fall 2013
from the director his fall offers numerous opportunities to engage with UMMA’s recently stepped up twentieth- and twenty-first century global offerings. These exhibitions and events are designed to build on our collections’ strengths and to provide an entrée into the Museum for university students and other visitors who gravitate towards more current cultural production. As with our digital initiatives, the Museum, through all of its programmatic efforts, is committed to meeting our onsite and online audiences where they coalesce and in the process bring them along on an epic cultural journey. As I mentioned in the last UMMA Magazine, this fall sees the launch of our dedicated photography gallery on the second floor of the Maxine and Stuart Frankel and the Frankel Family Wing. We are thrilled to devote space to the Museum’s truly exceptional photography holdings—more than 3,000 works by some of the most renowned masters of the medium. Brett Weston Landscapes, which inaugurates the gallery, considers Weston’s highly attuned and structured visual aesthetic as it relates to the natural world. Two other exhibitions this season celebrate our collaborations with outstanding collections and institutions. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Curator of Media Arts Rudolf Frieling serves as our guest curator for this year’s New Media Gallery projects, bringing three exhibitions to the Museum consisting of time-based work primarily from the SFMOMA collections. And a major traveling exhibition, Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor, which comes to us from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation—explores the seminal Abstract Expressionist’s evolution into three-dimensional work and complements the important Gottlieb painting and works on paper in UMMA’s collection. In case you missed the news, UMMA was among the first university art museums to be invited to join the Google Art Project. In April we held a major event at the Museum
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announcing this exciting venture, which allows hundreds of distinguished international museums to increase access to their collections through more than 40,000 digital images and in the process foster cultural connections and conversations around visual art. Our curators chose more than 60 works of art by 37 artists from our renowned holdings to represent the Museum. I encourage you to visit the site and explore this towering online art experience for yourself—googleartproject.com. Finally, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you who participated in our first UMMA Glow event, which recognized longtime Museum supporter, Michigan man, and visionary art ambassador Irv Stenn, Jr. It was truly an evening to remember, and your enthusiastic support honors and sustains this great institution in more ways than I can express. I look forward to many more! Warmest regards,
UMMA News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Exhibitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Umma glow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 in focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Joseph Rosa Director
Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 umma happenings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Spotlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
UMMA’s 2013 season is supported by the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts.
umma Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Cover: Adolph Gottlieb, Untitled (Three Discs), 1968, maquette; acrylic on cardboard, 5 3/4 x 8 x 4 1/4 inches, ©Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, NY, NY 2
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umma news CAMPUS-WIDE EXHIBITION This fall, UMMA will join the U-M Institute for Humanities, the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design, and the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS) to present the work of rising young South African artist Mary Sibande. Through her work, Sibande constructs elaborate visual narratives to consider race, gender, and class in post-colonial South Africa. Rooted in her own family’s history of three generations of women as domestic servants, her larger-than-life figures clothed in yards of fabric confront the viewer with the stark limits of cultural heritage, as well as the possibility of transformation. Sibande’s Ann Arbor residency includes an original installation at the U-M Institute for the Humanities gallery, a Penny Stamps lecture, an open studio on North Campus, and exhibition of Sibande’s existing work at Gallery DAAS, the Slusser Gallery, and UMMA. Her work, titled The wait seems to go on forever, is on view in UMMA’s Commons area from September 14, 2013 through January 12, 2014.
DELACROIX PAINTING TRAVELS TO SANTA BARBARA AND BIRMINGHAM, AL One of nearly twenty works by French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix in UMMA’s collection, Lycurgus Consulting the Pythia will be a part of a special exhibition titled Delacroix and the Matter of Finish. The exhibition will be on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) in Santa Barbara, California from October 27, 2013 through January 26, 2014 and at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama from February 23 to May 18, 2014. Organized by SBMA Assistant Director and Chief Curator, Eik Kahng, the exhibition features approximately 35 paintings and showcases the surprising variety of painterly finish in the 19th-century French master’s practice, whose groundbreaking Romanticism is normally associated with a jewel-like palette and loose, sketchy brushwork. It is the first presentation to dramatize the clear distinction between Delacroix’s hand and that of his best-known students.
UMMA’S 2013-14 MELLON FELLOW APPOINTED Antje Gamble was selected as this year’s Andrew W. Mellon UMMA-History of Art Curatorial Fellow, a position she will hold for the 2013–14 academic year. Gamble is a PhD candidate in History of Art and is writing a dissertation titled Defining Terms for a National and International Modernism in Italian Sculpture from 1939–1959. Before coming to Michigan, Gamble earned her Master of Arts in Modern History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While at UMMA, Gamble will work on a number of curatorial projects related to her interests in modern art and architecture.
