UMMA Magazine | Winter 2012 by UMMA MusTech

winter 2012 university of michigan museum of art

from the director

umma news THE NEW YEAR PRESENTS MULTIPLE NEW OPPORTUNITIES to engage with and enjoy UMMA’s incredible range of special exhibitions and outstanding collections. If there’s a single word that describes our offerings in 2012, it is diverse. Our continuing and upcoming exhibitions highlight UMMA’s holdings in exciting new ways and bring important global contemporary visual art to Ann Arbor. Two new exhibitions energize this winter season. Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life showcases the 1960s Fluxus art movement, which challenged the notion of high art by creating unassuming, often humorous objects and performances. A work by Haroon Mirza will investigate our relationship to sound by revealing how digital sounds are produced, and in the process creating sculpture from objects used to make sounds, and from other scavenged materials. And opening January 7, Robert Wilson’s Video 50 will take up residence in the New Media Gallery. Guest curator Ruth Keffer describes this theatrical video as “full of startling wit and poetry.” Wilson will visit campus January 20–22 for a related UMS performance of his renowned opera Einstein on the Beach, created with minimalist composer Philip Glass.

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Our current major photography exhibition, Face of Our Time: Jacob Aue Sobol, Jim Goldberg, Zanele Muholi, Daniel Schwartz, Richard Misrach, continues through February 5. If you haven’t had a chance to see it yet, I hope you will. Capturing images of the modern world—from hardships of life in the Arctic to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina—the documentary-style work by these five photographers provokes questions and elicits responses from viewers. The exhibition also inspired the Museum’s Student Programming and Advisory Council to hold a student photography contest, described opposite.

EXHIBITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 FEATURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 IN FOCUS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 PROGRAMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 SPOTLIGHT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 MEMBERSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 MUSEUM STORE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Cover: Flux Year Box 2, 1966, five-compartment wooden box containing work by various artists, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, George Maciunas Memorial Collection, Purchased through the William S. Rubin Fund, GM.987.44.2

Finally, please don’t miss Recent Acquisitions: Curator’s Choice, Part I. The newest additions to our collection, most of which are generous gifts from Museum friends, have their own place in the spotlight in this exhibition, which includes images by artists as wide ranging as Annie Leibovitz, Edward Steichen, and Rembrandt van Rijn. In March the second part of this exhibition opens, with a focus on works from our heralded Asian collections, including prints by twentieth-century artist Saitô Kiyoshi. As we busy ourselves with this exciting slate of winter exhibitions, we’ll also continue to host arts-related events such as our monthly jazz series and hands-on art workshops. We welcomed the community to explore our fall exhibitions in November at our inaugural UMMA After Hours event, which featured talks with curators, music, and light refreshments. Join us again on April 12, 2012 for the next UMMA After Hours event as we open our doors for this artful and social evening. Wishing you a very happy, creative, and bountiful new year. Warmest regards,

Joseph Rosa Director

umma.umich.edu

Incoming students enter the Maxine and Stuart Frankel and the Frankel Family Wing for Artscapade.

ARTSCAPADE 2011 Every September UMMA and Arts at Michigan celebrate Welcome Week by introducing incoming students to the wide array of possibilities for arts participation on campus at an evening of art-making, live music, dance, poetry, games, and prizes at the Museum. In addition to the engaging activities offered annually at Artscapade, this year’s event featured an interactive performance with the UM Gamelan Ensemble as well as a student film festival presenting film and video shorts created by students. This wonderful and fun event, made possible by Whole Foods Market and the University of Michigan Credit Union, welcomed 4,500 students to the Museum as they began their university careers.

NEW STUDENT BLOG LAUNCHED WITH EXHIBITION PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST In the fall UMMA’s Student Programming and Advisory Council (SPAC), along with our Education department, launched a new student blog, The Annex, as another gateway for students to enter the world of art available to them at UMMA. The blog was first introduced as the platform for a student photography competition that UMMA hosted in conjunction with the Face of Our Time exhibition. Of the many entries received, the SPAC selected twenty finalists who are included in a digital slideshow that is on display in the Face of Our Time gallery at the Museum. Among those finalists, three winners were selected, and the winner received a $200 cash prize. In addition to special projects like the photography competition, The Annex provides

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a spirited and dynamic platform for UM students to engage publicly with the Museum and with their peers, and serves both to educate and to invite thoughtful and creative responses. SPAC members develop and contribute creative content regarding Museum exhibitions and programs, revealing new perspectives and beginning thoughtful public conversations.

