fall 2012 university of michigan museum of art
from the director
THIS FALL THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MUSEUM OF ART CELEBRATES collaboration and innovation through its exhibitions, collections, publications, outreach, and interpretation. All of these exciting projects and initiatives reflect UMMA’s mission to connect visitors with objects and ideas that can meaningfully shape how they experience, filter, and understand their world.
contents UMMA NEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 EXHIBITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 IN FOCUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 PROGRAMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 UMMA HAPPENINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 SPOTLIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 MEMBERSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 UMMA STORE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Cover: Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (detail), 1776, oil on canvas, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan
UMMA’s 2012 season is supported by the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts.
As we outlined in the previous issue, the recent $650,000 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to the Museum will have far-reaching implications for how UMMA can engage more broadly with the University in its mission to encourage multidisciplinary and global thinking. One of the key components of the grant is what we call Collections Collaborations. On September 22 the Museum unveils an exhibition that came about through an impactful collaboration with another important collecting unit on campus: Discovering Eighteenth-Century British America: The William L. Clements Library Collection. This exhibition of exceptional highlights from the library provides the perfect complement to our other major fall exhibition—Benjamin West: General Wolfe and the Art of Empire—which brings together objects and material to contextualize the Clements’ version of the great West canvas, The Death of General Wolfe. Speaking of collections, thanks to grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan, and the Korean Cultural Heritage Association with additional support from the UM Nam Center for Korean Studies the Museum will introduce various multimedia tools and fresh voices and interpretation to its collections galleries. Please see the full story later in this issue. The Museum’s dynamic publishing program has ramped up with the launch of a new series called UMMA Books and the release this season of three exhibition-related publications that feature new scholarship and perspectives. Two are more traditional exhibition catalogues—African Art and the Shape of Time and Benjamin West: General Wolfe and the Art of Empire— while the volume offered in conjunction with YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES is an innovative artists’ book that functions as the second part of this incisive and exhilarating installation. I look forward to seeing you at the Museum! Warmest regards,
Joseph Rosa Director
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umma news UMMA RECEIVES CACHE OF WORKS BY EMILIO SANCHEZ
NEW WORKS ON VIEW IN ASIAN GALLERIES
The Emilio Sanchez Foundation in New York recently gave the Museum of Art a large gift of seventy prints and ten paintings by the acclaimed artist. Born in Cuba in 1921, Sanchez moved to New York in 1944 and lived and worked in the city until his death in 1999. Sanchez is known for his vibrant, abstracted images of vernacular architecture and structural fragments rendered through flat color, dramatic light and shadow, and geometric rigor. Sanchez bridged Latin American, Caribbean, and American modernism and drew on such diverse sources as Georgia O’Keeffe and Pierre Bonnard. He described himself as a “Realist with a Surrealist twist.” UMMA is very grateful to the foundation for this generous gift, which complements the Museum’s growing Latin American collection in important and diverse ways.
UMMA’s Shirley Chang Gallery of Chinese Art and the Museum’s Japanese Gallery have been enhanced with new works on view this fall, thanks to the C.Y. Chang Research Associate Internship and the UM Center for Japanese Studies, respectively. The lacquer wares now featured in the Japanese Gallery come from UMMA and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Made from the sap of a variety of sumac, lacquer ware first appeared in Japan (from China) in the sixth century. Thin layers of lacquer are applied to a base material, usually wood, and then polished; decorative techniques include carving, painting, engraving, and inlay with metals, shells, or colored lacquers. These exquisite objects from Japan will be on view through summer 2013.
UMMA AFRICAN OBJECTS LOANED TO SMITHSONIAN The Museum of Art was very pleased to share three important works from UMMA’s significant African holdings with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art through January 30, 2013. The three ancestor figures—two women and one man—are fashioned of wood in the Manda style and originate from the Congo region; all three objects were generous gifts to the Museum from Helmut Stern. These arresting figures exhibit body scarification patterns then in use in Tabwa communities. The UMMA works will be on view in Washington, DC, as part of African Cosmos: Stellar Arts, a major exhibition with a related publication that explores African cultural astronomy through traditional and contemporary visual art. Ancestor figure, Congo (Zaire), Tabwa, wood, UMMA, Museum purchase made possible by a gift from Helmut Stern, 1987/1.157.001
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Separately, a new installation in the Shirley Chang Gallery of Chinese Art includes a diverse selection of contemporary Chinese folk pottery from the collections of three Michigan-based ceramic artists: John Stephenson, Suzanne Stephenson, and Marie Woo. Through numerous research trips to rural areas of China between 1995 and 2009, these artists studied the techniques and artistry of Tibetan, Dai, Bai, Miao, and Han pottery communities. These objects of daily use were created by individuals, families, or small-scale pottery-making communities primarily for local or regional commercial markets. This special installation will remain on view through April 2013.
