The Nasher / Fall 2017 by Nasher Sculpture Center

THE NASHER FA L L 2017

Tom Sachs, Tea Ceremony Prep List, Tea Ceremony Manual, 2016. Courtesy of the Artist. Â© Tom Sachs

seemed to me that it was sculpture that had the greatest range and diversity, and provided for the expression of the widest array of sensibilities and purposes. And across each one of these exhibitions—all surveys of contemporary art—the presence of history was deeply felt; histories and art histories of cities, peoples, and nations, as well as the art of the progenitors whose work undergirds the most recent manifestations. So along with the many discoveries, there were significant rediscoveries. It was interesting, for example, to see the work of choreographer Anna Halprin featured in Venice, and that of Anna and her late husband, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin— responsible for the landscape design of NorthPark—given extensive treatment in Athens and Kassel.

This summer, I had the tremendous good fortune to visit the major contemporary exhibitions held in Athens, Kassel, Münster, and Venice. This once-in-a-decade confluence was both exhilarating and exhausting, as each show spread across an entire city, and each offered moments of inspiration and surprise, measures of delight and perturbance. I hope I’ll be forgiven for feeling some pride at the prominence accorded to a number of artists with whom the Nasher Sculpture Center has been associated. Nasher Prize 2017 Laureate Pierre Huyghe’s amazing transformation of an unused skating rink in Münster was a standout, while Michael Dean’s haunting installation that filled an interior court in that city’s art museum built on, and advanced, his exhibition at the Nasher earlier this year. Representing Britain at the Venice Biennale, Phyllida Barlow seemed almost to assault the polite classical architecture of that nation’s pavilion, while Rick Lowe developed an extraordinary community project in Athens, as part of documenta 14, related in important ways to his work for Nasher XChange, Trans.lation Vickery Meadow. Seeing projects by Nairy Baghramian and Carol Bove—the former in Athens, Kassel, and Münster, and the latter in Venice—made me all the more eager to see realized those artists’ forthcoming Nasher projects. So great was the profusion of art on view this summer, and so considerable its multiplicity, that generalization can be difficult. For me, and especially from the perspective of a museum focused on modern and contemporary sculpture, two themes stood out. I was struck by the profusion of materials and approaches used to make sculpture, manifest in all of the exhibitions. Fabric had an especially strong presence, but so, too, did stone and concrete, metal, and wood. And if many works employed materials and techniques commonly associated with craft, others made use of the most cutting-edge technology. While every art form—from photography and film, to painting, performance, and more—found powerful and memorable expressions, it

These themes—the flexible materiality of sculpture, and the presence of history in the art of the present—are vividly evident in our fall exhibitions. Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony offers a dual homage to the tradition of the Japanese tea ceremony, and to the great modernist sculptor Isamu Noguchi, whose work Sachs’s show will include. Sachs describes his approach to sculpture as “bricolage”—making things from the materials at hand. Here Sachs re-creates the setting and the implements of the tea ceremony using an array of materials at once unlikely and brilliant. Sachs’s project was in part inspired by the work of Isamu Noguchi, and Noguchi’s life’s work may be considered an ongoing effort to reconcile Japanese tradition with Western modernism. Noguchi’s work in the Nasher Collection will also figure in the permanent collection installation that Sachs is curating, adjacent to Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony, offering additional insight into his approach to art, and his understanding of modernism. Paper into Sculpture brings together work by five artists who—each in very different ways—make sculpture from paper. As a material, paper is both ubiquitous and, in our most frequent encounters, humble. It is also a material we wouldn’t normally associate with the qualities of mass, weight, and volume typically linked to sculpture. The strikingly disparate works of Paper into Sculpture—at times delicate and subtle, at others massive or expansive—suggest a range of ways in which this traditionally two-dimensional material can be put to sculptural use, as well as the amazement that can result from an artist’s intense focus upon an unconventional material. Beyond our special exhibitions and permanent collection displays, this fall, like every season at the Nasher, offers so many opportunities to experience music and film, educational activities for children and adults, to enjoy great food, and even to witness the reimagining of the Nasher Store, with a new point of view, and a new range of merchandise. It will be an exciting season, and I look forward to seeing you here! .

Jeremy Strick Director

THE NASHER FA L L 2017

The Exhibitions Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony Tom Sachs 23... Paper into Sculpture 31... The DRAMASTICS: A Punk Rock Victory Twister in Texas 33... First Sculpture: Hand Axe to Figure Stone 7...

17... Foundations:

The Collection 37... Spotlight:

Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisition Fund for Women Artists 39... New Acquisitions: Dorothy Dehner 47... Fountain to Fountainhead: 100 Years Later

The Artists 51... Sculpture

in 2017 Artist Microgrant Recipients 67... Artist Circle Chat 63... 2017

The Experience 73... Soundings:

New Music at the Nasher Nasher Store Reimagined 81... The Great Create 83... Create Your Own Paper Sculpture 77...The

Top:Tom Sachs, Large Chawan Cabinet, 2014, Porcelain, gold lustre, ConEd barrier, epoxy resin, steel hardware, 73 1/2 x 76 x 9 in., Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York. © Tom Sachs Middle: Dorothy Dehner, Grid Lock, 1953, Etching, 12 ½ x 15 in. (31.8 x 38.1 cm) Nasher Sculpture Center, Gift of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation © Dorothy Dehner Foundation/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Kevin Todora Bottom: Artist page from Fountainhead by Adam Raymont

Special Contributors

D A N I E L L E AV R A M

C H R I S T O P H E R B L AY

STE VE CARTER

DAKIN HART

Danielle Avram is a curator and writer based in Dallas. She is currently the Gallery Director at Texas Woman’s University. She has held positions at Southern Methodist University (Dallas); The Power Station and The Pinnell Collection (Dallas); and The High Museum of Art (Atlanta). She has an MFA from the School of The Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University (Boston), and a BA from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Christopher Blay is an artist with a BFA from Texas Christian University. He has worked as curator for the Art Corridor Gallery at Tarrant County College Southeast for the past seven years, and is also an art critic for Fort Worth Weekly magazine. His work incorporates photography, video, sculpture, and performance. Blay was the spring 2017 Visiting Artist at the Dallas Museum of Art’s Center for Creative Connections.

Steve Carter is a Denton-based freelance arts writer whose work has appeared in Patron, Modern Luxury Dallas, Dallas Home Design, Interiors, Houston, and elsewhere. He graduated from the University of North Texas with a degree in Music Composition, and has been a professional musician for several decades. For the past 15-plus years he’s written about music, art, travel, architecture, and culture.

Dakin Hart is Senior Curator at The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum (Long Island City, New York), where he oversees the museum’s exhibitions, collections, catalogue raisonné, archives, and public programming, and has the daily good fortune of collaborating with Isamu Noguchi in absentia.

KENDALL MORGA N

BRET REDMAN

TOM SACHS

Kendall Morgan is a Dallas-based writer and editor who has covered art and style for publications such as 1530 Main, Culture Map, Highland Park Village Magazine, and Patron magazine. In this issue, she examines the importance of the museum store under the new stewardship of Director of Retail Donald Fowler.

Bret Redman is a graduate of NYU Film School. His work appears regularly in both print and online for D magazine. He enjoys shooting for The Nasher and a variety of other publications and clients.

Artist Tom Sachs was born in New York in 1966. After studying at the Architectural Association in London in 1987, he received a BA from Bennington College, Vermont in 1989. His work has been included in many exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, and has been collected by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, San Francisco MOMA, and the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo. Major solo exhibitions include SITE Santa Fe (1999), the Bohen Foundation, New York (2002), Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2003),

Astrup Fearnley Museet for Milan (2006), Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles (2007), Lever House, New York (2008), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2009), Park Avenue Armory, New York (2012), The Noguchi Museum, New York (2016), Brooklyn Museum, New York (2016), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2016). Sachs lives and works in New York. Sachs has had solo exhibitions at Sperone Westwater in 2004, 2008, and 2011.

The Exhibitions

Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony 17...Foundations: Tom Sachs 23...Paper into Sculpture 31...The DRAMASTICS: A Punk Rock Victory Twister in Texas 33...First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone 7...

Tom Sachs, Kabuto, 2015 Helmet, foamcore, paracord, fiberglass, epoxy resin, mixed media 37 x 15 3/4 x 16 1/2 in.(94 x 40 x 42 cm) Â© Tom Sachs Photo: Genevieve Hanson

Installation view, Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony, on view March 23 through July 24, 2016 at The Noguchi Museum, Long Island City, New York Photo: Johnny Fogg.

On View: September 16 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; January 7

Written by JED MORSE, Nasher Sculpture Center Chief Curator With adaptations of the words of Dakin Hart, The Noguchi Museum Senior Curator

Traditional tea ceremony, or chanoyu in Japanese, elevates the simple act of serving guests tea to an art form. The practice developed over hundreds of years into an elaborate, prescribed, and highly aestheticized ritual that involves specially designed rooms and gardens, carefully selected utensils and decorations, and an intricate series of traditionally defined actions. Much of the tea ceremony was codified in the 16th century by Sen no Rikyū, whose treatise remains the guiding text on the subject. Still, within the well-defined practices of tea ceremony, the host adapts the details to his or her guests. Arranging flowers (also a highly considered art form), preparing special foods, choosing the appropriate decorative scroll for appreciation and contemplation, and carefully selecting from one’s collection of tea utensils—some of which may be revered artifacts that confer status to host and guests alike—are all elements adapted to the occasion. Like all enduring rituals, the tea ceremony captures lasting values in universal experiences: “It celebrates hospitality, reinforces the development of community, and creates a holistic but intimate sense of connection to the world in fundamental combinations of earth, air, fire, and water,” notes exhibition curator Dakin Hart.

Tom Sachs, Sochin, 2014 Plywood and mixed media, 13 x 17 x 9 1/4 in. (33 x 43.12 x 23.5 cm). © Tom Sachs Photograph: Genevieve Hanson

Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony is the most recent in a long line of projects by American artist Tom Sachs that pay homage to cultures of exacting standards and heightened attention to detail. Working within the artistic practice of bricolage— creating from whatever materials are at hand—Sachs has made universes of objects from Con Edison barriers, plywood, Tyvek, and common hardware that highlight the creativity, dedication, and commitment of cultural phenomena such as McDonald’s (the model of modern efficiency), James Brown (the consummate showman known as “the hardest working man in show business”), and the NASA space program (the pinnacle of human achievement). The last of these included a life-size lunar landing module, mission control center, and space suits—all handmade—which featured in performances inspired by the Apollo missions to the moon and imagining new missions to Mars and Europa. Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony grew out of the mission to Mars, when the two astronauts in that performance turned to tea ceremony to resolve a conflict between them and establish civilization on the red planet. The exhibition is an immersive work that juxtaposes the cultures of tea (the ritualized drinking of matcha, or powdered green tea, in Japan and the microcosmic universe that goes with it); Sachs’s studio, where the mission is participatory, appropriative, gently transgressive world-building; NASA, with its can-do spirit, and seat-of-the-pants engineering; and the legacy of Modernism, which liberally borrowed forms and ideas from around the world, creating new hybrids of cultures and idealized, universal values. Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony presents Sachs’s distinctive 21stcentury reworking of chanoyu, including the myriad elements essential to that intensely ritualistic universe. In the Nasher’s indoor galleries, Sachs sets a teahouse in a constructed garden accessorized with variations on lanterns, gates, a washbasin, a plywood airplane lavatory, a koi pond, an ultra HD video wall with the sublime hyper-presence of Mount Fuji, a bronze bonsai made of more than 3,600 individually welded parts, and other objects of use and contemplation, all made from commonplace materials easily procured through the McMaster-Carr hardware catalogue. Sachs has also produced a complete alternative material culture of tea—from bowls and ladles, scroll paintings and vases, to a motorized tea whisk, an electronic brazier, and hundreds of simple, handmade ceramic tea bowls, or chawan, searching for the ideal size, feel, and appearance in the wabi esthetic, which celebrates austerity, spontaneity, and apparent artlessness. Originally organized by The Noguchi Museum in New York, the exhibition there brought into high relief the relation between the work of the Modernist master Isamu Noguchi and that of the contemporary artist Sachs. On that occasion, Noguchi Museum Senior Curator Dakin Hart wrote: ”Sachs, like Isamu Noguchi, is a cultural synthesizer committed to the traditional American dream of a pluralistic, crazy quilt society. Both believe that our best futures have at least a foot in the past; that technology should affirm craft; that the most sustaining serenities are tinged with chaos; that polarities like East and West can exist harmoniously in productively ambiguous relationships; that the conceptual and the formal are not hand and glove but earth and atmosphere;

and that the balkanization of creativity into categories such as ‘art’ and ‘design’ is nonsense.” A carved stone sculpture by Noguchi, Narrow Gate, on loan from The Noguchi Museum, assumes pride of place in the inner sanctum of Sachs’s tea garden. This work and other Modernist icons (some reconceived by Sachs) serve as kinds of kami, or ancestor spirits, for Sachs’s garden. On occasions through the course of the exhibition, Sachs or a colleague will perform tea ceremony for a few guests. The walls of the teahouse will be removed, enabling visitors to watch the ceremony as it unfolds. Supplementing the tea garden are additional installations featuring consummate examples of Sachs’s tea tools, a brief history of tea as it developed out of Sachs’s Space Program 2.0: MARS, and a selection of objects from the artist’s two– decade–long career as a cultural hybridizer and devotee of Modernist Essentialism.

Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony is made possible with the generous support of the Dallas Art Fair Foundation. Additional support is provided by Amy and John Phelan, Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO and Angela Westwater, Sperone Westwater.

WORLD PREMIERE TOM SACHS: TEA CEREMONY FILM

The presentation of Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony at the Nasher also features the world premiere of a new film of the same name, a condensed portrayal of the ceremony that Sachs developed with Johnny Fogg. Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony screens regularly in Nasher Hall, along with the film Ten Bullets, a work of art in the form of a training video outlining the salient working processes, expectations, and spirit of Sachs’ studio. Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony 2017 Made by Johnny Fogg and Charlie Koss Screening times: Daily, on the hour Run time: 15:00 Ten Bullets 2010 Written by John Furgason and Tom Sachs Directed by Van Neistat Screening times: Daily, on the half hour Run time: 21:00

Tom Sachs at The Noguchi Museum, from the April/May 2016 issue of Cultured. Photo by Susanna Howe.

EXPERIENCE A

FILM SCREENING December 10 / 1 p.m. A Space Program A Film by Tom Sachs and Van Neistat 2015 Run time: 72:00

TEA CEREMONIES October 21 / 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. October 22 / 11 a.m. November 18 / 3 p.m. November 19 / 11 a.m. December 9 / 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. December 10 / 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. MEMBERS ONLY October 22 / 3 p.m. November 19 / 3 p.m.

The setting and the tools constitute only part of the culture of tea. As beautiful as they are on their own, they exist to serve a ritual: chanoyu, literally the making of “hot water for tea” and the drinking of tea. The opportunity to connect with nature, time, and each other—to slow down in a constrained environment designed to exist outside reality, in relative simplicity and silence—is at the heart of the experience and the culture. During the course of the exhibition, Tom Sachs’s friend and colleague in tea, Johnny Fogg, will perform tea ceremonies. The tea ceremony is an intimate experience. The teahouse can accommodate only 2 to 3 guests to take part in the tea ceremony, but the walls of the teahouse will be removed, enabling all visitors to observe the ceremony. Tea ceremony audiences are limited to 30 visitors. The performance will last 1.5 hours, with a question and answer session following the performance. Teahouse guests for each performance will be decided by lottery. If you are interested in participating in the ceremony as a guest in the teahouse, you will receive instructions on how to do so after making your reservation. Johnny Fogg is a lifelong student of tea and tea culture and for the past 15 years he has studied in the Urasenke tradition of the Japanese Way of Tea. He collaborated with Tom Sachs on creating the experiential portion of Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony. His project Baisao Tea Room is a mobile and modular tea space that ephemerally creates the atmosphere of a traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony. FREE for Members. $10 for Non-members. Reservations include admission.

In A Space Program, artist Tom Sachs takes us on an intricately handmade journey to the red planet, providing audiences with an intimate, first-person look into his studio and methods. The film is both a work of art in its own right and a recording of Sachs’s historic performance, Space Program 2.0: MARS, performed at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in 2012. For Space Program 2.0: MARS, Tom and his team built an entire space program from scratch. They were guided by the philosophy of bricolage: creating and constructing from available yet limited resources. They ultimately sent two female astronauts to Mars in search of the answer to humankind’s ultimate question: Are we alone? The film also contains the origins of Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony. The two astronauts turn to tea ceremony to resolve a conflict between them and establish civilization on the red planet. Directed by Van Neistat. FREE for Members. FREE with admission. Learn more at nashersculpturecenter.org/engage

MORE EVENTS

PATRON DINNER SEPTEMBER 13 / 6 P.M.

