UMMA Magazine | Winter 2013 by UMMA MusTech

winter 2013 university of michigan museum of art

from the director

ach exhibition season we strive to bring you, our visitors and supporters, a diversity of media, cultures, traditions, makers, and perspectives. This season is particularly gratifying in that regard, with artists and artwork from around the globe reflecting the most advanced thinking and practice taking place now and in the past. This season’s headliner exhibition, El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa, comes to us from the Museum for African Art in New York and profiles the fascinating oeuvre of west African artist El Anatsui (born 1944). This major survey of Anatsui’s work is as gorgeous as it is provocative and is accompanied by a comprehensive scholarly catalogue. Don’t miss the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series talk with El Anatsui and the University of Toronto’s Betsy Harney at the Michigan Theater on February 7. The Museum’s UM Collections Collaborations series continues with Buddhist Thangkas and Treasures: The Walter Koelz Collection, Museum of Anthropology. This very special exhibition celebrates the stunning images and objects collected by UM zoologist Walter Norman Koelz. Please refer to our program pages in this issue and our website for the rich array of public programming organized in conjunction with this truly inspiring exhibition.

contents UMMA NEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 EXHIBITIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 IN FOCUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 PROGRAMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 UMMA HAPPENINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 MEMBERSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 UMMA STORE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Cover: El Anatsui, Group Photo (detail), 1987, wood, dimensions variable, Photo courtesy The October Gallery

Florencia Pita is an emerging architect/designer whose lexicon of work I have been following for some time. Born in Argentina, Pita and her studio, FP mod, are now based in Los Angeles. At this midpoint in her career it seemed fitting to devote a one-person exhibition to her rigorous, wide-ranging, and life-affirming talent and vision. I am also very pleased that we were able to produce a publication as part of our UMMA Books series that elaborates further on the full spectrum of Pita’s highly choreographed work. Kathleen Forde, this year’s guest curator of the Museum’s New Media Gallery, has brought the second of three hugely important international artists to UMMA—Francis Alÿs—whose compelling 2004–05 video Guards recently opened with much anticipation. Born in 1959 in Antwerp, Alÿs lives and works in Mexico City and is considered one of the leading artists of his generation. Make a plan with friends or family to visit your Museum of Art this winter! I hope to see you soon. Warmest regards,

Joseph Rosa Director

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umma news NEW SAWYER INTERN In addition to the three new positions funded by the UMMA’s multiyear $650,000 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, the Museum of Art and the UM Department of History of Art created a new named internship at the Museum spurred by the Mellon grant that further extends the reach and impact of one of its three key initiatives—training emerging talent in the museum field. Because the Mellon Curatorial Fellowship applicant pool was so strong, the new Charles Sawyer Museum Internship was established to provide an additional opportunity for early-career art historians to obtain museum experience at UMMA. This semester-long internship is named for Charles Sawyer, the director of UMMA from 1957 to 1972 and the founder of the Museum Practice Program (since reconstituted as the Museum Studies Program). Monique Johnson, who will take up the Sawyer Internship in winter 2013, is a PhD candidate in history of art with a focus on nineteenth-century art and photography.

WIFI IN MUSEUM The Museum is always looking for new ways to increase accessibility to its venerable collections and to deliver on its goal to be a dynamic cultural meeting place. For many years UMMA has offered a searchable digital database of its entire collection online as an important resource for both scholars and the general public. The Museum has also produced numerous interpretive projects and multimedia initiatives, including the DialogTable— UMMA’s interactive storytelling and social learning tool—that have broadened and deepened visitors’ experience with works of art in the permanent collection. Now, thanks to the UM Office of the Provost and the Charles H. Gershenson Trust, the Museum can now boast a dedicated WiFi network. This important tool enhances accessibility while also allowing the Museum to become an even more robust community resource.

NEW KOREAN ART VIDEOS Two new short videos that bring to life the stories behind two objects in the Museum’s superb collection of Korean ceramics now enliven UMMA’s Woon-Hyung Lee and Korea Foundation Gallery of Korean Art: Guardian of the City explores the ogre roof tile on view, which adorned the roof of the historic Great South Gate in Seoul; Search for Form: The Art of Kim Yikyung profiles this contemporary ceramic artist and shares her work process. The preparation and presentation of these videos was made possible by the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea, the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage, and the University of Michigan Nam Center for Korean Studies.

save the date!