DIRECTOR JOSEPH ROSA ON NATIONAL TRAVEL RADIO PROGRAM In May UMMA Director Joseph Rosa was among several noteworthy Ann Arborites who served as guests on the Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio Show, a nationally syndicated travel news program. An acclaimed travel journalist, Greenberg, in addition to hosting his popular radio show, which each week is broadcast from a different location around the world, is travel editor for CBS News and appears regularly on CBS This Morning, the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley, and CBS Sunday Morning. Some of the other guests from Ann Arbor included Eve Aronoff, chef and owner of Frita Batidos, who chatted about her Cuban-inspired eatery in downtown Ann Arbor; Ken Fischer, president of the University Musical Society; and former UM football star Dhani Jones. The threehour show, which was produced at UMMA in the Helmut Stern Auditorium in the Frankel Wing, reached more than three million listeners across the country.
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a. alfred taubman gallery i | september 22, 2012–january 13, 2013
BENJAMIN
WEST
GENERAL WOLFE AND
THE ART OF EMPIRE 4
How is it that an American painter came to define the British Empire? When Benjamin West’s painting The Death of General Wolfe was first shown at the Royal Academy in 1771 it was received with great acclaim and quickly became one of the most famous paintings in eighteenth-century Britain, serving for generations as the consummate projection of its military, moral, and cultural supremacy and a celebration of Empire. Depicting the heroic death of James Wolfe, the British commander at the 1759 Battle of Québec during what is known in this country as the French and Indian War (1754–63), West’s canvas presented a momentous contemporary event in a large-scale history painting, but with the figures in modern rather than classical dress. In so doing, West flouted the conventions of the genre put forth by academic painters such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, the famed director of the Royal Academy. Though his was not the earliest representation of the death of Wolfe nor the first history painting to violate the norms of pictorial depiction by showing him in uniform, West’s interpretation of the event became iconic, crystallizing for a patriotic public the moment when Britain assumed the mantle of empire. The artist went on to produce five additional full-scale versions of the painting, one of which belongs to the William L. Clements Library at the umma.umich.edu
Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe, 1776, oil on canvas, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan
University of Michigan. The composition was also widely disseminated in the form of reproductive engravings that earned both the painter and the engraver a small fortune. Through forty works from Michigan, Canadian, and British collections, this thematically focused exhibition considers how artists contributed to Great Britain’s emergence as the dominant colonial power in Europe in the later eighteenth century—from West’s pivotal portrayal, to the painting’s popularization in a wide variety of media, to the cartographers on the ground in Canada whose maps helped ensure Canada’s future as a British colony. In addition to West’s monumental vision of British conquest, the exhibition includes previous depictions of James Wolfe and his death on the battlefield and explores the commodification of Wolfe in popular culture. Among the many historically important and visually compelling works included in the exhibition are portions of the Murray Atlas of Canada from the UM Clements Library, a set of highly detailed maps executed in 1761–63 by military surveyors under the direction of general and military governor James Murray. The Murray Atlas (known in only five extant examples) includes plans drawn by, among others, Samuel Holland and John Montresor, the latter a British artist and military engineer who fought alongside Wolfe. Carole McNamara Senior Curator of Western Art A fully illustrated catalogue published by the Museum as part of the new UMMA Books series, authored by UMMA Senior Curator of Western Art Carole McNamara and with an essay by Clayton Lewis of the UM Clements Library, accompanies the exhibition.
LECTURE BY EXHIBITION CURATOR CAROLE MCNAMARA Sunday, September 23, 3 pm HELMUT STERN AUDITORIUM Generous support for this exhibition is provided by the Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation, the University of Michigan Health System, the University of Michigan Office of the Provost and Office of the Vice President for Research, the Richard and Rosann Noel Endowment Fund, and THE MOSAIC FOUNDATION (of R. & P. Heydon).