Special tea ceremony and dinner with Tom Sachs. For Members at the Brancusi Circle and above Call 214.242.5152 for more information. MEMBER PREVIEW SEPTEMBER 14 / 7-9 P.M.

Exhibition viewing and reception with special screening of Tom Sachs’s film Tea Ceremony. Open to all Members. RSVP at memberevents@nashersculpturecenter.org or 214.242.5154. 360 SPEAKER SERIES: TOM SACHS SEPTEMBER 16 / 2 P.M.

Tom Sachs discusses his work and the exhibition in this public lecture. FREE with admission. FREE for Members. RSVP at nashersculpturecenter.org/360.

Tom Sachs, Columbia, 2014 English porcelain, high fire reduction, Temple White glaze, NASA Red engobe inlay 4 H x 4.5 W x 4 D inches. S/N: 2014.024. Courtesy of the Artist © Tom Sachs

Tom Sachs. Japan Deck Playing Cards, Tea Ceremony Manual, Courtesy of the Artist. Â© Tom Sachs

On View: September 16 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; December 31

FOUNDATIONS:

Written by JED MORSE, Nasher Sculpture Center Chief Curator

The Foundations series of installations and exhibitions at the Nasher Sculpture Center highlights aspects of modern and contemporary sculpture, in all of its revolutionary artistic and intellectual variety, through the extraordinary lens of the Nasher Collection. The late-19th- and 20th-century art in the Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection provides essential context for better understanding work being made today; conversely, presenting contemporary practices alongside the Nasher Collection expands upon, revivifies, and prompts new insights into the radical nature of art of the past. Each Foundations exhibition complements, contextualizes, and expands upon the featured contemporary exhibition on view. Sometimes Nasher curators organize these installations; other times, the artist featured in the adjacent gallery is invited to select works of art from the Nasher Collection to have on view. For Foundations: Tom Sachs, the artist has selected works that provide insights into his deep ties to Modernism and point to aspects of these historical precursors that still resonate today. On the following pages, Sachs presents some thoughts behind his selection.

Paul Gauguin French, 1848â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1903 Tahitian Girl, ca.1896 Wood and mixed media, 37 3/8 x 7 1/2 x 8 in. (94.9 x 19.1 x 20.3 cm) Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection Photo: David Heald

WHAT ISAMU NOGUCHI AND TOM SACHS HAVE IN COMMON p

Written by DAKIN HART, Senior Curator, The Noguchi Museum

Still the only museum in the United States founded and installed by an artist to show his own work, The Noguchi Museum exists to serve a uniquely narrow mission: representing the worldview of Isamu Noguchi (1904–88). We do that, as the artist intended, by offering a purposeful example of a different way to exist in the world. Despite the stereotypes and misunderstandings that sometimes mask Noguchi’s legacy (the transit and transcendence of which were, not incidentally, central to his work), that example—pluralistic, multicultural, synthetic, optimistic—seems more vital with each passing year. As an early American avatar for contemporary modes of open-ended, transdisciplinary, socially conscious art-making, Noguchi turns out to be virtually peerless. And in an increasingly fragmenting world, whom better to guide us to something better than mere survival than the artist, an informed admirer once described as a “one-man kaleidoscope.” As the last generation of Noguchi’s contemporaries disappears, we at the museum have felt compelled to consider new ways of ensuring that the Noguchi cult, and its associated secret languages, continue to flourish in a vibrant niche. But as a first serious foray into initiating a contemporizing conversation with a visual artist, Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony struck some here, at first, as a bridge too far. The most common question asked by people who hadn’t seen the show was not “What do Noguchi and Sachs have in common?” but “What!?” Our goal in engaging with contemporary creatives from across the many disciplines Noguchi combined is not to find and celebrate followers, lookalikes, or even the obviously influenced. The goal is to produce complex, mutually advantageous adventures in comparative religion. To compare and understand the philosophies that underlie objects, you need objects imbued with coherent philosophies. Everything Tom Sachs makes is the expression of a worldview that engages life, not just art, and productively deconstructs cultures of making. Those two characteristics just happen to be Noguchi’s most important baselines as an artist, sculptor, and person. To make the case for the values-level sympathy between Noguchi and Sachs to stakeholders at the museum, I assembled this loose proof from a collage of Noguchi’s words.

WHAT ISAMU NOGUCHI AND TOM SACHS HAVE IN COMMON A Semiformal Proof in Noguchi’s Own Words

1. I believe in the true development of old traditions.

2. To be hybrid anticipates the future.

3. The future does not belong only to the futurists.

4. Nothing is new, but everything’s new.

5. I like the Japan that I know and want to know, not the Japan that is imposed upon me…I am not about today or yesterday, but only that which is useful to me. Many people live in Japan historically; I don’t.

6. I expect Japan to be the first country to take off as a whole into outer space!

7. Ultimately, I like to think, when you get to the furthest point of technology, when you get to outer space, what do you find to bring back? Rocks!

8. Consult NASA. 9. I don’t look at art as something separate and sacrosanct. It’s part of usefulness.

10. So that art might have Isamu Noguchi, Gregory (Effigy), 1945 (cast 1969) Bronze, 69 1/4 x 16 1/8 x 16 3/8 in. (175.9 x 41 x 41.6 cm.) Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas © 2017 The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: David Heald

the kind of authority that religions have had in getting people to respect and value their part of the earth.

Upcoming: October 14 – February 4

PAPER SCULPTURE p

Written by CATHERINE CRAFT, Ph.D. Nasher Sculpture Center Curator

Even as the shift to digitized images, virtual reality, and social media has been said to herald its obsolescence, paper nonetheless remains inescapable. Accessible to all, paper endures as the site of notes, lists, price tags, reminders, sketches, ads—at once the most mundane and the most intimate of communication media, and the most readily discarded. As concerns about humanity’s impact on the environment intensify, paper is also one of the most persistent reminders of our connections to nature through the cyclical nature of its creation, disposal, and regeneration through recycling. Derived largely from plant fibers, paper also ages and degrades, its fragility inspiring metaphorical associations with human corporeality and vulnerability. Modern artists challenged traditional ways of making art by exploring unconventional processes and techniques, among them collage. In turn, the wide variety of resources collage made available for creative use encouraged artists to reconsider the physical properties of more familiar materials— in particular paper, which has deep roots in both artistic practice and daily life. Paper as a sculptural material became one current of artistic practice in the 1960s and 1970s in the work of such artists as Sol LeWitt, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Mira Schendel. Following these examples of conceptual and physical subtlety, in recent years artists have shown that when paper moves into sculpture, the results can be dramatic as well as contemplative, humorous as well as critical. The artists in Paper into Sculpture—Noriko Ambe, Marco Maggi, Joshua Neustein, Nancy Rubins, and Franz West— play on tensions between commonly held understandings of sculpture and what paper can and cannot do, pushed to its physical limits. Treating paper as a material with a palpable three-dimensional presence rather than as a mere support for mark-making, they have used processes ranging from tearing, crumpling, and cutting to scattering, binding, and adhering to create sculptural works that take a variety of forms, with a diverse range of expressive and conceptual implications. 23

Noriko Ambe’s work in paper plays between nature, language, and culture. Her cuts into stacks of paper—done by hand without sketches or templates—invoke natural rhythms, such as ocean and air currents and topographical views. In a related body of work, Ambe cuts into exhibition catalogues and monographs on artists with whom she feels a connection, with the cutting becoming an extended meditation on, and engagement with, the artist’s work. (See interview, p. 29.) Using everyday paper materials, such as office supplies, Marco Maggi commonly works at a small scale, in subtleties rather than monumental statements. Yet his interventions have surprising cumulative power: As Maggi cuts into papers, he seems to develop a vocabulary of forms, creating a language that ranges over walls and floors, and yielding a linguistic and architectural environment on an intimate scale apparent to the viewer initially only as a blur across the walls of the gallery. (See interview, p. 27.) A pioneer of Conceptual art, Land art, and Post-Minimalism, Joshua Neustein lived and worked in Israel from 1965 to 1982, where he first made the relationship between sculpture and drawing a cornerstone of his practice. In his ongoing Carbon series, begun in the late 1960s, Neustein cuts, tears, and folds layered carbon sheets, creating smallscale reliefs from a material long used for bureaucratic purposes. Even as these copying sets have passed into obsolescence, Neustein has continued to make use of them as a diaristic activity. He has also used paper to create largescale installations, some of which involve recycled-paper bales, their rectangular masses echoing the language of Minimalist sculpture even as they stand as mute evidence of our seemingly insatiable appetite for paper. For the interview with Neustein that appeared in the Nasher’s Spring 2012 newsletter, see nashersc.org/JoshuaNeustein2012.

Franz West Sisyphos IX, 2002 Papier mâché, styrofoam, cardboard, Above: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisilacquer, enim adand minim acrylic veniam, quis nostrud exerci. 68 ½ x 59 ¾ x 44 in. (174 x 151.8 x 111.8 cm) The Rachofsky Collection Below: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut©wisi enimofad minim Estate Franz West veniam, quis nostrud exerci. Photo: James Kelly Contemporary

FPO

Top: Nancy Rubins, Drawing, 2010. Graphite pencil on paper. 134 x 379 x 12 in. (340 x 963 x 30 cm). © Nancy Rubins. Photo: Erich Koyama, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery Bottom: Joshua Neustein, Paper Bales, 1976. Paper bales, dimensions variable. Installation view, Joshua Neustein, Tel Aviv Museum,1977. © Joshua Neustein. Photo: courtesy of the artist Opposite L: Noriko Ambe, Zero, 2013. Cut book (catalogue of dOCUMENTA 13). Book size, 8 1/4 x 7 x 3 1/8 in. (21 x 17.8 x 7.9 cm). © Noriko Ambe. Photo courtesy of Lora Reynolds Gallery Opposite R: Marco Maggi, Ladder Upside Down, 2010. Cuts on paper in 55 slide mounts. 20 x 20 in. (50.8 x 50.8 cm). © Marco Maggi. Image courtesy of the artist and Josée Bienvenu Gallery

Best known for her ambitious public sculptures made from such unlikely materials as aluminum canoes and airplane parts, Nancy Rubins is also a pioneer in the use of paper as a sculptural material on a truly environmental scale. Her large, graphite-covered sheets of crumpled and rippling paper occupy expanses of walls, ceilings, and corners, exchanging conventional notions of drawing for a palpable, monumental physical presence. For the interview with Rubins that appeared in the Nasher’s Spring 2010 newsletter, see nashersc.org/NancyRubins2010. The influential, irreverent sculptures of Austrian artist Franz West challenged accepted ideas about appropriate sculptural forms and materials. Perhaps best known for his brightly colored public sculpture suggestive of sausage-like or scatological forms, West also created sculptures in papier mâché, a material more often used in children’s art projects. In West’s hands, compressed and soaked balls of newsprint form ungainly lumps spotted with daubs of paint that only partially conceal their abject, makeshift character as objects, an impression heightened by West’s use of empty tape rolls and other objects jammed beneath his sculptures as props. West’s aggressive exposure of his sculptures’ improvised nature and inevitable vulnerability spotlights the economy of paper—its availability and, in turn, its physical limits.

EVENTS

MEMBER PREVIEW OCTOBER 13 / 7-9 P.M.

Exhibition viewing and reception. Open to Members at the Hepworth Circle and above. RSVP at memberevents@nashersculpturecenter.org or 214.242.5154. 360 SPEAKER SERIES: PAPER INTO SCULPTURE OCTOBER 14 / 11 A.M.

FREE with admission. FREE for Members. RSVP at nashersculpturecenter.org/events.

Also on view: October 14 – February 4

ESOPUS Concurrent with Paper into Sculpture, the Nasher will present an installation of works related to the New York-based magazine Esopus, issues of which were generously donated to the Nasher by Marion Flores in memory of her husband Nash Flores. Since 2003, Esopus has published a distinctive cross section of content from a range of creative disciplines, presented in a striking visual format. Esopus has distinguished itself by its refusal of advertising and its mission to provide an unmediated source of experience with art, photography, literature, music, history, and broader streams of culture. As a physically created object intended to be handled by readers, Esopus takes a decidedly sculptural approach to paper and the magazine as genre and medium. The result has been a publication that The New York Times has called “a thing of lavish, eccentric beauty.” From the beginning, established and emerging artists alike have contributed and created special projects for the magazine. Artists featured in Esopus have included John Baldessari, Barbara Bloom, Mark Dion, Robert Gober, Kerry James Marshall, Roxy Paine, Judy Pfaff, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha, Alyson Shotz, Robert Therrien, and Richard Tuttle, whose projects have taken the form of removable posters, booklets, foldouts, and hand-assembled sculptures, and have often used complex printing processes, unique paper stocks, and specially formulated inks. The current issue includes a project by Paper into Sculpture artist Marco Maggi. Stop by the Nasher Store to get your own copy of Esopus.

An Interview with

Curator Catherine Craft and Paper into Sculpture artist Marco Maggi talk about time, space, and our urgent need to slow down. Catherine Craft: Marco, your art often makes use of simple, everyday items—an apple, a roll of aluminum foil, reams of copy paper, and other office supplies. For the Nasher, the work you’re making will use small elements you cut from self-adhesive labels, applied directly to the gallery walls, an approach you’ve used in other spaces, most notably the main room of the Uruguayan pavilion during the 2015 Venice Biennale. Walking into that space, I had the initial impression that I was in a pristinely white, empty room. But gradually, I was aware of a sort of “vibration” on the walls, and coming closer realized it was the very slight projections and shadows coming from cut and folded labels adhered to the walls. I joined other viewers standing close and looking closely at a barely visible panorama, vast but vanishing quickly from my peripheral vision. These works have been compared with aerial views of architecture, circuit boards, and elements of a language. How would you describe their subject? Marco Maggi: Uncertainty. Including uncertainty about the subject of my work. Your experience at the Uruguayan pavilion in Venice was exactly that: visual art on the threshold of blindness. It is very important to multiply our empathy for insignificance. Craft: Why? Maggi: Because, nowadays, we are condemned to know more and more to understand less and less. We deserve a pause, and an insignificant drawing can work like a perfect training ground to increase our capacity to live in an illegible context. My actual specialty is to not understand. 27

Craft: How do such works change the viewer’s experience of time? Maggi: I want to make time visible. Promoting pauses, slower and closer viewers with a myopic attitude, scanning surfaces with no hope to be informed. I am prescribing a global myopia in contrast to the hyperopia1 that characterized the 20th century— wide and long-term certainties based on clever ideas and very clear messages. In politics, art, and cars, speed and faith are very dangerous. Craft: Your work seems to encourage us to slow down in order to take in what we’re seeing. Can this slowing down be transferred to the experience of other artworks, or of the world? Or is translation possible? Maggi: Our only possible hope resides in tiny details. In order to focus on them, I propose a new approach, an objective intimacy. We need to rebuild slowness and proximity. Viewers spend 16 seconds per masterpiece at the Louvre: We must change our pace of reading surfaces and faces. The world has become illegible because our dispersion is unprecedented. We are in love with speed and long distance. Computers double their speed every 18 months, but we cannot upgrade our brain. But I like computers because they do fast tasks, allowing us to slow down. Craft: Computers undoubtedly save us all kinds of time—our conversation is being conducted by email, across great distances, over a matter of days and hours. Yet instead of enjoying this gift of more time, we often speed ourselves up more. Does your art propose a remedy? Maggi: Art is not a remedy. Art is more like a disease and can be contagious. The virus that I like the most is the radical optimism based in extreme attention and subversive delicacy.

Maggi: I always work on the edge between two and three dimensions. Homeopathic folds and clefts. Micro levels and layers are essential in my projects. They suggest possible itineraries and stop signs. Craft: What type of space helps us experience time most fully? Maggi: Micro-macro spaces. When scale is out of focus. Tedious closeups are the only way to erase visual pollution and focus on inner time. Craft: You have an MFA in printmaking. Does the art you make now have any relation to printmaking? Maggi: I chose “making” and I forgot “printing.” I am still very interested in dry pointed and etched plates: Braille drawings. I have a series of drawings titled Soft Plates & Slow Prints based on aluminum foil “plates” impossible to print and micro pencil drawings very difficult to reproduce. Craft: You are about to exhibit your work in a sculpture museum. How might we think of your work in terms of sculpture? Maggi: My drawings are sculptures. Lines released from the plane of pages or walls. Intimate dialogue between two and three dimensions. Shadow drawings—shy sculptures. Craft: Among the everyday items you use, what attracts you to paper in particular? Maggi: Paper is a human privilege. Paper is only surface; it’s completely superficial and I don’t like deep transcendence. Paper is light, strong, malleable: It is a two-dimensional icon and three-dimensional object. A ream of paper is a 3D dream.