UMMA RECEIVES MAJOR MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT We are very pleased to announce that the Museum has received a 40-month grant of $650,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support and expand a comprehensive program of collections-based teaching and learning at the Museum. The grant will support the inauguration of a series of exhibitions that will encourage faculty to take a fresh look at the UMMA collections, including those outside their primary field of specialization, in order to challenge their own thinking as well as that of UMMA’s audiences. In addition, UMMA will deepen and expand partnerships with other museums and libraries on campus, including the William L. Clements Library, the Museum of Anthropology, the Bentley Historical Library, and the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. The Mellon grant will also offer training and support for future scholars in various stages of their careers through internships, a collections assistant position, and the establishment of an UMMA-History of Art Mellon Curatorial Fellowship. Look for more information to come as these exciting Mellon programs unfold.

exhibitions

february 25–may 20, 2012 | a. alfred taubman gallery i

FLUXUS

AND THE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS OF LIFE One recent letter from my mother counsels me that “Life is like an onion, son: you peel it off layer by layer, and sometimes you weep” . . . Considering my life a failure, she often ends her letters with the painful rhetorical question: “What did Dad and I do wrong?” —Emmett Williams in Daniel Spoerri’s An Anecdoted Topography of Chance1 An exhibition designed to provide new ways to experience the radical and influential cultural development that was Fluxus, Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life shifts attention away from attempts to define and toward the asking of questions. Its most fundamental question—“what’s Fluxus good for?”—has important implications for how art is made and life is lived. Fluxus resists characterization as an art movement, collective, or group and defies traditional geographical, chronological, and medium-based approaches. Often called an “anti-art” movement, Fluxus was more subversive than even this characterization suggests. From its origins in the United States and Europe in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Fluxus was more of an “anartmovement,” along the lines of Marcel Duchamp’s “anartist”: “I’m against the word ‘anti,’” Duchamp said, “because it’s very like ‘atheist’ as compared to ‘believe.’ An atheist is just as . . . religious . . . as the believer is, and an ‘anti-artist’ is just as much of an artist as the other artist. ‘Anartist’ would be much better . . . meaning, ‘no artist at all.’ That would be my conception.”2 The notion of Fluxus as an anartmovement corresponds with founding Fluxus artist George Maciunas’s philosophical/ political position that the end of art, in the sense of its goal, is the end of art, in the sense of its absorption into the practice of being alive. His statement that “Fluxus objectives are social (not aesthetic)”3 indicates his intention to circumvent both aesthetics and the commercial art world, and to empower people to engage with essential issues via the Fluxus approach to life as connection and flow. Fluxus introduced two new things into the world of art: event scores and art-as-games-in-a-box, many of which were gathered into “Fluxkits” along with other ephemera. The idea was to sell these kits at low prices—not through galleries but by mail and through artist-run stores. The events were even more accessible. Sometimes consisting of just one word—such as George Brecht’s “Exit”—Fluxus events could be performed by anyone, 4

anyplace. Brecht wrote that his event scores were meant to “prepare one for an event to happen in one’s own now.”4 “Fluxus,” Maciunas wrote, “is definitely against art-object as non-functional commodity . . . It could temporarily have the pedagogical function of teaching people the needlessness of art including the eventual needlessness of itself.”5 His point is clear: art, to cite the title of pragmatist philosopher John Dewey’s well-known book, is experience. The pedagogical function of Fluxus artworks is to help us practice life; what we “learn” from Fluxus is how to be ourselves. To Emmett Williams’s mother’s question, “What did Dad and I do wrong?” George Maciunas might have answered, “It doesn’t matter; there’s nothing wrong.” From a Fluxus perspective, no life is a failure and no answer, much less any question, is wrong. Jacquelynn Baas Exhibition curator, emeritus director of the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and chief curator as well as founding director of the Hood Museum of Art from 1982 until 1989 This exhibition 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 and the University of Michigan Office of the Provost.

Excerpted with permission from the Hood Quarterly, issue 31, pp. 4–5. Notes 1. Daniel Spoerri, An Anecdoted Topography of Chance (Re-Anecdoted Version), with the help of Robert Filliou and translated and further anecdoted by Emmett Williams (New York: Something Else Press, 1966), 11–12.

George Brecht, Exit, 1961, realized as sign about 1962–63, metal sign mounted on painted wood with metal screws, The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA, © 2011 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY

2. From “Marcel Duchamp Speaks,” an interview on 19 January 1959 by George Heard Hamilton in New York and Richard Hamilton in London, broadcast over the BBC Third Program, in the series “Art, Anti-Art,” 13 November 1959: http://www.ubu.com/sound/duchamp.html 3. From a 1963 letter to Tomas Schmit quoted in Clive Phillpot and Jon Hendricks, Fluxus: Selections from the Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1988), 24.

George Maciunas, Burglary Fluxkit, 1971, seven-compartment clear plastic box with white paper label containing seven keys, including a roller-skate key, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, George Maciunas Memorial Collection, Gift of the Friedman Family, GM.986.80.164. © Courtesy of Billie Maciunas

4. From the unpublished manuscript George Brecht Notebook VII, March–June 1961, The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York; quoted in Julia Robinson, “In the Event of George Brecht,” in George Brecht Events: A Heterospective, ed. Alfred M. Fischer (Köln: Museum Ludwig, 2005), 16.