ISCOVERING EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH AMERICA: THE WILLIAM L. CLEMENTS LIBRARY COLLECTION The University of Michigan William L. Clements Library is grateful to the Museum of Art for presenting this significant exhibition that provides glimpses of British America in the 1700s. The exhibition reflects a major interest of the library’s founding donor, who gave his personal collection of early Americana to the University of Michigan and paid for the lovely Albert Kahn structure at 909 South University Avenue that has housed it since 1923. An 1882 graduate of the University and a longtime member of the Board of Regents, William L. Clements assembled an outstanding array of primary sources on North America dating between 1492 and 1800, with a heavy emphasis on early European exploration and discovery and the eighteenth-century wars for control of the continent. The exhibition features a mix of rare items from Mr. Clements’s original donation and pieces the library has acquired since 1923 to complement and enhance its strength in eighteenth-century American history. Visitors will see maps, prints, and manuscripts by notables such as Paul Revere, Mark Catesby, John Montresor, and Thomas Gage; John Mitchell’s 1755–57 Map of the British and French Dominions in North America; manuscript plans of major engagements in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution; a 1776 printing of the Declaration of Independence; and rare views of leading early American seaports and cities. Because the library has only limited exhibition space, some of the larger components—seven sheets from an enormous 1761–62 manuscript atlas of the St. Lawrence River—have never been on display before. The exhibition is designed to complement the Museum’s adjacent show, Benjamin West: General Wolfe and the Art of Empire, which features West’s monumental painting The Death of General Wolfe from the Clements collection and serves as an entry point for anyone interested in the early history of the United States and Canada. Most of us know the old adage about the tip of the iceberg, and it applies here: as anyone familiar with the Clements can attest, for every great eighteenth-century Americana treasure in this exhibition there are thousands more in the library’s holdings. J. Kevin Graffagnino, Director William L. Clements Library Generous support for this exhibition is provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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JESPER JUST: THIS NAMELESS SPECTACLE new media gallery august 18–december 9, 2012 UMMA unveils a new year of exciting projects in the New Media Gallery this fall as part of its mission to deliver to its audiences unparalleled access to today’s leading-edge artists, thinkers, and vocabularies. Working with guest curator Kathleen Forde, the Museum will present three pieces by an international cadre of upcoming and established artists working in this dynamic field: Jesper Just (born in Denmark in 1974), Francis Alÿs (born in Belgium in 1959), and an artist yet to be announced. Ms. Forde is a noted contemporary curator who has worked at and with major museums around the United States and abroad. In addition to conceiving UMMA’s New Media Gallery projects this year, she works as an independent curator in New York City and as artistic director at large for the Borusan Contemporary in Istanbul, Turkey. “For the three media gallery shows at UMMA that I have the pleasure to be involved with, I thought a great deal about selecting work that showed a range of the different ways artists could use the space of the gallery and, more broadly speaking, how artists are working in vastly different ways in the field,” said Ms. Forde. “I am delighted to finally be able to work with Jesper Just, whose work I have been following for quite some time. As the audience will see, in this installation as in much of his work, Just situates the viewer in his signature landscape of beauty, provocation, and a general uneasiness that is as seductive as it is ominous. It’s breathtaking. Francis Alys is likewise an artist with whom I have not yet had the opportunity to work, but I have been a longstanding fan of his for many years. I first saw Guards at his solo show at MOMA/PS1 last year and returned for many repeat visits to experience it again and again. It is so captivating, witty, and smart and at the same time very moving. I’m thrilled to be able to share it with UMMA visitors.” Jesper Just: This Nameless Spectacle will be on view through December 9, 2012. Francis Alÿs’s Guards begins December 15, 2012 and will run through April 21, 2013. Generous support for these exhibitions is provided by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost.
Jesper Just, This Nameless Spectacle, 2011, Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, and Galleri Nicolai Wallner, ©Jesper Just 2011 6
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exhibitions a. alfred taubman gallery ii august 18, 2012–february 3, 2013
AFRICAN ART AND THE SHAPE OF TIME Clockwise from top left Mask (mwana pwo), Chokwe peoples, probably late 19th century, wood, tukula powder, clay, string, metal, fur, snakeskin, cloth, UMMA, Gift of Candis and Helmut Stern, 2005/1.201 Wosene Kosrof, The Preacher III, 2000, acrylic on canvas, Purchased with funds provided by the Annie Laurie Aitken Endowment, 2001-1-1, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution Bell (kunda), Kongo peoples, probably late 19th century, wood, Private collection, courtesy of Donald Morris Gallery, Inc. Staff finial (sono), Beafada, Badyaranke or Maninka or Fula peoples, probably 17th–19th century, copper alloy, Private collection, courtesy of Donald Morris Gallery, Inc.
