longevity, prosperity, and good fortune, and give a sense of the variety and richness of sacred art in the second half of the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910).

Organized by Anna Kim, the JSMA’s 2021-22 Korea Foundation Global Challengers Intern; with profound gratitude to the NRICH and Gochang Conservation Institute master conservator SONG Jeongju and her staff in Korea.

Shaman’s Fan (Museon). Korean; late Joseon dynasty or Colonial period, circa late 19th-early 20th century. Folding fan; ink and color on paper, 16 ¼ x W. 32 ¼ in. On loan from the Robert and Sandra Mattielli Collection

Ainu Women, Monbetsu , late 19th-early 20th century, Gertrude Bass Warner photograph PH014_b031_005 reproduced with permission from University of Oregon Special Collectionsand University Archives

Tale of Two Collectors

Once upon a time, two Japanese print collections generously supported the museum’s teaching mission…

The JSMA is the extremely fortunate beneficiary of two spectacular gifts of 19th- and early 20th-century Japanese prints from two distinguished Oregon collections Portland-based collector Irwin Lavenberg, and Eugene-based collectors Lee and Mary Jean Michels. Lee Michels began collecting prints while stationed in Japan during his service as a Navy doctor. Fascinated by the culture and art he observed there, his first acquisitions were woodblock prints depicting war scenes from the Meiji period (1868-1912). After moving to Eugene to work as a radiologist, the collection expanded to reflect his wide-ranging interests in landscapes, gardening, fire-fighters, fishing, folktales, humor, theater, and examples of cross-cultural influence. Lee Michels has served on the museum’s Leadership Council for more than twenty years and he and Mary Jean have generously donated acquisition funds and loaned prints for exhibitions and curricular use by professors Akiko Walley (History of Art and Architecture) and Glynne Walley (East Asian Languages and Literatures), and Chief Curator Anne Rose Kitagawa. Dr. Michels also donates his time and expertise presenting to UO students and to the JSMA’s Education Department. Highlights from the first donation of 126 Japanese prints from the Michels collection include

From left: Irwin Lavenberg and Lee Michels with graduate students

UTAGAWA

a rare monumental Chutes-and-Ladders game depicting the FiftyThree Stations of the Tōkaidō by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) and the stunning ten-panel panorama Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō at a Glance by Utagawa Hiroshige II (1826-1869), along with all the works the collectors generously loaned for our 2021-22 exhibition Fit to Print: The Dawn of Journalism in Japanese Woodblock Prints from the Lavenberg and Michels Collections (co-curated by professors Akiko Walley and Glynne Walley for curricular use and to coincide with the JSMA’s Fall 2021 exhibition The Art of the News: Comics Journalism) and our new 202223 exhibition Fit to Print II: Constructing Japanese Modernity in Action and Body (co-curated by Akiko Walley, Anne Rose Kitagawa, and the students who took their Winter 2022 Japanese art history and museum studies course, for details see page 12).

Retired Sony engineer Irwin Lavenberg is well-known in Japanese art circles as the creator of the brilliant scholarly print resource myjapanesehanga.com (now hosted by UO), which provides images and detailed information for 2,000+ prints spanning the Meiji period through the 1970s from his personal collection. Inspired to collect by a 1998 exhibition of works by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) and Hiroshige, he visited an art dealer who explained that equally lovely, slightly later Japanese prints could be purchased at reasonable prices.

And so, Lavenberg began to collect, research, and share information about ukiyo-e (images of the floating world), shinhanga (new prints), and sōsaku hanga (creative prints). After twenty years of collecting, a chance encounter with Anne Rose Kitagawa at the Portland Print Fair resulted in a burgeoning friendship and extremely generous donations to the JSMA of a portfolio of 90+ Chinese propaganda images and over 520

Meiji-period Japanese prints, including all of those from the Lavenberg collection featured in Fit to Print and Fit to Print II. Lavenberg recently joined the JSMA’s Collections Committee, lent more prints for use in Akiko Walley and Kitagawa’s Winter 2022 Japanese print exhibition course, and graciously shared his time with the class. Highlights from his donation include a fascinating selection of shinbun nishiki-e (“brocade newspapers”) and kaika-e (“civilization pictures”) depicting Japan’s rapid modernization and westernization, propaganda prints depicting the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese warfronts, numerous works by pioneering artist Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915) and others, and a remarkable number of editions from the 1885-90 series Instructive Models of Lofty Ambition.