Nasher Curator Catherine Craft conducted this interview with Marco Maggi by email in July 2017. Myopia is nearsightedness, meaning that objects come into sharp focus when seen at close range; hyperopia is farsightedness, its opposite. 1

Craft: What is the role of space in your work? The three-dimensional element is very small, arguably almost nonexistent, yet we move through space to see it, drawing close and walking along it to see more.

Top: Photographer before Marco Maggi’s GLOBAL MYOPIA (paper & pencil), 2015. Self-adhesive archival paper and ERCO LED lighting. Uruguayan Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale, Venice, Italy. Exhibition detail. © Marco Maggi. Image courtesy of the artist and Ugo Carmeni Bottom: Marco Maggi, GLOBAL MYOPIA (paper & pencil), 2015, detail. Self-adhesive archival paper and ERCO LED lighting. Uruguayan Pavilion, Giardini della Biennale, Venice, Italy. © Marco Maggi. Image courtesy of the artist and Ugo Carmeni

An Interview with

Curator Catherine Craft talks to Paper into Sculpture artist Noriko Ambe about the artist’s journey into sculpture. Catherine Craft: Noriko, you initially studied painting and even exhibited as a painter when you were in your 20s. How did you come to work in cut paper instead? Noriko Ambe: As I worked, my paintings were getting bigger and bigger, and more and more complex, to emphasize their ideas. I was really inspired by infinite space, but the bigger and more complex my paintings became, the more it felt like I could never reach what I understood as infinite space. So I stopped. And I felt really almost ashamed of myself: What have I been doing here, with such big paintings, showing these in a gallery every year to an audience? Craft: A real crisis. What did you do? Ambe: At first, I started drawing lines. Just lines. And I also started doing etchings as like “rehabilitation”. Because for making prints, even one line could work, so I didn’t need to think about what I should draw. Craft: Working simply, and at a much smaller scale. More intimate. Ambe: I went to Italy for a residency program in printmaking run by [the artist] Luis Camnitzer. The first day of the residency, I showed [him] all my works, and he looked at them and said just one thing: What is art for you? And that’s the thing I had been thinking, when I had been doubting myself: What is my original? That was my question. It was a summer residency, and I went three times. The third time, I was on my way, and when I was on the airplane I saw lots of white clouds, against the blue sky. It was

really, really beautiful. I felt then I really wanted to melt into the natural world somehow. That I could really disappear—a feeling of freedom I could imagine and that I really wanted to express in my art. I realized that it was a kind of meditative experience. When I got to the residency program, I spoke to Luis Camnitzer about my feeling: I think I found myself, what I want to express, finally.

Craft: Why were you interested in going into three dimensions? Ambe: Gradually, I wanted to see the more three-dimensional shape of my work, somehow. I had done a course on bookbinding at The Center for Book Arts to bind my etchings in an artist’s book. That was fun, but it felt too complex. Craft: You wanted something more direct.

Craft: And at that point, you had to find a way to give form to what you had realized. Ambe: Right. Practically speaking, how to express this feeling. So first I used an image of mapping on the paper, with drawing. Craft: Was that related to your experience of looking out of the airplane, a mapping of that aerial view? Ambe: Maybe, like a running river draws on the earth. Then I just started drawing, just making lines and lines and lines. I drew them without any rulers or tools, so they’re not straight – [they’re] slightly curved, [there are] distortions. And I realized, Oh! These natural distortions are carriers of human feeling. This is my originality, this physicality. They looked like the surface of water or the rings of a tree, and I started connecting with these details of nature. I was so happy when I made the first one that I decided that I would spend at least 10 years on this project and work on it every day, because time is very essential for this work. I thought that I have to spend at least 10 years of my life to figure out what this [project] is, a long time like the way a tree makes a ring each year it is growing. Craft: When was that? Ambe: In 1999. And now, it’s the 17th year (laughs). After Italy, I moved to New York, because I got a grant, and I was at Pearl Paint, the art supply store, when I saw a very thick sketchbook. I thought, maybe instead of drawing lines, I can cut each page directly, to make a three-dimensional piece. So then I started cutting into this white sketchbook.

Ambe: Right. Somehow, though, I thought I could use the shape of the book. And then I found this very thick sketchbook at Pearl Paint. Craft: So in a way cutting paper started with a sort of book, a sketchbook. From that first sketchbook, you’ve gone on to make large works by cutting into stacks of paper. These can be extremely complex sculptural works, with a staggering amount of detail. How did you have the idea for these large works? Ambe: The size was already getting bigger, and then there was September 11. I was back in Japan, but I had friends in New York. It was really shocking, and I wanted to heal myself. Cutting like praying, I started making this large, thick white paper piece with just excavated lines—like a map, but no borders and no countries: my own geography, white and minimal. “We are emptiness”—that might be related to Buddhism thoughts—made me feel so peaceful. Craft: You don’t use preparatory sketches and you cut everything by hand. How do you begin making an excavation, as you call it? You begin with a stack of paper, right? Ambe: Yes, the first cut is tiny, the smallest one. I make this cut on the top sheet, and then under it I see the mark, the impression it leaves on the next sheet. I use this as a guide, try to make the next cut a little bigger, move the paper out, then cut a little bigger on the next sheet, and then keep going, to arrive at an excavated piece. Craft: I want to ask you about another type of work you make from cutting into books. Sometimes these are encyclopedias or atlases, but often

they are art books. You’ve cut into the catalogue of the documenta XIII exhibition and into monographs of works by artists including Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, and recently Fazal Sheikh. It seems to me that you’ve selected books about art that you connect to deeply. Ambe: Yes, in fact I wrote about these works that they are “an offering to the god of art.” Craft: You also wrote that this is “an audacious statement.” Ambe: Yes, but these are the only words that come to mind that are appropriate.

Craft: But the books are not just sculptural material to you. The way you treat them is a response to art that moves you. Ambe: Yes, cutting books is like collaboration for me. It’s important to choose the materials carefully because printed matter conveys a message automatically, as you know. Cutting as a dialogue with each page, I am expressing a new concept by cutting the pre-existing patterns and information in books so as to alter them. And the structure of the book itself is standing on the edge between two and three dimensions like my work between drawing and sculpture. Anyway, since the concept is not so

simple all the time. I would rather let my artwork do the talking. I don’t want to guide the responses. Me, as an artist, I’m not interested in expressing myself. Artists should be a filter or a medium, with a shamanistic sensibility somehow.

Nasher Curator Catherine Craft visited Noriko Ambe at her studio in Long Island City, Queens, on June 26, 2017. Noriko Ambe, Inner Water 2012, 2012 Installation detail with cut paper sculptures Wave 2, Wave 3, and Wave 4 The Warehouse Gallery, Syracuse University, New York © Noriko Ambe Photo: David Broda, courtesy of the artist

Upcoming: October 27 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; January 31

THE DRAMASTICS: A PUNK ROCK VICTORY TWISTER IN TEXAS WORK BY NATHAN CARTER p

Adapted from Casey Kaplan Gallery by LEIGH ARNOLD, Ph.D. Nasher Sculpture Center Assistant Curator

Installation view, Casey Kaplan, New York, Nathan Carter: The DRAMASTICS & The Fascinators, June 23 - July 28, 2017 Photo: Jason Wyche, Courtesy of artist and Casey Kaplan, New York

In a fantastical cornucopia of color, form, and gesture, Nathan Carter presents the story of a fictional punk rock band who call themselves The DRAMASTICS. The band, and the world Carter created for them, are the focus of his first video titled The DRAMASTICS are Loud AF (2016), which tells the story of the group’s rise to stardom in a series of vignettes, starting with The DRAMASTICS’ formation at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas and ending incredibly with a world tour finale in Paris. Carter’s choice of unlikely video subject—an all-girl punk rock band—was inspired by his love for such rock groups as The Slits, Blondie, and Bikini Kill, as Carter describes, “I wanted to be around sweaty, angry punk rock women. It’s as simple as that.” To create the video, Carter wrote a script based on his observations of teenage chatter to ensure that the dialogue mimicked the speaking patterns, colloquialisms and coded language of the characters he was creating. He also wrote and recorded all of the music and constructed dioramas as scenes for his paper cutout characters to inhabit. For his exhibition in the Nasher’s Corner Gallery, Carter presents this video, together with a selection of dioramas that transport the viewer into the colorful and chaotic world of The DRAMASTICS. In his own words, the artist explains: In the spring of 2014, a surprise first-time occurrence unfolded in my studio: I made a series of drawings depicting human figures. The characters looked like pirates in theatrical scenes. They were wearing long dresses and capes and they had very long, wavy hair and carried weapons. I put myself in the drawings; I wore a blue mini dress with red lining, light blue thigh-high tights, and red peep-toes. I had a handlebar mustache and carried a torch. I wanted to activate these figures by giving them a story, so I decided to write and direct a video about a punk rock band who call themselves The DRAMASTICS. The story begins on the roof of the Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas, Texas, where lead vocalist Molly Blowout and her electric guitar-playing friend Crimson Ivy make big plans to start a band, write songs, make posters and costumes, and go on a world tour along with Melancholly (their terminally anxious bass player), and Calamity (a 7-foot-tall, foul-mouthed street tough drummer from Detroit Rock City). I made sure to listen to voices closer to the ages of the women in the band. I tried to pick up their coded language and made careful notes when I heard someone say something exciting. I spent days walking around the city, listening to music, and occasionally stopping to write down all of the

stories and humorous vignettes I could remember about my own experiences trying to make music in a high school band. With the help of a close friend who is an actor and a playwright, my notes on language and anecdotes began to take the form of a script. I developed the four band members by constructing 10-inchtall, handmade figures out of paper, glue, aluminum wire, and paint. I gave each band member a distinct look and personality. Next, I made dioramas using found plywood, plastic, and painted paper background scenes for the character to inhabit. The dioramas look like places a touring band might visit: a steamy, malodorous rehearsal space, and not an intimidating recording studio, and various exotic locations to perform live, including the Saigon City Roller Discotek, a High Desert generator party, and a full-scale model of Paris, France for the film’s final scene. The activity of world-building felt like inventing and playing with punk dolls in their punk dollhouse. The entire process, of improvising and building and recording and filming, was like making a DIY basement recording. All of it looked and sounded immediate, fast, loose, and loud. Meticulous craft took a backseat to enthusiasm. By the winter of 2016, the accumulation of sculptures, drawings, sets, and lights made it physically hard to move around my studio. I was writing and recording the music in one corner and recording the characters’ voices in another. A small group of friends became the film crew. They operated the figures in the dioramas while I moved the camera around. In an unspoken exchange, my studio became their dance hall, fueled by a steady supply of fresh guacamole, quesadillas, handles of Tito’s, Parliaments, weed, and 50,000 watts of sound system bangers and anthems. It was like a gang of rabid peacocks invaded my studio and started a weekly party, leaving their colorful feathers behind and cigarette burns everywhere. The feathers were eventually repurposed for part of the final scene in Paris. This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of Casey Kaplan and Esther Schipper. Film screening and live performance in collaboration with the Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Family SOLUNA International Music and Arts Festival.

EVENTS

EXHIBITION VIEWING, FILM SCREENING AND PERFORMANCE OCTOBER 26 / 10 P.M .

Film screening 10:30 p.m. / Performance 11:00 p.m. FREE. RSVP at nashersculpturecenter.org/events 360 SPEAKER SERIES: NATHAN CARTER OCTOBER 27 / 11 A.M.

Montgomery Arts Theater, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Nathan Carter discusses his work and the exhibition in this public lecture. FREE. RSVP at nashersculpturecenter.org/events.

Upcoming: January 27 – April 29

FIRST SCULPTURE:

HANDAXE TO FIGURE STONE

Written by NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER CURATORIAL TEAM

First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone is the first museum exhibition to present ancient handaxes and figure stones as works of art. Traditionally understood as the longest-used tool in human history, with examples dating back more than 2 million years, some handaxes are equally fascinating for their non-utilitarian, aesthetic qualities. First Sculpture will present these objects as evidence of the earliest forms of artistic intention, highlighting the aesthetic qualities of each stone and providing crucial historical and scientific information to give the viewer a deeper understanding of human history, as well as an enriched appreciation for humankind’s early ability to sculpt beautiful objects. Whether carved from visually interesting stones or rendered at unusual sizes that would inhibit use of the object as a tool, a case can be made for the handaxe as the first sculpture our prehistoric ancestors conceived. The exhibition’s second focus, that of figure stones, suggests early human ability to recognize beauty and meaning in found objects. These naturally occurring stones possess evident shapes and patterns, including geometric forms, animals, and especially faces. Prehistoric people recognized these shapes, and augmented their mimetic qualities through additional carving. First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone is the product of a unique curatorial collaboration between Los Angeles-based artist Tony Berlant and anthropologist Dr. Thomas Wynn, Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated, scholarly catalogue published by the Nasher, with a central essay co-written by exhibition curators Berlant and Wynn, as well as a foreword by renowned American scientist Jared Diamond. The exhibition will be designed by prominent French designer and museographer Adrien Gardère.

EVENTS

MEMBER PREVIEW JANUARY 26

First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone is made possible by the Eugene McDermott Foundation and the Lyda Hill Foundation, with additional support provided by Nancy O’Boyle, Betty Regard and the Museum of Street Culture. 33

360 SPEAKER SERIES JANUARY 27

Handaxe, Niger Date Uncertain 4 3/4 x 3 1/2 x 1 in. (12 x 8.8 x 2.5 cm) Private Collection Photo: Kevin Todora

The Collection

Spotlight: Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisitions Fund for Women Artists 39...New Acquisitions: Works by Dorothy Dehner 47...Fountain to Fountainhead: 100 Years Later 37...

Nasher Garden installation with works by William de Kooning and Henry Moore. Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas. Photograph: Carolyn Brown ÂŠ Nasher Sculpture Center

Spotlight

Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisitions Fund for Women Artists p

Written by LEIGH ARNOLD, Ph.D. Nasher Sculpture Center Assistant Curator

In 2015, the Nasher Sculpture Center announced the formation of a new fund for the acquisition of work by women artists: The Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisitions Fund for Women Artists. Established with a generous seed gift from the foundation named for author, artist, and arts patron Kaleta A. Doolin, the fund provided an initial $750,000 toward purchasing work by women artists, helping substantially grow both the Nasher’s collection of work by women artists and, with a keen focus on living artists, its contemporary art holdings. Since its inception, the Doolin fund has supported the acquisition of works by artists Phyllida Barlow, Ana Mendieta, and most recently, Dorothy Dehner. Apart from its impact on the Nasher’s permanent collection—which is becoming increasingly apparent with each new acquisition and has already doubled the number of women artists represented in the collection—the Doolin fund has inspired curatorial and educational programming at the Nasher. Last fall, the Nasher debuted the acquisition of four works by Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta in an installation in the Corner Gallery. In February, the Nasher organized the panel discussion “Off the Pedestal: Women Artists in Art Museums,” which brought together artist Lynda Benglis, curator Connie Butler, activist and historian Elizabeth A. Sackler, and art historian Jenni Sorkin in a lively discussion that touched upon topics ranging from the historical lack of women artists represented in museum collections, to the constant struggle women artists face balancing life, work, and family, to women’s rights in the current political moment. Behind the Doolin fund is the woman whose generosity and thoughtfulness make all of this possible. This summer, Kaleta Doolin and I corresponded about the eponymous fund, feminism, and (s)heroes. Following is a condensed version of our e-conversation. 37

Leigh Arnold: When did the idea for the Doolin fund come to you? Kaleta Doolin: When I started my foundation, I decided to focus my giving on women’s and girls’ charities because at that time they only received 5% (now 7%) of philanthropic dollars. I refined my giving to impact the inequality in the representation of women in the visual arts and to reflect my interest in sculpture practice, video art, book art, women’s studies, and art history (my minor in college). Years ago, I altered and transformed my first edition of H.W. Janson’s book The History of Art with an X-Acto knife and a vulva-shaped template to create an artwork titled Improved Janson: A Woman on Every Page [now in the library of the Museum of Modern Art, New York’s Artists’ Books Library.] This seemed to say it all for me since Janson boasted that he would have included a woman artist in his “History of Art” if he thought that there were any women artists worthy of inclusion [paraphrased]. Arnold: How did you decide the Nasher would be the beneficiary of the fund? Doolin: I recognized the gender imbalance in the Nasher collection and I saw the opportunity to make a significant change and hopefully influence others to join me in my efforts. Arnold: What goal(s) did you have in mind when you established the fund?

