may/june 2011
university of michigan museum of art
insight
4 exhibitions 7 features 8 program highlights 13 staff spotlight 14 umma briefs 15 museum store
cover Amalia Pica,On Education, 8mm film transferred to video, 4’33”, Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Diana Stigter, Amsterdam opposite Guro Peoples, Côte d’Ivoire, Mask (Zamble), wood, pigment, 1950–99, Museum purchase made possible by gifts from David L. Chambers and John G. Crane and Dr. James and Vivian Curtis, 2002/2.348
insight • may/june 2011 2
On the programming front, the Museum presented numerous collaborative events over the academic year that just ended. The very popular concert series organized with the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance included the recent 6 x 8, in which more than 400 patrons enjoyed six new eight-minute operas created by UM graduate student composers and performed by UM student musicians and vocalists from the UM opera studio. With the University Musical Society and several other key partners, the Museum presented MacArthur Fellow Aaron Dworkin’s multimedia piece Metamorphosis to a full house, and two programs— including an engaging discussion on aging and the creative process— in conjunction with the Merce Cunningham Dance Group’s Ann Arbor performances. Other outstanding ongoing collaborations that have brought distinguished artists to the Museum include the Zell Visiting Writers Series, the Ark at UMMA student-songwriters series, and UMMA’s growing jazz series, which now counts as one of the best opportunities to hear jazz in the area. As you will see in the program pages, our partnership with the Ann Arbor Art Center continues to thrive, the Ann Arbor Summer Festival has come on board again this year, and we unveil a new collaboration with M-Healthy—weekly yoga classes in the beautiful surroundings of the Apse! Finally, don’t miss the feature story in this issue highlighting our partnership with two area caregiving institutions—St. Joseph Mercy Health System’s Huron Woods and the University of Michigan Health System’s Turner Geriatric Center Silver Club—to provide Museum tours designed for visitors with dementia. I am so grateful to our outstanding docents and the entire Education department for spearheading this important service and for making the Museum ever more accessible to all of our visitors. Warmest regards,
Joseph Rosa Director
from the director
C
ollaboration and partnership—as a means of contextualizing and enhancing an organization’s primary purposes, reinforcing its mission and values, and extending its reach—is a growing and healthy trend in the arts. UMMA’s current exhibition Photoformance: An Empathic Environment perfectly embodies the sort of collaborative offering that the Museum has increasingly embarked on since our expansion two years ago. Conceived as a collaboration by three renowned artists with UM ties—Monica Ponce de Leon, Ernestine Ruben, and Peter Sparling—the piece weaves together architecture, sculpture, video, dance, and photography in a multisensory dialogue in the Museum’s most visible gallery space, the Irving Stenn, Jr, Family Project Gallery.
what not to miss
May 7 and 28
African Art Workshops Try your hand at creating abstractions and dream-based imagery using the Museum’s renowned African collections as your inspiration.
May 15
Korean Ceramics Artists’ Talk Join exhibition artist Kim Yikyung and UM Professor Emerita of Ceramics Georgette Zirbes as they explore current trends in ceramics today.
June 15
Paul Keller Quartet A Grammy-nominated artist and the leader of several ensembles, Keller and friends will perform an evening of familiar standards in the Frankel Wing Forum.
June 30
Ann Arbor Summer Festival Reading Expect dynamic performances at this reading by award-winning poets and fiction writers—part of the AASF’s new literary arts series FRESH INK.
May 10–June 14
Yoga in the Apse Practice relaxation, strength, flexibility, and balance with this weekly Hatha-style class.
