spring/summer 2012 university of michigan museum of art
from the director
umma news
I READ WITH INTEREST THE NEWS EARLIER THIS YEAR THAT two major art museums in this country will be sharing curatorial expertise. This kind of scholarly cooperation and collaboration will only increase in the future and for good reason. We at UMMA have embarked on engaging several guest curators over the next several years to bring the most innovative, cutting-edge, and informed curatorial voices to the University of Michigan. You may have noticed the names of some of these scholars of contemporary art and culture already on our gallery walls and as authors of essays in our new series of gallery brochures titled UMMA Papers. Look for more as we seek to include a diverse range of curatorial voices throughout our galleries, from special exhibitions to new acquisitions and collections research.
contents UMMA NEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 EXHIBITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
UMMA PICASSO PAINTING LOANED TO MAJOR NEW YORK EXHIBITION
UMMA DIRECTOR JOSEPH ROSA APPOINTED PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE AT UM
In May and June, one of the jewels in UMMA’s collection, Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of Françoise, will be included in a seminal exhibition organized by New York’s Gagosian Gallery entitled Picasso: L’Époque Françoise. This ambitious show, organized by Picasso biographer John Richardson and the Gagosian, covers the years in the 1940s and 50s that the artist and Françoise Gilot—his partner at the time, the mother of two of his children, and an artist in her own right—lived in the south of France near Cannes. A substantive catalogue, with essays by Richardson and other scholars and published by Rizzoli, will accompany the show. Don’t miss it if you find yourself in New York!
Late last year UMMA Director Joseph Rosa received official word that the Regents of the University of Michigan appointed him as professor of architecture, with tenure, at the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Monica Ponce de Leon, Dean and Eliel Saarinen Collegiate Professor of Architecture and Urban and Regional Planning, stated in her notification letter that Rosa’s “work has encompassed not only buildings and scholarly publications, but also exhibits and publications intended for an urbane museum-going public. It takes a special skill to elucidate complex ideas in varied venues and to different audiences.”
Beginning this June the A. Alfred Taubman Gallery will vibrate with abstraction, thanks to two exciting exhibitions—Judith Turner: The Flatness of Ambiguity and Flip Your Field: Abstract Art from the Collection. While Turner’s lexicon of abstraction focuses on black and white architectural photography, the works on paper in the inaugural exhibition in UMMA’s new Flip Your Field series, guest curated by UM Dutch art historian Celeste Brusati, resonate with color and a variety of printmaking techniques.
IN FOCUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 PROGRAMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 UMMA HAPPENINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 SPOTLIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 UMMA STORE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Cover: Judith Turner, Untitled, 1976, gelatin silver print, Peter Eisenman, House VI (Frank Residence), Cornwall, Connecticut, Courtesy of the artist
UMMA’s 2012 season is supported by the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Also on view this season are two exhibitions brought to life by Associate Curator of Asian Art Natsu Oyobe: Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, a video artist collaborative out of Seoul, South Korea; and the second installment of our two-part showcase of recent acquisitions, this one presenting Asian, European, and American additions to the collections in a wide array of media. And be sure to visit the latest work in our New Media Gallery—video art pioneer Peter Campus’s Kiva.
Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Françoise, 1949, oil on canvas, UMMA, Gift of The Carey Walker Foundation, 1994/1.68
Warmest regards,
If you haven’t visited UMMA’s YouTube channel recently, check out the latest videos by UM Screen Arts and Culture student Jonathan Biskner. In the fall 2011 term, Biskner created The Student for UMMA’s DialogTable, a video inspired by the work The Student (L’Étudiante), a 1950 canvas by artist Gerome Kamrowski in UMMA’s collection, as part of his class “Introduction to Film, Video and Television Production” taught by Terri Sarris. Knowing talent when we see it, UMMA hired Biskner for the winter term to work with us to document the myriad Fluxus exhibition events. Filming seven performances, two class working sessions, three faculty interviews, Diag Day, and a Student Late Night event, Biskner amassed the footage to capture the broad range of activities we launched to engage the campus with this historic exhibition, just named “Best Show in a University Gallery” for 2011 by the US Art Critics Association (AICA-USA). Visit youtube.com/ummamuseum to see the results!