Thursday, April 11, 2013 As we inaugurate a new gala event

UMMA GLOW

Celebrating the luminous arts leadership of Irving Stenn, Jr. Complete details on page 18

“BEHIND THE SCENES” AT UMMA This fall UMMA’s Student Programming and Advisory Council (SPAC) launched a new monthly series of interviews on our student blog, The Annex, conducted by SPAC members with UMMA staff members. The goal of these interviews is to provide a behind the scenes look at who works at UMMA, introduce UM students to what we do here, and help members of the SPAC become more connected to the Museum at the same time. Visit The Annex at http://annex.umma.umich.edu/ to check out these interviews along with SPAC members’ thoughts about UMMA exhibitions and programs, interviews with visiting artists and curators, and more!

SMTD@UMMA INSTALLATION CONCERT: NOMENCLATURE Mixing music, art, and architecture, the annual SMTD@UMMA Installation Concert features new work created entirely by UM students using the collection and architecture of UMMA as inspiration for their compositions. Over the past three years, well over 1,000 people have enjoyed this unique museum and concert experience, where performances are “installed” throughout the building creating new relationships to the compositions and the works of art. Previous years have featured chamber concertos for percussion (2010); eight-minute operas conceived specifically for the spaces in which they were performed (2011); and jazz compositions in response to works in UMMA’s permanent collection (2012). On January 19, 2013, from 1 to 4 pm, students in the UM composition department will present new works conceived in response to terms and ideas that visual art and music share: line, texture, color, shape, contrast, and volume. The SMTD@UMMA performance series is made possible in part by the Katherine Tuck Enrichment Fund.

exhibitions

a. alfred taubman gallery i | february 2–april 28, 2013

When I Last Wrote to You about Africa Organized by the Museum for African Art, When I Last Wrote to You about Africa is a major retrospective of internationally renowned artist El Anatsui, which includes approximately sixty works that span decades and media. The Ghanaian-born El Anatsui, who lives and works in Nigeria, is widely known for monumental wall sculptures made from discarded bottle tops, and is recognized as one of the most original and compelling artists of his generation. The following is an excerpt from the enlightening essay by Lisa Binder, curator at the Museum for African Art, in the richly illustrated catalogue that accompanies the exhibition.

When I last wrote to you about Africa, I used a letterheaded parchment paper, There were many blank slots in the letter.... ……………………………………………………….. I can now fill some of these slots because…….. I have grown older. El Anatsui (1986) El Anatsui has been writing to us about Africa for a very long time. For over four decades he has created drawings, paintings, prints, sculptures, and installations that convey histories both personal and universal. Each work has its own story to tell, though, when seen together they relate to each other like words in a sentence that may be rearranged to convey a umma.umich.edu

El Anatsui, Zebra Crossing III, 2007, aluminum and copper wire, Photo courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery

El Anatsui, Untitled, 1980s, acrylic on Masonite, Photo courtesy Museum for African Art / Jerry L. Thompson

different message. Anatsui refers to those pieces of a story as bits of data that are free to interact to create new ideas, a method he has encouraged in his students and practiced himself throughout his entire career. This retrospective takes its name from a suite of the artist’s work produced in the late 1980s. When I Last Wrote to You about Africa is the first line of the poetic title quoted above. Anatsui produced several prints and sculptures by the same name, two of which are included in this exhibition. In a sketch for these works we see his thought process of wording, rewording, and filling in the lines of his letter with adinkra symbols, a west African graphic system used in Ghana. Just as the symbols come together to create various meanings, so do the works on view in this exhibition; they are organized by their aesthetic relationships, so visitors can follow sightlines and make connections, thus filling in their own “blank slots.” In this way, his works seek to tell our story as well as his own. Many of El Anatsui’s sculptures employ materials once designated for another purpose. Using found objects such as market trays, old mortars, fallen logs, can lids, and cassava graters, he reworks and rearranges materials and transforms them into something new. The vocabulary of Anatsui’s work is inextricably bound to the materials involved in exchanges

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between the singular-self and group-other. Although individually humble, they become collectively monumental. The basic things that connect us together as human beings remain a central focus of Anatsui’s practice. Our individual actions as consumers and communicators allow us to participate in a global community. These two themes are especially evident in Anatsui’s sculpture from his early years in Ghana made from market trays through his most recent series comprising thousands of west African bottle tops. El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa is organized by the Museum for African Art, New York, and has been supported, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Lead support for UMMA’s installation is provided by the University of Michigan Health System, Office of the President, Office of the Provost, Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, and Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design; the University of Michigan Credit Union; and the James L. and Vivian A. Curtis Endowment Fund. Additional generous support is provided by the University of Michigan African Studies Center, CEW Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund, Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, Department of the History of Art, Institute for the Humanities, Museum Studies Program, and School of Natural Resources and Environment.