Ben Vautier, God, 1961, glass bottle with pencil on label, The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA, © 2011 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris, Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY

5. January 1964 letter to Tomas Schmit, in What’s Fluxus? What’s Not! Why., ed. Jon Hendricks (Rio de Janeiro and Detroit: Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil and Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Foundation, 2002), 163.

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exhibitions irving stenn, jr, family project gallery march 17–july 22, 2012

aroon Mirza is a noted visual artist who wants us to listen, to train our ears on the incidental sounds that surround us, and to connect sound to the objects that create it. In his work Mirza explores and attempts to restore the relationships humans have with sound that occur through objects, actions, and forces, relationships largely screened behind the black boxes of electronic keyboards, digital music players, TV monitors, and the bits of information they play. He creates music by layering sounds in all-encompassing sensory environments, whimsically linking optical and auditory in a unique hybrid of sculpture and sound composition. In A Sleek Dry Yell (2008–11), a seamstress table opens to reveal hacked sonic guts, and a bucket of water ripples with sound waves. In Backfade_5 (2011) cause-and-effect registers as speakers are cut open, exposing the physicality of woofers pounding out sound, and pulsing lights generate sound through the electricity they consume, their pitch in sync with their brightness. Or in his most recent installation, I Saw Square Triangle Sine (2011), a stage setup holds only the instruments, which play themselves.

Haroon Mirza, Backfade_5 (Dancing Queen), 2011 mixed media, Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery Haroon Mirza, The national apavilion of then and now (detail), 2011 Anechoic chamber, LEDs, amp, speakers, electronic circuit, Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery

In a sense, Mirza has extended the logic of the composer Edgard Varese’s famous dictum that music is “organized sound” to say that sculpture is “organized form.” Mirza’s work reflects skillful compositional choices in which sound serves form and form serves sound in a closed feedback loop. His installations evoke the aesthetics of the scavenger and tinkerer, whether through the materials themselves or through their origin. In this scavenging, Mirza is aligned with traditions of assemblage in visual arts and of sampling in music, and sees the whole world as full of objects and compositions ripe for plucking, from thrift store furniture and disused electronics to other artists’ work, either excerpted or remade. In-betweenness is central to Mirza’s work, as it exists between many states—sculpture and installation, sound and noise, choreographed experience and live event, composition and chance, order and chaos, art and music. His installations—which could also be considered unique time-based concerts—have captured the attention of the public and critics alike; he was awarded the prestigious Northern Art Prize in 2010 (he lives in Sheffield, England as well as London), and his work for the 2011 Venice Biennale garnered the Silver Lion Award as the most promising young artist. In experiencing his work, we are placed in an in-between position, vacillating between isolating the part and apprehending the whole. The installation itself performs for us as an “unfolding composition in time,” and we the audience unfold too, through our acts of looking, listening, seeing, and hearing. This exhibition is Haroon Mirza’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Elizabeth Thomas Guest Curator

This exhibition is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost and the Susan and Richard Gutow Fund.

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exhibitions

ROBERT WILSON: VIDEO 50 new media gallery | january 7–april 29, 2012 Robert Wilson’s reputation as the creator and director of aggressively experimental theater was well established before his 1978 foray into video art. Works from the mid-1970s, such as The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973) and Einstein on the Beach (1976) were lavish, unusually long productions that broke and then redefined every convention of theater. The tiny dramas that comprise Video 50 are smaller-scale experiments, but they share with these larger spectacles the qualities that have come to typify Wilson’s aesthetic: surreal or dream-like imagery, the absence of a linear narrative, the conflation of seemingly unrelated characters and micro-stories, and a mesmerizingly slow pace. Video 50 consists of a randomly arranged set of 30-second “episodes”; counting occasional repeats and alternate versions, the 50 pieces of the title number nearly 100. Some of these episodes are static to the point of resembling still-lifes; others are self-contained vignettes that begin and end—or seem to end; any narrative resolution is teasingly withheld. With its use of early video techniques and the highly stylized, fashion-world look of its actors, Video 50 seems dated, but the way in which Wilson wields his domestic-gothic vocabulary is classic surrealism: everyday objects and settings made mysterious or comical or alien by their bizarre juxtaposition to one another, and by an equally nonsensical and cheerfully manipulative score of music and sound effects.

Created in a studio at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Video 50 was the product of an experimental television workshop in Germany, Das kleine Fernsehspiel, a program of the state-sponsored ZDF channel that continues today to promote emerging film and video artists. Wilson intended the episodes, broadcast in any quantity and in any order, to serve as late-night or between-program filler, and they functioned that way in Germany and France. In the US the work, packaged as it is here as a near-hour-long sequence, became a fixture of video art and alternative art venues. But the artist never fulfilled his more eccentric ambition to configure the episodes as a form of surrealist Muzak, or visual white noise, “on the back of airplane seats…on wristwatches…on clocks in the street.”