Save the date UMMA AFTER HOURS October 18 2013 Lead sponsor
Mary Sibande, The wait seems to go on forever, 2009. Digital print, 90 x 60 cm (edition of 10). Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg, South Africa fall 2013
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exhibitions
a. alfred taubman gallery i | September 21, 2013 – January 5, 2014
Adolph Gottlieb Sculptor One of the founding members of the Abstract Expressionists, Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974) was an important presence in the artistic life of New York from the 1930s until his death. Artists in the United States working between the two World Wars found a striking variety of abstract approaches by both American painters as well as European artists whose work could be seen in the Museum of Modern Art and in a few commercial galleries in New York. This rich fermentation underpins the emergence of the New York School of painting in which artists created works that combine abstraction with a highly personal sensibility. By 1941, Gottlieb’s own work had evolved into his enigmatic Pictographs, paintings that employ a visual language of symbols that are at once a personal construct and an evocation of an ancient and universal language of symbols. In a letter of June 1943 to the New York Times, Gottlieb and fellow painter Mark Rothko wrote about the new direction in painting, ‘We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.’ 4
Many of the tenets we associate with Abstract Expressionism are at the core of this revealing declaration: that which appears simple is not; the visual imperative privileges a flat and assertive presence; traditional “illusion”—of space, form, and perspective, are false and illusory; truth can be found in the integrity of the painted surface.
For Gottlieb, the focused distillation of simple geometric shapes continued in his work from the 1940s through the end of his career in 1974. In 1967, Gottlieb abruptly shifted his interest to sculpture and began to explore the simple and often monumental symbols that had preoccupied him in steel, bronze, aluminum and other materials. The elements of his painting, that had emphasized the picture plane, now began to occupy three dimensions. The exhibition, Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor brings together both sculptures from the roughly eighteen months that he worked in that medium, and paintings and monotypes of 1964–1974. In addition to finished sculptures and related paintings, the exhibition allows an examination of Gottlieb’s process in creating his sculptural work by also including maquettes and templates used in the fabrication of the final work. umma.umich.edu
The strength of Gottlieb’s work, as well as its subtlety and beauty, is revealed as the artist probes the meaning of his forms, playing with the tensions inherent in portraying his iconic two-dimensional symbols in a three-dimensional framework; also critical is how that exploration in turn informs the paintings. As the artist himself indicated, his sculptures became “a vehicle for the expression of feeling…I feel a necessity for making the particular colors that I use, or the particular shapes, carry the burden of everything that I want to express, and all has to be concentrated within these few elements.” Carole McNamara Senior Curator of Western Art The exhibition Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor was organized by the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, New York. Lead support for UMMA’s installation is provided by the Richard and Rosann Noel Endowment Fund, the University of Michigan Health System, and the University of Michigan Credit Union.
Opposite Adolph Gottlieb, Arabesque, 1968, painted steel, 26 3/4 x 38 x 12 1/4 inches, ©Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation/ Licensed by VAGA, NY, NY fall 2013
Adolph Gottlieb, Two Bars, 1968, oil and acrylic on linen, 72 x 48 inches, ©Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation/ Licensed by VAGA, NY, NY
Exhibition Related Programs Friday, September 27, 5:30 pm Lecture by Sanford Hirsch, Executive Director, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Tuesday, October 1 and Friday, November 1, 7 pm This fall the SMTD@UMMA concert series delves into Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor. Tuesday, October 10, 7 pm Christopher Lees’ Contemporary Directions Ensemble with visiting composer Steven Mackey. Friday, November 1, 8 pm Students and faculty perform works by Virgil Thomson, Aaron Copland, and others composed for fellow members of their circle.