UMMA Projects: Amalia Pica may 28–september 18, 2011 Irving Stenn, Jr, Family Project Gallery The promise—as well as the uncertainty—of communication is a recurring concern in the work of London-based, Argentinian-born artist Amalia Pica. Investigations into perception, time, memory, and a desire to explore how particular gestures read in different cultural contexts are pursued across a diverse body of work in sculpture, photography, film, and installation, as well as temporary interventions on buildings, monuments, or objects. One recent work—Babble, Blabber, Chatter, Gibber, Jabber, Patter, Prattle, Rattle, Yammer, Yada yada yada (2010)—consists of a series of eighty slides, projected in sequence, showing the artist spelling the work’s title using semaphore flags, one letter or space per slide. Transmitted via two forms of defunct or outmoded visual communications technology (semaphore having been superseded by the telegraph in the mid-nineteenth century, 35mm slides by digital projection in the early twenty-first), Pica’s work visually encodes the “babble, blabber, chatter…” of the title—idiomatic English-language terms for unintelligible language, and words that are themselves notoriously difficult to translate. A similar disjunction between form and function, between sending and receiving, is evident in a recent series of sculptures based on the kinds of homemade television antennae found across the developing world, objects that are themselves rapidly losing their utility in the era of digital television. In Sorry for the Metaphor (2005) and Sorry for the Metaphor #2 (2010), two examples from an ongoing series of large-scale works composed of photocopies pasted directly onto the wall, assemblages of individual photocopied sheets coalesce into larger images of a woman, her back to the viewer and a megaphone at her side, facing into the landscape. In Dialogue (Paper and Mountain) (2010), the same female figure holds aloft a large blank sheet of paper. In their composition and iconography, these works evoke art historical precedents such as nineteenth-century German Romanticism (in particular the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, with their solitary figures turned away from the viewer as they face
insight • umma.umich.edu 4
into the landscape). But they also recall the contemporary visual culture of social and political activism, referencing the sort of handmade posters that cover the surfaces of public kiosks and walls. Powerful manifestations of Pica’s desire for communication and civic engagement, these works attest both to the promise and the challenge of communicating. In Pica’s work, megaphone and paper stand as modes of communication in potentia, carriers of a message that remains hypothetical.
Shot on location in Montevideo, Uruguay, Pica’s 2008 film On Education documents the artist—dressed in the white, lab coat-like uniform worn by both teachers and students in Argentina’s public schools—in the act of whitewashing the horse of an equestrian monument, a reference both to mythical images of heroes on valiant white steeds and to the South American adaptation of a famous joke asking “What color is the white horse of Napoleon Bonaparte?” in which any number of famous generals are substituted for the French emperor. In the film, fragments of the preface to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s eponymous treatise on the nature of man’s education appear as subtitles, while the soundtrack plays the white noise known as “room tone,” used in the film industry to replicate the ambient sound of an empty space. Through these juxtapositions, a more serious subtext emerges, raising questions about the ongoing political and intellectual repercussions of European imperialism in South America, and in particular the willful distortion of history and the active suppression of civic participation, a powerful legacy of colonialism and military control, even in the post-colonial present. The white horse appears again in Pica’s slide projection piece Escapees (2008), a sequence of eighty photographic slides depicting equestrian monuments all over the world. In a precise yet poetic act of vandalism, Pica has excised the horse from each image with a knife, allowing the white light of the projector’s bulb to shine through the hole in the film in its place. Escapees replaces an emblem of military prowess with a gleaming, but ultimately blank, light released by the artist’s hand—a gesture at once assertive and quite literally open to new possibilities. Jacob Proctor Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art This exhibition is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost and CEW Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund.