Jean Dubuffet, Ecrits et Lithographies, 1968, lithograph on paper, Gift of Dr. Seymour and Barbara K. Adelson, 2009/2.188 Berenice Abbott, Seventh Avenue Looking North, 1936, gelatin silver print, Gift of Ellen and William Kahn, 2008/2.272

Instead, Video 50 inspired Wilson in an alternative direction. A few of the episodes feature notable French personalities of the time—perfumier Hélène Rochas stares down a mugger, culture minister Michel Guy struggles to open a dresser drawer—and Wilson thought of these as miniature portraits or character studies. The action, rather than serving a coherent plot, reveals elements of personality or registers the viewers’ subjective impressions of a character. This is the radical conceit of Video 50: the still life is no longer still. As time-based portraits, exploring the intersection of narrative and still-life, they are immersive and experiential, and seductively dissolve the distance between viewer and subject.

RECENT ACQUISITIONS: CURATOR’S CHOICE a. alfred taubman gallery ii

PART I

november 12, 2011–march 18, 2012

PART II

march 31, 2012–august 5, 2012

Ruth Keffer Guest Curator This project is made possible in part by Prue and Ami Rosenthal.

Robert Wilson, Video 50, 1978, Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

In this two-part exhibition Senior Curator of Western Art Carole McNamara and Associate Curator of Asian Art Natsu Oyobe present notable works from the UMMA collections that have been acquired in recent years. Every year UMMA actively acquires works of art in various media, adding to the nearly 19,000 objects in the Museum’s renowned collections that span a rich spectrum of the world’s artistic heritages. Many of these new additions are gifts to the collections and come to UMMA through the generosity of donors. Some works fill gaps in the Museum’s existing collections, while others build on areas of strength, and still others initiate new directions. As McNamara explains, “There have been so many important gifts that have come to us in the last five years. They range from the rich holdings of Old Master prints from the Boldts to the marvelous drawings and watercolors by Klimt and Schiele from the Pulgram-McSparran Collection.” Looking historically at the development of UMMA’s collections, it is clear that in addition to the contributions of directors and curators over the decades, it is the passion, the “eye,” and the dedication of collectors who share their collections with UMMA that have had tremendous impact on the shape of the Museum’s holdings; it is fitting for a museum at the heart of a public university that the majority of the collection has been formed through gifts. Recent Acquisitons: Curator’s Choice, Part I presents a first look at mostly prints, drawings, and photographs by artists as diverse as Annie Leibovitz, Edward Steichen, and Rembrandt

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van Rijn. McNamara chose works that focus on some of the enduring and compelling themes that have occupied artists in Europe and America. One is the preoccupation with the human form as an expression of ideas, feelings, and sensations. This selection begins with the tradition of the academic nude study and progresses to embrace different genres, from both secular and religious contexts. Another selection—landscapes and cityscapes—allows viewers to explore how we experience landscape as well as how we construct our own urban environments. For Part II of Recent Acquisitons: Curator’s Choice, Oyobe selected works of Asian art, both historic and modern, such as pieces by leading Japanese ceramic artist Kôyama Kiyoko, as well as works by contemporary European and American artists, among them acclaimed Michigan artist Larry Cressman. The exhibition includes woodwork and basketry objects from Korea and China, contemporary wood sculpture and sculptural pottery, Hindu and Buddhist representations of religious icons, and a range of prints. The human form—whether a sacred icon or a highly personal portrait—is also on view in gifts from the visual cultures of Asia and America. While Buddhism and Hinduism produced intricate and fascinating visual representations of religious icons, these contrast with the simple forms of human beings in the work of modern Japanese printmaker Saitô Kiyoshi and contemporary American artist Michele Oka Doner. Though the new additions presented here have not yet had the benefit of research and study, we look forward to making them available as a resource for scholars and students, schoolchildren, and the general public and to presenting them in different exhibition contexts over time. The objects on view in these paired exhibitions represent just a small selection of the many fine works of art that have been donated to the Museum in recent years. However, they make clear that engaged and thoughtful donors remain a vital and continuing force in the formation of UMMA’s vibrant and celebrated collections. This exhibition series is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost.

feature

in focus

NEW

While Stuart works, he turns and rotates the work giving him time to rest, think, look, and enjoy.

ALBERS

JR: The breadth of your collection is one of its many strengths. How does di Suvero’s work fit in with your collecting practices, framework, and philosophy?

ACQUISITION

MF: Stuart and I believe, first and foremost, in responding to the work. We spend a great deal of time looking; looking through magazines, going to galleries, art museums and artists’ studios. Our goal has always been to educate our “eye.” We have not sought out artists, but have looked to “discover” and respond to their work. In building our collection the goal has been to collect across materials and to collect a broad range of an artist’s practice.

To open eyes: this was the stated goal of Josef Albers in his teaching and his art. His particular interest was opening our eyes to the interactions of color. In art he produced from the 1930s through the 1970s, Albers used specific constellations of forms—nested squares or, as here, an array of rectangles—executed in an infinite combination of colors to demonstrate how colors advance, recede, and bend when juxtaposed in different ways. He believed that “when you really understand that each color is changed by a changed environment, you eventually find that you have learned about life as well as about color.”