exhibitions

irving stenn, jr. family gallery | january 19–june 16, 2013

HE PROLIFERATION OF DIGITAL TECHNIQUES IN

architectural education and practice in the last twentyfive years has produced an emerging group of individuals who have combined technological literacy with the conceptual legacy of the 1970s and expanded its lexicon to include spatial installations that connote architectural conditions. The recent employment of figurative characteristics in the design arts offers an ideal opportunity to examine how contemporary architects and designers—as a result of their digital literacy and enhanced fabrication techniques—have reintroduced hybrids of methods and ideologies that were once considered too ornamental or too handcrafted for twentieth-century practitioners’ minimalist design vocabulary. Florencia Pita, principal of FP mod, a collaborative practice established in Los Angeles in 2006, is a prime example of someone generating this kind of unconventional thinking. Her “intricate, polymorphous, digitally created designs” explore the phenomenological relationships between literature, art, and architecture, and inform her own architectural production, which draws heavily on figuration, color, and ornamentation. UMMA’s installation and related publication offer a focused investigation of the trajectory of Pita’s ideology and work in architecture and design. The exhibition will showcase her unique pairings of art and linguistics in projects that maximize cutting-edge architectural technologies. For instance, the densely ornamental form of her earlier wall piece Alice will introduce Pita’s inquiry into the realm of embellishment and fantasy. Changing scale, from surface modeling to occupiable forms, Pita continues her unique explorations with the House in the Bahamas, which is informed by Andy Warhol’s Ice Cream Dessert prints. Her designs span all aspects of scalelessness— from urban plans, dishware, and furniture, to jewelry—resulting in a genealogy of forms that have a distinct narrative. Complementing the scope of her work on view will be Pita’s first floor piece—a new work commissioned by UMMA specifically for this exhibition. Born in Argentina, Pita received her architecture degree from the National University of Rosario, School of Architecture in 1998. In 1999, she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to pursue studies at Columbia University, where she received her MSAAD in 2001. Her work has been exhibited in numerous museums, galleries, and biennials. She has worked as project designer in the offices of Peter Eisenman, and at Asymptote. She participated in the World Trade Center Site Design Competition as a member of United Architects and the Ark of the World project as a member of Greg Lynn FORM. She has taught at numerous architecture schools and is currently on the design faculty at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles. While the architectural profession still has a very small demographic of architectural studios owned and led by women, 6

Florencia Pita/FP mod, House in the Bahamas, 2009, Bahamas, Team: Dulrye Mhin, Yu-Shan Wu, image courtesy of the artist

Opposite Florencia Pita/FP mod, Alice, 2007, LAXART Gallery, Los Angeles, California, Team: Zarmine N. Nigohossian, Tanja Werner, Clair Souki, Ai Amano, Guillermina Chiu, image courtesy of the artist

leading figures such as Zaha Hadid, Jeanne Gang, Toshiko Mori, Lindy Roy, Winka Dubbeldam, Farshid Moussavi, and Monica Ponce de Leon have showcased that critical thinking and progressive ideology can change and broaden the course of the discipline. They have also provided a platform for future female architects to go even further. Pita represents this new generation—that builds on this rich legacy, embraces and explores engendered character and critical thinking with subjective aesthetics, and supersedes the antiquated notion of “form follows function.” Joseph Rosa UMMA Director Lead support for this exhibition is provided by the Herbert W. and Susan L. Johe Endowment, Laura Lynch and Hugh McPherson, and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Additional generous support is provided by Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.

SMTD@UMMA: BEYOND SCALE Friday, March 29, 7 pm APSE

New acoustic and electronic works by multimedia artist Carlos Carcia and composers Kevin Ernste and John Berners, performed by soprano Jennifer Goltz, UM Associate Professor of Music Adam Unsworth, and local contemporary ensemble Latitude 49. The SMTD@UMMA performance series is made possible in part by the Katherine Tuck Enrichment Fund.