“ I altered and transformed my first edition of H.W. Janson’s book ‘The History of Art’ with an X-Acto knife and a vulva-shaped template to create an artwork titled “Improved Janson: A Woman on Every Page.” This seemed to say it all for me since Janson boasted that he would have included a woman artist in his ‘History of Art’ if he thought that there were any women artists worthy of inclusion.” – KALETA A. DOOLIN Kaleta A. Doolin Improved Janson: A Woman on Every Page

Doolin: I have found that a surprising number of people I have encountered have never examined the very small percentage of women in museum collections, exhibitions, museum directorships, college leadership positions, magazine features, and art history texts. My goals were to bring attention to my mission while making a positive impact on the Nasher (which, as a sculptor myself, I appreciate very much, but felt that the permanent collection could be even better). Arnold: Have you always been a feminist? Doolin: When I turned 10 years old, I expected to gain the same freedoms that my two older brothers gained at that age. When I was restricted because of being female, my spirit of rebellion was born. I became religious about equality and self-identified as a feminist as I learned more about it. Arnold: Was there any particularly defining moment or period in your life when feminism became important to you? Doolin: Feminism became more important to me when I formed my foundation and started thinking seriously about the legacy that I want to leave. I began to focus my mission around my identity as a feminist, an artist, and a philanthropist.

Arnold: Who are your (s)heroes Doolin: • Anne Early, my Women and Gender Studies professor at SMU • The Guerilla Girls, artists • Lucy Lippard, feminist, art historian, critic, and writer • Marsha Tucker, art historian, curator, and founder of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York • Judy Chicago, artist • Elizabeth Murray, artist • Annette Messager, artist • Roni Horn, artist • Eva Hesse, artist • Kiki Smith, artist • Laurie Anderson, artist • Gloria Steinem, feminist, activist, and journalist • Elizabeth A. Sackler, philanthropist, activist, historian, and founder of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum • Linda Nochlin, art historian • Helen LaKelly Hunt, Dallas native who helped to seed the women’s funding movement and who promotes giving big and bold with passion and purpose.

New Acquisitions

Works by Dorothy Dehner p

Written by CATHERINE CRAFT, Ph.D. Nasher Sculpture Center Curator

Thanks to the generous support of the Kaleta A. Doolin Fund for Women Artists, the Nasher Sculpture Center has been able to purchase a significant sculpture by the American artist Dorothy Dehner (1901–1994), and the Dorothy Dehner Foundation has reciprocated with a gift of seven works on paper. Born into Abstract Expressionism’s first generation of artists, Dehner included among her artistic peers her first husband David Smith as well as Ibram Lassaw, Herbert Ferber, and her close friend Louise Nevelson. After growing up in Ohio and California, she moved to New York to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, but during a 1925 trip to Europe she was exposed to modern art in Paris, which inspired her to pursue art. On her return to New York, she enrolled at the Art Students League, studying drawing but finding sculpture classes too conservative after her experience with the work of Picasso, Lipchitz, and other artists in Paris. Dehner met David Smith at her rooming house in 1926. Newly arrived in New York, he too enrolled at the League after meeting Dehner, and they married the following year. They focused on painting, studying with the Czech-born Modernist Jan Matulka. During the 1930s, Dehner turned from abstraction to representation; although she was interested in pursuing sculpture, Smith discouraged her from its practice. During their time together in Bolton Landing, New York, at a farm they purchased in 1929, Dehner was deeply involved in Smith’s work. She offered advice and often gave titles to his sculptures—the Nasher’s Smith sculpture Perfidious Albion, which formerly belonged to Dehner, owes its title to her. During the 1940s, drawing became Dehner’s primary creative outlet. In 1949, she produced Star Cage, an abstract watercolor of vividly hued washes and jagged lines evoking constellations in the night sky. According to art historian Joan Marter, president of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation, Dehner recalled that Smith came into her studio, admired the drawing, and said that he would like to make a sculpture. When Dehner proposed a collaboration, Smith declared himself “too jealous” for that. Instead, in 1950 Smith made a painted steel sculpture he titled Star Cage that has close affinities with Dehner’s drawing.

In 1950, Dehner left Smith and divorced him shortly thereafter. Aware of the need to support herself and eager to devote herself to her own work, she obtained a degree from Skidmore College in 1952 and returned to New York City, where she began teaching and making drawings. After her first one-person show there at Rose Fried Gallery in 1952, she showed regularly for many years at Willard Gallery, which also represented Smith. In 1952, Dehner also began making prints, which reawakened her desire to make sculpture. Shortly thereafter she began to make three-dimensional works from wax using an experimental technique she had started to explore while still at Bolton Landing. In the early 1950s, she developed this into a viable working method derived from the traditional process of lost-wax casting, creating models built up from small pieces of wax that she frequently drew or scratched into, then joined together to create grid-based matrixes of form. Beginning in 1955, she started having her pieces cast in bronze. For the next three decades, she focused largely on sculpture, complemented by drawings and prints. Dehner’s use of wax and bronze to create solid, singular works was innovative and unusual for its time, giving her work a density that belies the negative spaces permeating her compositions, as well as a sensuous, tactile surface that sets her apart from other sculptors of her generation: What her male peers created through the industrial process of welding, Dehner achieved by adapting one of the oldest sculptural processes in existence to a situation all too common to women artists of her era—a lack of space and resources that made working part-to-part in an intimately sized studio a necessity. In 1965, Dehner showed a decade of her work in a retrospective at the Jewish Museum. In the 1970s, her sculptural practice shifted to the creation of assemblages in wood, an easier material for the aging artist to handle. During the 1980s, she had large-scale sculptures based on her earlier, smaller bronzes fabricated in Cor-Ten steel. Although her sculpture was acclaimed in the first decade of her career, extenuating circumstances led it to become marginalized in the years that followed. Dehner has suffered the neglect that often occurs with women artists, especially those

Dorothy Dehner, Bird Machine #3, 1952. Etching, 15 x 19 in. (38.1 x 48.3 cm), Nasher Sculpture Center, Gift of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation. © Dorothy Dehner Foundation/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Kevin Todora Dorothy Dehner, Untitled, 1953. Watercolor and pen and ink, 18 ¼ x 23 in. (48.4 x 58.4 cm), Nasher Sculpture Center, Gift of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation. © Dorothy Dehner Foundation/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Kevin Todora

Dorothy Dehner, Low Landscape No. 3, 1961 Bronze, unique. 7 ½ x 32 ½ x 21 ½ in. (19 x 82.6 x 54.6 cm) Nasher Sculpture Center, acquired through the Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisitions Fund for Women Artists © Dorothy Dehner Foundation/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Kevin Todora

Top: Dorothy Dehner, River Landscape #4,1953 Engraving, Nasher Sculpture Center, 9 x 22 in. (22.9 x 55.9 cm) Gift of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation © Dorothy Dehner Foundation/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Kevin Todora

Left: Dorothy Dehner, Grid Lock, 1953 Etching, 12 ½ x 15 in. (31.8 x 38.1 cm) Nasher Sculpture Center, Gift of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation © Dorothy Dehner Foundation/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Kevin Todora

Right: Dorothy Dehner, Untitled, 1954 Watercolor and ink, 4 ¾ x 5 ¾ in. (12 x 14.6 cm), Nasher Sculpture Center, Gift of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation © Dorothy Dehner Foundation/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Kevin Todora

who have been partnered with well-known male artists—a situation intensified in Dehner’s case by Smith’s unexpected death in 1965, which led her to become a primary source for legions of researchers on his work. Additionally, she was caught in a generational change that affected many of her contemporaries when critical discourse in the late 1960s shifted to the concerns of younger Minimal artists, who were critical of the sculptural vocabulary and relational compositions characteristic of her generation as well as the sense of touch apparent on the surfaces of her works. Dehner’s cast bronzes conjure associations with both architecture and landscape, her sculptural vocabulary growing out of the works on paper that had sustained her at Bolton Landing. She experimented with different sculptural formats, including vertical, totemic works; suspended, needlelike forms; landscapes tipped upright to become shallow freestanding sculptures; wall-mounted reliefs; and horizontally oriented works that traverse tabletop surfaces. Her years in nature at Bolton Landing as well as travels earlier in her life fueled the conception, imagery, and titles of her sculptural works, as well as her works on paper. The sculpture acquired by the Nasher, Low Landscape No. 3, is one of Dehner’s most substantial works in her signature method of unique, solid bronze sculptures cast from handbuilt wax models. Employing the part-to-part constructivist compositional language common among her generation of artists, Dehner created abstract works with strong allusions to architecture and landscape, nature and travel. Low Landscape No. 3 summons both the enveloping sensation of being fully within a landscape and the impression of looking down from an elevated vantage point. Low Landscape No. 3 is unique among Dehner’s cast bronzes for its scale in combination with its horizontal disposition. Her other horizontally oriented sculptures are smaller and tend to be constructed as if they are journeys, extending from one node of compositional activity to the next. With other sculptures bearing similar titles, Dehner raised them upright and attached them to a plinth, lending them a pictorial aspect. Low Landscape No. 3 suggests that a certain monumentality was needed to sustain the compositional power of Dehner’s work in a horizontal orientation, and it also suggests the physical limits of her method: A sculpture of this size in joined pieces of wax must have been highly fragile. A virtuosic demonstration of Dehner’s intimate familiarity with the strengths and limitations of her materials, Low Landscape No. 3 was displayed in her 1965 Jewish Museum retrospective and in her 1967 exhibition at the Hyde Collection, but rarely since. The Dorothy Dehner Foundation’s gift to the Nasher includes four drawings that span the artist’s work from the late 1940s through the end of the following decade, the very years she developed the signature sculptural style embodied in Low Landscape No. 3. The earliest drawing, from 1947, is an untitled landscape created at Bolton Landing at a time when Dehner was beginning to move back into abstraction after years of painting and drawing in a representational manner. The sense of immersion in nature, conveyed by the rhythms of its all-over composition, would persist in Dehner’s abstract drawings and sculptures. Another drawing, Saratoga Springs, exemplifies her idiosyncratic manner of working in watercolor 45

and ink, a method combining wet-in-wet processes that allowed her materials to flow and bleed into one another and into the paper, with Dehner going back with pen to draw and scratch into the work’s surface. Printmaking was pivotal to Dehner’s work as a sculptor, and the Foundation has included in its gift three prints Dehner made at Atelier 17, the innovative printmaking workshop founded by Stanley William Hayter, where she began working in 1952. At Atelier 17 the emphasis lay more on exploring the possibilities of printmaking—particularly engraving and etching—than on publishing editions of prints. Despite Hayter’s emphasis on the masculine qualities of physical mastery required to control the engraving process, Atelier 17 was a welcoming place for women, who comprised nearly half its artists and included, in addition to Dehner, Louise Nevelson, Louise Bourgeois, Sue Fuller, and Anne Ryan. Dehner credited the process of engraving, in which the artist scratches directly into a copper plate with a stylus called a burin, with reawakening her interest in creating sculpture. She kept the copper plates from her time at Atelier 17, occasionally displaying them as sculptural objects. At Atelier 17, Dehner worked her plates until she decided they were resolved to her liking, often combining engraving with etching and aquatint. Although she kept a few proofs along with her plates, she did not execute an edition of any of her prints until nearly the end of her life. Dehner’s work is an important addition to the Nasher Sculpture Center’s collection. In addition to the close creative dialogue she enjoyed for many years with Smith, her sculpture has important resonances with many artists in the collection. She joins the Nasher’s mid-century works by American artists, including Smith, Willem de Kooning, Raoul Hague, Isamu Noguchi, Richard Stankiewicz, and John Chamberlain. Her sense of touch and involvement with wax find common ground with Medardo Rosso’s earlier experiments with lostwax casting, while the importance of drawing and printmaking to her sculpture places her in the company of artists likewise represented in the Nasher’s collection by both sculptures and works on paper, including Tony Smith, James Magee, Jacques Lipchitz, David Bates, and Manuel Neri.

The Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisitions Fund for Women Artists is made possible by generous gifts from Kaleta Doolin and Alan Govenar, with additional support from Camilla Cowan, Hannah and Stuart Cutshall, Julie and Robert England, Joan Davidow, and the Martha McCarty Wells Donor Advised Fund at Dallas Women’s Foundation. To support this important fund, please call Rebecca Watkins at 214.242.5169. Dorothy Dehner, Saratoga Springs, 1951. Watercolor and pen and ink, 18 ¼ x 23 in. (48.4 x 58.4 cm). Nasher Sculpture Center, Gift of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation © Dorothy Dehner Foundation/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Kevin Todora Dorothy Dehner, Untitled [landscape], 1947. Pen and ink with gouache 12 ½ x 17 in. (31.8 x 43.2 cm). Nasher Sculpture Center, Gift of the Dorothy Dehner Foundation. © Dorothy Dehner Foundation/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Kevin Todora

LOW LANDSCAPE NO. 3 AND THREE PRINTS BY DEHNER ARE ON DISPLAY UNTIL OCTOBER 1 IN 2D / 3D .

Fountain to Fountainhead, 100 Years Later p

Written by CATHERINE CRAFT, Ph.D. Nasher Sculpture Center Curator

A gift of The Art Foundation in 2012, the beautifully produced, oversized artists’ book Fountainhead was inspired by one of the great conceptual gestures of modern art. In 1917, Marcel Duchamp, using the pseudonym R. Mutt, submitted a porcelain urinal as a work of art titled Fountain to an exhibition supposedly open to all. Its rejection prompted Duchamp to issue a statement that laid the foundation not only for Conceptual art, but also for art that embraces everyday objects: “Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under a new title and point of view—created a new thought for that object.” In the ensuing scandal, Fountain disappeared, its existence documented only by photographs (until being replicated by Duchamp on several occasions, many years later). The Art Foundation’s founding members—Joshua Goode, Ryder Richards, Lucia Simek, and Andrew Douglas Underwood—had the inspired idea to return to this “fountainhead” of contemporary art by soliciting the alteration of various photographs of Fountain, from a number of local and international artists. (See the next page for the original call for submissions.) On this, the centennial of Fountain’s first appearance (and disappearance), their imaginative efforts render an iconic image of the past a newly vibrant part of the present. 47

FOUNTAINHEAD ON VIEW AT THE NASHER OCTOBER 14 – FEBRUARY 4

To accompany Paper Into Sculpture and Esopus.

Artist pages from Fountainhead (L-R): Sara Hignite, Jonathan Whitfill, and Frances Bagley.

Original Call for Submissions, March 8, 2012 Dear Artist, The Art Foundation asks that you alter the attached image in any way you see fit and send the file back at its original size. Your altered image, along with those of other hand-selected artists, will be included in an outsized handmade book that will be ceremoniously displayed during The Art Foundation’s inaugural curated exhibition, Fountainhead, during the week of the Dallas Art Fair this April. Alongside the call-and-response book will be a small exhibition of art objects that explore themes of authorship, receptivity, deception, and manipulation. The Art Foundation is an artist collective based in Dallas, with founding members Andrew Douglas Underwood, Ryder Richards, Joshua Goode, and Lucia Simek. The group’s aim is to cultivate and elevate the artistic dialogue in Dallas, in conversation with the wider world, through exhibitions, interventions, and the written word. We hope you will participate in this endeavor by March 18. And so does Marcel. Gratefully, The Art Foundation

These submissions were eventually turned into the artists’ book Fountainhead and displayed in April 2012.

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS FEATURED IN THE FOUNTAINHEAD BOOK INCLUDE: Frances Bagley (Dallas) Jesse Morgan Barnett (Dallas) Laetitia Benat (Paris, FR) Rebecca Carter (Dallas) Piotr Chiszinski (Ithaca, NY) Steve Cruz (Dallas) Matt Cusick (Dallas) Elliot Doughtie (Dallas) Erika Duque (Fort Worth) Celia Eberle (Dallas) Cassandra Emswiler (Dallas) Teresa Gomez-Martorell (Barcelona, SP) Brenton Good (Harris, PA) Sara Hignite (Dallas) Kelly Lynn Jones (San Francisco, CA) Gerald Lopez (Corpus Christi) Stephanie Madewell (Brooklyn) Sam Matineau (Brooklyn) Lindsay McCulloch (Washington) Ruben Nieto (Dallas) Tom Orr (Dallas) Sara Pringle (Brooklyn) Teresa Rafidi (Dallas) Adam Raymont (Berlin) Enrico Riley (Vermont) Gregory Ruppe (Fort Worth) Gretchen Schermerhorn (Washington) Shawn Smith (Austin) Ian F. Thomas (Slippery Rock, PA) Karen Weiner (Dallas) Jonathan Whitfill (Lubbock) Zero (location unknown) 48

The Artists

Sculpture in 2017 63...2017 Artist Microgrants 67...Artist Circle Chat 51...

Work by 2017 Nasher Microgrant recipient Marcela Reyes

The summer of 2017 presented a rare moment in the art world—the convergence of three of the most important recurring European exhibitions: the Venice Biennale, documenta 14, and the Münster Sculpture Project. Berlin-based writer Alison Hugill previewed these monumental shows in the last issue of The Nasher, highlighting some of the most anticipated works and interventions in expectation of the Trifecta, as we, in keeping with their enormous natures, dubbed the trinity of shows. This issue, we sat down with Nasher Director Jeremy Strick and the curatorial staff—Chief Curator Jed Morse, Curator Catherine Craft, and Assistant Curator Leigh Arnold—to get their feedback on what they saw in Europe over the summer: which installations left the most lasting impressions, which artists stood out, and what can be said about the climate of the world as seen through the lens of these important exhibitions.