JR: di Suvero works in numerous scales and media. In your view, what kind of ideas can di Suvero work out through his smaller-scale work as opposed to his monumental pieces?

conversation between Maxine Frankel, philanthropist, collector, and UMMA lead benefactor and Joseph Rosa on the occasion of the Museum’s special exhibition Mark di Suvero: Tabletops, on view through February 26, 2012, which features works from the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art. Joseph Rosa: Why were you and your husband, Stuart, drawn to di Suvero’s work in the first place, and how has his work sustained your interest over time? Maxine Frankel: In 1995, we visited Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York, to see their jaw dropping, memorable di Suvero exhibition. Stuart couldn’t stop whistling and I had the chills for days. Within a very short time, we began collecting Mark’s work. The first piece, we acquired was Ganesha’s Word, a “mini” di Suvero, very playful, yet it speaks volumes about his practice. It sits on Stuart’s desk where it has been since the day it arrived.

MF: We don’t distinguish between Mark’s smaller works and his monumental sculptures. Each is part of his practice and the different scale allows him to accomplish different “things.” Regardless of scale, for us the work speaks for itself and allows the viewer to respond to this constantly moving, graceful, light and airy sculpture made from one of the heaviest materials known to man. As we look at much of his work it reminds us of calligraphy in motion and sometimes twisted rolls of fiber. Mark is influenced by music and as the works move you can almost hear the sounds. There is one work in the collection, I believe, that might be considered a study: Landscape is a sculpture that is made to look as if it spans a body of water; it is the only one that seems to be about working through an idea that could/should be realized at a monumental scale.

The particular arrangement of rectangles in the three prints on display is based on Albers’s observations of adobe houses in Mexico and the southwest. Albers and his wife Anni emigrated to the United States in 1933—both taught at the Bauhaus before emigrating—and soon after they visited Mexico. The color and culture they found there made such an impression that they visited frequently, often for months at a time, and both of them incorporated Mexican references into their subsequent work. Some of Albers’s early adobe paintings have subtitles such as Southern Climate or Luminous Day while others are called simply Adobe Variant.

JR: What do you hope visitors will take away from their experience of di Suvero’s small- and large-scale work at UMMA?

The donors of these prints, Dr. Seymour and Barbara Adelson, have been generous to UMMA over the last six years, gifting nineteenth- and twentieth-century prints and photographs from Europe, the US, and Japan. The nearly eighty exceptional works of art from these informed and enthusiastic collectors have markedly enriched the UMMA collection.

MF: Mark has said, “My sculpture has an element of motion or pivoting which invites the viewer to participate.” Stuart and I have definitely responded to that invitation and hope the viewers do as well. Josef Albers, I-S Va 2; I-S Va 4; I-S Va 5 from Six Variants Portfolio, 1969, screenprints on Arches paper, Gift of Dr. Seymor S. and Barbara K. Adelson, 2011/1.116–118

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Pam Reister Curator for Museum Teaching and Learning

programs

NAOMI SHIHAB NYE At the end of August people in this part of the world are wild for peaches. It’s easy to understand why: there is something transcendent about the flavor of a freshly picked peach. Little hoards of peaches perfume kitchens, and the race to eat them before they grow overripe begins. Recently, when I noticed that a red-bellied peach in my refrigerator had softened, and was beginning to rot, I was pricked by a vague discomfort about the way desire and access to overabundance intermingle. I found some comfort in poetry. In The World in Translation Naomi Shihab Nye notices the instructive grace of a peach (and a mango) in the face of human negligence and the simple passage of time: If she were to have anything to do with the world, these would be her translators, through these she would learn secrets of dying, how to do it gracefully as a peach, softening in silence, or the mango, finely tuned to its own skin.

BOOK SIGNING AND PUBLIC RECEPTION Monday, January 23, 6 pm FORUM

ZELL DISTINGUISHED POET IN RESIDENCE POETRY READING Monday, January 23, 7:10 pm APSE

LECTURE Thursday, January 26, 5:10 pm HELMUT STERN AUDITORIUM

Nye’s poetry is as bell-clear and blanket-warm as a true gift. It is a gift that does not seek to glorify the giver or flatter the receiver, but instead reveals the strange beauty that surrounds us and is within us. The wisdom of Nye’s work arises from its balanced perspective on the people, places, things, and rituals of our everydays: their glinting facets and subtle gravities. What we need, her poems say, does not exist elsewhere, is not waiting for us on the lip of some horizon that scoots a little further back each time we approach. What is essential is already at hand, and we can arrive at a rich contentment if only we look out into both our private worlds and the wider world with a warm curiosity and deep respect. Naomi Shihab Nye, the child of a Palestinian father and American mother, grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. This global personal history informs her work and reminds us that home can be many places. She has written and edited numerous volumes of poetry, essays, and has also written works for children and young adults. In 2012 a collection of very short stories (There Is No Long Distance Now) and a book of prose and poetry (Transfer) will appear. She has been a Lannan Literary Fellow, the recipient of a Guggenheim, and a Witter Bynner Fellow. Her awards are numerous and include four Pushcart Prizes. Ann Marie Thornburg UM MFA ’11 and Zell postgraduate fellow in poetry UMMA is pleased to be the site for the Department of English Program in Creative Writing Zell Visiting Writers Series, which brings outstanding writers each semester. The Series is made possible through a generous gift from UM alumna Helen Zell (’64). For more information, please see www.lsa.umich.edu/english/grad/mfa/mfaeve.asp.