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exhibitions

a. alfred taubman gallery ii | february 23â&#x20AC;&#x201C;june 9, 2013

BUDDHIST THANGKAS AND TREASURES The Walter Koelz Collection, Museum of Anthropology

Walter Koelz in Ladakh (with permission of the Bentley Historical Library) Opposite: Vairocana Buddha (detail), 13th century, Poo Monastery, Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India (Museum of Anthropology Catalog #17461)

N THE LATE FALL OF 1932, University of Michigan zoologist Walter Norman Koelz traveled to northwest India to lead a

scientific expedition into the rugged Himalayan regions of Ladakh, Zanskar, Spiti, and Kunawar. Although part of India, these were the westernmost regions of the Tibetan cultural domain. Over the next year, Koelz journeyed many hundreds of miles by foot and on horseback over treacherous mountain passes and through fertile valleys, stopping at Buddhist monasteries and isolated mountain communities along the way. The goal of the University of Michigan’s Himalayan expedition was to create a collection of Tibetan artifacts for its Museum of Anthropology. As recounted in his diary, Koelz’s collecting was guided equally by his keen aesthetic sense and his stubborn determination—and by the assistance of his partner Rup Chand, a member of a highly respected Lahuli family, who provided him with entrée into private homes and sacred places. At the expedition’s end in January 1934 Koelz shipped twelve large crates back to Ann Arbor. Contained within them were thousands of plant and animal specimens and more than 600 objects, including paintings, textiles, bronzes, jewelry, wooden moulds and stamps, and bone artifacts, preserved today at the Museum of Anthropology. Buddhist Thangkas and Treasures, a collaboration between UMMA and the Museum of Anthropology, presents the spectacular Buddhist thankga paintings and ritual objects from the Koelz Collection. Thangkas, religious paintings on cloth, are the most famous form of Tibetan Buddhist art. The twenty-six paintings featured in the exhibition include representations of the historical Buddha and his arhats or enlightened disciples, as well as images of other Buddhas and bodhisattvas, historical figures, and wrathful deities. Spanning six centuries, the works encompass a range of painting traditions—of the western Himalayas, the east, and local or “folk” styles. Together they attest to the wide artistic interactions across the vast region encompassing the Indian and Tibetan Himalayas. Highlights of the collection include a painting of the Buddha Vairocana , or “Celestial” Buddha, surrounded by more than 140 smaller Buddha figures. Acquired from Poo Monastery in Spiti, this is the earliest painting in the collection, likely dating to the thirteenth century. Koelz acquired seventeen paintings from Likir monastery in Zanskar, writing in his diary that the monastery’s collection included “the loveliest old things, the likes of which there are not in this country.” Eager for these paintings, Koelz enlisted the help of a powerful lama to persuade the monastery to part with them. Among the eight paintings from Likir in the exhibition is a beautiful depiction of a White Tara seated on a lotus throne; White Tara, one of many forms (of the goddess or of this deity), is linked to compassion, health, and healing. Elegant paintings such as these contrast with the charm of the local style or “folk” painting of Padmasambhava, an Indian master famed for establishing Buddhism in Tibet in the 8th century CE. Additional rarely seen treasures of the exhibition include silver and brass ga’u, small boxes that contained sacred texts or amulets, carried by men and women as they traveled the rugged mountains, as well as bronze images, jewelry, and carvings of wood and bone. Carla Sinopoli Guest Curator UM Professor of Anthropology and Curator, Museum of Anthropology Director, Museum Studies Program This exhibition is co-curated by Carla Sinopoli and Donald Lopez, UM Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies, with UMMA’s coordinating curator and Associate Curator of Asian Art Natsu Oyobe. This exhibition is part of the UM Collections Collaborations series, co-organized by and presented at UMMA and designed to showcase the renowned and diverse collections at the University of Michigan. The UM Collections Collaborations series is generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

winter 2013

exhibitions

new media gallery december 15, 2012–march 31, 2013

There is perhaps no more symbolically unemotional character than that of a red-jacketed, bearskin-hat-wearing guard of the Queen of England. So much so that attempting to get a stuffy royal guard to laugh, smile, or show any hint of personality has become a pervasive prank for local Brits and tourists alike. For his 2005 work Guards, Belgian artist Francis Alÿs created the following set of instructions for a “walk” throughout the City of London by sixty-four of the Queen of England’s guards. The documentation of this activity forms the basis for the video, currently on view at UMMA. Sixty-four Coldstream Guards enter the City of London by different streets, unaware of one another’s route The guards wander through the City looking for each other Upon meeting, they fall into step and march together, looking for more guards to meet up with When a square measuring eight by eight guards has been built, the complete formation marches towards the closest bridge As they step onto the bridge, the guards break step and disperse Though the artist’s rules for the guards’ movements appear as detached as the guards themselves, the video work generated by these rules is by no means dispassionate. Francis Alÿs has