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Photography Gallery | August 17–December 1, 2013
Brett Weston, Landscape, Germany, from the Brett Weston Europe portfolio, 1960, gelatin silver print, UMMA, Museum purchase, 1978/2.34
Brett Weston, Untitled (Northern California Hills and Clouds), 1954, Gelatin silver print, UMMA, Gift of Margaret and Howard Bond 2011/2.153 6
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Umma inaugurates new photography gallery with brett Weston landscapes As part of UMMA’s phased efforts to incorporate more twentieth-and twenty-first century art and culture throughout the building, the Museum inaugurated in August its new Photography Gallery on the second floor of the Maxine and Stuart Frankel and the Frankel Family Wing. This flexible and accessible space, sited adjacent to the South and Southeast Asian Gallery, allows the Museum to regularly showcase its own distinguished and widely admired photography collection—more than 3,000 images that date from the medium’s historic origins to innovative contemporary work and represent a broad range of techniques—through special exhibitions and thematic installations. UMMA Senior Curator of Western Art, Carole McNamara, chose the ravishing imagery of Brett Weston, one of the most iconic photographers of the twentieth century, to launch the Photography Gallery exhibition program. Weston (1911–1993), the son of photography pioneer Edward Weston (1886–1958), developed his own strong visual aesthetic that combined exploiting the tensions between positive and negative space, the influences of painters such as Diego Rivera and Georgia O’Keeffe, and a profound interest in the abstraction of landscape. Weston was also one of the celebrated Group f/64 photographers—which included Edward Weston and Ansel Adams among others—who rejected soft-focus, poetic photographs that were heavily manipulated in the dark room. Like them he embraced natural light, large-format cameras, and the use of aperture f/64 to achieve the greatest depth of field and an overall sharp focus. The tectonic clarity and purity of his photographs, however, is distinctive even among the work of his peers. fall 2013
Following Brett Weston Landscapes, U-M Professor Larry Cressman of the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design, Residential College, and Literature, Science, and the Arts will offer his own take on the Museum’s photography holdings in Flip Your Field: Photography from the Collection (December 7, 2013–March 16, 2014). This is the second exhibition in UMMA’s Flip Your Field series, each curated by noted University of Michigan faculty members. This series asks these guest curators to consider artwork outside their field of specialization from UMMA’s renowned collections to challenge their own thinking as well as that of UMMA’s audiences. Professor Cressman will present two discrete displays: a salon-style arrangement of straightforward images of trees by artists throughout the history of photography, which comments on the act of collecting; and photographs manipulated to reflect each artist’s creative vision–presented individually in order to absorb the message and intent. Rounding out the lively and diverse first season in the UMMA Photography Gallery will be An Eye on the Empire: Photographs of Colonial India and Egypt (March 22 – June 29, 2014). Offered in conjunction with the UM 2014 winter theme semester India and the World, and drawn from UMMA’s collections, the exhibition explores how nineteenth-century photographers captured views of important monuments in the storied British colonial territories as souvenirs for Europeans traveling to India and Egypt during the rise of the modern tourism industry. Lead support for Brett Weston Landscapes is provided by the Lois Zenkel Photographic Exhibitions Fund. The UMMA Flip Your Field series is generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Related Exhibition The Legacy of the Land Through Art will be on view at the University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Gardens from October 12–November 10, 2013, and at Sandhill Crane Vineyards from February 1–March 9, 2014. The exhibition, organized by the Legacy Land Conservancy in Washtenaw County, will present forty-three mixed media works that explore and celebrate the benefits that a connection to land brings to human beings.
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new media gallery and Apse | August 17, 2013–January 5, 2014
Performing Still Images David Claerbout and Matthew Buckingham UMMA’s third year of offering dynamic and thought provoking contemporary video, film, and time-based projects that complement its collections and extend its global contemporary reach will be presented not only in the Museum’s dedicated New Media Gallery but will also animate unexpected spaces throughout the building, including the Apse. Guest curated by Rudolf Frieling, the three exhibitions that make up the 2013–14 New Media Gallery season address performativity in contemporary art through time-based approaches by some of the most innovative artists working in the medium today. As Curator of Media Arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Frieling has organized numerous exhibitions, including The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now (2008) and Stage Presence: Theatricality in Art and Media (2012). Prior to his arrival at SFMOMA in 2006, Frieling held curatorial positions at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany. All but one of the works in this year’s new media installations are generous loans from SFMOMA.
Exhibition Related Programs Seeing is Believing / A Consideration of Image, Memory, and the Velocity of Time Wednesday, October 23 at 5:30 pm U-M Institute for the Humanities Arts Curator Amanda Krugliak, with Stamps School of Art and Design Witt Visiting Artist in residence Jennifer Karady, Detroit artist Scott Hocking, and Stamps School of Art and Design faculty artist Jessica Frelinghuysen explore the idea of performativity in contemporary art as it relates to UMMA’s New Media Gallery Season 3 exhibitions.
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The first exhibition of the series, Performing Still Images: David Claerbout and Matthew Buckingham, explores two distinct ways of translating the two-dimensional medium of photography into an immersive experience in space and time. Both artists use projected images. In Image of Absalon To Be Projected Until It Vanishes (2001), Buckingham, an American artist, displays an interest in social memory and place, while Belgian artist Claerbout’s The American Room (2009–10) focuses on suspended narratives and the role of architecture. The second installation of the year, Affecting the Audience: Anthony Discenza, Aurélian Froment, and Dora Garcia, on view January 11 through April 27, 2014, emphasizes how the construction of images or effects impacts the viewer directly or psychologically. The concluding exhibition of the series, Appropriation and Collaboration: Harrell Fletcher, Miranda July, and Christian Marclay, which runs from May 3 through July 20, 2014, includes the powerful collaborative online project Learning to Love You More (2002–09) by Fletcher and July, as well as Marclay’s iconic video Telephones (1995). “Taken together, these three exhibitions constitute a multiplicity of perspectives on what it means to construct a time-based experience of art,” said Frieling. “They address the way that the production of contemporary art exceeds the boundaries of genres and institutional frameworks, offering opportunities to review art histories as much as they produce new narratives.” Lead support for the 2013–14 New Media Gallery season is provided by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost and the Herbert W. and Susan L. Johe Endowment.