Donations of this magnitude are transformative. Generations of UO students and JSMA visitors will be educated, inspired, and provoked by the phenomenal prints from the Irwin Lavenberg and Lee & Mary Jean Michels collections. The combined strengths of their gifts have made the museum into a major repository of 19th- and early 20th-century Japanese art that will be a magnet for future students, scholars, and visitors.

Hiroshige (1797-1858). Japanese; Edo period, circa 1849-52. Tōkaidō Stations with Auspicious Poems selected by Hinokien Umeaki (1793-1859) Ukiyo-e woodblock printed e-sugoroku game; ink and color on paper, 32 ½ x 47 in. Gift of the Lee & Mary Jean Michels Collection

HASEGAWA Chikuyō (active circa 1876-1889). Japanese; Meiji period, 1886. Sericulture with Imperial Family. Woodblock-printed vertical ōban triptych; ink and color on paper, 13 ½ x 28 ³ ₁₆ in. Loan from the Lee & Mary Jean Michels Collection

YŌSHŪ Chikanobu (1838-1912). Japanese; Meiji period, 1878. Mirror of Our Country’s Revered Deities and Esteemed Emperors . Woodblock printed vertical ō ban triptych; ink and color on paper, 14 3/8 x 28 7/8 in. Gift of Irwin Lavenberg, The Lavenberg Collection of Japanese Prints

KOBAYASHI Kiyochika (1847-1915). Japanese; Meiji period, 1885. Gen’ichiro Fukuchi from the series Instructive Models of Lofty Ambition. Woodblock print in vertical ōban format; ink and color on paper, 13 5/8 x 9 1/8 in. Gift of Irwin Lavenberg, The Lavenberg Collection of Japanese Prints

Shared Visions

Kevin Beasley (American, b. 1985). Site V, 2022. Polyurethane resin, raw Virginia cotton, housedresses, t-shirts, confetti t-shirts, altered t-shirts, confetti housedresses, du-rags. Collection of Lizzie and Steve Blatt

Born and raised in Lynchburg, Virginia, Kevin Beasley grew up near land passed down through generations of his family’s history. The artist received a BFA from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and an MFA from Yale University before moving to New York, where he currently operates a large studio in Long Island City. Beasley is interested in memories, cultural references, and historical records of the American South, particularly how ideas of place manifest in personal objects and materials. In his series of relief “slab sculptures,” the artist preserves raw Virginia cotton, clothing items, fabrics, sports equipment, and other found material in resin. In his recent work, these sculptures are often paired with sound installations that play field recordings or allow the artist to perform live in the gallery space.

Site V features materials intricately tied to the Black experience in the American South. With du-rags, confetti t-shirts, and flowered housedresses cemented in resin, Beasley works to reclaim power in African American identity and fashion. Though these items are personal, they point to collective experience and reflect how local industries, materials, and objects are tied to American history and culture. According to the artist: “As materially-oriented as I am, it’s all because there is a context for those materials.” This “slab sculpture” was recently included in Beasley’s 2022 solo exhibition, On Site, at Regen Projects in Los Angeles.

NEW ACQUISITION

Red Pool by esteemed Oregon painter and printmaker George Johanson depicts a playful group of bathers swimming and splashing in iridescent water, with hazy views of the Columbia River Gorge visible beyond broad black stripes. JSMA holds a selection of Johanson’s prints and drawings spanning the 1940s-1980s; this new acquisition, a gift from the artist’s family, is the first painting of this large size (and on a shaped canvas) and this subject matter—one of his recurring themes—to enter the collection.