Mark Bradford Tomorrow Is Another Day/ Domani è un altro giorno, 2017 United States of America 57th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia, Viva Arte Viva Photo: Francesco Galli Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia

On the 57th Venice Biennale VENICE, ITALY

Jeremy Strick: Let’s start with the pavilions. What were the highlights? Jed Morse: I thought the Phyllida Barlow installation at the British pavilion was just extraordinary. She dominated that space with her work. It completely filled every nook and cranny, and had as much to say about the power of making as that building says about the traditional colonial powers, and I thought that was a really strong retort to that. Strick: Yes—It’s almost as if the work was a statement of the impossibility of apprehension, of knowing, of the insufficiency of any one view. Once you were inside, you really could not grasp the entire outline from one vantage without moving physically, and so really it set up the space to be in this sort of confrontation with the work, where each almost defeated the other. I felt that at the American pavilion, Mark Bradford’s work was terrific and it was surprising—the architectural intervention that he did was unlike anything I’ve seen by him before. But the single biggest surprise for me was in the Swiss pavilion, which featured two very different responses to the work of Alberto Giacometti—by Carol Bove, and by the Austin-based team of Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler. Hubbard and Birchler’s film was centered on the life of American artist Flora Mayo, who was romantically involved with Giacometti in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The film was a revelation, both in terms of Mayo’s life, but also as a meditation on the life of an artist. And as just a bravura act of filmmaking and installation, it was remarkable. You saw it, Leigh? Leigh Arnold: Yes. What was interesting to me was how Hubbard and Birchler wove together scripted and documentary-style filmmaking, juxtaposing a narrative of her [the girlfriend, Flora Mayo] 53

thoughts—conveyed via voiceover—and historical reenactments (or imaginings), with interviews with her son in the present day. The voiceovers come across as diaristic or as if they were lifted from letters written by Flora. But as a viewer, you’re never given confirmation of that, so the whole time you’re watching the film, you feel as though you’re privy to these very personal thoughts of hers and then left wondering if they’re truly hers: What’s real and what’s not? Hubbard and Birchler also play off the biography that was written on Giacometti [James Lord, Giacometti: A Biography (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1985)]. At a certain point during an interview with Flora’s son, he reads aloud passages from the biography that cite her as somewhat of a throwaway character in the life of [Giacometti]. It was devastating to watch, as it was a very real and emotional response to this text by her son. What was fascinating to me was the impulse to decipher what was real and what wasn’t. Strick: Any other pavilions stand out for you? Arnold: I thought the Italian pavilion was really strong. An artist I wasn’t familiar with before this, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, did an installation in one of the larger rooms where you walk into what feels like a large space, with very low ceilings; there is scaffolding everywhere and it’s very dark. You’re unable to really tell what you’re looking at, and so you are drawn to a staircase at the back of the room (it’s the only source of light in the space). Upon ascending the stairs, you are rewarded with this mind-blowing illusion that the ceiling has been inverted into the floor, and it just opens up the space. I initially thought the illusion was achieved through mirrors, but then I realized it’s actually water. So while you’re entering the space below in the scaffolding, you are literally underwater. It’s just remarkable. I was completely blown away with this installation. I also thought the French pavilion was an interesting way to activate a space, in contrast to the German

pavilion [by Anne Imhof], which I wasn’t able to see activated by a performance. The French pavilion— from what I know and having experienced it—is programmed fairly regularly with musicians using it as a recording studio. The artist Xavier Veilhan…came in and altered the architecture of the pavillion, creating a space that was influenced by Kurt Schwitter’s, Merzbau. But essentially, Veilhan’s interest was not so much in developing a visual installation, but rather, creating a pavilion that is more about sound and collaboration with musicians. I happened to be there on the day when they were doing a recording and it was just fantastic. Contrast that with the German pavilion, not having the opportunity to see the performance or the activation of the space, I didn’t get much out of that pavilion. It was a little disappointing to not be able to see what ended up winning the prize for the show. Strick: Yes, definitely. When I was there at the opening [of the German pavilion by [Anne Imhof], there were huge lines and the real possibility of standing in line and still missing the performances—it was not really [laughs] the easiest work to access. Arnold: Agreed, and it makes you wonder how performance can be brought into these large-scale, longlasting international exhibitions. If you’re there for a week you probably would be able to see it, but for those of us who could only be in Venice for a couple of days— Strick: And then what about the exhibition? What were some of the highlights for you? Arnold: At the Arsenale, I was looking through the lens of Land art, which was evident in the first two rooms, that dealt with social practice, and other rooms devoted entirely to Land art. I was looking at work by Maria Lai, who did this intervention throughout cities in Italy, stringing a strand of blue ribbon down streets and through buildings, and documenting the action in film and still photography, and then also thinking about artists like Anna Halprin, who stages dance performances every year as a means of reclaiming peace in an area outside of San Francisco that was

Top L: Phyllida Barlow, folly, 2017. Great Britain, 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, Viva Arte Viva. Photo: Francesco Galli. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia. Top R: Xavier Veilhan, Studio Venezia, 2017. France, 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, Viva Arte Viva. Photo: Francesco Galli. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia. Middle: Kader Attia, Narrative Vibrations, 2017, mixed media installation, dimensions variable. 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, Viva Arte Viva. Photo: Italo Rondinella. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia. Bottom: Giorgio Andreotta CalĂ˛, Untitled (La fine del mondo), 2017. Italy, 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, Viva Arte Viva. Photo: Jacopo Salvi. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

Ernesto Neto, Um Sagrado Lugar (A Sacred Place), 2017. Organic dyed cotton voile crochet, cotton wadding, cotton voile, cotton canvas, jute fabric, cotton voile little knots, wood, plywood, water filter, soil, sand, instruments, ceramic vases, plants, photograph, Huni Kuin drawing, weavings, and chants, Una Isi Kayawa books, fabric book dimensions variable. 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, Viva Arte Viva. Photo: Andrea AvezzĂš. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.

the site of several violent murders in the late 1970s–early 1980s, and these kinds of more social interventions in the landscape. And I was wondering how that might come into a future exhibition of Land art and how there is maybe a social function to Land art that hasn’t really been addressed. Arnold: Jed, what did you think about the main show in Venice?

tent. Anyone who wanted to could just pick up a drum and play. It was great! Strick: Flipping through my photographs, I’m thinking about the prevalence of fabric work, particularly in the Arsenale. The figurative sculptures of Francis Upritchard, Leonor Antunes, who was very strong— Morse: Yes, Sheila Hicks.

Morse: There were several things that I really liked. One was the Kadar Attia installation about the golden age Arab singers of his childhood. At the entrance to this installation, there were album jackets on the walls, so you got a sense of who the main singers were, and then in a darkened space you had these speakers with couscous on the top and the vibrations of the singers’ voices made the couscous move in these beautiful geometric patterns. It was, I think, as effective as a visual and physical installation as it was a sound installation.

Strick: Sheila Hicks was extraordinary. That wall that effectively concluded the whole exhibition. Ernesto Neto, who you mentioned.

It was nice to see the Ernesto Neto installation as well. I know that’s something he’s been working on for a while, and there was a kind of a smaller version of it at Tanya Bonakdar gallery, but this was a more fulsome version, essentially the result of several years of living with this indigenous group in the Amazon, and going on these spiritual journeys with them. And so it was really about the relation of humanity to the land and to some greater sense of the universe.

Strick: Even the abstract work of Zilia Sánchez, which are paintings, but ones that really emphasize the material nature of the fabric, their support. Judith Scott, of course.

Catherine Craft: Did he make a structure that you could enter? Morse: Yes, it was essentially a handknitted structure, like an enormous teepee or a tent. Arnold: There were benches and other seating areas in the four corners of the room, so the tent occupied the central aspect of the room, and then the four corners had areas where you could sit down and listen to recordings of music that this indigenous group performed. When I approached, I could hear drums before I entered the room, and whoever was playing them—they were really on-beat. I assumed it was a performance and then I came in and it was all children playing the drums in the

Morse: Yes, in the section of the Arsenale that included the Maria Lai and also recorded a lot of communal and performance works from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. The kind of red thread that ran through that was a “thread.” I mean, it seemed like each one of those installations involved artists using thread in metaphorical as well as very physical ways.

Craft: I wasn’t able to go to Venice, so I’m wondering how all of you feel about this Biennale? Does it seem different in substantive ways from previous years? Is there something distinctive about it? Strick: In a global sense, what does it say about the state of the world? I don’t think I’d attempt anything quite so grand at this point, and, you know, it’s difficult to draw large conclusions from the national pavilions because each comes out of such a particular set of circumstances. For the large exhibition, the challenge of creating an exhibition, along with different conditions in the world and in the art world and, above all, the different interests and inclinations of the exhibition’s curator, means that each iteration of the Biennale has a different character, and this year’s (curated by Christine Macel) certainly had a different character from the last, which was organized by Okwui Enwezor, which in turn had a different character from the last one prior, which was

organized by Massimiliano Gioni. Perhaps in this Biennale, the overall themes seemed less emphatically stated, and although this one was divided into a series of sections, there seemed a certain fluidity between those sections. But I think in the broader sense that this followed the pattern of the previous two in its incorporation of both current, recent work, as well as more historical work, which seems to have a particular resonance. And while in a very broad sense the last Biennale reflected the various responses of artists to a world in crisis, this exhibition seemed especially concerned with the inner world of artists in a time of broad turmoil. So it had a different character, a different flavor, but was not entirely distant either. Arnold: I visited Kassel first, then Venice, which was probably a great way to do it because leaving Kassel, I felt very depressed about the state of the world. It was a very serious exhibition, and yes, that’s important since the state of our world is very much in crisis at this point, but it was refreshing then to go to Venice and feel a little bit more transported by what you’re seeing and having a little bit more levity to the work that you’re looking at. Not to take us to Kassel, but — Strick: Let’s go to Kassel!

On documenta 14 KASSEL, GERMANY & ATHENS, GREECE

Morse: This iteration of documenta called Learning from Athens, had a very clear thesis to it surrounding, of course, the issues that Europe is facing with immigration and with the financial crisis. So, it was very political. It did cover issues of immigration very broadly from a variety of viewpoints, not just in Europe but also from other perspectives around the world. But what was interesting to me about it was it offered an almost alternative view of the art world; it included work by a number of artists with whom I was not previously familiar, and that, I thought, were really interesting. I don’t know how you all felt about that.

Top: ANTIDORON. The EMST Collection, Fridericianum, Kassel, 10 June- 17 September 2017. Curated by Katerina Koskina. Assistant Curators: Tina Pandi, Stamatis Schizakis. ÂŠ Lucas Samaras, courtesy Pace Gallery Bottom: Michael Dean, Tender Tender 2017, Skulptur Projekte 2017. Plastic sheeting, concrete, stickers, metal, paper

Arnold: Yes, I agree. I was introduced to many artists who I’m now interested in following up on and seeing how, if they’re still living, maybe they want to do something. I really enjoyed the Fridericianum, which had on view the collection of the Contemporary Museum in Athens. Strick: There’s a new museum in Athens for contemporary art, the EMST, I think, and because of the financial crisis, construction was stalled even though a collection was developed for it. documenta provided the funds for the museum to be completed and to be opened, but it was determined that the collection would be exhibited first in Kassel for documenta and simultaneously the museum in Athens--that building would open with the Athenian iteration of documenta. So what you see when you go to that brand-new, I thought, very effective building in Athens, is a portion of the Athens documenta, and then when documenta closes, the collection will go back and be in its new home. Arnold: There were works by artists with whom I’m familiar: Lynda Benglis, Lucas Samaras. But they had new work by Emily Jacir, as well as works by many Greek artists, historical and contemporary figures, that I didn’t know. It was an impressive collection to me. It also goes back to the notion that documenta includes historical work alongside new work, and for me it was nice to see familiar work as a way to start my journey through Kassel, but then also be introduced to new work and with the understanding that it’s all part of this cohesive collection from Athens. Craft: I agree; it was a very good introduction. One thing I did wonder about the collection was its presentation—the works on view, although they came from the permanent collection, were very much tied into the themes of this documenta: issues of displacement and immigration and various political strains on the system. I wondered about the extent to which the works in the exhibition had been chosen for that context and how it related to the museum collection as a whole, and what particular view of it we were seeing.

Strick: And we probably won’t know that until it returns to Athens. Craft: Exactly. Strick: You know, the Fridericianum is the historical home and center of documenta. It was the first art museum in Europe—and the first documentas were only in that space, but of course documenta has grown over the successive decades. It’s expanded and other buildings have been built, and it also temporarily occupies space in additional buildings. So I was sort of curious to find in that building, not the curated documenta exhibition but rather a selection of works from the EMST, but given that displacement was one of the themes of the exhibition, perhaps that makes sense. I thought that one had to admire the scale and ambition of this documenta and, particularly considering that it was being held in two cities, with that scale and ambition, to still see the specificity that it had both in terms of the themes and the way it addressed those themes, but also in terms of the selection of works chosen for specific locations, and how those works responded to their place, both the physical space but also the history of their spaces. I thought that was impressive. The presentation of the cities [Kassel and Athens] had differences. I also thought that particular care was taken in Athens to respond to that city and its history, and I thought that the concept of the show—the ways our world is marked by twin crises that are not unrelated, was powerfully stated. The crisis of capitalism as manifest in the debt crisis, with Athens and Germany as the two poles for that, and the fact that they have been at such significant political odds, and the second crisis, the refugee crisis, which has impacted both nations and both cities quite dramatically. But beyond that, in Athens what was particularly evident was the attention paid to the history of art in Athens: the focus on electronic music and its impact, the focus on teaching in schools. There were a number of themes carried out in interesting and quite thorough ways. That said, a lot of it was not the easiest, not the most pleasure-giving art—tough

art for tough times. But there was a lot that still rewarded attention.

On the Münster Sculpture Project MÜNSTER, GERMANY

Strick: I know that we were all truly amazed by the work of our 2017 Nasher Prize Laureate Pierre Huyghe, but did you like anything else [laughs]? Morse: I think the two standout works in Münster were Pierre Huyghe and Michael Dean. They were such extraordinary installations. Pierre’s work taking over an abandoned ice rink, carving into it, which was as much sculptural as it was archaeological. And then, of course, populating it with a variety of symbiotic creatures: bees, an aquarium with glass that would black out so at some points you could see it and at others you couldn’t. Arnold + Craft: Peacocks. Morse: Peacocks. And then adding this element of virtual reality to it, which, I don’t know if either of you played with while you were there— Craft: Yes, the virtual reality aspect, accessible via an app, which Leigh downloaded. Plus, there was the incubator with living human cancer cells. Morse: Yes, the cancer cells, which were responding to all of the activity in the space. It was an extraordinary experience in and of itself, and I think a tour de force. Strick: I might put in a plug for Nicole Eisenman’s work as well, which I thought was, along with Pierre Huyghe and Michael Dean, one of the real standouts. I thought that her fountain—first of all, the scale of it was marvelous, the execution, the humor, the sense of place, the specificity of it—really very successful. I hadn’t seen sculpture by her, and I was really delighted. Nairy Bahgramian, one of the artists who was both in Kassel and Athens, and then Münster, is going to be featured in an exhibition here at the 58

Top L: Mike Smith, Not Quite Under_Ground 2017, Skulptur Projekte 2017. Installation with mixed media and activities Top R: Nicole Eisenman, Sketch for a Fountain 2017, Skulptur Projekte 2017. Bronze, plaster, basin Bottom: Hito Steyerl, HellYeahWeFuckDie 2017, Skulptur Projekte 2017. 3-channel-video installation, environment, 4 min., HD video (2016)

Pierre Huyghe, After ALife Ahead 2017, Skulptur Projekte 2017. Concrete floor of ice rink, logic game, ammoniac, sand, clay, phreatic water, bacteria, algae, bees, chimera peacocks, aquarium, black switchable glass, Conus textile, GloFish, incubator, human cancer cells, genetic algorithm, augmented reality, automated ceiling structure, rain Nairy Bahgramian, Beliebte Stellen / Privileged Points 2017, Skulptur Projekte 2017. Lacquered bronze, metal, lashing chain, tensioning devices, rubber

Nasher. Catherine, did you have any thoughts about the work in Münster? Craft: I liked it very much. The site is a baroque palace with courtyards in the front and back that are the sites for two different sculptures. The sculptures have these organic associations, but also made me think of the curves of baroque architecture. I think it had a really nice scale to it, as well. There were many works in Münster that were large installations, with elements of performance and video, such that a work that’s simply a made, raw object could almost get a little bit lost. I think [Nairy’s] work is considerably more subtle. What do the rest of you think? Morse: I thought the [sculptures] were weird and compelling. That kind of organic quality—they’re abstract, they’re tubular, they have almost a biological quality to them. The dark ones on the front had these Noguchiesque crutches that propped them up or held them together like they were medical devices to mend broken bones. And then the white one in the back had these elements lying on top of each other with these really thick fabric or foam pads that were a tan color—lying in between them to cushion them against each other. And rather than being held together artificially by some external device, they were very gently laid upon each other, so they had a much more tactile quality to them. And it was interesting, both you and I, Catherine, noticed how little kids, toddlers, really gravitated toward them.

choose to do here [at the Nasher], is that a lot of the work she’s known for has been made for interior gallery and museum spaces, and she often talks about an interior architecture as being like the inside of a body. There was something I thought very vulnerable about these sculptures—even though the one in the back does have this enclosed courtyard that protects it in a way, they’re literally, and I think metaphorically, more exposed than the works seen in her last couple of gallery shows. It’s a different kind of work. Another artist whose contribution I found really interesting, as much maybe for the setting as for the work, was Hito Steyerl’s. She does video work and is interested in issues of surveillance. She’s done work about, for example, drone warfare and what it means to be visible or not visible to something you can’t even see. Her videos in her installation in Münster, accompanied by a few objects, are in the corporate headquarters of a bank that also has a corporate art collection. They are installed in the lobby of the bank headquarters alongside very cool, rational, geometric abstractions from the ‘70s. There were two different sets [of videos]—one about trying to develop robots and artificial intelligence that can go into disaster or war areas and rescue people or excavate rubble. and you see these things being tested, and the way they’re being tested is by being abused. So you’re seeing robots being kicked and beaten and pushed down. And on the other side you see an active war zone, and people wondering when help is going to come. I thought it was really powerful.