Top David Claerbout, The American Room (still), 2009-10; Single-channel HD video projection, Dolby Digital-encoded surround sound, 5.1 channels, 24:29 min., dimensions variable; Collection SFMOMA; photo: Ian Reeves Photography, courtesy SFMOMA; © 2013 David Claerbout
Bottom Matthew Buckingham, Image of Absalon To Be Projected Until It Vanishes (detail), 2001; Continuous color 35mm slide projection and framed text; dimensions variable; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art Fund purchase, 2009.139; © 2013 Matthew Buckingham umma.umich.edu
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umma glow
On Thursday, April 11, the University of Michigan Museum of Art held its inaugural UMMA GLOW, a biennial signature event to illuminate the important role that University of Michigan alumni art collectors and patrons have played in the international arts landscape and in UMMA’s evolution.
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The event’s objectives were: (1) to celebrate the impact of the U-M experience on shaping civic leaders by honoring an individual who epitomizes leadership, generosity, and passion for art and the University of Michigan; and (2) to raise awareness of the Museum’s outstanding collection, exhibitions, and programmatic initiatives. The honoree for UMMA GLOW 2013 was Irving Stenn, Jr. (BA ’52, JD ’55), an art collector who is deeply involved with the leading art institutions in his hometown of Chicago and with UMMA. Other noted participants in the program were U-M President Mary Sue Coleman; American conceptual artist Mel Bochner; Maxine Frankel (Member, U-M President’s Advisory Council and UMMA National Leadership Council); Michael Darling (James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago); Mark Pascale (Curator, Department of Prints and Drawings, Art Institute of Chicago); Kathryn Schoff (Irving Stenn, Jr. Scholar, U-M Law School); and Steven Stark Lowenstein (Senior Rabbi, Am Shalom, Glencoe, Illinois). Over 250 guests took part in the auspicious celebration. The marvelous mix of Irv’s friends and family, University executive leadership and volunteers, UMMA supporters, Michigan alumni, art patrons, and community advocates made for an exciting moment in UMMA’s history. Proceeds from the event will support future UMMA exhibitions and educational programs.
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Joseph Rosa, Mel Bochner, Irving Stenn, Jr., Abe Paley, and Rabbi Steven Lowenstein Stuart Frankel and Penny Stamps
Richard Rogel, Regent Shauna Ryder Diggs, and Melvin Lester
umma.umich.edu
glow
University of Michigan Friars
Joseph Rosa at podium Irving Stenn, Jr., Maxine Frankel, and Stuart Frankel
back: Sarah Stenn Grabb, Rachel Paley, Irving Stenn, Jr., and David Stenn; front: Judith Racht and Abe Paley
Robert Fiske, Jerry May, and Mike Jandernoa
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Michigan Marching Band warms up outside the Maxine and Stuart Frankel and Frankel Family Wing
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umma glow
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UMMA GLOW Host Committee
Roe Stamps, U-M President Mary Sue Coleman, Susan Meister, and John Evans
Jan Brandon, David Brandon, and Prue Rosenthal
Lisa Applebaum and George Haddad Bruce Bachmann Kristine Bell Barbara and Peter Benedek Jan and David Brandon Michele Oka Doner and Frederick Doner Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Andrew Fabricant and Laura Paulson Catherine and Nathan Forbes Maxine and Stuart Frankel Helyn Goldenberg and Michael Alper Roger and Sandra Goldman Paul and De Gray Richard and Mary Gray Sandy and Louis Grotta J. Ira and Nicki Harris James and Lynn Harris Jim and Lisa Harris Alan Hergott and Curt Shepard Deborah Karmin Frank and Patty Kolodny Liz and Eric Lefkofsky Gene and Elise Mesh Jerome and Linda Meyer Kara and Steve Ross David “Buzz” Ruttenberg Roger Ruttenberg and Gwen Callans Arlene Semel Maxine and Larry Snider Gerri and Andrew Sommers Julie Stark and Rabbi Steven Stark Lowenstein Ilene and Marc Steglitz John Stiefel and Lesa Ukman Marjorie Susman Judith and Alfred Taubman Trish Turner-McConnell and Tom McConnell Helen and Sam Zell David Zwirner
Table Sponsors Lisa Applebaum and George Haddad Barbara and Peter Benedek Judith and Stephen Dobson Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Catherine and Nathan Forbes Maxine and Stuart Frankel J. Ira and Nicki Harris Laurie and Rich Prager Prue and Ami Rosenthal Kara and Steve Ross Judith and Alfred Taubman University of Michigan Office of University Development Cooney and Conway Domino’s Pizza Macy’s Briarwood University of Michigan College of Engineering
Planning Committee Laurie Prager, Co-Chair Prue Rosenthal, Co-Chair Ines Fitzpatrick Carolyn Lichter Cheryl MacKrell Elaine Pitt Jackie Sasaki