Johanson studied at Portland’s Museum Art School in the late 1940s, after which he spent three years in New York City (1950-53) and two years in Mexico (1953-55). His work at mid-century showed the influence of Abstract Expressionism, but Johanson maintained an interest in figuration that set his body of work apart. In 1955, he began a 25 year teaching career at the Museum Art School (now Pacific Northwest College of Art). Johanson’s distinctive style solidified in the 1970s after two sabbaticals in London. In the decades since his retirement, he has devoted himself full-time to his studio practice, creating works featuring a number of favorite subjects (among them, portraits, boaters, parade watchers, and panoramas of Portland, volcanic activity, and animals), and marked by bold color and fantastical elements.

George Johanson (American, b. 1928). Red Pool, 1983. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 70 x 79 ½ in. Gift of Van Le and Aaron Johanson

Continuing Exhibitions

After Life: The Saints of Russian and Greek Orthodoxy

On view through June 30, 2022

A New Woman: Clara Barck Welles, Inspiration & Influence in Arts & Crafts Silver

On view through October 2, 2022

Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos) pearly gates

On view through October 02, 2022

A New Woman Documents the Life and Work of Clara Barck Welles

Order A New Woman online at https://jsma.uoregon.edu/Publications

Published in conjunction with the exhibition, A New Woman: Clara Barck Welles, Inspiration and Influence in Arts & Crafts Silver, the JSMA’s eponymous catalog is now available for purchase at the Museum Store. It documents the life, work, and social activism of one of America’s great woman entrepreneurs, Clara Barck Welles, who came across the Rockies in a covered wagon as a girl and grew up on a farm outside of Oregon City. After study at the new Art Institute of Chicago, Welles founded the Kalo Shop, an artisan workshop and retail enterprise that went on to become the most influential force in American Arts & Crafts silver through the first half of the 20 th century. The JSMA’s lavishly illustrated catalogue shows why, and features essays by Sharon S. Darling and Darcy L. Evon, two of the top experts in Arts & Crafts silver. Featuring many works donated to the JSMA by distinguished interior architect and UO alumna Margo Grant Walsh, the exhibition closes in October before heading to San Francisco and a spring opening at the San Francisco Airport Museum.

November 1 & 2

In November the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art will collaborate with Armando Morales, Rebeca Urhausen, Oak Hill School, MEChA de UO, and Adelante Sí for the 41st annual celebration of el Día de los Muertos. Check our website in October for updates on this annual celebration, and sign up for our e-news emails for invitations and this year’s lineup!

https://jsma.uoregon.edu/dayofthedead

Lewis Watts: “Faces and Places in the Diaspora” Watch Lewis's Watts public talk for School of Art + Design presenting Thursday, May 19th, 2022 co-sponsored by the JSMA.

Jean-Michel Basquiat's Self Portraits: A talk by Fred Hoffman

Education

Tykeson Family Foundation

GRANT ANNOUNCEMENT

The JSMA is honored to announce a recent $350,000 grant from the Tykeson Family Foundation to support Art Heals for four years. The grant builds on the success of the program and will support publication of the Art Heals Curriculum Workbook, dissemination of research and curriculum, staffing and graduate student training, and expanding access to rural patients and participants. Thank you to the Tykeson Family Foundation for investing in Art Heals and our region.

Art Heals: Whole Personhood in Medical Education

The pandemic has provided unexpected growth and opportunities for the museum’s Art Heals program. Thanks to support from the Barker Foundation, we have been able to expand the number of participants we are reaching each week with remote art workshops for patients, physicians, and hospice care providers. In addition, we have been given the opportunity to develop and test a new curriculum for over 650 3rd year medical students at Oregon Health Science University (OHSU). In 2020, the JSMA embarked on an ambitious research project with OHSU entitled Whole Personhood in Medical Education. The purpose of this study was to understand the impact of a humanities-based medical education curriculum developed by the JSMA Education staff (Lisa Abia-Smith and Hannah Bastian) and faculty from OHSU (Dr. Elizabeth Lahti, Dr. Cirila Estela Vasquez Guzman, Dr. Natalie Lanocha, and Dr. Brian Park) that specifically explores the intersection of the arts and bias, openness, and wellbeing. Our aims were to (1) recognize and undo one’s bias with regard to BIPOC, disability, and LGBTQ+ communities; (2) increase openness to multiple perspectives; (3) provide a space for reflection to encourage improvement of personal wellbeing; and (4) demonstrate the impact of vulnerability on encouraging a community of whole personhood.

From January 2021 through December 2021, a team of ten medical faculty and JSMA educators led 105-minute class sessions as part of the required classes at OHSU called Intersessions, which are taught between terms of core courses. Themes of the intersessions were Cancer, Cognitive Impairment, Pain, and Infection. All artwork and reading materials were created by BIPOC, persons with disability, or LGBTQ+ individuals. Students were divided into groups of 6-10 and each of the facilitators were trained in narrative medicine facilitation skills. The team is in the process of interpreting the data and will publish our findings in two medical journals, one museum professional journal, and will present and disseminate our findings at medical humanities conferences beginning in 2023.

Eugene Online Academy Utilizes “Zoom Into Your Room,” a JSMA Remote Tour Experience

Since early 2021, the JSMA has been offering online experiences of museum tours and art discussions tailored to the needs of K-12 teachers. Although schools have returned to in-person classes, many students and families have found that the consistency and focus of an accessible online education works best for them. And this year, thanks to Adrienne Colaizzi, former Exhibition Interpreter, who teaches second grade at Eugene Online Academy, the JSMA now has a solid partnership with this important 4J School District educational program.

Eugene Online Academy (EOA) allows student work to be completed off campus, asynchronously with support by teachers in regular video meetings. Using Art Teaches curriculum, Sherri Jones, Assistant Administrator of Education, has been meeting Colaizzi’s 2nd grade classrooms every few weeks for an art literacy discussion of works on view in the Soreng Gallery. Exhibition Interpreters (EIs) have been shadowing these remote tours so that Zoom into Your Room can be a continued service to K-12 educators.

Hear My Voice

I think it’s a very crucial time where we need to hear from the public and less about the public.

—Hank Willis Thomas

Education Hallways | through February 12, 2023

Four years ago, the JSMA created an annual museum education program for UO students to engage in conversations about race, identity, representation, and misrepresentation. The goal was to provide students with a space to create art and engage in dialogues about their experiences and fears as they navigate their lives as young adults. The projects begin with conversations facilitated by UO students and museum staff and integrate art production and writing as part of the process. The program culminates in an exhibition of student artwork that is displayed in the museum’s Education Corridor Hallways.

This year’s project, Hear My Voice, was led and curated by UO art students Kayla Lockwood (2022, ATCH BFA) and Malik Lovette (2024, M.Arch). The exhibition documents multiple community conversations with UO students, primarily students of color, and documents their experiences surrounding stereotyping. The project team represented each participants’ authentic view of their identity with the critical and reflective dispositions that accompany their personal development.

Art of the Athlete: Pay it Forward

Education Hallways | through February 12, 2023

This year’s Art of the Athlete (AofA) exhibition highlights four alumni of the AofA program and their contributions as they returned to share their time and talents to work on the museum’s education programs with UO students, youth in our World of Work program, and outreach programs for children identified as at-risk and enduring trauma. The former student-athletes and AofA alumni who participated were Tony Washington, Jr., Malik Lovette, Dexter Myers (football), and Erin Boley (women’s basketball).

Many of the self-portraits on display were created by freshman student-athletes who recently arrived on campus to start their college journey. As part of their orientation to campus, the new UO coach for Player Development, Tony Washington, Jr. requested that we provide a workshop on self-portraits as part of their group bonding and immersion program. Inspired by the art of contemporary artist Titus Kaphar, whose work centers around layers of identity, Lisa Abia-Smith, JSMA Director of Education, and Hannah Bastian, Museum Educator-Studio, worked with the students on a series of exercises focusing on internal and external identities which resulted in the self-portraits on view today.

Other examples of self-portraits on display were created by students who illustrated their faces with words and lyrics to express their values, identities, and struggles as they process death of loved ones, sacrifices made, and hopes for the future.

In Memoriam: Spencer Webb

July 13, 2022.  Spencer Webb passed away after a tragic accident. He was part of the Art of the Athlete program for a year and enthusiastically embraced making art as a way to express himself. He verbalized his appreciation for finding this new medium to explore his feelings.

Last summer he started to work on his self-portrait and expressed how much he “needed this in my life right now.”  The day he passed away, he was in class with JSMA director of education, Lisa Abia-Smith, sharing how proud he was of his art and how making art helped him to work through some memories from the past and how he was able to get clarity for the future.

Spencer was a bright light and he will be sorely missed by so many at the UO who were fortunate to know him.

Development News

Judy and David Berg

How did you become active in environmental conservation?

Judy: The inspiration began 50 years ago while an undergrad. Through a college professor, David and I became involved in the development of a new Audubon chapter. That singular event propelled me through a years-long course of study, culminating with a graduate degree specializing in wildlife behavior. Making a contribution with my life has always been paramount, so I set my course on studying endangered species to be an influencing factor towards their preservation. From African Elephants, Okapi, Serow and Goral (in a-typical captivity), to River Otters and Beavers (in Rocky Mountain National Park), I spent forty years doing field and library research, writing in science journals, giving presentations, and contributing as much as I could to benefit these and other wildlife species. My career culminated with writing two natural history books of creative non-fiction on River Otters and Beavers, intended to confer to our readers “a genuine appreciation of these marvelous animals and the environment they call home.”

David: I have to say my inspiration came from Judy’s enthusiasm about her studies and her career’s work. For both of us, as her work progressed, so did our awareness of the fragility of our planet and its wildlife citizens. As time allowed, I volunteered time for local Audubon chapters in various capacities. After retirement, I set my sights on applying my career skills in data management and analytics to environmental conservation. When I approached The Nature Conservancy, they welcomed my contribution. In the end, I compiled over 11,000 volunteer hours in conservation project data management over the course of fifteen years. Today, I mostly stay abreast of environmental issues, particularly as they affect wildlife, writing letters, signing petitions, and lobbying government officials on the value of natural systems to preservation of the planet.

What does being a JSMA member mean to you? It means being a part of the art community along with others who care about the creative process. Artists convey much to those who take the time to view and think about what they are viewing. Much of the entire course of human history has been exhibited here in every texture and palette imaginable, bringing us closer to events that shape our lives. Paramount, for us, it means being able to connect the dots between art and Nature, such as with Dreams Before Extinction and the current exhibit On Earth: A Fragile Existence. Personally, the words of Vincent Van Gogh convey our thoughts: “Keep your love of Nature, for that is the true way to learn to understand art. Painters understand Nature and love her and teach us to see her.”

What has been your favorite JSMA exhibition?

Naeemeh Naeemaei’s Dreams Before Extinction and Under the Earth, Over the Moon. To quote JSMA’s own preamble to the exhibit, “Through deeply personal narratives ... the artist awakens emotional concern not only for the animals in question, but also for the environment as a whole.”

Kavous Seyed-Emami’s foreword in the accompanying text adds: “... artists have the ability to connect to a general audience on an emotional level and thereby promote awareness of the need for nature conservation.”

What can we do to help keep our environment safe?

The preamble to the On Earth exhibit says it best: “The Anthropocene, our current geological age in which human activity is the dominant influence on the natural world, is a time of ... staggering environmental change.” Earth, today, faces two existential crises: biodiversity extinction and climate change. Neither is going away, unless and until humans change our behavior away from feeding the planet a diet of resource consumption and pollution. There needs to be a major paradigm shift away from consumerism towards Nature preservation. “Think globally, act locally.” Be a wiser consumer. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Eschew singleuse plastics. Be a wiser gardener. Leave the leaves to break down and nourish the land, and to provide wintering habitat for pollinating insects. Grow native plants that attract pollinators and rain gardens that filter runoff.

What books have you recently read?

Half Earth by the late E.O. Wilson that promotes setting aside half the planet for natural systems, and When Mountain Lions are Neighbors by Beth Pratt Bergstrom that talks about coexisting with urban wildlife.

What do you wish others knew about the JSMA?

Only that the museum provides many outstanding resource opportunities for the University and for the community. It is an invaluable teaching resource for students and scholars, as well as offering a wealth of art experiences for people of all ages, backgrounds, and demographics.

David and Judy Berg have been members of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art since 2006. They have dedicated their lives to advocating for environmental conservation and wildlife preservation.

Leadership Council News

The JSMA celebrates the contributions and service of Ellen Tykeson, Randy Stender, Erica Rife, Morning Glory Ritchie, and Jeff “Hawk” Hawkins, whose terms on the Council concluded in June 2022. Ellen Tykeson, President of the Council since 2020, has led the Council through two years of uncertainty with poise, thoughtfulness, and an enduring commitment to the mission of the JSMA. Her early tenure saw the implementation of two new committees devoted to advancing the museum’s Education and Communications & Engagement efforts. In addition to serving on multiple committees during her tenure on the Council, Ellen has been an ardent champion of the museum’s Art Heals programs.

As Council President from 2018-2020, Randy Stender led the Council through the Executive Director transition and the early days of the pandemic with keen and pragmatic insights. Randy also chaired the Development Committee for several years and led creative efforts

Leadership Council Announcements

The JSMA and Leadership Council are pleased to announce a new leadership team for the Council beginning in July 2022. Patti Barkin will step into the President role for a two-year term with Sarah Finlay continuing as Vice President. A long-time Exhibition Interpreter and supporter of the JSMA, Patti is well-versed in the museum’s collections and educational mission and will be a strong advocate for the museum in this role. The JSMA is grateful to Patti and Sarah for their willingness to serve the Council and the museum in their roles and looks forward to celebrating their contributions.

The Leadership Council also welcomes back Paul Peppis. A former Leadership Council Member and Liaison for the JSMA Faculty Engagement Working Group, Paul Peppis is an award-winning teacher and scholar of Anglo-American modernisms, Professor of English, and Director of the Oregon Humanities Center. Welcome back, Paul!

Thanks for supporting DucksGive!

Thank you to everyone who supported the JSMA during DucksGive 2022! Thanks to dozens of donors and advocates, Ducks Give raised $14,125 from 57 gifts for the acquisition of Oklahoma by Hung Liu. Inspired by Dorothea Lange’s iconic American images from the 1930s Dustbowl era, Oklahoma offers rich learning opportunities for faculty, students, and K-12 audiences. We’re thrilled for the support to keep it at the JSMA!

to engage the museum’s members, donors, visitors, and students, which will benefit the museum for years to come.

Erica Rife and Morning Glory Ritchie served as student representatives on the Council for academic year 2021-2022. Erica recently completed a Masters in Nonprofit Management and certificate in Arts and Culture Leadership at the UO and brought several years of nonprofit leadership experience to her time on the Council, in addition to working with the JSMA’s Education team over the past year.

Morning Glory Ritchie is a 4th year Art History and Art student, minoring in Classics and Italian at the Clark Honors College at the UO, and has worked as a gallery monitor and curatorial intern at the JSMA and as an intern at the Springfield History Museum. Morning Glory brought her unique experience as a lifelong Eugene resident and current student to the Council and the Collections Committee. In his time on the Council, Jeff “Hawk” Hawkins, Senior Associate Athletic Director of HDC Administration and Operations, facilitated deeper connections between the JSMA and UO Athletics that will sustain greater collaboration in the future.

The JSMA is deeply grateful to Randy, Ellen, Hawk, Erica, and Morning Glory for their service to the Leadership Council and museum.

“I’m honored to serve as President and work with our strong and talented Leadership Council as we emerge from the challenging times of the pandemic.  The reopening of the museum ensures that the JSMA can again enhance the UO’s academic mission and bring back the larger community to learn from, appreciate and enjoy the visual arts.  I hope to help broaden our impact and increase participation by carrying on the tradition of the JSMA being fully accessible, welcoming, and inclusive to all who want to visit.”

—Patti Barkin, above right

“I am so happy to continue as vice president for a second term and am delighted to be working with Patti Barkin, our incoming president. I look forward to supporting our Council and staff as we develop our long-range planning. I am proud that we continue to ask ourselves the important questions, while assessing and implementing initiatives and programs that embrace, reflect, and engage our diverse communities (both on and off campus) through the visual arts.”

—Sarah Finlay, above left

So Long, Bethanie!

Bethanie Nix, the JSMA’s head of facilities and security, is moving to Rockland, Maine, where she’ll take a similar position at the Farnsworth Art Museum. Comparable in size to the JSMA with 20,000 square feet of galleries, the Farnsworth has an excellent collection of sculpture by Louise Nevelson, and major bodies of work by Andrew, N.C., and Jamie Wyeth, plus works by the many artists who were inspired by the rugged beauty of the state and its coastline. We thank Bethanie for her good work at the museum during the challenging time of the pandemic, and we wish her and her wife Crystal and their three black cats a wonderful future on the East Coast.

SHOP OUR RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Cuban Contemporary Art: History, Materiality, Identity

Curated by retired JSMA executive director Jill Hartz, this book documents the museum's traveling exhibition, Cuban Contemporary Art: History, Materiality, Identity. Drawing on the museum’s collection, it was on view in 2021 and 2022 at the Schneider Museum of Southern Oregon University and the Boise Art Museum.

Art of the News: Comics Journalism

Art of the News: Comics Journalism is the first publication documenting the emergence of this important new form of expression over the past two decades. Featuring internationally published UO alum Joe Sacco and an equally international cast of comics journalists, the book documents the JSMA’s show of the same name, curated by UO faculty member Katherine Kelp-Stebbins.

A New Woman: Clara Barck Welles, Inspiration & Influence in Arts & Crafts Silver

A New Woman: Clara Barck Welles, Inspiration & Influence in Arts & Crafts Silver documents the JSMA’s show about the life, work, social activism, and influence of Oregon-raised Clara Barck Welles, founder and artistic head of the Kalo Shop, the nation’s most influential Arts & Crafts Movement producer of handwrought silver.

Order Art of the News | Comics Journalism, Contemporary Cuban Art | History, Identity, and Materiality, and A New Woman: Clara Barck Welles, Inspiration & Influence in Arts & Crafts Silver online at https://jsma.uoregon.edu/Publications

Dr. Adriana Miramontes Olivas has joined the curatorial team at the University of Oregon’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art as the new Curator of Academic Programs and Latin American & Caribbean Art.

Miramontes Olivas recently earned her PhD in Art History at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and holds an MA in Art History from the University of Texas at San Antonio. In 2008, she earned her BA in Art from the University of Texas at El Paso.

“The museum is delighted to have Dr. Miramontes Olivas join us in this crucial curatorial position,” said John Weber, JSMA Executive Director. “She’ll be working with UO faculty and students across the curriculum, fostering the growth of Latin American and Caribbean exhibitions and collection, and engaging the Latinx community on campus and off. She emerged from a national search as the unanimous choice of our search committee and brings strong scholarly background, gallery and classroom teaching experience, and new curatorial insights to our program. With a strong foundation in Latin American art history and global contemporary art, she’s poised to move the museum forward, and we are eager to start working together.”

The Curator of Academic Programs and Latin American & Caribbean Art will oversee the Latinx collection, which has been one of the fastest growing areas of art for the museum. Since 2010, the JSMA has accessioned 462 Latinx works, more than doubling the previous collection. The museum also connects with over 10,000 university students annually through the academic outreach from this position. Miramontes Olivas will also manage the JSMA’s annual Día de los Muertos Celebration held on November 1 and 2.

Miramontes Olivas brings a variety of museum and academic experience to the role, having worked as the Assistant in Museum and Community Engagement in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh, where she also served as a Teaching Fellow lecturing on World Art. She has also worked for the art gallery at The University of Texas at San Antonio, the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at the University of Texas, El Paso, and the El Paso Museum of Art.