Amalia Pica, Sorry For the Metaphor #2, 2010, photocopies, dimensions variable, Courtesy of the artist and Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles
exhibitions
insight • may/june 2011
5
Life in Ceramics: Five Contemporary Korean Artists
Photoformance: An Empathic Environment
through june 26, 2011
umma projects
A. Alfred Taubman Gallery I The artists featured in Life in Ceramics interpret one of the world’s great ceramics traditions with a modern sensibility. Kim Yikyung (born 1935) combines the white porcelain ware of Korea’s Joseon period (1392–1910) with a strong sense of forms developed through her study of African art and the sculptures of Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957). Yoon Kwang-cho (born 1946) is attracted to the dynamism and spontaneity of historical buncheong ware, grayish stoneware with decoration of dilute white clay (slip). Lee Kang Hyo (born 1961) also takes the buncheong tradition as his inspiration in order to create playful and subtle groups of objects. Lee Young-Jae (born 1951) and Lee In Chin (born 1957) make large-scale installation work. Lee Young-Jae’s installation of 111 bowls was born out of her experience of making communion cups for a church in her adopted Germany. Lee In Chin’s stacked pots share the simple and gregarious nature of Korean folk onggi pottery. Life in Ceramics: Five Contemporary Korean Artists was organized and produced by the Fowler Museum at UCLA. It was made possible by a major grant from the Korea Foundation. Additional support was provided by Korean Airlines. UMMA’s installation is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Health System, Office of the President, and Nam Center for Korean Studies, and by the Friends of the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
through may 15, 2011 Irving Stenn, Jr, Family Project Gallery Three distinguished artists—Architect and Dean of the UM Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Monica Ponce de Leon; Ernestine Ruben, experimental photographer of the human form and University of Michigan alumna; and Peter Sparling, dancer, video artist, and UM Thurnau Professor of Dance—collaborated on this project that challenges the boundaries of architecture, photography, and dance. From the beginning, the human form provided a shared point of departure. The concept of “skins”—both as the body’s most familiar organ, but also as a living, porous landscape for experience—became an environment onto which opaque layers are projected, peeled away, revealed. The undulating arcs of Ponce de Leon’s sculptural structure recall the sinuous shapes of the human body. Onto this form are projected three permutations of a video. Ruben photographed Sparling dancing in a series of still photographs, which the dancer then “re-animated” by combining the still images into a series of videos. These images of the human form were then further transformed by melding the images of Sparling’s dances with Ruben’s photographs of rippling light. The resulting videos are projected onto Ponce de Leon’s structure, creating a changing sequence of images and experiences. This exhibition is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost. Additional support has been provided by UM’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, Office of the Vice President for Research, and Digital Media Commons at the James and Anne Duderstadt Center.
FROM LEFT:
insight • umma.umich.edu 6
Lee Kang Hyo, Bottle, 2008, gray clay, built in onggi technique, wheel thrown, flattened, and faceted, white slip brushed on, ash glaze, Courtesy of Fowler Museum at UCLA Photographic still from Photoformance: An Empathic Environment
touring visitors with dementia One afternoon early this winter, visitors at UMMA could hear a tour group softly singing, their voices trailing from the balcony near the Joan and Bob Tisch Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. Led by UMMA docents in front of Sol Le Witt’s series of aquatints, Stars, the activity was one of the unique approaches that docents have developed to engage Museum visitors who are living with dementia. “Although their memories have been compromised, their senses have not,” explained UMMA docent Jeanie MackPowers. “When we play music or sing with the guests,” Gretta Spier added, “it is as if a light goes on. The whole group sings and their faces light up.” In addition to music, the docents use a variety of multisensory approaches, including props, dress-up, and artmaking as means to connect with the guests and enable them to connect with works of art. These specials tours, “Meet Me at UMMA,” were developed by a small group of UMMA’s community docents—Sophie Grillet, Jeanie Mack-Powers, Marlene Ross, Gretta Spier, Susan Schreiber, and Mary Wakefield—who worked closely with UMMA Director of Education Ruth Slavin. The docents and Slavin were inspired by a groundbreaking program at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In November 2009, UMMA hosted a workshop by Optimal Life Designs in Dementia Care, a non-profit organization that specializes in dementia education and training. Anne Robinson, Director of Optimal Life, and Carrie McGee, an educator with the Meet Me at MoMA Alzheimer’s Project, along with area physicians, presented a conceptual framework for understanding the potential impact that dementia can have on the ability to communicate one’s needs, experiences, and desires, alongside practical considerations in designing, offering, and facilitating small group art gallery experiences.