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TEACHERS FIND OPPORTUNITIES FOR CREATIVITY AND TRANSFORMATION UMMA offers a unique, intimate experience of art from around the world and provides teachers with privileged access to this resource at professional development workshops. Developed by UMMA’s Education Department, teacher workshops include interactive gallery tours, hands-on art making, and material for personal and classroom use. The combination of strong content and a friendly and relaxed atmosphere leave teachers saying, “I was expecting the best and was not disappointed.”

The fall 2011 workshop on the exhibition Multiple Impressions: Contemporary Chinese Woodblock Prints provided an important opportunity for understanding art and society in contemporary China. UMMA’s partnerships with the Centers for Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Studies and the University Musical Society multiplies the perspective of the workshops the Museum can offer. In the past two years such workshops covered East Asian, Korean, and African subjects.

The creativity of faculty, staff, and students at UM is instrumental in the success of these workshops. For example, a UM Museum Studies Program intern, Elizabeth Vandermark, wrote sketching lesson plans for a Whistler workshop to foster “careful observation, active study, and imaginative thinking” while UM Clinical Professor of Law Nick Rine shared his interview with Cambodian artist Ouk Chim Vichet in an evening on Southeast Asian art and culture.

Some workshops attract teachers from a specific discipline while others, such as the workshop on contemporary artist Mai Thu Perret—featuring nationally known educator Olivia Gude—attract art teachers from across the state. Teachers’ comments about this event were what we hope to receive for each workshop: “The material [was] so strong it will change my teaching and relationships with students,” reported one teacher, and, “the day was a work of art in and of itself” another expressed.

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programs

FLUXUS PROGRAMS

A MEETING PLACE FOR THE ARTS Shortly after the Museum reopened in March 2009 following its historic expansion and restoration, audiences from around the region settled down on colorful pillows on the floor of the newly renovated Apse to enjoy the University Musical Society’s presentation of the Fez Festival of Sufi Culture with Mohammed Bennis and the Hmadcha Ensemble. “Of course it’s a beautiful setting—one could almost imagine that they were in the interior courtyard of a Morrocan riad—but it’s the possibility for conversation among art forms that is really exciting to us in our work with the Museum,” commented Michael Kondziolka, UMS Director of Programming. The history of this kind of conversation between art forms has inspired an ever-growing list of artists to work across disciplines, sparked by the richness that results from working in multiple media. This January an artist who exemplifies this kind of boundary crossing will be bringing work to both the UMS stage and to UMMA’s walls. Robert Wilson, whose work is firmly rooted in the fine arts and has been exhibited in major museums around the world, is probably best known for his work in experimental theater. UMS will present his groundbreaking work with composer Philip Glass, Einstein on the Beach, at the Power Center January 20–22, while at UMMA audiences are invited to the recently opened New Media Gallery to experience Wilson’s 1978 video sketchbook, Video 50, a collection of one hundred visually dramatic and frequently humorous abbreviated “episodes” produced for a German experimental television workshop.

In addition to connections offered on stages and in exhibitions, UMMA and UMS have begun to expand the dialogue between visual and performing arts in a Web 2.0 direction, developing digitally based multimedia for online experiences. In the 2010–11 season, UMMA and UMS teamed up to create Roots in the Ordinary, a video conversation linking blues, bluegrass, and country music in the UMS season with the recent UMMA exhibition Out of the Ordinary: Selections from the Bohlen Wood Art and Fusfeld Folk Art Collections. Available on both organizations’ websites and on the UMMA DialogTable, audiences can learn about the religious, cultural, and regional traditions that inform and deepen our appreciation of American roots music and folk art.