Donors of $1,000 or more Helen and Sam Zell Jan and David Brandon Buzz Ruttenberg Keith Rudman Rabbi Steven Stark Lowenstein Georgia and Donald Boerma Jim and Lisa Harris Liz and Eric Lefkofsky Richard and Rosann Noel Stuart and Naomi Paley Pot & Box Floral Design, Lisa Waud Gerri and Andrew Sommers Susu Sosnick John Stiefel
Mel Bochner at podium
Maxine Frankel, Dede Feldman, and Cathy Forbes
Lisa Applebaum, George Haddad, and Pamela Applebaum
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umma glow
New Acquisition
Mel Bochner emerged forty-five years ago as a seminal figure in conceptual art alongside artists such as Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Smithson. Since then he has continued his investigations into systems—examining the codes and conventions of color, language, measurement, and even the medium of art itself, be it painting, photography, installation, or drawing. Bochner’s work echoes the larger concerns of conceptual art, a movement that engaged in an intellectual deconstruction of thought and being through art, challenging historical notions of beauty and artistry in the process. Bochner contributed not only as an artist, but as a writer and curator, using critical language and the medium of the publication, alongside the medium of the exhibition, to further his conceptual inquiries. From the beginning, Bochner’s works featured stripped-down, matter-of-fact aesthetics from photocopies and simple pencil drawings on graph paper to empty rooms with black tape and rub-on numbers marking their measurements and boundaries. Using a consistent aesthetic marked by a minimal conveyance of information, Bochner achieved a balance between the perceptual and the conceptual, to keep the viewer in a space between thinking and seeing without falling too deeply into either.
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Bochner has worked with language in particular across his career. His interest in language is not just about words and their meaning, but also about their visual dimension—letters and words as signs and symbols, to be read but also to be looked at. Early drawings strung together chains of words laid on the page to mimic the aesthetics of other conceptualists, repetition in the grouping of like workds, whose overlapping and subjective meanings point to the absurdity of language as an objective system. More recently Bochner’s articulations on this theme have played out in colorful large-scale paintings, known as the thesaurus paintings. Groups of like words fill the canvas in a grid, each letter over painted grounds, with works hyphenated as they reach the canvas’s edge to further complicate their legibility. Bochner uses color and composition to confuse the “reading: of the painting and the “reading” of the text.
Mel Bochner, Blah, Blah, Blah, 2011, monoprint with collage, engraving and embossment on hand-dyed Twinrocker handmade paper, UMMA, Promised gift of Irving Stenn Jr., 2013/1.286 14
The work entering UMMA’s collection, Blah, Blah, Blah, is based on several related paintings, each of which repeats that single word across the canvas, echoing the formal strategies of the thesaurus paintings. With contemplation, the work’s tone ranges from matter-of-fact to sarcastic to absurd. The word itself is a meaningless surrogate that colloquially stands in for other words. The work highlights how meaning is both emptied and exaggerated in its aggregation, and how text itself represents both a concretization and an abstraction of the language it depicts. Elizabeth Thomas Guest Currator umma.umich.edu
Recent Acquisitions
Actor Prints from the Stuart Katz Collection
From left to right: Natori Shunsen, Actor Sawamura Gennosuke IV as Niki Danjô Hiding under the Floor, 1925-29, Color woodblock print on paper, UMMA, Gift of Stuart Katz, 2008/2.8 Toyohara Kunichika, Actor Nakamura Shikan IV as Kato Kiyomasa. 1873, Color woodblock print on paper, UMMA, Gift of Stuart Katz, 2009/2.21 Utagawa Hirosada, Actor Kataoka Ichizô as Sumo Wrestler Onigatake, 1848, Color woodblock print on paper, UMMA, Gift of Stuart Katz, 2006/2.69 fall 2013
in focus
Kabuki, a popular type of Japanese theater, originated in the early seventeenth century, developing into a sophisticated, highly choreographed form in subsequent centuries. Still wildly popular in contemporary Japan, kabuki is characterized by all-male casts (female roles are played by specially trained male actors), ostentatious costumes and makeup, and stylized movements. Star kabuki actors were favorite subjects of ukiyo-e (literally: pictures of the floating world), a genre of Japanese prints and paintings depicting worldly pleasures, as seen in these three images created between the end of the Edo Period (1615–1867) and the beginning of the Showa Period (1926–1989).
sumo wrestler. The depiction of Actor Sawamura Gennosuke IV as Niki Danjô Hiding under the Floor by Natori Shunsen represents a new trend of the actor print genre in the early twentieth century, in which the facial expression of the actor appears more naturalistic.