Unlike preparing for other adult tours, the docents carefully select works of art that will allow them to expound on the material by using multimedia or multisensory approaches. For instance, when touring the collection of Tiffany glass from the Henry O. Havemeyer House, Marlene Ross dressed up to play the role of Mr. Havemeyer’s wife, Louisine. And when docents led tours through UMMA’s recent kimono exhibition, Wrapped in Silk and Gold: A Family Legacy of 20th-Century Japanese Kimono, they unfurled an obi across the laps of the guests. These activities triggered imagination and recognition—experiencing the role-playing and feeling the material of the obi helped the visitors to respond to the works. Caregivers from Huron Woods and the Silver Club are present on each tour, and family members are invited and encouraged to attend and participate as well. “The tours are a wonderful opportunity for family members to see their loved ones engaged and enjoying themselves,” explained Marlene. “It’s therapeutic—the tours create a bonding place for everyone involved and often allow for the guests and their families to be better able to communicate.” Slavin notes that leadership museums today are seizing opportunities to use their collections to connect with people in an expanding variety of ways. “I am a strong believer that museums can respond to important human needs and Meet Me at UMMA is just one example of that. In the process we are learning more about the value our collections hold for people.” Mary DeYoe Education Program Coordinator, Public Programs and Student Engagement
insight • may/june 2011
For its pilot year, UMMA has partnered with two well-known Ann Arbor organizations that provide care for people living with dementia—Huron Woods, which is affiliated with St. Joseph Mercy Health System, and the University of Michigan Health System’s Turner Geriatric Center Silver Club. In preparation for touring, the docents worked closely with leadership and staff from both of these organizations. Through these meetings, the team was able to learn more about both the broad picture of living with dementia as well as special techniques to engage with Museum guests with dementia.
For the docents, it has been an incredible privilege to work with these groups and to develop the Meet Me at UMMA tours. It’s been a “love affair between the caregivers, the docents, and the guests,” said Susan, “and we have all learned a lot from each other about how to be better guides.”
features
Meet Me at UMMA
7
Find yourself inside UMMA and the new Maxine and Stuart Frankel and the Frankel Family Wing. exhibitions related programs
Life in Ceramics
Teacher Workshop
Saturday, May 14, 8:30 am–4 pm The Nam Center for Korean Studies will offer an exciting teacher workshop that will immerse participants in Korean culture and history. Ceramicist Kim Yikyung—whose work is featured in the exhibition—and UMMA curator Natsu Oyobe will be distinguished speakers. In addition, Ann Arbor artist Daria Kim will present a ceramics demonstration and Mary Connor, president of the Korea Academy for Educators, will lead a session on teaching about Korea. Teachers will visit the exhibition Life in Ceramics: Five Contemporary Korean Artists, as well as UMMA’s permanent collection of celadon and other wares. The day will be punctuated by authentic Korean food and teachers will take away a substantial packet of contextual information and lesson plans for immediate use in their classrooms. SB-CEUs are available ($10 processing fee). Please contact Do-Hee Morsman at dmorsman@umich.edu for more information and to register. Registration deadline: May 2, 2011; fee is $10 (late registration $15).
Ceramics as Life: A Conversation with Kim Yikyung and Georgette Zirbes Artists’ Talk
Sunday, May 15, 3 pm Helmut Stern Auditorium
Joining us from Seoul, South Korea, exhibition artist Kim Yikyung and Ann Arbor-based artist Georgette Zirbes will discuss Ms. Kim’s work and the evolution of her artistic practice that incorporates East Asian traditions and Western aesthetics. Longtime friends, and devoted to educating future generations of artists, Kim and Zirbes will also explore current trends in ceramic art today. Chosen as “artist of the year” by the National Museum of Contemporary Art in South Korea in 2004, Kim taught at Kookmin University and is one of the featured artists in the Life in Ceramics exhibition on view through June 26. Georgette Zirbes is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Professor Emeritus at the UM School of Art and Design. In the 1960s she studied at Shigaraki, one of the oldest kiln sites in Japan.