Craft: Yes, it was funny. Morse: You said you kept waiting for this one toddler to move to take a picture. Craft: All my photos of one of the sculptures have a little boy riding it like a sea monster. [laughter] Morse: And mine do as well. There’s something elemental about that attraction. Craft: I think one thing that was interesting to me about it also, in starting to think about what Nairy may

Arnold: Wasn’t one of the videos also asking Siri “What happened to the city?” And it was a city that had been completely devastated by bombings. So it was asking your Apple iPhone questions about what happened here. Craft: And Siri responding “I don’t understand” or “How can I help you?” I thought that was a quite powerful combination of finding the right site for a particular type of work. And plus I was pleasantly surprised that the bank would go along with this.

because my friend, the artist Heyd Fontenot, contributed. Morse: Yes, Kathryn Andrews had posted about how much she enjoyed it and so we made a point of going to check it out. The whole idea behind it is it’s a tattoo parlor, but only for people over 65. Arnold: Because tattoos are usually something you do when you’re young and carefree and you don’t understand the effects it might have on your skin later on in life. Morse: So you’re older and wiser and here’s your chance. [laughter] Morse: The artist who did it, Mike Smith, invited all of the artists who were involved in the Sculpture Projects in Münster to contribute drawings for tattoos in the tattoo parlor, and then he also asked other artists [not in the Sculpture Projects]. As we were flipping through the book of tattoos you could get, we noticed that some were drawn by Heyd Fontenot. It was great to see our friend, and the former director of CentralTrak here in Dallas, as one of the surprise participants in the Münster Sculpture Projects. Strick: I thought that the Oscar Tuazon was terrific in Münster, as well. This is a work that’s, in effect, a smokestack, a stove, made of concrete in an area that’s an industrial and urban wasteland— very challenging space— but the work has a marvelous scale. Despite its location, it’s become an attraction, drawing people to it who sit together, warmed in colder weather, or climb up and look out from it. Arnold: Speaking of being warmed, though entirely non-art-related, what were your favorite drinks on the art trail? Mine was Aperol spritz… Morse: Martini at the Dukes Strick: In Kassel, a beer I particularly liked, Hüff Naturtrüb Craft: Campari and soda in Venice

Arnold: Did anyone see the tattoo parlor? I missed it, but I’m sad I did

Nasher Sculpture Center

Artist Microgrants In May, the Nasher announced the winners of the Nasher Sculpture Center 2017 Artist Microgrants, a program that provides annual financial support to North Texas artists through the distribution of small-sum grants that may be used to fund the purchasing of equipment and materials, travel or research, or even studio space. The 2017 Nasher Microgrant awardees were: Chesley Antoinette, Eileen Maxson, Marcela Reyes, Giovanni Valderas, and Montoya Williams. The winners were chosen by a jury that included former microgrant winners, artists Alicia Eggert and Michael Morris; Nasher XChange artist Ruben Ochoa; and Harold Steward, manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center, as well as Nasher Assistant Curator Leigh Arnold, and Nasher Curator of Education Anna Smith. Each Nasher Microgrant awardee received $2,000 to realize projects related to his or her studio practice. The 2017 Artist Microgrants are made possible by additional gifts from Nasher Members and Patrons. “In our third year of presenting microgrants to sustain the studio practices of North Texas artists, we found that many artists engaged with pressing issues facing some of the area’s marginalized communities, as well as wider global and artistic concerns,” said Director Jeremy Strick. “We’re excited to know that in helping fund the efforts of these artists, the Nasher is also encouraging stronger community engagement with the unique and powerful ways that artists work to build bridges and encourage positive growth in our cities.” The Nasher checked in with the recent winners to see how their Nasher Micrograntfunded projects are progressing.

The 2017 Artist Microgrants are funded by additional gifts from Nasher Members and Patrons. To support this program, visit nashersculpturecenter.org/micrograntfund

Chesley Antoinette

â&#x20AC;&#x153; My Nasher Microgrant is going toward a project called The Heart of the Headwrap, which explores art photography that references original paintings of black women wearing headwraps during the 17th to the 18th century. The exhibition will not only have images, but also original contemporary turbans that function as wearable art presented as fiber sculpture. In addition it will include a map of America during 1786 before and after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and video documentation of 15 workshops completed by 150 women and girls in Oak Cliff and South Dallas being taught how to boost selfconfidence while wearing headwraps and the American history behind it.â&#x20AC;? 14

Eileen Maxson “At the moment, I’m wrapping up the production of individual works (prints, video, and sculpture) that will form the basis of the larger, meta-narrative video selected for a Nasher Microgrant. Funnily enough, while a kind of anxious questioning of progress ties these works-withinworks together, support from the Nasher has created new and clear momentum in the studio. This energy, I think, started with the application process itself. The Nasher offered finalists the occasion to present and discuss proposals in person to the jury. For me, this was already an exceptional and generative experience.”

Marcela Reyes “ I am very humbled to be given the grant, which helps me make this project in which I will be able to work with two communities that are very important to me: the art community and the Hispanic community. The grant has helped me buy most of the materials needed for the project and to rent a small place where the photos will be taken.”

Montoya Williams

“ Since moving back to Dallas after 10 years, I’ve taken a look at my surroundings and noticed how things have changed, stayed the same, ebbed and flowed. I have observed how policy and politics shape the physical landscape into something foreign and yet familiar and what it means for Dallas residents. Using digital collage and photography, I have been exploring themes of isolation, racism, and gentrification, and would like to expand my practice to include photogrammetry and animation. The goal is to bring my art into the third dimension and create an interactive body of work. I want viewers to be able to move through the pieces as if they are walking through their own neighborhoods, highlighting the relationship between familiarity of old landmarks and new waves of gentrification, progress, and evolution. I plan on showcasing the exhibition across public libraries located in neighborhoods that are often overlooked by the art community. [With my Nasher Microgrant] the ultimate aim is to broaden artistic engagement with these communities by reaching out to unconventional audiences through new media.”

Giovanni Valderas “I am extremely thankful to receive the Nasher Microgrant. The funding support allowed me to mass-produce high-resolution signage that mimicked traditional political signage that spoke to the Latinx community. The project took a life of its own, the 18 x 24 inch signs were placed around the community and, at times, they would fall over or perhaps be taken down but interestingly enough, individuals would put them back up. As an artist, it was important for me to interact with my community by engaging them with contemporary art and utilizing our language and culture to reflect the needs and concerns we all share. Ultimately, my aim for this project was to create awareness and dialogue about gentrification, challenging traditional power structures, empowerment. Without the help from the Nasher Microgrant I could not have done this. Thank you all.”

Artist Circle Co-Programmers Danielle Avram & Christopher Blay

Chat

The Nasher Artist Circle is open to all working artists and art students, bringing additional enrichment to exhibitions through specially designed experiences for artists, by artists. For the coming season, Danielle Avram and Christopher Blay will collaborate on a series of events that draw ingenious lines between the variety of exhibitions on view throughout the year, from Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony to Paper into Sculpture to First Sculpture, and beyond. In our individual practices, we each focus on creating responsive programming that investigates myriad ideas under a single large umbrella. We revel in the chaos of creating, the energy of subversion, and the integration of seemingly disparate thoughts, histories, and vocabularies. Therefore, it made perfect sense for us to collaborate on this year’s Nasher Artist Circle programming, allowing our minds to wander over the connective possibilities that exist between the elements of the upcoming exhibitions. Through conversations, we decided that the game of rock, paper, scissors was the perfect umbrella under which to explore these connections, as it is representational of hierarchical structures, the displacement or shifting of power, and chance versus skill. Our ongoing text conversation allows for our ideas, asides, and random thoughts to percolate within the context of responding to the Nasher’s exhibition schedule. - Danielle Avram and Christopher Blay 67

Christopher Blay: Peter, The Rock: Matthew 16:18: “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” I grew up in a church culture. It definitely shaped my worldview in my teen years. The Rock is what we called a basketball, as in “Man, he’s good with that rock!” I sucked at basketball. I remember a game in the eighth grade when I defended well, stole the rock, beat everyone to the basket—then missed the easy layup! Benched immediately. Pete Rock They Reminisce Over You was one of those early ‘90s rap anthems that always rocked. And Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth were on constant rotation on my Sanyo ghetto blaster. That song was an epic family story with a jazz beat that still plays in my head when the intro drops. Dwayne Johnson, The Rock The Rock is a part of the ‘90s pantheon of wrestlers. I grew up watching the Von Erichs, Macho Man Randy Savage, Junkyard Dog, The Sheik and the Grappler with my dad. He died when I was 18, and just coming out of my years of rebellion. Those were loud and happy moments, listening to him yell at the refs! I used to ask my kids if they were hungry, and give them Grappler sandwiches, using the Grappler’s signature move to tickle them into stitches. And on a recent trip to Portland, I met the Grappler’s daughter working at a gelato shop. True story.

Danielle Avram:

Christopher Blay: Christopher Blay:

Christopher Blay: Scissors cut paper. I got all my haircuts on our front porch as a child. The guy that cut our hair also ran a Taekwondo dojo at the national sports center in Liberia, where I grew up. After one of those lessons, I convinced my cousin Taba to attack me with the kitchen knife, but my Kung fu was weak and he nicked my right pinky knuckle. It got infected and when it healed, moms put the kibosh on future lessons. Mom beats scissors.

Danielle Avram: Paper covers rock I grew up in Canada in the 1980s and ‘90s. During my childhood, the Canadian government replaced the $1 and $2 bills with the “loonie” and the “twoonie.” My grandfather was a truly unique guy. He was gruff, opinionated, and intimidating, but a total softy with his grandkids. He used to walk in the room when all of us kids were together, yell, “SCRAMBLE!” and toss a fistful of change into the air. We’d fight each other tooth and nail for the coins. If you got the loonie or a twoonie—damn, that was a good feeling. My grandfather also used to make a habit of hiding money when he would come to your house. One year he hid a $20 bill at our place, and the only thing he told us was that it was somewhere in the backyard. We had a huge backyard, and spent close to a year looking for that $20. It weathered four seasons, until the following summer my brother found it tucked under a shingle on the shed. We completely freaked out. The last time I saw my grandfather, I knew it would be the last time I ever saw him. We both cried and he said to me, “I don’t ever want to let you go.” I was 25. He had a stroke several months later. When he died, I asked for the large wooden sign he hung in the office of his law practice. That sign has traveled from Saskatchewan, to Boston, to Dallas, to Atlanta, and back to Dallas. It’s in my living room.

Danielle Avram: I have a very faded scar on my thigh from where I accidentally stabbed myself with a pair of scissors when I was about 8. They went in about 1/2 inch and I pulled them out. Scissors definitely beats leg.

Christopher Blay: Haha, I have a scar in my left hand from when I was 5. I tried to scoop the remnant Spam from a large can of Spam and nicked my hand. Baby’s first stitches.

Danielle Avram: Reminds me of a book I read many years ago where a hiker gets pinned when a massive boulder falls on both of his legs. I believe he’s stuck there for a couple of days. When the rescuers show up, they have to lift the rock very slowly or the blood could rush out and kill him.

Danielle Avram: Somewhere on my head is a scar from the stitches I got when I was 4 or 5. Hit my head against the coffee table. I remember there being A LOT of blood, and going to the ER. But I wouldn’t let my Mom in the room, only my Dad.

Christopher Blay:

Danielle Avram: Thinking about scars, and how you essentially become a vessel for physical/mental/emotional scars you acquire over the course of your life. Makes me think about what it’s like to become a mother, and to have to accept (as much as possible) the changes you go through on a fundamental level. Did you know that women go through microchimerism during pregnancy and retain bits of each of the children they carry for the rest of their lives? I also recently read that scientists believe women may retain cells from sexual partners.

Christopher Blay:

Physical scars, but also the grooves that are molded into hands from favorite tools. I also like works that organize ad catalog objects. There’s a ritual and obsession that I find in those kinds of works that seem primal.

I like that story! Sorry about your head.

Also, did you ever play that game where you had to slide pieces around in a framed box around a single space until they were placed in numerical order ?

Danielle Avram: When I was rock climbing a lot, I had the most amazing sets of calluses on my hands. You had to take good care of them to ensure that they would not be ripped off by a rock.

I have absolutely played those games! Ditto the little Radio Shack Pocket Repeat.

I think I might have read something about that. This may be completely unrelated but along the lines of women possibly retaining cells from their sexual partners, and a tangible part of their children, could we speculate that this indicates an intangible connection to others? Maybe these cells and bits reach out to our children and partners in a way that defies our rational minds, perhaps acting in our own self-interest. The thought of an involuntary subconscious, though, freaks me out. There was a story on Radiolab about parasites that move to the brain of mammals and manipulate them into involuntary behavior. Freaky.

Danielle Avram: Haha, but aging in and of itself involves a lot of involuntary actions. Think of the first time you realized you sounded just like one of your parents. Or the way your lizard brain takes over when there’s a threat. I’ve certainly had moments of feeling like my body is controlled by something deeply primal.

Christopher Blay: Sometimes I wonder if at some point that primal impulse evolved beyond necessity/survival and into what we mean when we say create. Or weather the impulse to make (tools, ritual, etc.) became beautiful somewhere along the way. I liked what you said about rock, paper, scissors the other day, which led to this convo. The thing about hierachies, and tools of construction doubling as implements of destruction.

Danielle Avram: That makes sense. That shifting from a nomadic, survivalist lifestyle would afford people the opportunity to expand on creating out of necessity. I wonder if that’s the root of luxury. The beauty of rock, paper, scissors is that it’s hierarchical but cyclical, like an ouroboros. No one is exempt from being destroyed by another. Kind of makes you think if that’s where we are now—the rock being covered by the paper.

I discovered that rock-paper-scissors organized in China before being popularized in Japan. It belongs to a category of hand games called “sansukumi-ken,” meaning first, three-way, deadlock.

Danielle Avram

Christopher Blay: I’m excited to delve deeper into this project with you, Danielle. These beginning connversations have my mind racing, as we move toward the fall. I’m taking a three-week road trip to the East Coast, and back through the Deep South beginning next week, but let’s keep chatting! Any plans for what’s left to the summer? Music, art, Netflix?

Danielle Avram: Just got back from Corpus Christi and the rest of my summer is work, work, work. What do you want to do in terms of sending stuff to the Nasher? Should we screenshot and send it?

Christopher Blay

Christopher Blay: Yeah, that works. I am super excited for this project!!!

Danielle Avram: MEEE TOOO! TEAM BLAYVRAM!

The Experience

Soundings: New Music at the Nasher 77...The Nasher Store Reimagined 81...The Great Create 83...Create Your Own Paper Sculpture

73...