created a video portrait of these guards that is, paradoxically, imbued with a sense of humanity, longing, and even wit. As the video begins, we watch the individual guards march stoically around the city looking for their fellows, slowly finding each other one by one or in multiples, until the entire group marches together to the bridge where they break step in an anticlimactic finale of sorts. It is hard not to see them as lonely when they are alone, as hopeful when they march in search of others, and finally, as they find each other at the close, as triumphant. Even with no break in the guards’ indifferent exterior, the tale still manages to be a powerful metaphor for the human condition.

Francis Alÿs, Guards, London, 2004–05, in collaboration with Rafael Ortega and Artangel, video documentation of an action (30 minutes), Courtesy David Zwirner, New York

Many of the elements of Guards, such as walking, rhythm, and the use of streets and bridges are found throughout Alÿs’s work. As in Guards, these strategies, evoking the poetic and sonic palette of the urban environment, involve a sometimes loose and other times overt relationship to social resistance and to the symbolic and often political implications of crossings. Alÿs provokes us to see our own urban scene afresh, inspiring us to change not only what we see but the way we see. Kathleen Forde Guest Curator Generous support for this exhibition is provided by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost.

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in focus

Caspar Netscher, The Music Lesson, circa 1665, oil on panel, UMMA, Gift from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Heydon, 2011/2.179 NEW ACQUISITION

CASPAR NETSCHER In 2011, the Museum of Art received the gift of an important panel painting by the Dutch painter Caspar Netscher (born Germany, 1639?–1684). This very fine work is an important addition to UMMA’s holdings in Dutch painting and represents a genre not already present in the collections—the subject of music making in a domestic interior. Beginning around 1650, scenes of low-life pastimes, such as drinking and dancing in taverns, were replaced by more affluent and refined interior scenes; Netscher’s The Music Lesson reflects that transition. Here, four figures are shown in a dark but carefully constructed interior space: the man on the left plays a theorbo, an early bass lute, and accompanies the singing woman; another man, seated at the far side of the table, and a woman holding a small dog fill out the frame. Such domestic scenes from the middle of the seventeenth century reflect the sophisticated taste of Dutch consumers and the painting richly emphasizes the pleasures of the senses: the aural beauty of the music, the delicate qualities of light, and the textures of fabrics are depicted with a verisimilitude that seems to conjure up the physical world. Netscher was the son of a German sculptor and trained in Arnhem with the still life painter Hendrick Coster (fl. 1638–59) before studying with Gerard ter Borch (1617–1681). Ter Borch’s winter 2013

influence on Netscher’s style can been seen in the handling of the rich cream-colored satin of the seated woman’s dress, as well as in the delicately described but ambiguous psychological relationships between the figures. Netscher settled in The Hague by 1662, where he remained until his death. The painting came to the United States from Vienna in the 1930s and was in the collection of UM Professor of English Language and Literature William A. Coles before Rita and Peter Heydon acquired it. The Heydons have long supported the Museum of Art and have donated several nineteenth-century works. They also led the effort to find a period replacement frame for the University of Michigan’s portrait of President Angell by William Merritt Chase, on view near the Museum’s administrative offices. Carole McNamara UMMA Senior Curator of Western Art 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 January 8 through April 7, 2013.

programs WINTER 2013 EXHIBITION PROGRAMMING

EL ANATSUI: WHEN I LAST WROTE TO YOU ABOUT AFRICA

his winter’s career retrospective of artist El Anatsui,

When I Last Wrote to You about Africa presents work in diverse media that invites reflection on memory and history as well as the countless everyday objects we so readily use up and discard. Born in Ghana and residing in Nigeria, where he is a professor at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, El Anatsui’s work has engaged the local and the international with global impact. The power of his forms and their equally strong relationship to conceptual ideas connect them to traditions of African art, yet his transformations of material and experience— whether somber or joyful—are dynamic and contemporary and have gained him an international reputation. In response to this opportunity, a particularly diverse array of partners has joined UMMA in creating programming for this exhibition, and the artist himself will be in residence at UM during the first week of February. Selected programs, listed below, will be joined by a Student Late Night event developed by UMMA’s Student Programming and Advisory Council, a teacher workshop with Art 21’s Joe Fusaro, and hands-on art workshops. Please see UMMA’s website for additional details.