RAY SILVERMAN RECEIVES MUSEUMS AWARD
Finally, please turn to the story later in this issue outlining many of the wonderful initiatives made possible by UMMA’s $650,000 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant. The impact of this major grant—which represents an incredible opportunity to increase our engagement with faculty, students, and other units on campus and to transform the traditional notion, purpose, and function of a university art museum—is already being felt across UMMA. Happy spring!
FLUXUS ON YOUTUBE
UM Museum Studies Program Director, and former interim director of UMMA, Ray Silverman was recently honored with a Quest for Excellence award by the Michigan Museums Association. The Quest for Excellence awards recognize outstanding contributions to the museum community. Silverman received the Peninsulas Prize, which honors long and distinguished service by an individual to a single institution, and the President’s Award, annually awarded to an individual who has made an exemplary contribution to the Michigan museum community. Since 2002, Silverman has led the distinguished UM Museum Studies Program, which has served as a model for interdisciplinary study and museum studies curricula development across North America. At UM, Silverman is also Professor of History of Art and Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies. Prior to joining UM, Silverman was the founding director of the Museum Studies Program at Michigan State University.
Joseph Rosa Director 2
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a. alfred taubman gallery i | june 9–september 2, 2012
ABSTRACT ART FROM THE COLLECTION When UMMA Director Joe Rosa brought up the idea of organizing an exhibition of material completely removed from her field of expertise as part of the Museum’s new Flip Your Field series
horizons because of their importance in northern European perspective theory and practice, especially in pictures that have many focal points, eccentric vanishing points, and variable horizon
supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Celeste Brusati jumped at the chance. As UM Professor of History of Art, Women’s Studies, and Art and Design, whose scholarly interests center around seventeenth-century Dutch art and culture, she is well versed in multiple methodological and conceptual approaches to works of art. And according to Professor Brusati, though seemingly a world apart, in many ways twentiethcentury abstract prints and Dutch realist imagery share more than meets the eye.
levels, from bird’s eye to worm’s eye views. I suddenly realized that there were a number of twentieth-century abstract artists who were making the horizon a subject, and that set me on my way.”
“I believe all figuration involves abstraction; one has to abstract in order to make a very precise, naturalist, realist image, we just don’t recognize it as such,” said Professor Brusati. “Certain Dutch artists central to my research, notably Johannes Vermeer and Pieter Saenredam, are abstract in many ways. Rather than treating them as modernists before the fact, I try to understand the abstract dimensions of their art in relation to artistic concerns of their own time.” After perusing a few thousand prints in the UMMA collections, Professor Brusati found a number of things that piqued her interest and that also dovetailed with issues that informed her work. Instead of considering artists as an organizing principle, she decided to focus on visual impact and correlating themes like perspective and medium. “I have been thinking about horizons a lot, and what caught my eye right away were those prints with very tightly designed, very rectilinear, carefully framed compositions,” said Professor Brusati. “When we look at any array of lines and colors on a surface, we tend to look for orienting vectors, like horizons. I was particularly attuned to 4
László Moholy-Nagy, Abstract Composition (Abstrakte Komposition), circa 1925, watercolor, India ink, and collage on off-white paper, UMMA, Museum purchase, 1953/2.9
Professor Brusati was also struck by the range of techniques reflected in the works she was drawn to and thought that visitors would appreciate learning firsthand about this dynamic experimental moment of the mid-twentieth century. Some artists were exploring techniques of lithography and color woodblock printing, for instance, which led to exciting collaborations and exchanges among American, European, and Japanese printmakers. “Once I reviewed the tentative exhibition checklist and began looking into the artists themselves, I realized in just how many ways their biographies were connected. Starting from visual prompts without particular historical questions in mind turned out to be an enormously stimulating approach to this material, something I cannot do in quite the same way when working in my own area of specialization. It made me think I should work that way more often. Who knows what I might learn in the process?” Among the artists included in the exhibition are Lee Bontecou, Helen Frankenthaler, Stanley Hayter, Wassily Kandinsky, Saitô Kiyoshi, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, Robert Motherwell, Joan Miró, Howardena Pindell, Anne Ryan, and Takahara Takeshi. This exhibition is made possible in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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a. alfred taubman gallery i | june 9–september 2, 2012
JUDITH TURNER
THE FLATNESS OF AMBIGUITY The following is an excerpt from the introductory essay by UMMA Director Joseph Rosa to the new book Judith Turner: Seeing Ambiguity, Photographs of Architecture [Edition Axel Menges, 2012]. UMMA’s affiliated exhibition encompasses approximately forty works that span the artist’s three-decade career and will include Turner’s architectural photography of buildings by some of the major architects of our time, including Alvar Aalto, Shigeru Ban, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Louis Kahn, Fumihiko Maki, and Renzo Piano.