Curator’s Talk
Sunday, June 12, 3 pm A. Alfred Taubman Gallery I
Contemporary Korean ceramics artists exhibit a strong modern sensibility while connecting with their heritage—one of the world’s great ceramics traditions. UMMA Research Curator of Asian Art Natsu Oyobe will guide visitors through the current exhibition Life in Ceramics, discussing the works on view and their inspiration. Life in Ceramics: Five Contemporary Korean Artists was organized and produced by the Fowler Museum at UCLA. It was made possible by a major grant from the Korea Foundation. Additional support was provided by Korean Airlines. UMMA’s installation and related programs are made possible in part by the University of Michigan Health System, Office of the President, and Nam Center for Korean Studies, and by the Friends of the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
insight • umma.umich.edu 8
program highlights
Jazz Series
Michael Malis Trio
Wednesday, May 18, 8 pm Forum
At just twenty-two, Michael Malis is a staple in Detroit jazz clubs, and has also performed at Hill Auditorium and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and once for President Obama. Malis will graduate this May from the UM Jazz Studies Department. Don’t miss this performance by one of the jazz world’s up-and-comers.
Paul Keller Quartet
Artmaking Workshops
Turn on your creative brain with these immersive workshops offered by the Ann Arbor Art Center. Advance registration is required: www. annarborartcenter.org.
Drop-in and Draw: Fridays in the Gallery
Check-in and materials provided at the
This drop-in drawing class offered by instructor Heather Accurso provides the opportunity to be more than an observer at the Museum. By studying works in UMMA’s collections you will experiment with proportion, perspective, line quality, value, composition, and personal style. No experience necessary—all are welcome! Register for the whole series online at annarborartcenter.org.
insight • may/june 2011
This monthly series, curated by UM Associate Professor Adam Unsworth, presents outstanding local artists in an intimate setting. This series is made possible by the Doris Sloan Memorial Fund.
Kim Yikyung, Crystalloid Column, 2009, porcelain with grog, wheel thrown, altered, and faceted, ash glaze, Courtesy of Fowler Museum at UCLA
(cash only) Information Desk
At UMMA, Paul leads a quartet of his friends in a performance of familiar standards. The group includes members of the Paul Keller Orchestra, saxophonist Ben Jansson, pianist Duncan McMillan, and vocalist Sarah D’Angelo.
OPPOSITE:
$70 full series/$10 one-time drop-in fee
Forum
recording company owner, producer, and a nationally recognized recording artist. Keller spent several years on the road with guitarist Russell Malone and later with singer/pianist Diana Krall. Together with Malone and Krall, Keller recorded Krall’s grammy-nominated CD All For You. Paul has performed around the globe with a myriad of jazz stars including Jackie Ryan, Scott Hamilton, Ken Peplowski, and Warren Vache.
Michael Malis; Paul Keller
Fridays, May 6–June 24, 11:10 am–1 pm (8 weeks)
Wednesday, June 15, 8 pm Paul Keller is the leader of several ensembles, including his twenty-two-year-old fifteen-piece big band, the Paul Keller Orchestra. He is a prolific composer, arranger, jazz educator,
FROM LEFT:
9
Abstracting the Figure
Saturday, May 7, 10 am–12:20 pm Multipurpose Room $27 members and UM students/ $35 non-members; lab fee $13;
Japanese Brush Painting
materials included
Saturday, May 28, 10 am–12:50 pm
Take an up-close look at objects in the African collection and explore their impact on twentiethcentury abstract art. Students will subsequently create an abstract piece using collage and mixed media. Instructor: Christina Burch.