In these prints, the artists portray close-up views of the actors’ faces in their memorable kabuki roles—a format popular since the late eighteenth century. They capture the heightened moments in climactic scenes called mie, when an actor’s body and facial expressions move incrementally and pose for a few seconds at a time; the position of the eyes can be as powerful as the movement of the body. In two of the prints, actors Nakamura Shikan IV and Kataoka Ichizô I fix their eyes to convey the prowess of their characters—one as a fearless warrior and the other as a strong
Natsu Oyobe Associate Curator of Asian Art
Stuart Katz, who earned his PhD degree in social psychology from the University of Michigan in 1971, recently retired from teaching at the University of Georgia. Dr. Katz began collecting Japanese prints, as well as paintings from Japan, China, and Korea, in the 1970s. Since his first generous gift to UMMA in 2006 and over many years, Dr. Katz has helped to expand the Museum’s strong Japanese holdings.
These recent acquisitions 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 October 8, 2013 through January 5, 2014.
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programs
Making the CourseCollection Connection University Engagement
El Anatsui visits with UMMA docents
In 2012 and 2013, UMMA deepened its existing collaborations with the University’s academic community, establishing numerous new points of engagement that have already fostered creative new uses of the collection and special exhibitions. These successes are made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. New Mellon-funded staff Anne Drozd, Collections Assistant, and David Choberka, Academic Coordinator, conducted outreach to the University’s instructors and assisted them in specialized searches for works in the collection to enhance their course curricula. For 2012 and 2013 the total number of University courses making visits to the museum increased from 67 to 125, and the number of students from 2,332 to 3,903. Behind these numbers are some exciting stories of collaboration that indicate the ways in which UMMA is becoming a dynamic resource for learning across campus. One particularly productive point of contact has been the integration of visits to UMMA into core humanities classes, such as History of Art 100 – Introduction to Art, and History 202 – Doing History. History of Art 100 is a trailblazing new approach to the introductory survey course in art history that discards the Eurocentrism and emphasis on memorization of works and artists of the conventional introductory course and instead looks across geography and time at the myriad forms of visual representation in which humans engage. Celeste Brusati, Professor in the History of Art and Women’s Studies and one of the faculty members who has worked over the past several years to develop this new class, says that UMMA’s broad collections are an “excellent resource for this wide-ranging class.” History 202 is a new course required for all History majors. It introduces students to the practice of historians, while integrating engagement with the collections of several cultural institutions. Matthew Lassiter, Professor of History and Urban and Regional Planning, wanted to identify a specific work in UMMA’s galleries that students could consider both in terms 16
of the historical story that it tells and in terms of the history of the object itself, including debates about how to display and explain it to museum audiences. Choberka guided them to Charles Wimar’s Attack on an Emigrant Train (1856), a controversial image of Native Americans attacking European settlers that hangs in the UMMA Apse, in part because UMMA’s education staff had produced an educational display for the painting that spoke directly to the kinds of historical questions to which History 202 introduces students. According to Lassiter, being at UMMA fostered “a very engaged and useful discussion about the role and responsibility of museums in the presentation of historical documents and the interpretation of public history—allowing students to see the rich and controversial background of an object that they may have just considered a dated piece of art if they had even ventured into the art museum at all.” These are just two examples from the first year of outreach efforts by UMMA’s new Mellon-supported staff. Starting last fall, Choberka and Drozd’s visits to numerous departments across campus, as well as two sessions that they offered onsite to interested instructors from any department, led to increased use of UMMA by diverse programs from language and area studies to historical, sociological, and cultural studies programs such as Judaic Studies and the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, as well as completely new collaborations with unorthodox partners such as the School of Kinesiology. Choberka describes assisting instructors with collections searches and curriculum planning as one of the most rewarding aspects of the work he does at UMMA. University instructors are often surprised to find that UMMA has both excellent works that are highly relevant to their classes and staff to assist them to creatively integrate visual culture into their curricula. At the same time, the collaboration brings to light neglected areas of UMMA’s large collection that are vastly deserving of more attention. Martha Jones, Professor of History and Afroamerican umma.umich.edu
Museum visits by university classes nearly doubled in the 2012-2013 academic year. Here, Andrew Gurstelle, a graduate student in Anthropology, conducts a tour for Professor Naomi Andre’s class, Arts in Cultural Contexts.