Africa Workshop: What is African Art? Tuesday, February 5 UMMA GALLERIES 4–5 PM HELMUT STERN AUDITORIUM 5–7 PM

Join UM Professor David Doris, History of Art and Department of African and African Studies, Detroit Institute of Arts Curator Nii Quarcopome, and University of Toronto Professor Betsy Harney for a lively discussion of myths and misconceptions regarding African art and how these relate to the work of global and contemporary practitioners, including El Anatsui. This panel discussion is co-organized with the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and the African Studies Center.

Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series: El Anatsui in Conversation with Betsy Harney Thursday, February 7, 5 pm MICHIGAN THEATER

Don’t miss this conversation with internationally renowned artist El Anatsui in dialogue with longtime colleague and University of Toronto Professor Betsy Harney at downtown Ann Arbor’s historic Michigan Theater. Offered in conjunction with UM’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design and the Institute for the Humanities.

Dobet Gnahoré and Acoustic Africa Thursday, February 21, 8 pm HILL AUDITORIUM

The UM Center for World Performance Studies presents a one-of-a-kind concert featuring music, dance, and rhythms from west Africa and around the globe with Dobet Gnahoré and Acoustic Africa. El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa is organized by the Museum for African Art, New York, and has been supported, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

umma.umich.edu

programs WINTER 2013 EXHIBITION PROGRAMMING

BUDDHIST THANGKAS AND TREASURES: THE WALTER KOELZ COLLECTION, MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY These rare and fascinating historical works are linked to living traditions of Buddhist thought and practice that UMMA Programs will explore this winter. Please check the UMMA website for additional programming, including a symposium with exhibition curators and UM Professors Carla Sinopoli and Donald Lopez and guest scholars, as well as a gallery talk by Sinopoli about the thangkas collector, “Michigan man” Walter Koelz.

The Living Ancient Art of Tibetan Buddhist Thankgas with Tibetan Buddhist Master Gelek Rimpoche Sunday, February 24, 3 pm Opposite Dobet Gnahoré and Acoustic Africa Above El Anatsui, Oasis, 2008, aluminum and copper wire, Photo courtesy Jane Katcher / Peter Harholdt Right, top Gelek Rimpoche Right, bottom Arjia Rinpoche

HELMUT STERN AUDITORIUM

This talk will also be webstreamed as part of Jewel Heart founder Gelek Rimpoche’s ongoing series of talks about Buddhism (jewelheart.org).

SMTD@UMMA Concert: Messiaen, Mystic Thursday, February 28, 7 pm pre-concert talk, 8 pm performance APSE

Inspired by the unique religious expression of the Buddhist thangkas, this concert presents works by the last century’s most enigmatic composer, Olivier Messiaen. UM Professor of Music Theory Andrew Mead discusses notable elements of Messiaen’s work in a pre-concert lecture.

Lecture by Arjia Rinpoche Tuesday, March 19, 5 pm BLESSING IN APSE, LECTURE TO FOLLOW IN HELMUT STERN AUDITORIUM

Arjia Rinpoche is the former abbot of one of the most important monasteries in Tibet and a frequent lecturer on Tibetan art. The lecture will follow a brief blessing ceremony in the UMMA Apse at 5 pm. This exhibition is part of the UM Collections Collaborations series, co-organized by and presented at UMMA and designed to showcase the renowned and diverse collections at the University of Michigan. The UM Collections Collaborations series is generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The SMTD@UMMA performance series is made possible in part by the Katherine Tuck Enrichment Fund.