PUBLIC INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT WILSON AND PHILIP GLASS Sunday, January 15, 4 pm MICHIGAN THEATER, 603 EAST LIBERTY, ANN ARBOR Cosponsored by the Penny W. Stamps Speaker Series, University Musical Society, and UMMA.

he artists and art of Fluxus—irreverent, provocative and even downright wacky—first emerged in the early 1960s as an art phenomenon that aimed to escape the boundaries of capital “A” Art. While today scholars consider and disagree about Fluxus’ historical precursors—among them Dada, Marcel Duchamp, and the Bauhaus—guest curator Jacquelynn Baas has organized an accessible and engaging exhibition that reconnects Fluxus with what she terms “the essential questions of life.” For those who would like to better understand Fluxus from both an historical and an experiential point of view, don’t miss Baas’s lecture on Sunday, March 11 at 3 pm. The adventurous and expansive spirit of Fluxus continues to animate and inspire contemporary art practice across many art forms. In conjunction with the exhibition, the UM Digital Music Ensemble will present In Memoriam... Kit Carson (1963), a non-linear opera by ONCE founder Robert Ashley. School of Music, Theatre, and Dance Professor Steve Rush notes, “Fluxus allows us to enjoy the world as it comes to us, rather than as we prefer it to be. There is great freedom in not thinking the only way to present ideas to performers is through the traditional ‘dots-on-a-page’ technique. Fluxus reinterprets performance as possibility and the celebration of the ordinary in contradistinction to the exceptional.” The opera features eight people staged at a casual gathering, each with a quasi-robotic “friend.” The resulting reactions and interactions constitute the complex sound of the piece. Rush, DME’s director, will also premiere a short opera on Ulysses Grant, rich with electronics and Civil War songs. In keeping with the idea of exploring Fluxus as both of its time and resonant for life today, UMMA educators are working with UM faculty and students as well as with the UMMA Student Programming and Advisory Council to create a host of Fluxus happenings. These will culminate in a special Fluxus-themed event on March 30 that will offer students access to the Museum after hours and will include Fluxus performances, music, and more. Whether recreating a historic Fluxus “event score” such as Alison Knowles’s Street Piece: Make something in the street and give it away from 1962, or creating and enacting new event scores, education activities will explore both the legacy and spirit of Fluxus. Nye Ffarrabas (formerly Bici Forbes and Bici Forbes Hendricks), Rx: Stress Formula, about 1970–78, pill bottle with ink on pressure-sensitive labels, containing photocopy in twenty-six gelatin capsules, The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection Gift, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA, Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY

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winter 2012

LECTURE BY GUEST CURATOR JACQUELYNN BAAS Life and the Essential Questions of Fluxus Sunday, March 11, 3 pm HELMUT STERN AUDITORIUM

KIT AND ULYSSES: DIGITAL MUSIC ENSEMBLE GOES FLUX Friday, March 30, 8 pm APSE Please check the UMMA website for additional Fluxus programming.

spotlight UMMA Sponsor: University of Michigan Health System CEO Ora Pescovitz on investing in the arts and the community The University of Michigan Health System is known nationally and around the world for excellence in patient care, education, and research. It is also home to one of the first and most comprehensive arts in health care programs nationwide. Can you tell us a bit about art’s place in medicine at UMHS?

Members and guests view the Multiple Impressions: Contemporary Chinese Woodblock Prints exhibition at the fall 2011 Private Showing.

The arts play an important role in medicine. During times of stress and illness, art has the power to nurture and heal; to entertain as well as provide respite from emotional or physical discord. The University of Michigan Health System maintains a strong commitment to making music and art part of its healing culture and we are enthusiastic about bringing visual and performing arts, as well as art-making opportunities, into the health care environment. Through initiatives like the Gifts of Art program and the Cancer Center’s Art Therapy Program we have seen firsthand that the arts can assist and enhance the healing process, reduce anxiety, support human dignity, and renew the spirit. UMHS has also contributed significantly to arts institutions in Ann Arbor. Many people don’t realize that international exhibitions and world premier dance programs would not be possible without the investment of individual and corporate community members. What motivates your investment? We feel an important sense of responsibility for serving as a role model for others in the community in which we live and work. In this regard, we feel that it is important to enhance the quality of life of the community. A community with rich arts offerings is an attractive place to live, work, and visit; this enhances our ability to attract and retain faculty, students, and staff. It also demonstrates to them that as an institution we believe in giving back to the community, much as we expect them to give back as individuals. What UMMA projects are you looking forward to this year? I am particularly excited about the three outstanding exhibitions sponsored by the UM Health System this year—Mark di Suvero: Tabletops, Face of Our Time and Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life. Our hope is that these programs will provide students, educators, and general audiences with unique opportunities to discover, explore, and engage with the art of our world. I am also excited about the collections-based collaborations between UMMA curators and educators and students in the UM Medical School—collaborations that explore art and medicine with a focus on issues of complexity, diagnostic thinking, and empathy in medical practice today.