Charles Ferdinand Wimar The Attack on an Emigrant Train, 1856 Oil on canvas Bequest of Henry C. Lewis
and African Studies and Affiliated LSA Faculty in the School of Law, worked with Choberka to find objects for her course in African-American Women’s History. According to Jones, “The staff introduced us to materials that were new, provocative, and greatly expanded the learning experience,” and the collaboration successfully “brought together my insights as a historian and the staff expertise on the collection.” Work by UMMA Education staff, most notably Curator for Museum Teaching and Learning, Pam Reister, and by the Mellon Academic Coordinator, David Choberka, to identify and interpret works for the university’s LSA Theme Semesters have similarly provided numerous instructors with the means to engage this past year’s themes. Ángela Pérez-Villa
Hendrick Goltzius The Farnese Hercules, ca. 1592 Engraving Museum Purchase made possible by the Friends of the Museum of Art
fall 2013
Students from Professor Melissa Gross’s anatomy class in the School of Kinesiology closely examined works like this in UMMA’s study cases.
Anne Drozd, the Mellon Collections Assistant, has been pivotal in facilitating access to these objects in the collection that otherwise reside in storage. Throughout the year she coordinated the use of the Ernestine and Herbert Ruben Study Center for Works on Paper and the Object Study Classroom by university instructors, ensuring that increased numbers of undergraduate students obtain an intimate learning experience with art as part of their U-M education. She also facilitated increased curricular use of the Study Cases on the lower floor of UMMA’s Frankel wing. One of the most interesting points of collaboration that arose from Choberka and Drozd’s outreach efforts was the use of the Study Cases by Melissa Gross, Professor of Movement Science in the School of Kinesiology, for her course on musculoskeletal anatomy. She worked with Choberka to identify works in UMMA’s collection that focused on depictions of human anatomy and assigned her students the task of assessing the realism of the anatomical representations. The selection of works on paper from the Renaissance and early modern period in Europe provided an excellent threeweek display in the Study Cases, and the scene of Kinesiology students closely examining and discussing art objects provided fine evidence of the range of UMMA’s increasing engagement with university learning. 17
programs
UMMA Docents Engaging the Community
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umma.umich.edu
Volunteerism in the U.S. has changed dramatically in the last ten years: recruits are increasingly retired professionals who bring business acumen, professional networks, and significant ambition to their service. Unlike some traditional volunteer positions, however, UMMA docents have always been highly professional and motivated as the founders created principles and guidelines with high standards for membership, training and touring. In the nearly 40 years since the genesis of this group, its average size has grown from 31 to 88 people— including eight from the original class who still participate at a social level. Last year docents gave tours to over 7,000 people, representing an exciting and varied demographic.
really deep understanding of the content and the curriculum.” UMMA docents have become an integral part of AAPS as they meet about 1,600 AAPS students each year. Across a wide variety of topics and participants, docents address their mission to “engage the community and each other in the exploration and enjoyment of art, stimulating new ways of seeing and fostering new possibilities for understanding the world.” Recent activities have focused on envisioning future service, including introducing iPads into gallery teaching, preparing this venerable program for the future.
As one would expect in a college town, some docents are attracted by the opportunity to exercise their academic interests, doing substantial research on UMMA’s rich schedule of temporary exhibitions to prepare tours for an adult audience. These docents offer public weekend and special group tours that they design, prepare, and deliver to approximately 2,500 people a year. Adult tour docents say that they are drawn to this type of tour because they especially appreciate and enjoy learning from each other—intelligent, hard-working docents devoted to sharing their love and understanding of art with each other and with the community. Museum teaching is a two-way street and these volunteers also learn from their audience. Docent Nancy Goldstein says, “Touring gives me a chance to present information and speculation that spark thinking and conversation. I like that!” She notes that her audiences range from longtime UMMA devotees to first-time visitors and that in the course of a tour they will have “discovered new information, insights, surprises, and maybe even shared some laughs.” “Museums respond to important human needs,” observes Ruth Slavin, Deputy Director, Education and Curatorial. The Meet Me at UMMA program does just that, reaching out to people with memory loss. Guided by Slavin, eight docents have done extensive self-education about Alzheimer’s and other memory loss conditions and the needs of this population. The Meet Me at UMMA docents devise engaging, multi-sensory experiences for over 200 people a year. School children are still central to the mission of the docent program, however, even youth tours have diversified. Some are for after-school programs such as Girl and Boy Scouts, and others are arranged by UM student volunteers such as K-grams, a docent favorite in recent years. K-grams is short for ‘Kids Programs,’ and pairs UM and elementary school students through a suite of mentoring activities. Class visits have also taken on a new character, responding to the need to teach to multiple intelligences and add content from other disciplines. UMMA’s curricular tours integrate science and social studies content into museum field trips. Robin Bailey, Ann Arbor Public Schools (AAPS) Fine Arts Coordinator, explains that this approach presents “…multiple ways for students to get a fall 2013
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umma happenings
UMMA’s annual Student Late Night had the highest attendance to date, with more than 1,200 students gathering to enjoy music and dance performances, and to participate in hands-on artmaking activities, a scavenger hunt, gallery tours, and more.