Time is fundamental to human experience, yet not everyone perceives it in the same way. Time may be conceptualized in dissimilar and even contradictory ways. This exhibition explores how diverse concepts of temporality, history, and memory are given material form in Africa. Indeed some of Africa’s most celebrated art objects were made to engage time and as such evoke fundamental questions regarding the way we experience time. For example, does time “flow” from the past through the present and into the future, like a river? What is the relationship between the past, present, and future? Considering these and many other questions will afford visitors to the exhibition an opportunity to reconsider accepted ideas concerning the meaning and function of African art. Ultimately, African Art and the Shape of Time presents a new approach for interpreting African art in the gallery that foregrounds the complex ways in which it functions as the materialization of time in space. Each work can be understood as a fragment of time, a material trace of the ever-present human desire to understand our place in an ever-changing world. The show brings together important artworks from UMMA’s permanent collection, the National Museum of African Art, and the UCLA Fowler Museum, as well as from several southeast Michigan private collections. The works date from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century and represent a range of media and artistic practices, including wood and ivory sculpture, modern painting, book illumination, jewelry, and time-based video. The exhibition explores five themes. The Beginning of Things explores African genesis stories and features sculptures and masks from west and central Africa that memorialize new epochs or social orders. For example, the a-Tshol shrine figure from the Baga culture of Guinea gives material form to the moment when humanity became aware of God’s existence. Moving Through
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Time features works such as a rare oracular bell and a monumental nkisi nkondi figure from the Kongo culture of central Africa that are tools to help people access sacred forces or beings who exist “elsewhere in time.” They exemplify the ways in which African artists investigate how time is comprehended in spatial terms, as something through which humanity moves. How the human body acts as a site of history and memory and also anchors visions for the future is explored in Embodied Time. It demonstrates how sculpture can articulate the indelible impact of the passage of time on human experience. Global Time considers the convergence of different modes of reckoning time and the dynamics of how such encounters shape the global world order. Here the works on view highlight aesthetics of cross-cultural negotiation. For example, an exquisite fragment from an ivory saltcellar demonstrates the ways Benin artists reimagined the visual culture of sixteenth-century Portugal for a newly emerging global market. The works of contemporary artists who deal with the representation of Africa’s past in contemporary worldviews is explored in the section titled NOW. These artists, including El Antasui, Emeka Ogboh, and Wosenre Kosrof, embody the foundational premise of this exhibition: to examine critically how and why time matters in Africa. Prita Meier, Assistant Professor of African Art, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Raymond Silverman, Professor of History of Art and Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan, and UMMA Adjunct Consulting Curator of African Art The Museum has published a catalogue in conjunction with the exhibition as part of the new UMMA Books series, authored by Prita Meier and Raymond Silverman and with contributions by Andrew W. Gurstelle.
LECTURE BY EXHIBITION CURATOR PRITA MEIER
IT’S ABOUT TIME: RECONSIDERING TEMPORALITY IN AFRICAN ART HISTORY Wednesday, November 14, 5:30 pm HELMUT STERN AUDITORIUM Lead support for this exhibition is provided by the University of Michigan Health System and the James L. and Vivian A. Curtis Endowment Fund. Additional generous support is provided by the CEW Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund.
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YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, ISN’T IT THE GREATEST IN THE WORLD? PART 1: WANT TO DO GOOD? KNOW HOW TO SHOOT A SEMI- AUTOMATIC HANDGUN?, 2012, original text and music soundtrack, 11 min 13 sec loop, one of a two-channel HD QuickTime movie, Courtesy YHCHI
irving stenn, jr, family project gallery | august 11–december 30, 2012
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES This fast-rising, provocative artist collective hails from Seoul, South Korea. For their UMMA installation, YHCHI has mounted a visually stacked and scaled, two-channel video with multiple projections and monitors that is both reminiscent of Jasper Johns’s iconic Three Flags (1958) and layered with contemporary sensibilities and political concerns. Don’t miss the second integral part of the exhibition: an innovative artists’ book, published by UMMA, with an essay by Associate Curator of Asian Art Natsu Oyobe. PENNY STAMPS LECTURE SERIES AND UMMA PRESENT
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES: ONE OR TWO THINGS WE KNOW ABOUT ART Thursday, October 11, 5:10 pm MICHIGAN THEATER, 603 EAST LIBERTY, ANN ARBOR Lead support for this exhibition is provided by the Herbert W. and Susan L. Johe Endowment, the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, and the Nam Center for Korean Studies. Additional generous support is provided by the Dr. Robert and Janet Miller Fund and the School of Art and Design’s Penny Stamps Speaker Series.