Judith Turner is a noted American photographer whose subject matter is mostly architecture. Her signature style consists of highly abstract black-and-white compositions that play with the ambiguity of light, shadow, and tonality to heighten the aesthetic character of her subject matter and reveal visual relationships not readily apparent. Tonality is a very important aspect of her illuminating compositions. An example of this can be seen in the way she employs the sky— above or beyond an actual building—as a monochromatic surface that then becomes part of an overall composition, a planar component brought into the frame of the photograph. This sensibility is furthered by a strong sense of light and shadow that allows elements of a building to be seen as abstract surfaces heightening its architectural essence without having the entire structure completely illustrated. Hence, this methodology is the foundation for all Turner’s work—which now spans over three decades—and is essential to understanding her own ideology, which explores the ambiguity of flatness within these well-composed photographs. Since the mid-1970s Turner’s photography of avant-garde architecture has always operated outside the realm of commercial architectural photography and is visually more aligned with fine art photography. Turner’s training as a graphic designer and not a photographer allowed her to visually understand an architect’s intention and to reveal it in compositions that she constructs and edits through the viewfinder of her camera. Her photography can be seen as a metalanguage of architectural intention and as an artistic expression that is inseparable from the representation of this built work. Turner’s aesthetic development also explains the ambiguity in the depth of her photographic work, which relates more to the flatness of an abstract two-dimensional construction than it does to the reality of a building’s physical presence. One of her first architectural subjects was Peter Eisenman’s House VI, photographed in 1976. It was through Eisenman that Turner was introduced to the world of architecture and started photographing some of its most significant buildings. Yet it was her first book, Judith Turner Photographs Five Architects—published in 1980—that Judith Turner, Untitled, 1989, gelatin silver print, Fumihiko Maki, Tepia Science Pavilion, Tokyo, Japan, Courtesy of the artist
truly solidified her reputation as the photographer of this emerging, avant-garde voice of architecture. Turner’s volume came out eight years after the seminal publication of Five Architects: Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier, which contained critical essays and drawings along with an assortment of photographs by numerous individuals that left the visual record of these architects’ built work the book’s weakest aspect.1 In sharp contrast, Turner’s timeless black-and-white photography—and a selection of some color images—connoted the formalist qualities of these architects, furthered their aesthetic ideology, and defined each architect’s personal idiom. 1
This volume was published in New York in 1972 by Wittenborn in response to a 1969 meeting by the Conference of Architects for the Study of the Environment (CASE) at the Museum of Modern Art. This exhibition is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost.
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YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES irving stenn, jr, family project gallery august 11–november 18, 2012
A Seoul-based artist collaborative that presents itself as a corporation, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries (YHCHI) is known for innovative videos that exist at the nexus of visual art and digital literature. Since its foundation in 1998, YHCHI has created more than sixty works in English, Korean, and many other languages. These are exhibited on their website (http:// www.yhchang.com), which averages over 43,000 visitors a day. Unlike what is frequently encountered in the fields of video and new media art, which use technologies such as live streaming images and spatialization of the image in immersive physical environments, YHCHI’s work is emphatically low-tech and non-interactive. Their videos are mostly black-and-white and are comprised of rapidly flashing, capitalized text in a generic Monaco font accompanied by jazz music and, more recently, percussion and string arrangements created by the artists themselves. The pace of the flickering words, sentences, and symbols is incredibly fast—often they move so quickly that it is impossible to finish reading or fully digest them. A viewer cannot pause, slow down, rewind or forward a video: the only option is to exit by clicking the “back” button. Like pioneering video artists in the 1970s, YHCHI’s work is both socially and culturally critical. Though a number of discursive 8
modes are used—monologue, dialogue, personal letters, speeches, prose, novels, poems, journalism, and chatroom posts and responses—the result is usually a narrative with a linear chronological progression that remains coherent despite gaps. Their subjects range from international politics to petty crimes, from urban isolation and poverty to consumer culture. And they cleverly exploit genres of popular culture, such as Hitchcock-like suspense, melodramatic love story, confessions of a housewife, apocalyptic science fiction, and nasty personal attacks inside online chatrooms. YHCHI’s work often confronts the viewer with stark contrasts— the grand and the mundane, official history and private story, violence and tranquility, sacred and profane, and international and local—at high velocity and with a brilliant sense of humor and irony reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp, whom they consider an important influence. Their sensitivity to contradictions was likely fostered by their experience as artists living and working in Seoul, which presents a surreal coexistence of extremes: high-rise buildings and low shacks, expensive restaurants and cheap street food stands, contemporary art galleries exhibiting works by internationally acclaimed artists and dingy shops selling tourist souvenirs. Despite the prosperity resulting from umma.umich.edu