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programs

HEATHER MCHUGH

ZELL DISTINGUISHED POET IN RESIDENCE Once in a while, you hear a good joke. Henny Youngman, whose one-liners made meat and bread of misunderstanding, comes to mind: A doctor gives a patient six months to live. The patient can’t pay his bill, so the doctor gives him six more months. In such a joke, our reverence has the rug pulled out from under it. What appears grave is only greedy; a non-sequitur dresses up as parable. Such sendups are also the stuff of Heather McHugh’s poems. “Language,” she says, “is a sort of organized belching or spitting or hiccupping…but we put a lot of stock in it.” Investigating that stock—the assumption that what we say matches what we mean—her poems share qualities with the best jokes. Exposed to McHugh’s piercing eye, worldly ideas can become literally otherworldly, as in Space Bar from Upgraded to Serious, her most recent collection:

sometimes an existential howl. And as she puts it in an essay on Beckett and Joyce, a pun’s ambiguity is existential: it concerns “…where a noun becomes a verb and vice versa, how parts of speech are separable or joinable, where a line becomes a sentence, where a life spills over, what its period or end-stop is […]” For this poet, as for a comic, a life expressed in language necessarily hovers between noun and verb, imagined and real, order and chaos. McHugh is the author of twelve books of poetry and translation and one of criticism. Among her numerous honors, she has received grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the NEA. She is Pollock Professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle and teaches in the MFA Program at Warren Wilson College.

Lined up behind the space bartender is the meaning of it all, the vessels marked with letters, numbers, signs. Beyond the flats

Leah Falk UM MFA ’12 and Zell postgraduate fellow in poetry

the monitor looms, for all the world like the world: images and motions, weeping women, men in hats. […]

Wednesday, January 23, 5 pm

BOOK SIGNING AND PUBLIC RECEPTION FORUM

ZELL DISTINGUISHED POET IN RESIDENCE POETRY READING

The poem’s absurdity—and humility—is built on what McHugh calls “the most important attribute of human sensibility: that it cannot know what’s most important.” Thus the list, that attempt at completeness: “for all the world/ like the world.”

Wednesday, January 23, 6 pm

McHugh is known for the wordplay in her poems, but her ability to locate the middle space of sound and meaning (“space bar,” e.g.) allows for something much more gymnastic. Puns and part-of-speech switches form the slapstick backbone of what’s

HELMUT STERN AUDITORIUM

APSE

LECTURE Thursday, January 24, 5:10 pm 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 http://www.lsa. umich.edu/english/grad/mfa/mfaeve.asp.

programs

UNDERSTANDING RACE

LSA THEME SEMESTER AND CAMPUS ENGAGEMENT This winter UMMA will be launching a suite of new projects in conjunction with the Winter 2013 LSA Theme Semester Understanding Race as part of the Museum’s ongoing efforts to engage students and faculty with UMMA’s world-class collection. Throughout the fall, David Choberka, the Mellon Academic Coordinator, and Anne Drozd, the Mellon Collections Assistant, conducted outreach across campus, informing UM instructors and researchers about the possibilities for conducting teaching and research with UMMA’s collections and exhibitions. Choberka has also developed new materials that highlight objects in the collection suitable for cross-disciplinary teaching. The first of these new teaching resources, Visualizing Translation, debuted in the fall in conjunction with the LSA Theme Semester on Translation. The purpose of these and other new resources such as faculty workshops is to provide tools for and promote use of the collections by faculty, graduate students, and other educators.

Ángela Pérez-Villa

UMMA DIALOGUE WITH MABEL WILSON

To prepare for this winter’s LSA Theme Semester Understanding Race, UM graduate student in history and women’s studies Ángela PérezVilla worked closely with UMMA Curator for Museum Teaching and Learning Pamela Reister as part of her summer 2012 internship at the Museum. Her full-time internship was supported by an Arts of Citizenship Graduate Fellowship. Pérez-Villa developed a dossier of teaching materials that instructors from a variety of programs can use to help students engage this semester’s challenging theme through visual culture. Her work investigates UMMA objects to illuminate the complexity of conceptions and representations of ideas about race, including presentation of self; the interconnected roles of gender, sexuality, and race; imagining community; and other themes. UMMA hopes that faculty and students will use this rich material to explore the goals and principles of the Understanding Race theme whether by using the online resources, the UMMA study rooms, or the galleries.

Thursday, March 21, 5:30 pm HELMUT STERN AUDITORIUM

UMMA welcomes Professor Mabel Wilson of Columbia University to discuss her book, Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums, with UM Professors Kevin Gaines (History and Department of Afroamerican and African Studies) and Magdalena Zaborowska (American Culture and DAAS). This UMMA Dialogue is offered in conjunction with the University of Michigan’s LS&A Winter 2013 Theme Semester— Understanding Race.