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umma.umich.edu
Above: As a component of LSA’s Understanding Race Theme Semester, UMMA welcomed Cuban artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons for a special dialogue with Larry La Fountain-Stokes, UM Associate Professor of American Culture, Romance Languages, and Women’s Studies.
Above: To launch UMMA’s involvement with the Google Art Project, a special press conference was held in April 2013. Congressman John Dingell, Director of Google Ann Arbor Michael Miller, and UMMA’s Director Joseph Rosa all spoke about the importance of the partnership and their dedication to making the arts accessible.
The 2013 Doris Sloan Memorial Program took place on May 17, and included a dialogue surrounding UMMA’s Isamu Noguchi and Qi Baishi: Beijing 1930 exhibition, followed by a reception and public viewing.
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spotlight
New Bequest Intention To Establish Craft Exhibition Endowment Faith and Stephen Brown of Tiburon, California are deeply passionate about the University of Michigan. The couple’s experiences while students at Michigan—where Faith earned a degree in English and Stephen earned degrees in English and law—kindled many lifelong interests. The Browns recently made a generous provision in their estate plan to establish the Faith and Stephen Brown Craft Exhibition Fund at UMMA, which will fund periodic exhibitions in the areas of 20th and 21st century textiles, glass, ceramics, jewelry, woodwork, and related crafts. UMMA has already benefitted greatly from Faith and Stephen’s love of art. In 2000 the Museum showcased highlights from their spectacular quilt collection in an exhibition entitled Amish Quilts 1880 to 1940 from the Collection of Faith and Stephen Brown. The exhibition toured to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the Spencer Museum of Art at Kansas University. There also have been major exhibits of the Browns’ antique Amish quilts at the Denver Art Museum and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The Browns first discovered antique Amish quilts at the Smithsonian in the mid-1970s. They were attracted by the graphic power, intense colors, and creative impulses evident in the quilts. Soon thereafter, upon spying a bold Amish quilt 22
in a Chicago storefront, they made their first purchase, and their quest for quilts had begun. Since that time, their collecting interests have expanded into glass and ceramic works. “We hope this fund will allow generations of UMMA visitors to enjoy the kinds of art that have brought us so much pleasure,” said Faith and Stephen Brown in speaking of their bequest. “We feel that UMMA is a perfect venue to showcase the extraordinary talents of artists working in textiles, glass, ceramics, wood and other media.” The Browns’ contribution to the future vitality of Michigan extends well beyond UMMA’s doors. Faith and Stephen have also made estate provisions that will fund professorships in urology, law, and American literature, as well as merit scholarships in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts and the Law School. The Browns’ legacy will have a demonstrable impact on future generations of Michigan students and faculty. “The Museum of Art is immeasurably grateful to Faith and Stephen for this remarkable testamentary gift,” commented Joseph Rosa, Director of UMMA. “Their commitment to exhibition support for craft artwork will greatly enhance the Museum’s offerings in this important genre of visual art. Moreover, the Browns’ wide-ranging support for multiple areas of the University speaks volumes about their desire to enrich the holistic student experience at Michigan.” umma.umich.edu
umma store
the UMMA Store is Online! Fall brings many exciting changes at UMMA, including the launch of the new online UMMA Store–featuring a selection of locally handcrafted items, one-of-a-kind pieces, and exhibition publications. Visit store.umma.umich.edu to place an order today! All proceeds from purchases at the UMMA Store directly benefit the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and Museum members can now enjoy a year-round discount in-store and online.
Featured item: One-of-a-kind, beautiful hand thrown vase airbrushed with layers of luminescent color by Michigan artist TJ Krueger. fall 2013
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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
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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: Mark J. Bernstein, Ann Arbor; Julia Donovan Darlow, Ann Arbor; Laurence B. Deitch, Bloomfield Hills; Shauna Ryder Diggs, Grosse Pointe; Denise Ilitch, Bingham Farms; Andrea Fischer Newman, Ann Arbor; Andrew C. Richner, Grosse Pointe Park; Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor; Mary Sue Coleman, ex officio Contributors: Lisa Borgsdorf, David Choberka, Sydney Hawkins, Courtney Lacy, Carole McNamara, Natsu Oyobe, Stephanie Rieke Miller, Pamela Reister, Ruth Slavin, Leisa Thompson Editor: Sydney Hawkins Designer: Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo
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 November 10, 2013
N H D M / Nahyun Hwang + David Eugin Moon through December 1, 2013
Brett Weston Landscapes through January 5, 2014
Performing Still Images: David Claerbout and Matthew Buckingham September 21, 2013 – January 5, 2014
Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor November 30, 2013 – April 13, 2014
Islamic Art from the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology December 7, 2013 – March 16, 2014
Flip Your Field: Photography from the Collection December 21, 2013 – April 13, 2014
Three Michigan Architects: Part 1—David Osler