Opposite: YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, from TEASER, 2010, original text and music soundtrack, HD QuickTime movie, 1 min 41 sec, flexible dimensions Above: YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, NEGRITUDE AND SOLITUDE/NEGRITUDE E SOLIDÃO, 2011, installation view, Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil, original text and music soundtrack, HD Quicktime movie, 6 min 23 sec, flexible dimensions Right: YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, from THE ART OF SLEEP, 2006, Tate, London, original text and music soundtrack, HD Quicktime movie, 18 min 45 sec, flexible dimensions
the incredible speed of South Korea’s industrialization and urbanization in the past thirty years, the shadow of its elusive northern neighbor, whose border is a mere thirty miles from Seoul, is felt keenly: the city’s major streets are wide enough to accommodate great numbers of cars, taxis, and buses, in case tanks and weapons should be suddenly mobilized. As people all over the world are threatened by job loss, the housing crisis, terrorist attacks, disquieting international politics, and financial upheavals, the sense of the precariousness of the good life that exists in Seoul is becoming more and spring/summer 2012
more familiar. Using Seoul as the point of reference, YHCHI reminds us of the inescapable interconnectedness of the world community, offering an international perspective grounded in the local that speaks to us with a universal urgency. Natsu Oyobe Associate Curator of Asian Art This exhibition is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, the Nam Center for Korean Studies, and the Dr. Robert and Janet Miller Fund.
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in focus
new media gallery | may 5–august 12, 2012
NEW ACQUISITION: JORDAN EAGLES
Peter Campus is a pioneer of video art who experimented with the medium in the 1970s alongside other notable artists Bill Viola, Bruce Nauman, and Joan Jonas. These innovators advanced the formal and conceptual potential of these new imagemaking technologies in art frameworks. Video represented a new frontier, one that allowed artists to channel and expand upon common artistic concerns of the era at the intersection of minimalism, performance, interdisciplinary exploration, and conceptual art. Campus pursued many directions, and fully exploited the medium’s nascent potential— he employed special effects like chromakey (making a composite of video streams) to surrealistically layer images within footage, and experimented through presentation rather than production by creating large-scale projections and a series of little-seen installation works that employed live video feeds, of which Kiva (1971) is one. Campus experimented with closed circuit cameras not with an interest in surveillance and control, but rather because they were the ideal tools for producing situations of interactive engagement between viewer and image. These cameras transmitted live, direct images instead of recording to film or tape, and as such Campus valorized them for producing “pure video.” Kiva and the other live feed works of the same period are deceptively simple installations, employing cameras in this most basic mode of raw transmission to shoot black-and-white footage displayed on simple monitors. But in each work he engages the viewer and the space by using cameras and angles to create a simultaneous multiplicity of images, or by the simple addition of mirrors to generate multiple views within the view of a single camera, creating his own forms of interactive art. Kiva comprises a monitor with a closed circuit camera mounted on top; the lens is pointed directly at the viewer of the monitor, 10
but the camera’s view is restricted and manipulated by the placement of suspended mirrors. The camera shoots through a hole in one mirror to the surface of the other, both constantly shifting in relation to each other as they turn like a mobile. The mirrors fragment and multiply the image, allowing the camera to take in aspects of the room, the viewer, and the eye of the camera itself. Campus has said, “recordings weren’t so interesting, but doing something in front of the camera was,” and Kiva puts the viewer in this position of agency. Originally a student of experimental psychology, Campus was particularly interested in idea of the self, and in how his work could generate a psychologically resonant state. With Kiva, the viewer is put in the rare position of seeing their image in real time outside of themselves, as if they are simultaneously an observer and an actor. The title refers to a kind of ceremonial room, used by Native Americans of the Southwest for ritual and spiritual ceremonies, imbuing the act of self-recognition and distortion with a spiritual patina, one that suggests a relationship between psychological and sacred states. The implied cognitive and emotional shifts produced by such an uncanny experience of inhabiting this dual position have been central to Campus’s work throughout his career, but perhaps never more succinctly, elegantly, and directly than in the experience of Kiva. Elizabeth Thomas Guest Curator UMMA wishes to thank Brad and Kammi Reiss for their generous loan of Peter Campus’s Kiva for this installation. The exhibition is supported by the UMMA Director’s Discretionary Fund.