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Bronze Crowd, 1990-91 Bronze, 71 1/8 x 23 x 15 1/2 in. (180.7 x 58.4 x 39.4 cm.) Overall: 4400lb. (1995.8kg) Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas Photograph: Carolyn Brown Â© Nasher Sculpture Center

Soundings The eighth season of Nasher Sculpture Center’s Soundings: New Music at the Nasher will astonish with its signature juxtapositions of contemporary, classical, early music, traditional folkloric, and more, performed by world-class chamber ensembles and solo artists. p

Written by STEVE CARTER

Paddle to the Sea (World Premiere) Wednesday, October 18 Third Coast Percussion The season’s first offering is perfectly emblematic of what Soundings is about—diversity, juxtapositions, and thought-provoking resonances. In this case, it’s the world premiere of Paddle to the Sea, featuring Chicago’s Grammy-winning Third Coast Percussion performing its original live score for a screening of Paddle to the Sea; it’s the Oscar-nominated Canadian film from 1966, based on the 1941 Caldecott Honor Book by American author Holling C. Holling. The story chronicles the years-long water-bound voyage of “Paddle to the Sea,” a small hand-carved figure of an Indian in a canoe, whittled by a young Canadian boy. From its launch on the Nipigon River, to the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence River and finally the Atlantic Ocean, Paddle’s journey addresses ecology, the interconnectedness of cultures, the fragility of the natural world, and mankind’s part in the larger mosaic. Also on the program, Third Coast Percussion will perform Jacob Druckman’s marimba masterwork Reflections on the Nature of Water, Philip Glass’s Aguas da Amazonia, and traditional music of Zimbabwe’s Shona people. Third Coast Percussion member and Executive Director David Skidmore says that the project was suggested to them by Tom Welsh, Cleveland Museum of Art’s Director 73

of Performing Arts. After viewing the film for the first time, the ensemble fell in love with it, took on the project, and began to develop the piece last October in a residency at Yellow Barn in Putney, Vermont, where Seth Knopp is Artistic Director. “We found inspiration in the story,” Skidmore says. “The theme that resonated the most with us is the idea of stewardship. Paddle is picked up several times along its way, by someone in a boat, or by a kid. But in each case, by will or by accident, he’s returned to the water to continue his journey.” The works by Glass, Druckman, and the Zimbabwean music that fill out the program inspired and influenced the group’s collaborative composing of Paddle to the Sea. Skidmore says the Soundings audience can expect “a stage full of instruments”: marimbas, vibraphones, drums, mbiras, and even water itself will be used as a musical element. “It’s a really compelling, interesting sound world,” Skidmore adds with a laugh. “It’s fun to find ways to integrate a bunch of different, disparate sounds—that’s kind of what we do with every performance.”

Bach’s Musical Offering Saturday, January 13 Music from Yellow Barn Nasher audiences are the beneficiaries of artistic crossfertilization with “Music from Yellow

Barn” now an annual highlight of the Soundings series. This season’s Music from Yellow Barn evening is an ear-bending exercise in canny, bravura programming, as the polyphonic feast of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Musical Offering is interspersed with Chinese-American composer Lei Liang’s Garden Eight, a contemporary minimalist musical koan of single-note polyphony. To paraphrase Kipling, East is West, and the twain have met. Performers for the works are “drawn from a troupe of Yellow Barners who have been part of our Center for the last two decades,” says Knopp. “We’ll have percussion and winds, keyboard and strings all playing different orchestrations of the different sections in the Musical Offering.” Knopp analogizes that Liang’s concept of a single note as a polyphonic entity in Garden Eight is the musical equivalent of one-line drawings, and it’s an apt comparison. Another aspect of the unlikely juxtaposition of Bach and Liang is that Garden Eight’s minimalist aesthetic “…creates a kind of oasis from what is a very complex listening experience,” Knopp adds, “because Musical Offering is like polyphonic gymnastics—it’s a miracle.” Yet despite the surface diversity of the works on the program, Lei Liang is quick to acknowledge his debt to Bach. Liang, raised in Beijing until he moved to Austin at 17, says, “Bach has been an important part of my education since I started playing

Third Coast Percussion

Lei Lang

Benjamin Baxby

Alexi Kenney

piano when I was 4; he’s had so much to teach me as a composer and musician, including complexity, multidimensionality.” That being said, he admits that he approached Garden Eight from an Eastern perspective, harkening back to the monophonic, homophonic musical tradition of China. “I wondered, would it be possible to bring these two worlds together, the world of single notes and the world of multidimensionality?” he muses. Using only six permutating pitches, six different dynamics, and six different durations throughout its six movements, Garden Eight’s answer is a resounding “yes.” Liang concludes, “The genius of Seth’s vision, in terms of bringing these kinds of seemingly unrelated things together in his programming, is to see their deep connections— that’s just something that Seth does, again and again, in astonishing ways.”

Beowulf Thursday, March 1 Benjamin Bagby, vocalist and Anglo-Saxon harp One highlight of last year’s season was the North American premiere of Das Heisse Herz, a song cycle by Jörg Widmann, the first ever Soundings composer-in-residence. Baritone William Sharp was the featured vocalist for the work, and Seth Knopp recalls Sharp telling him about the wonders of Beowulf, a one-man performance of the AngloSaxon epic by his friend, singer and six-string harper Benjamin Bagby. Knopp was intrigued, to say the least. “I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’” Knopp enthuses. “And so I found a video of his Beowulf and said, ‘This is amazing!’—I just wanted to bring him here immediately.” That “immediately” arrives as the third concert of the Soundings season, on Thursday, March 1. Benjamin Bagby’s masterful performance of the first 1,062 lines of Beowulf is an unequivocal tour de force, a spellbinding evening of the storyteller’s craft that has mesmerized his worldwide audiences for the past 25-plus years. In 1990, Bagby devoted five months to

memorizing the first third of the epic in the original Old English, and developed a musical accompaniment on a custom-built German-made 6-string harp, a replica of a 7thcentury relic. And while Old English sounds foreign to contemporary ears, Bagby’s performance is riveting, communicating at an elemental frequency that engages every imagination in the room. Language barrier? Not here. “I think it resonates first of all because we react on a very basic level, maybe with a different part of the brain, to storytelling from an actual human being,” Bagby offers. “It draws on something which is quite archaic in each of us, and probably has some connection to childhood memories of listening to stories. Especially if it’s a very old story about something quite basic, like a king who can’t protect his people from a monster, and a hero who comes to save them.” Bagby acknowledges that there’s an element of risk in this high-wire act, continuing, “It’s always a little bit terrifying, which I think is good. It’s a weird mixture of storytelling, theater, standup comedy, philosophy, and sermonizing, all mixed up together, which is the way storytelling functioned in the Middle Ages, in the hands of one person whose special gift that was.”

Bach Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin Thursday, May 3 Alexi Kenney, violin The final show of the season is another solo concert, this time featuring violin wunderkind Alexi Kenny (born 1994, Palo Alto, California), the recipient of a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant. And although Johann Sebastian Bach’s classically virtuosic Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin is the linchpin of the concert, in typical Soundings fashion there’s more than one approach to virtuoso violin. Also on the program is Steve Reich’s epochal Violin Phase, Kaija Saariaho’s haunting Nocturne for Solo Violin and Frises, Iannis Xenakis’s microtonal masterwork Mikka, and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Lachen verlernt, a single-

movement chaconne that dates to 2002. Violin Phase and Frises both incorporate live electronics. “Alexi is someone I’ve known since he was a teenager,” Seth Knopp says. Kenney visited Yellow Barn when he was 16, playing in an ensemble that performed a new work for electric guitar and string quartet by composer Steve Mackey. “And even then Alexi was completely mature; he hadn’t done a lot of new music at the time, but it was such an incredible performance of that piece.” It’s a testament to Kenney’s prodigious talent that a single violinist could scale all the requisite heights of this particular concert with such dazzling aplomb. Again, Seth Knopp: “This program is really Alexi’s program. My idea was to have him do something that showed Bach in a different kind of way. Bach uses a single instrument in both his cello suites and his violin sonatas and partitas in a way that’s just unimaginable—it’s really never been equaled. And all of the other pieces have conscious or unconscious tributes to Bach in them…they have their birthplace in the music of Bach. These works will be like children meeting their parents,” Knopp adds with a laugh, “and looking very different, but with undeniable DNA.”

Soundings is supported by Charles and Jessie Price and Kay and Elliot Cattarulla, the Friends of Soundings, City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, TACA, and the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University. Additional support provided by Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger. Media Partner WRR 101.1 FM.

SEASON TICKETS ON SALE NOW nashersculpturecenter.org/soundings Support Soundings by becoming a Friend of Soundings. Call 214.242.5169 or visit nashersculpturecenter.org/soundings for more information.

The Nasher Sculpture Center Store Reimagined Donald Fowler unveils a new museum store standard p

Written by KENDALL MORGAN

Donald Fowler joined the Nasher in the fall of 2016, as director of retail, and has spent the past nine months combing the globe for unique stock that reinforces the most contemporary ideas in sculpture. Recently unveiled, his forward-looking reboot is a carefully edited foundation of books, paper goods, travel accessories, and kids’ items mixed with unique finds that complement the exhibitions at the museum currently on view. Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony will serve as inspiration for the initial revamping of the Nasher Store. The artist’s signature retro aesthetic and use of bricolage—wherein he incorporates various high and low cultural references into campy, sometimes irreverent sculptures made from easy-to-access materials—has informed a lot of Fowler’s choices in new products for the store. “Sachs has such an amalgamation of ideas, it’s fun to find products that reflect them,” says Fowler. The store will also offer branded items designed by Tom Sachs himself, including clothing, decks of cards, books, and mugs. Fowler, who formerly served as manager and senior buyer of the tony home shop Nest, brings more than 15 years of retail experience to the Nasher. Diving into markets in Paris and New York among others, he has honed in on evergreen stock that offers the best in contemporary design, with items that give a nod to Surrealism and Neo-Classicism with the ‘80s Memphis Group layered on top. “Products should inspire or surprise; they should initiate an emotional reaction similar to what you might have in front of a work of sculpture” says Donald Fowler.

TASCHEN presents an immaculate portfolio of Andy Warhol’s seven handmade artist’s books.

Nasher Staff Picks

CASSANDRA EMSWILER BURD Public Relations and Social Media Coordinator

($200)

Selection: Haptic Lab’s Sailing Ship Kite Writer Zoë Lescaze and artist Walton Ford present the astonishing history of paleoart from 1830 to 1990. ($100) LEIGH ARNOLD, PH.D. Assistant Curator Selection: Bellinvito Emoji Stationery

AVI VARMA Gallery Teacher Selection: The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen and Yayoi Kusama

Ancient Greece and contemporary styling collide in these bookends from Sophie. ($120)

At the Nasher Sculpture Center Store

NEW N EDITIO G COMIN R O JUST F ER ASH THE N E STOR

It Wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Fail Because of Me Cocktail Napkins $15.00

Tea Ceremony Manual $90

Japan Deck $20

Heaven $20.00

Chawan Volume I $100.00

Heart Brain Feedback System (A Space Program DVD) $50.00

PL Notepad $20.00

Space Program: Europa (Experience Report 2.0) $50.00

Ten Bullets Notebook (3-pack) $20.00

NASA/A Space Program T-Shirt $20.00

Bic Mini 4-in-1 Pen $12.00

Space Program: Europa Mission Patches $12.00

Command Service Module Lamp $1,200.00

10 Bullets Sticker $1.00

The Great Create 2018 Save the Date: Sunday, April 29 Building on the resounding success of the 2017 event, The Great Create will be a family affair in 2018. Co-chairs Macey and Steve Davis, Nicole and Justin Small, and Meredith and Scott Wallace share the same family tree and a love of bringing their children together for fun, art-filled projects. Join them next year at the April 29 event. Learn more at nashersculpturecenter.org/thegreatcreate. All proceeds from the event will directly benefit the Nasher Sculpture Center, bolstering the museumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s efforts to provide outstanding youth education programs throughout the year.

Photos: Bret Redman

Create Your Own

Paper Sculpture with artist Randy Guthmiller, the Nasher’s Manager of Visitor Experiences.

The Nasher Sculpture Center is lucky to have many practicing artists on its staff. The charismatic and hilarious Randy has worked at the museum in various roles over the past several years, as a Store Associate/Assistant Buyer, Gallery Educator, Database and Research Coordinator, as well as a visiting artist for Gallery Labs, Summer Teen Institute, and The Great Create. In addition to working with the Nasher, he has led workshops and classes with The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Crow Collection of Asian Art, The Perot, and the artist workshop space Oil and Cotton. As a practicing artist, Guthmiller’s work has been shown at The Greater Denton Arts Council, The Safe Room at Texas Theatre, The Reading Room, The Power Station, Ware:Wolf:Haus, Neiman Marcus Flagship Store, Alabama Song, and Apartment 13. He has permanent murals in both of Dallas’ oldest and most dynamic neighborhoods, Deep Ellum and Oak Cliff, and he is also one of the people behind the artist-run experimental art space in Expo Park, BEEFHAUS. Around Dallas, one of the things Randy is best known for is his commitment to shapes—an unbridled adoration for the infinite possibilities of geometric form—and the series of self-published zines that grew out of this love: Shape Zines, which then led to his founding the now much-loved annual event Dallas Zine Party.

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On the occasion of Paper into Sculpture, Randy Guthmiller lent some shapes to this (maga)zine, bringing his energy and delight to these pages. Look for introductions to other artists on the Nasher staff in subsequent issues.

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Thanks to the forethought and generosity of our founder Raymond Nasher, who created an endowment to cover general operating expenses such as building maintenance and security, we are in a unique position to say that 100% of your gifts to the Nasher support programs and special exhibitions. Donations to the Nasher allow us to bring the top experts in the field to Dallas for public talks and discussions, welcome thousands of students into the galleries every year, and organize landmark exhibitions that reflect the history of sculpture and suggest its future. Thank you to all of our donors, and especially the following Patrons, who make all of this, and so much more, possible.

Director’s Circle Jennifer and John Eagle Charlene and Tom Marsh Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Allen and Kelli Questrom

Rodin Circle Kay and Elliot Cattarulla Michael Corman and Kevin Fink Nancy M. Dedman Kaleta A. Doolin and Alan Govenar Laura and Walter Elcock Amy Faulconer Mr. Tim Hanley Ms. Lyda Hill Dr. and Mrs. Mark Lemmon Mrs. Eugene McDermott Jenny and Richard Mullen

Matisse Circle Mr. and Mrs. John L. Adams Dr. and Mrs. Kenneth Altshuler Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Bancroft Mr. and Mrs. Richard M. Barrett Mr. and Mrs. James P. Barrow Ms. Joanne L. Bober Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth H. Bruder Ms. Joanne L. Cassullo Mary M. Cook and Dan Patterson Ms. Carol A. Crowe Mr. John W. Dayton Claire Dewar Marion T. Flores Drs. Eugene and Rhonda Frenkel Ms. Kathleen Gibson Debbie and Eric Green Mr. and Mrs. Richard E. Gutman Fanchon and Howard Hallam Marguerite Steed Hoffman and Thomas W. Lentz Mr. Roger Horchow Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Hull Elisabeth and Panos Karpidas Mr. and Mrs. Harlan Korenvaes Patricia Villareal and Thomas Leatherbury Linda Marcus Mr. and Mrs. John D. McStay Mr. and Mrs. William Montgomery Mr. and Mrs. Jay A. Pack Mr. and Mrs. H. Ross Perot Nancy Perot and Rod Cain Jones Mrs. Caren Prothro Cindy and Howard Rachofsky Mrs. Betty S. Regard Catherine and Will Rose Deedie Rose Mr. and Mrs. Frank Ryburn Cindy and Armond Schwartz Ann and Donald Short 85

Mr. Stephen Stamas Mr. and Mrs. Peter Stewart Mr. and Mrs. Paul T. Stoffel Mr. and Mrs. Peter Townsend Ms. Alice Walton Martha and Max Wells Marnie and Kern Wildenthal Donna M. Wilhelm Christen and Derek Wilson

Brancusi Circle Mr. and Mrs. Paul Abbarno Mr. and Mrs. Ansel Aberly Dr. and Mrs. Richard Chang Lindsey and Patrick Collins Ms. Lisa Dawson and Mr. Thomas Maurstad Mr. and Mrs. Peter J. Denker Mr. and Mrs. Uwe Duenhoelter Ms. Talley Dunn Angie and Dan Eckelkamp Bess and Ted Enloe Dr. and Mrs. Chip Fagadau Mr. and Mrs. Brent Franks Mark Giambrone Dr. and Mrs. Gary Gross Mr. and Mrs. William J. Harkinson Mr. and Mrs. Will F. Hartnett Mr. and Mrs. James Hibbetts Mr. Henry Lindemann and Ms. Hilary Hoffman Mrs. Sylvia Hougland Dr. William Hwang and Dr. Chiufang Hwang Dr. William B. Jordan and Mr. Robert Brownlee Mr. and Mrs. George Kao Mr. Tim Kreatschman and Mrs. Petra Zlovic Mr. and Mrs. Mark Kreditor Mr. Laurence Lebowitz and Ms. Naomi Aberly Mr. and Mrs. Gene Lunceford Mr. Harry Lynch Nancy Cain Marcus Holly and Tom Mayer Mr. and Mrs. Rick McConnell Mr. and Mrs. J. Kenneth Menges, Jr. Cynthia and Forrest Miller Mrs. Nancy M. O’Boyle Mr. and Ms. James O’Keefe Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Orewiler Ms. Angela D. Paulos Lucilo A. Peña and Lee A. Cobb Janelle and Alden Pinnell Ms. Bonnie Pitman Karen and Richard Pollock Mr. and Mrs. Robert G. Pollock Dr. and Mrs. Karl Rathjen Mr. and Mrs. Frank A. Risch Mrs. Ruth Robinson Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Rohde