Multipurpose Room
Drawing Buddha
Saturday, May 7, 12:30–3 pm Multipurpose Room $27 members and UM students/ $35 non-members; lab fee $13; insight • umma.umich.edu 10
excellent for developing focus, training the eye and hand in awareness, and deepening pre-existing art technique.
materials included
Learn the techniques of drawing the Buddha’s sublime form with Rob Davis, Buddhist artist and director of Copper Colored Mountain Arts. Drawing the Buddha will focus on the central discipline of Tibetan Thangka painting as taught to Davis by his teacher Pema Rinzin. This class is
$27 members and UM students/ $35 non-members; lab fee $13; materials included
Discover the techniques and observations necessary to make the dynamic and simple brush strokes of Japanese art. Join Rob Davis, artist and director of Copper Colored Mountain Arts, and learn to create vital images of animals, nature, and saints in brush and ink.
Japanese Aesthetics and Woodblock Printing
Multipurpose Room
Multipurpose Room
$27 members and UM students/
$27 members and UM students/
$35 non-members; lab fee $13;
$35 non-members; lab fee $13;
materials included
materials included
The space of ritual where the divine and human intersect and intermingle is very much alive in the ritual arts of Africa. Explore works from the collection, including masks and power figures. Students will produce mixed-media works based on dream images as we explore ways of engaging ritual in the creative process. Instructor: Christina Burch.
Explore the UMMA collections and gain an appreciation for the highly refined sense of beauty in Japanese art. We will consider some central themes of Buddhist and Shinto culture, which inform this unique sensibility. Students will learn basic woodblock printmaking and make a set of hand-printed note cards. Instructor: Christina Burch.
Colorful Tiffany Stained Glass Maquettes/Tin Journals
Millefiori Polymer Clay
Multipurpose Room
$27 members and UM students/
$27 members and UM students/
$35 non-members; lab fee $13;
$35 non-members; lab fee $13;
materials included
Saturday, May 28, 1–4 pm
Saturday, June 4, 12–3 pm
materials included
Using blend-able colored pencils, participants will create colorful maquettes (small models) of stained glass windows, similar to how Louis Comfort Tiffany would have done in his glass studios. Then use your maquette to create a colorful tin journal, à la the Tiffany stained glass. Students will study the UMMA Tiffany collection for inspiration. Instructor: Patricia Johnson.
Write with Images
Saturday, June 11, 12–3 pm Multipurpose Room $27 members and UM students/ $35 non-members; lab fee $13; materials included
Saturday, June 25, 12–3 pm Multipurpose Room
Explore Venetian glass in the UMMA collection and learn the traditional millefiori technique. Using polymer clay, students will create a decorative piece, such as a vase, pendant, or votive holder. Instructor: Jenneva Scholz.
Ann Arbor Summer Festival
UMMA is pleased to be a part of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival new literary arts series FRESH INK, a collection of events celebrating the written and spoken word.
Film: Louder Than a Bomb Friday, June 24, 7:30 pm
Helmut Stern Auditorium
Louder Than a Bomb tells the story of four Chicago high school poetry teams as they prepare for and compete in the world’s largest youth slam. By turns hopeful and heartbreaking, the film captures the tempestuous lives of these unforgettable kids, exploring the ways writing shapes their world, and vice versa. While the topics they tackle are often deeply personal, what they put into their poems—and what they get out of them—is universal: the defining work of finding one’s voice.
insight • may/june 2011
Learn how a cartoonist uses drawings, panel size, and sound effects to immerse readers in a story. Cartoonist Jerzy Drozd will lead you in an interactive discussion on some of the fundamental comic storytelling principles, after which you’ll be invited to create a short comic story of your own.
Saturday, June 18, 12–3 pm
program highlights
Art and Ritual—UMMA’s African Collection
11
Yoga in the Apse
Photo cred it here.
Tuesdays, May 10–June 14, 5 pm Advance registration required: mhealthy.umich.edu/exercise; class #812204-04; $40 UM employees/ $50 non-UM participants Apse
Participate in the ancient practice of yoga in the beautiful surroundings of UMMA’s Apse. Based in the Hatha style, this one-hour class encourages relaxation, strength, flexibility, and balance with an emphasis on integrated breathing techniques in standing, sitting, and supine yoga postures. All levels welcome. Contact 734.647.7888 or mhealthy@umich.edu for more information.