Peter Campus, Kiva, 1971, video installation, edition 2/3, photo courtesy of Cristin Tierney Gallery umma.umich.edu
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ew York-based multimedia artist Jordan Eagles has been painting with animal blood for fifteen years, refining a process to transform what is essentially biological waste into an extraordinary expressive tool. “Sometimes I think of myself as an alchemist,” the artist says, as he describes his ambition to bring a once-living substance back to life, and to develop a body of work that explores essential questions about life and death. Eagles’s fascination with these questions began as a New York University student in the late 1990s. In his early art experiments he tried—and failed—to capture the aesthetic of blood using various red paints as facsimiles. His frustration led to a simple revelation: paint with blood itself. He first purchased blood from a meat market in New York’s Chinatown, and learned the hard way that decaying blood is as unpleasant as it is visually intriguing. Today he buys fresh blood from local slaughterhouses and freezes it in batches. Blood leftover from a day’s work is deposited in open-air trays, where it is allowed to dry slowly into bricks of odorless powder. The spring/summer 2012
powder can be mixed with fresh blood or crumbled by hand onto the composition. In TSBC3, cow’s blood is blended with UV resin and applied in successive layers to a Plexiglas frame. Layers of a blood and copper powder mixture are also brushed or dripped onto the surface. The fourth crucial ingredient is light, which reveals the contrasting textures and colors of the materials. Eagles calls TSBC3 an “energy” piece. The radial forms mimic patterns in nature, evoking for the artist “the birth of a star, the head of a volcano, or the pupil of an eye” while remaining fundamentally abstract. Ruth Keffer Guest Curator UMMA is grateful to Lillian Montalto and Robert M. Bohlen for their generous gift of this important work of art. The impact of the Bohlens’ long association with the Museum has been felt in numerous ways, through their naming of the African Gallery and donations of many significant works of African and wood art—treasures enjoyed by Museum visitors each day.
Jordan Eagles, TSBC3, 2011, blood, copper, and UV resin on Plexiglas, UMMA, Gift of Lillian Montalto and Robert M. Bohlen, 2011/2.1 11
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programs
TALKING FLUXUS A CONVERSATION WITH BEN PATTERSON Ben Patterson inviting the audience to participate in his “Paper Piece” (1960) at the Fluxus String and Water Compendium performance on March 14.