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in focus NEW ACQUISITION
ROMARE BEARDEN “The artist has to be something like the whale, swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he needs.” Romare Bearden was a man of great intellectual curiosity and manifold interests. During the Harlem Renaissance of his childhood, Bearden was surrounded by people who fed his intellect and imagination. His friends were other artists, writers, poets, and jazz musicians, including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Ralph Ellison, Duke Ellington, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary McLeod Bethune, George Grosz, and Stuart Davis, among others. He took his imagery from their words and ideas as well as everyday life. The painting on display here demonstrates the importance of two other influences: the Cubism of Pablo Picasso and the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca. This painting was completed at a time when Bearden was inspired by powerful literary sources, including Rabelais, Homer, and Lorca, writers who share themes of violence, suffering, death, and resurrection. A critic of the time described the continuity between the themes of these writers as the struggle against darkness. Now the Dove and the Leopard Wrestle takes its title from a line in Lorca’s poem Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias. Bearden met Lorca when he was in the United States from June 1929 to March 1930. He also may have met the
bullfighter Ignacio Sanchez Mejias when he visited Lorca in late 1929. These (possible) meetings could be a reason for the artist’s selection of this poem. The scene portrayed, however, does not represent a dove or leopard, nor does it portray the death of Mejias in 1934. Rather, the violent attack of the bull on the horse is more of an homage to the “religious mystery” of the bullfight (Lorca’s term) that held such a potent attraction for Lorca, Mejias, Picasso, and Bearden. Although the literary link is to Lorca, the stylistic reference—the overlapping, intersecting, flat, and rounded forms contained in Cubist space—is evidence of Bearden’s special interest in Picasso. This important early work by Bearden was given to the University of Michigan’s Clements Library by Clarence Wolf, a frequent benefactor to the Clements. Wolf’s father, Ben, was a painter and art critic who reviewed Bearden’s early exhibitions and acquired this painting directly from Bearden. Ben Wolf felt that Bearden was “one of the most exciting creative artists” to emerge in a long time. The painting was transferred to UMMA this year where it will be an important resource for students, visitors, and scholars. Pam Reister Curator for Museum Teaching and Learning This new acquisition will be on view in the first-floor connector between the Museum’s historic wing and the Maxine and Stuart Frankel and the Frankel Family Wing from September 8, 2012 through January 6, 2013.
Romare Bearden, Now the Dove and the Leopard Wrestle, 1946, oil on canvas, Transfer from the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, gift of Clarence Wolf, February 1997, 2012/1.225
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umma education year in review 2011–12
James (Intrusion 13), by Cranbrook Academy of Art student Joe Sobel, took first place in the student photography competition in conjunction with the Face of Our Time exhibition in fall 2011.
Associate Professor of History of Art David Doris performs Nam June Paik’s One for Violin Solo during a program featuring Fluxus originator Ben Patterson, UM faculty from SMTD and History of Art, and over thirty UM students from more than five disciplines. Left: Our Fluxus-themed Student Late Night event welcomed 700 students in March 2012.
STUDENT ENGAGEMENT Nine thousand students enthusiastically took part in student programs at UMMA, often collaborating as program organizers, artists, singers, musicians, writers, and attendees. The UMMA Student Programming and Advisory Committee focuses on student engagement. Highlights from this year included: • the launch of a new student blog, The Annex; • a student photography competition in conjunction with the special exhibition Face of Our Time; • three podcast interviews with contemporary artists and curators; and • Student Late Night: an art, artmaking, and music event when UM students have exclusive access to the Museum. 12
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PUBLIC PROGRAMS Over 19,800 people participated in a wide variety of public programs, from dialogues with artists and curators, to concerts and films, to readings and hands-on workshops, all of which contribute to making the Museum a dynamic public space for our audiences.
TEACHING AND LEARNING A total of 3,486 students from more than thirty campus departments and schools participated in teaching programs in the Museum’s galleries and object and paper study classrooms.
Top: Author Jennifer Egan reads from her Pulitzer Prize-winning book A Visit from the Goon Squad. Every year, UMMA hosts readings by over twenty authors brought to campus by the UM Department of English Program in Creative Writing Zell Visiting Writers Series. Above: The Contemporary Directions Ensemble, led by Christopher Lees, performs a concert inspired by the exhibition Mark di Suvero: Tabletops. This was one of the nine SMTD@UMMA programs in 2011–12, a collaboration with the UM School of Music, Theatre, and Dance that featured site-specific concerts linked with the art and ideas of UMMA’s exhibitions and collections. Top right: Under the direction of UM instructor Terri Sarris, students in Screen Arts and Cultures 290: Introduction to Film, Video and Television Production made new movies for the UMMA DialogTable, the Museum’s interactive storytelling and social learning tool. Bottom right: Holly Rider-Milkovich, director of the UM Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center, was a lively participant in planning for the student docents’ online collaboration Paths to Renewal: Teaching, Leading, and Healing through Art. fall 2012
The UMMA Student Docent Program engaged twenty undergraduate students from a wide variety of disciplines, from history of art to biology to the Museum Studies Program. In addition to the popular Saturday morning Storytime at the Museum for families, student docents conducted a career day for area high school students and curated an online exhibition connecting art in the UMMA collection to the themes of the UM Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center’s 25th anniversary. UMMA’s award-winning docents led visitors on nearly 340 tours—ranging from kindergarteners to college students, members of the general public to people with dementia and UM recruits—engaging over 8,000 people in active encounters with original works of art. 13
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Every year, dozens of UM students apply to join UMMA’s Student Programming and Advisory Council (SPAC) because they are passionate about art and outreach. From those candidates, the Education Department at UMMA selects a diverse group of 13–15 undergraduate and graduate students from a wide variety of academic disciplines and organizations across campus that share UMMA’s commitment to creating significant experiences with art for UM students. “I strongly believe that the exchange about art and its power of expression and communication is a conversation that we must always be expanding,” said Molly Dierks, SPAC board member and a graduate student in the School of Art and Design. “Art is a celebration of everything that makes us human and the institutions that support it are an invaluable part of our society. We are so lucky to have the University of Michigan Museum of Art on this campus, which consistently has cutting edge, beautiful, and informative exhibitions and lectures.”
STUDENTS BRING PASSION AND PERSPECTIVE TO UMMA
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Over the past year the SPAC has taken on an increasingly active role in connecting UM students with UMMA’s special exhibitions through participatory projects like the Face of Our Time student photography competition, a plethora of Fluxus-related events and activities, and interviews with curators and contemporary artists, and by contributing to a dynamic conversation on UMMA’s new student blog, The Annex. We look forward to continuing this trend of increased exhibition-related student programming throughout the 2012–13 school year as we welcome eight new members—and their diverse backgrounds and perspectives—to the SPAC. Undergraduates majoring in history of art, psychology, anthropology, communications, and comparative literature will work alongside graduate students in studio art and design, political science, and medicine to ensure that UMMA is a meeting place for the arts for UM students across campus. The council plans events for and features students at UMMA and offers opportunities throughout the year that focus on student participation and awareness. “I am interested in the intersections of politics and the arts,” said Christopher Skovron, a graduate student in political science. “I believe that a dialogue that considers how culture determines political outcomes is essential.” It is important to UMMA that the SPAC represent different disciplinary and personal perspectives in order to make art at the Museum meaningful to all UM students. By functioning as a direct link between UM students and the Museum, the SPAC plans to engage students in significant ways with several upcoming exhibitions this year, including through a film series to complement Benjamin West: General Wolfe and the Art of Empire in the fall and an annual student late night event in the spring that will feature music and artmaking activities inspired by the upcoming exhibition by a contemporary African artist El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa.
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From Guardian of the City:
NEW GRANTS SUPPORT MULTIMEDIA IN THE GALLERY
Even though I didn’t know what the Ogre tile was when I first looked at it, the more I delved into it, the more I saw it was related to everyday life in Seoul. I guess it really goes to show that every object—no matter how remote or dusty it first seems— has a captivating story to tell. ELLIS CHANG
ollowing on the success of the UMMA DialogTable— which was recognized with a Gold Muse Award by the American Association of Museums in 2010 and praised for its “layered multimedia interpretation, which integrates still images, videos, and narratives, and provides an experience tailor-made to the user”— UMMA is preparing to launch a series of new technology-based interpretive initiatives this fall. Three recent grants will assist in bringing fresh voices and perspectives into the UMMA gallery experience through multimedia as well as making several dozen 2–3 minute DialogTable movies available for in-gallery use. The National Endowment for the Arts and the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan will support the Many Voices project, which will enable the development of new videos created with visitors, filmmakers, and others to interpret UMMA collections objects. These grants will also make it possible for UMMA to deliver content on demand in the gallery for visitors on iPod Touch devices as well as via docent or teacher use of iPads in gallery lessons and tours. UMMA hopes these interpretive tools provide new and better ways for students and visitors to connect with original works of art, prompting new conversations and creative connections. These new technologies and their content will become available in early spring 2013. Already underway is a project funded by the Korean Cultural Heritage Association with additional support from the UM Nam Center for Korean Studies, which will bring multimedia interpretation to the serene and beautiful Woon-Hyung Lee and Korea Foundation Gallery of Korean Art. Focus groups prior to fall 2012
Ogre roof tile, Korea, circa 1398, earthenware, UMMA, Gift of Bruce and Inta Hasenkamp and Museum purchase made possible by Elder and Mrs. Sang-Yong Nam, 2004/1.258
UMMA’s reopening identified issues in connecting these works—some of the oldest in the Museum—to contemporary life. In particular, younger respondents expressed the wish to see this and other cultures represented in the Museum’s global holdings as less “frozen in time.” The new video Form Matters explores the physical processes, both timeless and innovative, that contemporary ceramics artist Kim Yikyung used to make one of UMMA’s latest acquisitions—a contemporary clay piece—as well as relating this work to the great legacy of Korean ceramics. Guardian of the City develops a storyline with UMMA intern and UM student Ellis Chang, who links an ancient object with one of the world’s flourishing mega-cities, Seoul, South Korea. Visitors can experience the new videos starting in fall 2012. 15
umma happenings
Artist Haroon Mirza (below right), guest curator Elizabeth Thomas (top), and writer David Toop (above) presented an UMMA Dialogues program in March in conjunction with Mirza’s installation at the Museum, his first solo exhibition in the US.
Hundreds of enthusiastic visitors enjoyed four new exhibitions, music, curator conversations, and seasonal refreshments at UMMA After Hours in April (below and right).
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spotlight MELLON GRANT HELPS UMMA TRAIN NEXT GENERATION OF MUSEUM PROFESSIONALS
Guest curator Celeste Brusati (above) discussed the works she chose to include in the exhibition Flip Your Field: Abstract Art from the Collection and artist Judith Turner (below) shared her photographs as part of UMMA’s annual Doris Sloan Memorial Program in June.
One of the three key components that the UMMA’s recent Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant makes possible is training emerging talent in the museum field. Specifically three positions have been funded through the Mellon grant that allow the Museum to nurture young museum professionals while at the same time realizing its mission to increase access to the collections and connect more widely across the university community. As the Mellon Academic Coordinator, David Choberka will be responsible for identifying and managing auspicious campus collaborations that result in significant exhibitions and other scholarly projects. Choberka received his PhD from the UM Department of Germanic Languages and Literature in addition to a graduate certificate from the Museum Studies Program with a focus on the history and theory of museums and art museum practice. He previously served as a both a researcher and interpretive content developer at UMMA prior to the reinstallation of the collections in 2009. Anne Drozd, the Mellon Collections Assistant, is tasked with reaching out to professors and instructors at area colleges and universities, including UM, in order to increase usage of the Museum’s 2D and 3D study rooms. These relatively new (since reopening in 2009) and critical resources, located on the lower level of the Frankel Wing, offer unparalleled access to original works of art from the Museum’s renowned collections, which in turn provide insight into a broad array of subjects well beyond art history. Drozd recently completed her MS in Information Science from UM and previously interned at UMMA as librarian and study room art handler. In consultation with the UM Department of History of Art, Katherine Brion has been selected as the Mellon Curatorial Fellow for the 2012–13 academic year. Brion is a PhD candidate in history of art with an emphasis in nineteenth-century French art. She will be developing one or more curatorial projects while at UMMA, both related to her dissertation— Decorative Visions: Shaping the Viewer in Fin-de-Siècle France—and to other less familiar material. We welcome all three of these very promising young professionals to the Museum and look forward to shaping and following their current projects and future careers.
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membership
FALL/WINTER EVENT PREVIEW UMMA Members will be treated to several exciting and thought-provoking events this fall and winter, including:
SEPTEMBER: For Curators’ Circle and Director’s Circle Members, on Saturday, September 29, join UMMA and Michigan Radio for an ArtPrize outing. Take the bus from Ann Arbor or meet us in Grand Rapids to enjoy a catered lunch at the Amway Grand with guest speaker Kevin Buist, Director of Exhibitions for ArtPrize. Then explore ArtPrize on your own or meet with the group to discuss highlighted projects. Lunch and transportation costs are associated with this event.
OCTOBER: Director’s Circle Members will be invited to dinner with UMMA Director Joseph Rosa and Senior Curator of Western Art Carole McNamara to get an intimate view of how the exhibition Benjamin West: General Wolfe and the Art of Empire came together. Dinner invitations will be mailed in September.
NOVEMBER: On Friday, November 9, all are invited to UMMA After Hours. This free evening event celebrates five special exhibitions, including work by the Seoul-based art collaborative YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, renowned video artist Jesper Just, the exploratory African Art and the Shape of Time, and the historic Benjamin West: General Wolfe and the Art of Empire and Discovering Eighteenth-Century British America: The William L. Clements Library Collection. Curator conversations, music, and light refreshments round out the evening. Last fall more than 900 people joined us for this spectacular event.
FEBRUARY: Curators’ Circle and Director’s Circle Members will be invited to a brunch surrounding the exhibition of work by contemporary artist El Anatsui.
UMMA MEMBERS ALSO ENJOY THESE ADDITIONAL BENEFITS: • Reciprocal benefits at more than 450 North American museums (Donor Circle Members and above) • 20% off purchases in the UMMA Store during home football weekends • Invitations to special events celebrating exhibitions • Advance notice and insight into upcoming exhibitions through our tri-annual UMMA Magazine and weekly email updates • New bimonthly UMMA Calendar detailing the exciting programs—more than 400 annually—offered by UMMA and partners such as the UM School of Music, Theatre, and Dance and the Ann Arbor Art Center UMMA relies on the support of individuals like you—those who value the vibrant range of exhibitions and programs we deliver to broad audiences across the campus, region, and globe. Your membership and annual fund gifts allow us to complement the exhibitions in our galleries with hundreds of diverse programs for the campus and community. Thank you for your support of UMMA. If you have not already, please check out the new and improved Membership levels on our website: umma.umich. edu/member.
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umma store FALL IS A WONDERFUL TIME IN ANN ARBOR with many new activities and events to discover. Please add the UMMA Store to your “must see” list this season. Stop by and explore our unique merchandise offerings, including three new UMMA exhibition-related books—African Art and the Shape of Time, Benjamin West: General Wolfe and the Art of Empire, and an unconventional artists’ book by YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES. These volumes are part of the new UMMA Books series that includes in-depth consideration of art and ideas on view in the Museum’s galleries by UMMA and affiliated scholars and artists. All three publications are available exclusively at the UMMA Store for a limited time. Don’t forget, Members always receive 10% off in the UMMA Store! Featured item: Grass and prayer mat baskets handcrafted in Africa. These have been enormously popular, so plan to visit soon before your preferred color or style is gone!
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Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage
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university of michigan museum of art
Ann Arbor, MI Permit No. 144
525 South State Street Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1354 734.763.UMMA umma.umich.edu
connect online facebook.com/ummamuseum twitter.com/ummamuseum youtube.com/ummamuseum
become a member umma.umich.edu or umma-giving@umich.edu
gallery hours (September–April) Tuesday through Saturday 11 am–5 pm Sunday 12–5 pm Closed Mondays
building hours (September–April) The Forum, Commons, and selected public spaces in the Maxine and Stuart Frankel and the Frankel Family Wing are open daily 8 am–8 pm.
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 Contributors: Lisa Borgsdorf, Cynthia Carson, Lauren Rossi Harroun, Heather Meixler, Stephanie Rieke Miller, Ruth Slavin, Peter Smith, Leisa Thompson Editor: Stephanie Rieke Miller Designer: Susan E. Thompson
Admission to the Museum is always free. $5 suggested donation appreciated.
EXHIBITIONS ON VIEW
For up-to-date details on UMMA exhibitions and programs, visit umma.umich.edu or follow UMMA on Facebook or Twitter!
through december 9, 2012
Jesper Just: This Nameless Spectacle through december 30, 2012
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES september 22–january 13, 2013
Benjamin West: General Wolfe and the Art of Empire september 22–january 13, 2013
Discovering Eighteenth-Century British America: The William L. Clements Library Collection through february 3, 2013
African Art and the Shape of Time