Another component of UMMA’s activities for the Understanding Race Theme Semester will come from our undergraduate volunteers. Building on the introduction last fall of the student blog, The Annex, a project of the Student Programming and Advisory Council and UMMA’s Education Department, Education Program Coordinator Lauren Rossi Harroun will be coordinating a series of blog commentaries by our student docents on the works of art in UMMA’s Understanding Race teaching dossier. The students’ blog entries will introduce a greater diversity of voices to the discussions. From increasing ways for undergraduates to be involved with their campus art museum to promoting creative uses of the Museum’s collection by university faculty and graduate students, UMMA continues to be a vital center of campus learning and community. This project is supported by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

winter 2013

umma happenings

Hundreds of contemporary art enthusiasts attended the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series presentation by the art collective YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES at the Michigan Theater in October. Below: The YHCHI installation ISN’T IT THE GREATEST IN THE WORLD? illuminates UMMA’s Irving Stenn, Jr. Family Gallery.

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New Media Gallery artist Jesper Just and his gallerist Elyse Goldberg visit with UMMA Director Joseph Rosa

Thousands of incoming UM students enjoy their first introduction to the arts on campus at Artscapade!, held annually at UMMA.

UMMA’s October 25 Director’s Circle dinner focused on the special exhibition Benjamin West: General Wolfe and the Art of Empire. Above, patrons enjoy the gallery. Below, UMMA Senior Curator of Western Art Carole McNamara discusses Benjamin West’s iconic canvas, The Death of General Wolfe (1776).

membership

ILLUMINATING THE MICHIGAN DIFFERENCE This spring UMMA will launch a biennial signature event to illuminate the important role that University of Michigan alumni art collectors and patrons have played in UMMA’s evolution and in the international arts landscape. Called UMMA GLOW, the event’s objectives are to celebrate the impact of the UM experience on shaping civic leaders by honoring an individual who epitomizes leadership, generosity, and passion for art and the University of Michigan; and to raise awareness of the Museum’s outstanding collection, exhibitions, and programmatic initiatives. Please join us on Thursday, April 11, 2013 for the inaugural UMMA GLOW, as the Museum honors one of UM’s great art ambassadors, Irving Stenn, Jr. (BA ’52, JD ’55). As many of you know, Irv Stenn is the rare individual who exemplifies grace, humility, enthusiasm, and big-heartedness. His involvement at UMMA has been central to our growth in recent years, particularly during our award-winning expansion and restoration project. Beyond Ann Arbor, Irv’s civic leadership in the arts is felt deeply in the Chicago community.

The University of Michigan has produced numerous distinguished alumni such as Irv who care deeply about the arts. It’s a wonderful rarity that speaks to “The Michigan Difference”—the unique legacy of industry and civic leaders whose roots were formed at Michigan. It seems only fitting, therefore, that UMMA pauses regularly to honor a UM alumnus or friend who is making a difference in the art world and in the community in which he or she lives. In addition to dinner, entertainment, and a short program, UMMA GLOW will also feature an appearance by renowned American painter Mel Bochner, with whom Irv has enjoyed a longstanding relationship. Mark your calendars now for UMMA GLOW! Invitations will be mailed in early February. For more information, please contact the UMMA Development Office at 734.764.1983 or umma.development@umich.edu.

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umma store

VISIT THE UMMA STORE

before or after exploring the Museumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fascinating global exhibitions this winter and browse our exciting new merchandise. Pick up a copy of the illuminating and beautifully illustrated catalogue that accompanies the current special exhibition El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa. Peruse our new selection of jewelry from the design studio Nervous System. These innovative pieces are created from computer generated designs and are produced using various materials, such as nylon, silicon, and stainless steel. Stop in and see them for yourself!

fall 2012

Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage

paid

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, Bloomfield Hills; 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, David Choberka, Lauren Rossi Harroun, Lon Horwedel, Stephanie Rieke Miller, Pamela Reister, Ruth Slavin, Leisa Thompson, Carrie Throm Editor: Stephanie Rieke Miller Designer: Susan E. Thompson

Admission to the Museum is always free. $5 suggested donation appreciated.

For up-to-date details on UMMA exhibitions and programs, visit umma.umich.edu or follow UMMA on Facebook or Twitter!

through january 13, 2013

Benjamin West: General Wolfe and the Art of Empire through 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 through march 31, 2013

Francis Alÿs: Guards february 2–april 28, 2013

El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa february 23–june 9, 2013

Buddhist Thangkas and Treasures: The Walter Koelz Collection, Museum of Anthropology january 19–june 16, 2013

Florencia Pita/FP mod