his interview was conducted with Fluxus originator Ben Patterson on February 28, 2012. Mr. Patterson was in residence in Ann Arbor March 11–14 and was the featured artist in an evening of Fluxus performances with UM students and faculty on March 14. This performance was just one of many programs UMMA offered in conjunction with the exhibition Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life (on view until May 20). Still to come, a rare performance of George Brecht’s Motor Vehicle Sundown on May 20. Q: You completed your bachelor’s degree in music here at UM in 1956. You’ve said that your first Fluxus performance occurred in the fall of 1955. Can you tell me that story? A: My “first Fluxus performance” happened during my junior year, by which time I was leader of the tuba section of the marching band. The last game of the season was against Ohio State, in Columbus. The winner would go to the Rose Bowl so the stakes were high! Our half-time show went perfectly UNTIL the final formation when somehow the tuba section—which formed the “C” in the script “MICH”—ended up on the wrong side of the field (led by you-know-who). Thus, this trademark formation looked like this:
c mi h Well, after you have had 100,000 people in the stadium and another several million on national television laughing at you, you are ready for Fluxus or anything else! Q: What attracted you to Fluxus? A: I think it is important to understand that, in the beginning—the 1962 Wiesbaden Fluxus 12
Festival—there was not yet “Fluxus, the art movement.” The artists and works presented in these Wiesbaden concerts were seen as representatives of the “newest of new music,” soon to be published in a new magazine to be called Fluxus. I suppose if any one thing united us, it was probably the influence of the Dadaists—Marcel Duchamp and company. We had come together through a mutual admiration for each others’ work, but not consciously to establish a new genre. This mutual support was absolutely essential to dare to make and present experimental work at the outer edges. Q: What do you feel Fluxus has to offer people in 2012? A: Life is not static and the art that attempts to portray and/or guide it must also not be static if it is to be relevant. Thus “Fluxus,” as in the original Latin definition, attempts “to keep up with the flow.” Fluxus for me was about an exploratory spirit and an enthusiasm for risk taking. It’s important not to define Fluxus through historical references, but to keep the mind and eyes open for what is really new and experimental. Actually, our digital world is, or can be “current Fluxus”— after all, 1960s Fluxus was the first truly broadbased worldwide network of artists.
ARE YOU LOOKING FOR FUN AND ENRICHING FAMILY TIME ACTIVITIES? This summer UMMA will launch a new program designed for family fun through exploration and learning in the art galleries. Four different family kits, child-size backpacks containing a story, activity, and more, will be available for families. These kits will help parents talk about art with their children in a fun and engaging way. One kit will have a story about a little girl who wants to be a glassblower. Parents can take their children and this kit to the beautiful Tiffany peacock mosaic and read the story while looking at the fabulous glass birds. Following the story the children can make a small mosaic with the same shaped tesserae as in the Tiffany piece. Another kit will include a story about Detroit artist Tyree Guyton and an activity that allows children to decorate a house in the manner of Guyton. Parents may retrieve these kits, in exchange for a driver’s license, and return or exchange them for another. Parents must work with children. Kits are designed for four-to-seven year olds, and are available on weekends.
For the complete interview with Ben Patterson, including the story of when he first met John Cage, please visit the Fluxus exhibition page on our website, umma.umich.edu. And don’t miss our FluxVideos at youtube.com/ummamuseum. Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life was organized by the Hood Museum of Art and was generously supported by Constance and Walter Burke, Dartmouth College Class of 1944, the Marie-Louise and Samuel R. Rosenthal Fund, and the Ray Winfield Smith 1918 Fund. UMMA’s installation is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Health System, the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, Arts at Michigan, and the CEW Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund.
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This project is supported in part by an award from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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programs This year marks 150 years since Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii by Randolph Rogers was given to the University. The first significant original work of art to enter UMMA’s collections, Nydia from the beginning has attracted a wide variety of people into her orbit. Her arrival in Ann Arbor in 1862 was the result of funds raised by a group of university and community members who called themselves the Randolph Rogers Art Association—a precursor to the Ann Arbor Art Center. Rogers said of her “the subject is so beautiful, and the character of the blind flower girl so pure, that all who have a heart must feel interested in her.”1 Seen immediately upon entering the Museum’s historic wing, Nydia was written into being in Edward BulwerLytton’s novel The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), set at the dramatic moment in 79 ACE when Vesuvius erupted and buried the Roman city of Pompeii under nine feet of ash in eight hours. The story of Pompeii has sparked the imagination of western artists for nearly 300 years. Still today, children are intrigued by the story of Pompeii and the way sculptures are made and adults are drawn to the tragedy of her story as well as to her Victorian genesis.
PATHS TO RENEWAL: TEACHING, LEADING AND HEALING THROUGH THE ARTS This year the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center at the University of Michigan celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary. Director Holly Rider-Milkovich approached UMMA to collaborate in bringing to life the messages of teaching, leading, and healing at the core of SAPAC’s mission. The result will be a small online exhibition of works in UMMA’s collection— selected by UMMA’s student docents—that invites reflection on and conversation about these themes. “Art can be both inspirational and aspirational through providing positive role models or examples for communities to model, identifying and promoting positive values, and creating shared expectations of what we ask of each other and ourselves when it comes to relationships,” said Rider-Milkovich. “I wanted our anniversary to intentionally include opportunities for a different kind of learning that would, optimally, encourage students to reflect on their own histories, and the ideas of others, and bring those reflections to bear in thinking about art in new ways.”