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winter 2012 The audience enjoys A Sense of Steel: Dances for di Suvero in front of the Museum and the Mark di Suvero: Tabletops exhibition.

membership

MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS CHANGES Since the Museum’s renovation and expansion, UMMA has truly become a hub for the arts. We want to thank you, our Members, for helping make everything we do possible. We’re also happy to announce that the benefits of being a member at UMMA are getting even better. Now, if you join or renew your membership at the $75 level, you will receive reciprocal membership with twelve other Michigan museums, including the Detroit Institute of Arts, Grand Rapids Art Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. We are streamlining our slate of other benefits to make it easier for you to take advantage of all the opportunities membership offers. All UMMA Members receive the following benefits: KmZk[jahlagf lg UMMA Magazine sent tri-annually and the bi-monthly UMMA Calendar. )( \ak[gmfl gf_gaf_ af l`] Emk]me Klgj] *( \ak[gmfl ^gj Çjkl hmj[`Yk]k Y^l]j e]eZ]jkàh$ \mjaf_ UM home football weekends, and at other select times <ak[gmflk gf 9ff 9jZgj 9jl ;]fl]j [dYkk]k lYm_`l Yl MEE9& O]]cdq ]eYad mh\Yl]k gf ]pàZalagfk Yf\ hjg_jYek& UM Student Member ($15) receives: MEE9 E]eZ]j d]n]d Z]f]Çlk Yl Y \ak[gmfl]\ jYl]& ;`][c gml l`] UMMA Magazine and UMMA Calendar online. AfnalYlagf lg ]p[dmkan] klm\]fl ]n]flk& UMMA Member ($50) receives: :Yka[ e]eZ]jkàh hjanad]_]k Yk dakl]\ YZgn]& UM Faculty/Staff Supporter ($60) receives: MEE9 Kmhhgjl]j d]n]d Z]f]Çlk Yl Y \ak[gmfl]\ jYl]&

museum store

SOME EXAMPLES OF WHAT

YOUR SUPPORT CAN DO $75

helps us stay connected with students through social media.

$100 rents a bus so K–12 students can visit for a gallery tour.

$500 makes it possible to keep our galleries open for two hours.

$1000 provides educational materials for an exhibition. Sponsor Circle ($250) also receives: Ghhgjlmfalq lg j][]an] gf] [gehdae]flYjq MEE9 hmZda[Ytion per year. Curators’ Circle ($500) also receives: AfnalYlagf lg Yf ]p[dmkan] kg[aYd Yf\ d]Yjfaf_ ghhgjlmfalq with a curator. Director’s Circle ($1,000) also receives: AfnalYlagf lg l`] YffmYd <aj][lgj¿k ;aj[d] <aff]j$ Yf opportunity to hear highlights of the coming year in exhibitions, acquisitions, and new initiatives. 9ffmYd j][g_falagf gf l`] Emk]me <gfgj OYdd&

Benefactor’s Circle ($2,500) also receives: =p[dmkan] ghhgjlmfala]k lg e]]l \aklaf_mak`]\ nakalaf_ artists, critics, and scholars in intimate settings.

UMMA Supporter ($75) also receives: J][ahjg[Yd e]eZ]jkàh Yl lo]dn] emk]mek Y[jgkk l`] klYl] of Michigan, including the DIA, GRAM and MoCAD. AfnalYlagfk lg Yll]f\ kh][aYd ]n]flk Yf\ ]pàZalagf gh]faf_k throughout the year. Donor Circle ($125) also receives: =fjgdde]fl af l`] Fgjl` 9e]ja[Yf J][ahjg[Yd E]eZ]jkàh Benefits Program that includes more than 460 museums in the US and Canada. (http://sites.google.com/site/ northamericanreciprocalmuseums/north-americanreciprocal-museum-listing)

Patron’s Circle ($5,000 and above) also receives: =f`Yf[]\ e]eZ]jk`ah ghhgjlmfala]k oal` mfhj][]\]fl]\ access to the director.

lease stop by the Museum Store on your next visit to the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The store features a wide array of merchandise from local and global resources and you are sure to find something you can’t live without! A few of the items you will discover include locally handcrafted sculptures; hand-painted silk scarves; contemporary and traditional jewelry; unique, recycled glass items; intriguing educational gifts for children; and a variety of pottery and ceramic art objects.

To learn more about these and other membership opportunities, such as the Director’s Acquisition Committee, please contact Amee Spondike at aksim@umich.edu or 734.647.0516. Whether you’re interested in contemporary or classical art, whether you come for the music, the readings, the lectures, or the films, whether you take advantage of our family events or enjoy a quiet solo stroll through the galleries, it’s easier than ever to find something you love at UMMA. We hope you will visit again soon, and we hope you’ll become a Member, or renew your membership and continue to support UMMA, your art museum.

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Museum Members enjoy a year-round discount in the store and are eligible to receive special promotional discounts at various times. Featured item: One-of-a-kind, handcrafted whimsical vases by Kate and Ed Coleman winter 2012

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525 South State Street Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1354 734.763.UMMA umma.umich.edu

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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, Lauren Harroun, Carole McNamara, Natsu Oyobe, Pam Reister, Ruth Slavin, Peter Smith, and 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 february 5, 2012

Face of Our Time: Jacob Aue Sobol, Jim Goldberg, Zanele Muholi, Daniel Schwartz, Richard Misrach through february 26, 2012

Mark di Suvero: Tabletops through june 24, 2012

Recent Acquisitions: Curator’s Choice january 7–april 29, 2012

Robert Wilson: Video 50 february 25–may 20, 2012

Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life march 17–july 22, 2012

Haroon Mirza