Mr. and Mrs. Dan Routman Lisa and John Runyon Mr. and Mrs. Philip Samson Dr. Louis Fox and Mrs. Maria Sancho-Fox Mr. and Ms. Joel Schubert Mr. and Mrs. Peter Scott Mr. Jay Shinn and Mr. Tim Hurst Ms. Emma Siegel and Mr. Carlos Elguea Robyn and Michael Siegel Ms. Lisa K. Simmons Mr. and Mrs. Matt Smith Mr. Gary L. Scott and Ms. Elizabeth Solender Mr. and Mrs. William T. Solomon Mr. and Mrs. Alan Stamm Wendy and Jeremy Strick Sidney L. Tassin and Cynthia M. Tassin Mr. and Mrs. Jason M. Taylor Mr. and Ms. Anthony Villani Dr. Glenn Voss and Dr. Zannie Voss Mr. Jeffery M. Jackson and Mrs. Sally A. Warren Dr. and Mrs. Howard Weiner Mr. and Ms. Maurice Wingo Mr. and Mrs. Ken Woolley Mr. and Mrs. Peter York Sharon and Michael Young

Miró Circle Mr. and Mrs. Gene H. Bishop Mr. and Mrs. Garrett Boone Ms. Faye C. Briggs Mr. and Mrs. Ike Brown Mrs. Barbara Bryant Ms. Bonnie Cobb Mr. and Mrs. John R. Cohn Ms. Camilla Cowan Ms. Lee Cullum Ms. Judy Cunningham Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Cutshall Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. Decherd Mr. and Mrs. Rick del Monte Mr. and Mrs. Steve Durham Mrs. Richard D. Eiseman Mr. and Mrs. Richard Eiseman, Jr. Julie and Robert England Mr. and Mrs. Gary J. Fernandes Melissa and Trevor Fetter Mrs. Jacqueline Fojtasek Mr. Svend Fruit Mr. and Mrs. Toby L. Gerber Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Glimcher Dr. Joseph L. Goldstein Mr. Larry Green and Mr. Logan Green Mr. and Mrs. Graham Greene Mr. John Hadjipateras Dr. Barbara B. Haley Lara and Stephen Harrison

Mr. and Mrs. Mitch Hart Mr. and Mrs. Velpeau E. Hawes Mr. John A. Henry III Mr. Billy Hibbs, Jr. Amy and Scott Hofland Mr. and Mrs. Ed Howard Megan and John Hughet Ambassador Ronald Kirk and Mrs. Matrice Ellis-Kirk Mr. and Mrs. J. Peter Kline Ms. Patricia Kozak Mr. William A. Kramer Mr. and Mrs. Peter A. Kraus Mr. and Mrs. Jeff Kurz Mr. and Mrs. John Levy Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Mankoff Mr. Gordon McDowell Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Morse Dr. and Mrs. Steven A. Nash Mr. and Mrs. Erle A. Nye Ms. Danna Orr Mr. Byron A. Parker Mrs. Ella Prichard Dr. Paul Radman Elizabeth Redleaf Ms. Sandra D. Roberdeau Mr. and Mrs. Peter H. Roberts Dr. and Mrs. Randall Rosenblatt Dr. and Mrs. Richard Sachson Ms. Betty J. Sanders Dr. and Mrs. Donald W. Seldin Mr. and Mrs. Darwin Smith Mr. and Mrs. Andre Staffelbach Mr. and Mrs. Ronald G. Steinhart Dr. Dennis Stone and Dr. Helen Hobbs John and Kelly Strasius Dr. Joanne H. Stroud Mr. Greg M. Swalwell and Mr. Terry G. Connor Ms. Rosalie Taubman Mr. Shelby K. Wagner and Mr. Niven Morgan Mr. and Mrs. Thomas M. Watkins III Dr. Megan M. Wood and Mr. Brady K. Wood *as of July 31, 2017

Nasher Happenings SEP September 8 / Nasher Sculpture Center Nasher Store Experience the reimagined Nasher Store. Learn more at store.nashersculpturecenter.org MEMBER EVENT September 13 / 6 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center Patron Dinner and Preview: Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony Join us for a Members-exclusive exhibition preview and private dinner. FREE for Members at the Brancusi Circle and above. RSVP by September 6 to patron@nashersculpturecenter.org or to 214.242.5151. MEMBER EVENT September 14 / 7– 9 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center Member Preview: Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony Join us for the Members-only exhibition preview and reception. Open to all Members. RSVP by September 7 to memberevents@nashersculpturecenter.org or to 214.242.5154. September 15 / 6 p.m. – midnight ‘TIL MIDNIGHT AT THE NASHER Opener: Chris Norwood Concert: Walker Lukens Film: Catch Me If You Can, 2002 (PG-13) FREE Admission. nashersc.org/NasherTilMidnight September 16 / 2 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center 360: SPEAKER SERIES Tom Sachs, Exhibition Artist FREE with admission. FREE for for Members and Students. RSVP at nashersc.org/360SpeakerSeries September 19 / 7 p.m. CST 2018 Nasher Prize Laureate Reveal Live Broadcast Tune in to learn who will be the 2018 Nasher Prize Laureate. FREE Watch at facebook.com/NasherSculptureCenter September 23 / 9 – 11 a.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center KIDS CLUB AT THE NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER FREE for Members at the Moore Circle and above. For more information, contact membership@nashersculpturecenter.org or 214.242.5151.

September 28 / 6 – 8 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center NASHER NOW CLASSES FOR ADULTS: Tom Sachs Artist Tom Sachs reimagined the traditional Japanese tea ceremony for his handmade, space-age installation at the Nasher. Join us to discuss how rituals can be experienced differently, and immerse yourself in new creative waters. FREE for Members. Non-members $10. Advance registration required. Visit nasher.org/NasherWorkshops or email Lynda Wilbur at lwilbur@nashersculpturecenter.org

OCT MEMBER EVENT October 2 / 6 – 8 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center ARTIST CIRCLE: TOM SACHS Programmed by Danielle Avram and Christopher Blay. FREE for Artist Circle Members. Learn more about the Artist Circle at nashersc.org/ArtistCircleMember October 7 / 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center TARGET FIRST SATURDAYS Bring the kids and enjoy free admission and fun family programming on the first Saturday of every month. Presented by Target. FREE Learn more at nashersc.org/LearnAtNasher MEMBER EVENT October 13 / 7– 9 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center Member Preview: Paper into Sculpture FREE for Members at the Hepworth Circle and above. RSVP by October 6 to memberevents@nashersculpturecenter.org or to 214.242.5154. October 14 / 11 a.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center 360: SPEAKER SERIES Paper into Sculpture Panel featuring exhibition artists Marco Maggi, Joshua Neustein, and Nancy Rubins FREE with Admission. FREE for Members and Students. RSVP at nashersc.org/360SpeakerSeries October 18 / 7:30 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center SOUNDINGS: NEW MUSIC AT THE NASHER Paddle to the Sea World premiere of Third Coast Percussion’s new performance project based on the classic children’s book and Academy Award-nominated film. $20 for Members. $25 for Non-members. $10 for Students/Educators. Buy tickets at nashersc.org/NSCSoundings

October 19 / 6:30 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center VIRTUAL IS THE NEW REAL Virtual and augmented reality are transforming how we live, work, and play. Join us for a lively evening of conversation with innovators working to create our new immersive reality. Presented by Business Council for the Arts in partnership with xREZ Art + Science Lab, a department of UNT’s College of Visual Arts and Design. Special reception for BCA & Nasher Members at 6 p.m. FREE with RSVP. nashersc.org/VirtualNewReal October 20 / 6 p.m. – 12 a.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center ‘TIL MIDNIGHT AT THE NASHER Opener: Bri Bagwell Concert: Charley Crockett Film: Super 8, 2011 (PG-13) FREE admission. Learn more at nashersc.org/NasherTilMidnight October 21 / 11 a.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center TEA CEREMONY WITH JOHNNY FOGG Exhibition artist Tom Sachs’s friend and colleague in tea, Johnny Fogg, will give an informative tour of the tea garden and perform a tea ceremony. Maximum of 30 registrants. FREE for Members. $10 for Non-members Includes admission. Register at nashersc.org/TomSachsTeaCeremony October 22 / 3 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center MEMBERS ONLY TEA CEREMONY WITH JOHNNY FOGG Exhibition artist Tom Sachs’s friend and colleague in Tea, Johnny Fogg, will give an informative tour of the tea garden and perform a tea ceremony. Maximum of 30 registrants. FREE for Members. Register at nashersc.org/TomSachsTeaCeremony October 26 / 10:00 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center Nathan Carter and The DRAMASTICS Exhibition viewing of The DRAMASTICS: A Punk Rock Victory Twister in Texas, film screening and performance. Flim screening at 10:30 p.m. / Performance at 11 p.m. FREE with RSVP. Learn more at nashersc.org/NasherEngage October 27 / 11 a.m. / Booker T. Washington High School for the Performaing Arts Montgomery Arts Theater 360: SPEAKER SERIES Nathan Carter, Exhibition Artist FREE RSVP to nashersc.org/360SpeakerSeries October 28 / 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center NASHER NOW CLASSES FOR ADULTS: Paper Into Sculpture Twist, scrunch, rip and roll! Get ready to take your ideas about paper into the third dimension as we view paper sculptures by six artists and let our own ideas unfold. FREE for Members. Non-members $10. Advance registration required. Visit nashersc.org/NasherWorkshops or email Lynda Wilbur at lwilbur@nashersculpturecenter.org

NOV MEMBER EVENT November 2-5 Patron Travel: Hudson River Valley Explore museums, galleries, private collections, and favorite local restaurants on this weekend tour, created and led by Chief Curator Jed Morse, of New York’s beautiful Hudson River Valley. Open to Members at the Brancusi Circle and above. For more information, contact Amy Henry, Patron Travel Coordinator, at ahenry@nashersculpturecenter.org or at 214.242.5103. November 4 / 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center TARGET FIRST SATURDAYS Bring the kids and enjoy free admission and fun family programming on the first Saturday of every month. Presented by Target. FREE Learn more at nashersc.org/LearnAtNasher November 4 / 9 –11 a.m. / Dallas Museum of Art KIDS CLUB AT THE DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART FREE for Members at the Moore Circle and above. For more information, email membership@nashersculpturecenter.org or call 214.242.5151. November 5 / 1:30 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center DESIGN SYMPOSIUM Redefining Space for Art Presented by Dallas Architecture Forum with speakers Jenny Moore, Director, Chinati Foundation and Joseph Thompson, Founding Director, MASS MoCA Tickets at dallasarchitectureforum.org/symposium2017.html November 11 / 2 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center 360: SPEAKER SERIES Tauba Auerbach, Artist FREE with Admission. FREE for Members and Students. RSVP at nashersc.org/360SpeakerSeries November 16 / 6 p.m. – 8 p.m./ Nasher Sculpture Center NASHER GALLERY LAB “I Would Dye For You” featuring Catherine MacMahon Discover Japanese Shibori dyeing techniques with artist Catherine MacMahon and learn to manipulate fabric to make patterns with indigo and ingenuity. FREE for Members. Non-members $10. Advance registration required. Learn more at nashersc.org/NasherWorkshops or email Lynda Wilbur at lwilbur@nashersculpturecenter.org. November 18 / 3 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center TEA CEREMONY WITH JOHNNY FOGG Exhibition artist Tom Sachs’s friend and colleague in tea, Johnny Fogg, will give an informative tour of the tea garden and perform a tea ceremony. Maximum of 30 registrants. FREE for Members. $10 for Nonmembers Includes admission. Register at nashersc.org/TomSachsTeaCeremony

November 19 / 3 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center MEMBERS ONLY TEA CEREMONY WITH JOHNNY FOGG Exhibition artist Tom Sachs’s friend and colleague in tea, Johnny Fogg, will give an informative tour of the tea garden and perform a tea ceremony. Maximum of 30 registrants. FREE for Members. Register at nashersc.org/TomSachsTeaCeremony November 30 / 6 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center NASHER GALLERY LAB Creative Discovery featuring Gray Garmon Use the methods of Human-Centered Design for problem-solving and boost your creative confidence. FREE with Admission. FREE for Members. RSVP to asmith@nashersculpturecenter.org

DEC December 2 / 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center TARGET FIRST SATURDAYS Bring the kids and enjoy free admission and fun family programming on the first Saturday of every month. Presented by Target. FREE Learn more at nashersc.org/LearnAtNasher MEMBER EVENT December 4 / 6 – 8 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center ARTIST CIRCLE: Paper Into Sculpture Programmed by Danielle Avram and Christopher Blay. FREE for Artist Circle Members. Learn more about the Artist Circle at nashersc.org/ArtistCircleMember December 9 / 11 a.m. & 3 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center TEA CEREMONY WITH JOHNNY FOGG Exhibition artist Tom Sachs’s friend and colleague in tea, Johnny Fogg, will give an informative tour of the tea garden and perform a tea ceremony. Maximum of 30 registrants. FREE for Members. $10 for Non-members. Register at nashersc.org/TomSachsTeaCeremony December 10 / 11 a.m. & 3 p.m. TEA CEREMONY WITH JOHNNY FOGG Exhibition artist Tom Sachs’s friend and colleague in tea, Johnny Fogg, will give an informative tour of the tea garden and perform a tea ceremony. Maximum of 30 registrants. FREE for Members. $10 for Non-members. Register at nashersc.org/TomSachsTeaCeremony December 10 / 1 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center A Space Program Film Screening A Film by Tom Sachs and Van Neistat, 2015 1:12 runtime. FREE with Admission. Learn more at nashersc.org/SpaceProgramFilm

JAN January 6 / 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center TARGET FIRST SATURDAYS Bring the kids and enjoy free admission and fun family programming on the first Saturday of every month. Presented by Target. FREE Learn more at nashersc.org/LearnAtNasher January 13 / 7:30 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center SOUNDINGS: NEW MUSIC AT THE NASHER Bach’s Musical Offering featuring Bach’s Musical Offering in its entirety, with Lei Liang’s Garden Eight. $20 for Members. $25 for Non-members. $10 for Students/Educators. Buy tickets at nashersc.org/NSCSoundings MEMBER EVENT January 26 / 7 – 9 p.m. / Nasher Sculpture Center Member Preview: First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone Save the date for the Members-only exhibition preview and reception. Open to all Members For more information, email membership@nashersculpturecenter.org or call 214.242.5151.

Members Make It Happen Support from Members allows the Nasher Sculpture Center to showcase world-class exhibitions from established and emerging artists, bring top experts to Dallas for community discussions and events, and welcome thousands of students into the galleries each year. Not a Member? For more information, visit nashersculpturecenter.org/membership for details.

nashersculpturecenter.org

360: Speaker Series Presenting Sponsor: Martha and Max Wells. The 360 videography project is supported by Ansel and Suzanne Aberly. Additional support provided by Sylvia Hougland. Target First Saturdays is generously sponsored by Target. Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) is the public transportation partner for Target First Saturdays. ‘til Midnight at the Nasher is presented by Central Market/H-E-B. Additional support for ‘til Midnight is provided by The Eugene McDermott Endowment Fund, Texas Commission on the Arts, KXT, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART). Soundings: New Music at the Nasher is supported by Charles and Jessie Price, Kay and Elliot Cattarulla, the Friends of Soundings, City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, TACA and the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University. Additional support is provided by Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger. Media Partner: WRR 101.1 FM. Tom Sachs: Tea Ceremony is made possible with the generous support of the Dallas Art Fair Foundation. Additional support is provided by Amy and John Phelan, Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO and Angela Westwater, Sperone Westwater.’ Tom Sachs, Chasen, 2015, Photo by Genevieve Hanson

2001 Flora Street, Dallas, TX 75201 USA Tel +1 214.242.5100 Tuesday â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Sunday, 11 a.m. â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 5 p.m.

The Nasher magazine, as well as the many community programs, special exhibitions, and learning opportunities described within, are made possible by the generous support of Members, Patrons, and donors to the Nasher. Cover: Tom Sachs, Chasen, 2015, Photo: Genevieve Hanson

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