Nydia’s historical, literary, and artistic pedigree make her a rich opportunity for teaching and a good case study for the uses to which we put UMMA collections. Nydia is featured in school and adult tours, UM class visits, and just last January, as part of a program organized by UM’s Context for Classics program. In that program, entitled “Objects as Texts,” Context for Classics invited five scholars and artists from different disciplines—English, Art and Design, Classical Studies, Creative Writing, and Comparative Literature—to explore questions raised today by the figure of Nydia. Scholars have also referenced Nydia to explore issues of artistic patronage and consumption by women in the nineteenth century.2
Recognizing that visual art (especially non-representational art) can be intimidating and museums can also be places that are not comfortable for some students, one of the significant benefits of diversifying the ways in which we use the collections in a university setting is that we increase the possible avenues for student engagement with art. The collaboration with SAPAC is one of the many ways UMMA strives to bring art to diverse audiences and invite conversations around particular works of art.
1 Hiram W. Woodward, Jr, Eighty Works in the Collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (Ann Arbor, MI: UMMA, 1979), 13. 2 Lauren Keach Lessing, “’So Blessed Now that Accustomed Darkness’: Randolph Rogers’s Nydia the Blind Girl of Pompeii and the Female Gaze,” The University of Michigan Museums of Art and Archaeology Bulletin XIII (2000–01): 53–73.
Perhaps the most exciting part of this project is the contribution of UMMA’s student docents. Students selected works in the collection and wrote short reflections providing some helpful background information and their own thoughts about the piece’s significance to teaching, leading, or healing—thus modeling the kind of learning Rider-Milkovich is most interested in encouraging. Pamela Reister, UMMA Curator of Museum Teaching and Learning who leads the docent program, commented, “The SAPAC project allowed students to act as curators in a real-world application. We are thrilled with the creative and personal insights the students produced. The group product is so much richer than a single interpretation.” Crista McClain, an undergraduate student pursuing a BA in History with a minor in Museum Studies, selected Roni Horn’s Key and Cue no. 1182 (Remembrance has a rear and a front) from UMMA’s modern and contemporary collection. She writes, “Just as the work can be approached from different angles, there is no singular path to emotional recovery—healing is a process that happens differently for different people. The idea of remembrance having “a rear and a front” is also meaningful. Memories change with the passage of time and can slowly become less painful.” To see the online exhibition, please visit sapacexhibit.org. Roni Horn, Key and Cue no. 1182 (Remembrance has a rear and a front), 1984, cast plastic and aluminum, UMMA, Gift of an anonymous donor, 2009/1.470 14
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umma happenings
Above and left: More than 900 people enjoyed the Museum’s first UMMA After Hours community open house, which featured four new exhibitions, live music, and curator chats. Right: UMMA Director Joseph Rosa interviewed Face of Our Time curator Sandra Phillips as part of the UMMA Dialogues series.
Artist Mark di Suvero visited the Museum during the run of UMMA’s exclusive exhibition Mark di Suvero: Tabletops.
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The annual Student Late Night had a distinctly Fluxus flavor with students performing a new work inspired by a classic LaMonte Young piece whose score reads “Draw a straight line and follow it,” 17 artmaking, music, taking silly photographs, and of course browsing the galleries from 10 pm to midnight!