Lunchtime Tours
Fridays, May 20 and June 24, at 12:15 pm Meet at Information Desk
Designed specifically for the lunch hour, UMMA students and staff will offer 30 minutes of conversation about art in the UMMA galleries around entertaining, warm-weather themes.
Storytime at the Museum
Saturdays, May 7 and June 11, at 11 am Meet at Information Desk
Reading: VOLUME Summer Institute Thursday, June 30, 7:30 pm Helmut Stern Auditorium
The award-winning writers and instructors from the VOLUME Summer Institute will give a featured reading for students in the Institute and the general public. The event will feature dynamic performance poets Patricia Smith, Roger Bonair-Agard, and Kevin Coval, California Best Book Award-winning fiction writer Adam Mansbach, and local award-winning poets and fiction writers Scott Beal and Jeff Kass.
insight • umma.umich.edu 12
FRESH INK is presented in partnership with Ann Arbor Book Festival, Ann Arbor District Library, 826michigan, the Neutral Zone, Michigan Radio, WCBN, and other literary minded partners.
Children ages 4–7 are invited to hear a story in the galleries. We will bring art to life as we read stories related to the art on display and invite responses from our youngest patrons. Parents must accompany children. Siblings are welcome to join the group.
Exhibition Tours
Join UMMA’s award-winning docents for tours of Life in Ceramics, Photoformance, and Out of the Ordinary. Offered on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, check the calendar insert or the website for tour dates and times.
Manager of Collections and Exhibitions and Chief Registrar To casual visitors, the Museum galleries appear to be magically refreshed and reinstalled with the seasons. But a whole flurry of work goes on behind the scenes to ensure that visitors always have an engaging and seamless viewing experience, and all of it would be impossible without Orian Neumann and her team in the collections and exhibitions department.
staff spotlight
Orian Neumann
As Manager of Collections and Exhibitions and Chief Registrar, Neumann is primarily responsible for the proper cataloguing, maintenance, and installation of the permanent collections, and for facilitating faculty and student research of and access to the collections with the assistance of graduate student librarians and art handlers. Neumann’s work has grown with the Museum’s expansion two years ago, which created vastly expanded gallery spaces and the Education Center with its open storage spaces and object-study classrooms on the lower level of the Frankel Wing. All of this has brought more people into the Museum and brought more artwork out of storage and out on view. And true to her high energy level and attention to detail, this suits Neumann fine.
insight • may/june 2011
This spring, she’s working on several new projects, the results of which will be seen as near as your computer screen and as far away as Europe. She’s managing the digitization of the areas of the collections that have yet to make it onto the Museum’s comprehensive database, and she’s handling the loan of two important works to a German museum. “I just enjoy interacting with art,” she says. “I love working on my own with the collections and I love working with people as they come to experience UMMA’s incredible holdings for themselves.”
13
UMMA Briefs Welcome New Director of Development Carrie Throm UMMA is happy to announce the appointment of Carrie Throm as the Museum’s new Director of Development. Carrie has been serving as Interim Director of Development since last October, while the Museum conducted a national search to fill the position. Carrie has worked at UM since 2005, most recently as Executive Director, Constituent Programs in the Office of University Development, where she was a member of the senior management team and oversaw many university-wide fundraising initiatives. Prior to that she was Assistant Dean for Development at the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance. She brings significant experience to UMMA in the areas of development, public relations, and external affairs, having focused her career serving arts-based units within major public universities. She holds a master’s degree in arts administration from Indiana University and studied economics and music as an undergraduate at University of California, San Diego. Carrie has personally been involved in the arts throughout her life and currently is a member of the UMS Choral Union.
insight • umma.umich.edu 14
Recent Gift to Collections Many donors have made incredible gifts of art to UMMA, helping us grow our collections in ways our acquisition budget would simply not make possible. Barbara and Dr. Seymour Adelson have very generously given significant works of art on paper consistently over the years, allowing the Museum to build upon its strong holdings in modern and contemporary prints and photography, as well as Japanese prints and early photography. Recently the Adelsons gifted thirteen exceptional twentiethcentury prints and photographs by such noted masters as Josef Albers, Jean Dubuffet, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacommeti, Andre Kertesz, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and Frank Stella. UMMA looks forward to sharing these works with our visitors in future gallery rotations. Reciprocal Membership Membership expiring shortly? Consider joining the Museum at the Sponsor Level ($250), and in addition to receiving all the other wonderful benefits of membership—including a subscription to Insight, 10% savings in the Museum Store, and invitations to exclusive exhibition previews—you’ll also be eligible for the North American Reciprocal Membership Benefits Program. Over 468 museums in the US and Canada participate. Support your own museum, and in the process enjoy free access to a wonderful diversity of institutions over your summer vacation and year-round!
Roy Lichtenstein, Haystacks #1, 1969, color lithograph, Gift of Dr. Seymour and Barbara K. Adelson, 2010/2.38
museum store
Museum Store Focus on Michigan Artists Spanish/Catalonian artist Francesc Burgos now calls Ann Arbor home after spending many years in Northern California and Europe. His diverse creative training includes graduate degrees in architecture and ceramics, and today he serves as a lecturer at the UM School of Art and Design. Before turning to ceramics, Burgos worked in architectural, textile, product, and graphic design. His ceramics practice incorporates primarily stoneware, often unglazed. “I construct my pieces by pinching wads of clay, or I build them with slabs,” says Burgos. “I also make slip-cast porcelain forms from models previously built of folder paper. I try to push the structural possibilities of the clay while it is being built, and also afterward, while it is being fired.” insight • may/june 2011
The Museum Store is pleased to feature functional vases, teacups, and platters by Burgos, as well as some of his dynamic sculptural work.
15
university of michigan museum of art
Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage
525 South State Street Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1354 734.764.0395 734.763.UMMA (24-hour information hotline) umma.umich.edu
paid
Ann Arbor, MI Permit No. 144
connect online facebook.com/ummamuseum twitter.com/ummamuseum youtube.com/ummamuseum
become a member umma.umich.edu or umma-giving@umich.edu
gallery hours Tuesday through Saturday 10 am–5 pm Sunday 12–5 pm Closed Mondays
building hours The Forum, Commons, and selected public spaces in the Maxine and Stuart Frankel and the Frankel Family Wing are open daily 8 am–10 pm. Admission to the Museum is always free. Support the Museum: $5 suggested donation.
location, parking, transportation
glen
to m- 14
UMMA is at the intersection of South State and South University. For bus transit information, visit theride.org or call 734.996.0400. Parking is available in public garages on Maynard and South Forest, with metered parking on adjacent streets.
e. ann
n. university
ged
maynard
thompson
s. fifth
s. division
s. fourth
e. william
to
e. jefferson
d
to i- 94
ar monroe
P
hill
Stephanie Rieke Miller External Relations Manager and Senior Writer Susan E. Thompson Senior Designer Photography: Courtney Graham, Steve Kuzma, Stephanie Rieke Miller, Peter Smith, and Randal Stegmeyer
printed on paper made with 100% post-consumer waste
us
-2
3
forest
church
ck
tappan
pa
madison
e. university
s. university
P
des
observatory
P
washtenaw
P
fletcher
main street
e. liberty
state street
e. huron
to i- 94
University of Michigan Board of Regents Julia Donovan Darlow, Ann Arbor Laurence B. Deitch, Bingham Farms Denise Ilitch, Bingham Farms Olivia P. Maynard, Goodrich Andrea Fischer Newman, Ann Arbor Andrew C. Richner, Grosse Pointe Park S. Martin Taylor, Grosse Pointe Farms Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor Mary Sue Coleman, ex officio