The UO’s Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

appoints Dr. Adriana Miramontes Olivas as new Curator of Academic Programs and Latin American & Caribbean Art

"I am delighted to join the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and the University of Oregon communities. I am grateful for this opportunity to contribute to their ongoing efforts in the pursuit of equity and inclusion in the arts and society at large and I look forward to fostering and maintaining diverse spaces where visibility, agency, learning, and creativity are encouraged through intellectual exchanges and collaborations," says Miramontes Olivas. This is an exciting time for Latinx artists and art from Latin America and the Caribbean. As we continue to contest these categories and to redefine the discipline of art history and its institutions, I am eager to engage in these conversations through academic and exhibition programming and working with the collection and la comunidad Latina.”

“The hire of Dr. Miramontes Olivas signals the JSMA’s ongoing commitment to diverse and engaged art exhibition programs where education is at the core,” says UO School of Journalism Professor and search committee member Gabriela Martinez. “It also highlights the importance of continuing to grow the Latin American and Caribbean collection and related exhibitions. The professional and lived experiences Dr. Miramontes Olivas brings will enrich the artistic, intellectual and educational connections between the JSMA and faculty and students across disciplinary boundaries while also strengthening the existing ties to local and state Latinx communities. I’m excited to welcome Dr. Miramontes Olivas.”

In addition to the hiring announcement, the JSMA is pleased to announce an anonymous gift to support the museum’s Curator of Academic Programs and Latin American & Caribbean Art in perpetuity.  The gift includes an endowment that will fund the full costs of staffing and benefits and support curatorial work and public programs, community engagement, and activities which further the Museum’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and engagement with the Latinx community. The gift will also support the position and programming for the 2022-2023 academic year, before the endowment distributes earnings. This generous gift recognizes the JSMA’s long-standing commitment to the museum’s academic mission and its engagement with the Latin American community in Oregon and beyond.

arts seen captions

1. The East-West Kung Fu Lion Dancers perform at the JSMA’s Summer Reception and Asian Celebration Art Exhibition opening in July.

2. Jeffrey Finell, Zahzah the Dog, and JSMA’s ace staffer, Lesley Williams, with a tiger and tigerappropriate ears at the Summer Reception, seen in a photo by JSMA Communications ace, John Adair, who manned the Photo Booth.

3. Visitors in the On Earth, A Fragile Existence exhibition this summer.

4. David Tam, Asian Celebration Event Director and JSMA Communications & Engagement Leadership Council Committee member, addresses the crowd at the Summer Reception.

5. Drum performance by Eugene Taiko group at the Summer Reception.

6. Clarinet solo by UO Music Associate Professor Wonkak Kim for the Summer Reception.

7. JSMA staffer Christin Newell (left) and UO faculty members Glynne Walley (right) and Maram Epstein (2nd right), work with nationally visiting faculty and grad students in a National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar to study Chinese and Japanese literature using objects in the museum’s collection.

8. UO students working on a class assignment in On Earth, Spring Semester, 2022.

9. JSMA chief curator Anne Rose Kitagawa with a student in the Soreng Gallery.

10. A UO student in Remember This: Hung Liu at Trillium

11. Students studying Ruth Asawa’s work on view in the museum’s Preble Murphy Gallery.

12. Kyungsook Cho Gregor (center), this year’s 2021 Gertrude Bass Warner award winner, at the ceremony honoring her during the summer Leadership Council Emeriti Luncheon, with outgoing Leadership Council President Ellen Tykeson (right), Susan Cox (center-right), and Anne Rose Kitagawa (left).

13-14. Incoming UO athletes participating in the 2022 Art of the Athlete summer program. They worked with JSMA Leadership Council member and Art of the Athlete alum, Tony Washington, the JSMA's Director of Education, Lisa AbiaSmith, and UO students Saher Alladin and Gregorii Malakhov.

15. A proud JSMA Summer Art Camp participant shows off her creation.

Phone: 541-346-3027

Fax: 541-346-0976

Website: http://jsma.uoregon.edu

Hours

Wednesday: 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.

Thursday - Sunday: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Academic visits by appointment