spotlight
umma store
MAJOR MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT ALREADY MAKING AN IMPACT With the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, UMMA’s collections-based teaching and learning initiatives will be enhanced by the addition of two new exhibition series. This spring, the A. Alfred Taubman Gallery I will feature the first installation of UMMA’s Flip Your Field series, which invites scholars to serve as guest curators for projects drawn from the Museum’s collections, applying their experience while thinking outside of their specialty areas. It will be followed by the launch of the UM Collections Collaborations series, which showcases the University’s varied and stellar collections. The premiere Flip Your Field project, detailed on page 4, was curated by Professor Celeste Brusati, an expert in the visual art and culture of the Netherlands from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Her exhibition features twentieth-century color abstract art that complements and contrasts an exclusive UMMA exhibition of Judith Turner’s architectural photographs, installed in the same gallery. The UM Collections Collaborations series begins this fall with two exhibitions organized in partnership with the University’s William L. Clements Library, world-renowned for its early American history and culture resources. For Benjamin West: General Wolfe and the Art of Empire, UMMA Senior Curator of Western Art Carole McNamara will investigate the lasting impact of a work of art in the Clements collection, pairing it with works borrowed from collections around the globe. The exhibition will be complemented by an installation of other noted works from the Clements collections. Fall will also bring the first UMMA-History of Art Mellon Curatorial Fellow. This new fellowship, available to one PhD student annually, offers the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with art objects; to develop an understanding of issues related to their preservation, display, and interpretation; and to be introduced to museum culture through exposure to both the creative and business aspects of museum practice. Future magazine issues will share news of more projects stemming from these new Mellon-funded initiatives. 18
JOHE ENDOWMENT BEQUEST TO PROPEL UMMA INITIATIVES During their lifetimes, Herbert and Susan Johe were tireless advocates of their passions. Herb, Professor Emeritus of UM’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and Sue, enthusiastic volunteer, cared deeply about art, architecture, and education in their community. In addition to his notable career in architecture, Herb was also an accomplished painter whose primary inspirations were the melding of art with math (Fibonacci Series) and architecture. His watercolor series on the five orders of architecture are part of UMMA’s permanent collection. Longtime Ann Arbor residents, the couple’s involvement at UMMA spanned several decades; their financial support gave life to exhibitions, educational programs, acquisitions, and other initiatives. After Herb’s death in 2005, Sue continued her support of and involvement at UMMA. Sadly, Sue passed away in 2011; the Museum and the entire community miss her warm, bright spirit. Herb and Sue’s foresight of generosity cemented that their passions would continue to receive financial support after their deaths. Through a generous seven-figure estate gift from this remarkable couple, UMMA has established the Herbert W. and Susan L. Johe Endowment to fuel such projects as exhibitions, educational programs, outreach efforts, and acquisitions. The Johes also designated a portion of their estate to benefit Taubman College. “What an honor it will be to celebrate Sue and Herb at UMMA in perpetuity,” said Joseph Rosa, UMMA Director. “Even in the short time Sue and I knew each other, I quickly took to her energetic spirit and optimism. Conversations with her were a window into Michigan’s legacy in architecture and art, her two passions. Sue was such a special person: she lived in the present, she spoke fondly of the past, and she embraced the future. It was a privilege to know her, and I’m thrilled that Sue and Herb’s names will be associated with UMMA long into the future.”
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arm weather has arrived and there is no better time to stop by the UMMA Store and discover our ever-changing selection of beautiful and unique merchandise. Handcrafted jewelry, woven baskets, art notecards, and the brass Jali animals featured above are just a few of the items you will find. Handmade in Orissa, India, these delightful figurines were often used as toys or left at temples as a donation; no two are exactly alike!
Considering an estate gift to UMMA? Please contact Carrie Throm, Deputy Director for Development and External Relations, at 734.763.6467 or cthrom@umich.edu. umma.umich.edu
spring/summer 2012
Also available this spring: Judith Turner: Seeing Ambiguity, Photographs of Architecture (Edition Axel Menges, 2012) a new book by noted architectural photographer Judith Turner, with an introductory essay by UMMA Director Joseph Rosa. Accompanying UMMA’s exhibition of Judith Turner’s work on view June 9 through September 2, 2012, the publication includes images of buildings by well-known architects taken over the course of Turner’s career. As always, all proceeds from the UMMA Store benefit the Museum. Please visit soon and support the University of Michigan Museum of Art!
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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 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.
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: Charlotte Boulay, Lisa Borgsdorf, Courtney Lacy, Stephanie Rieke Miller, Pam Reister, Ruth Slavin, Peter Smith, Leisa Thompson, Carrie Throm, and Jann Wesolek 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 may 20, 2012
Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life through july 22, 2012
Haroon Mirza through august 5, 2012
Recent Acquisitions: Curator’s Choice, Part II may 5–august 12, 2012
Peter Campus: Kiva june 9–september 2, 2012
Judith Turner: The Flatness of Ambiguity june 9–september 2, 2012
Flip Your Field: Abstract Art from the Collection august 11–november 18, 2012
Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries