Rodney McMillian @ The Contemporary Austin - Against a Civic Death

Rodney McMillian: Against a Civic Death
The Contemporary Austin
February 1 – August 26, 2018

Rodney McMillian  

Untitled (neighbors) (still), 2017 

Forthcoming video work. Commissioned by The Contemporary Austin with funds provided by the Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize. 

Artwork © Rodney McMillian. Image courtesy the artist; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; and Maccarone, Los Angeles/New York.

The Contemporary Austin presents a solo exhibition of newly commissioned and recent works by the Los Angeles–based artist Rodney McMillian (American, born 1969 in Columbia, South Carolina). On view at the museum’s downtown location on Congress Avenue, Rodney McMillian: Against a Civic Death is an immersive installation that fills the entire exhibition space and incorporates paintings, sculptural installations, video, and sound pieces.

Rodney McMillian was selected by an independent Advisory Committee of six renowned curators from across the U.S. to be the inaugural winner of The Contemporary Austin’s Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize, which awarded McMillian a $100,000 unrestricted prize along with a solo exhibition and a scholarly catalogue. The catalogue features the new work created for the exhibition in Austin, along with a history of McMillian’s performance-based works from throughout his career.

“The Contemporary Austin is built on collaboration, and the Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize contributes to this, offering an artist the latitude to expand their practice or even experiment with new formats,” said Louis Grachos, the Ernest and Sarah Butler Executive Director and CEO of The Contemporary. “As the inaugural awardee, Rodney has taken advantage of this opportunity to create new work and to rethink his past work in a new context. We are proud to present Rodney’s exhibition and to create a space that can contribute to a civil discourse on the history and ideas that he thoughtfully explores in these powerful and engaging installations.”

Adds Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs Heather Pesanti, “This exhibition expands Rodney’s inquiries into painting, installation, and performance to express a nuanced and poetic social critique of American history and the ideologies that have driven this historical narrative. The work and presentation will challenge the viewer to confront difficult and poignant issues, offering a courageous and progressive exhibition that allows for open-ended resolution.”

Rodney McMillian 

pod: frequencies to a manifestationing (detail), 2016 

Vases, wood shelves, spray paint, fabric, chicken wire, PA system, and sound installation. Dimensions variable. 

Artwork © Rodney McMillian. Image courtesy the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. 

Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer

Rodney McMillian 

pod: frequencies to a manifestationing (detail), 2016 

Vases, wood shelves, spray paint, fabric, chicken wire, PA system, and sound installation. Dimensions variable. 

Artwork © Rodney McMillian. Image courtesy the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. 

Photograph by Robert Wedemeyer.

When visitors enter The Contemporary Austin’s Jones Center building, they encounter an exhibition that is divided into two distinct but interrelated sections, visually delineated by the colors white and black, referring to the uneasy coexistence of white supremacism and progressive politics throughout modern American history.

The ground floor is dominated by a large-scale white vinyl painting depicting the facade of the United States White House; its columns and exterior outlines are rendered in a simple graphic style. Hand-stitched with thread in shades of gray and black and hung from the ceiling, the white form drapes to the floor in contrast to the austerity, stability, and power that the neoclassical facade of the Presidential residence was intended to evoke.

Pulling back the artist’s soft rendition of the White House reveals a newly commissioned film on view behind the drapes of the work, directed and choreographed by Rodney McMillian and shot in Austin. Exploring the vulnerability of the “architecture of power” expressed in the accompanying White House painting, this film, Untitled (neighbors), 2017, features a performance by four classically trained ballet dancers, cloaked in white with their faces obscured, who slowly move and awkwardly dance through water and a wooded landscape. The imagery is both representational and abstract, loaded with history and symbolism. The film begins at twilight and moves into the darker hours of the night as the dancers progress from slow, measured movements in a landscape, to exploitative interactions with a neoclassical architectural element, to a climactic dance in the woods.

Visitors then ascend to the second floor of the museum, where the color black, and a progressive politic that is sometimes located in African-American culture and history in America, is at the forefront. The two floors are bridged by a new, large painting by Rodney McMillian, an abstract landscape that utilizes the unique architecture of the building’s staircase. Two installations that combine sculpture and a cacophony of sound occupy the second floor. In pod: frequencies to a manifestationing, 2016 to present, a reconfiguration of a 2016 installation, the gallery is filled with still-life arrangements of vases—painted in shades of black and placed on white shelves.

In the center of the room is an amorphous black shape, the “pod,” and overhead are public-address speakers broadcasting two audio recordings: one that centers around Alice Coltrane’s 1971 recording Journey in Satchidananda and the other, a recording of a campaign speech given by Congresswoman Shirley Chisolm at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1972, when she was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the United States Presidency. The first black candidate and the first female candidate to seek the nomination of the Democratic Party in the United States, Chisholm’s firm defiance of and infuriation with the political status quo reverberate through the stark space as she excoriates the nature of power that “relegates the masses to the bottom of the priority list.” Often overlooked by teachers of American history, Chisholm’s speech—swirling through the gallery space and in, out, and around the empty black vessels—repeats impassioned arguments and calls to action that persist in today’s political landscape.

The second installation within this section, a prism, 2016, references painting with stripes of dark purples, blacks, and grays that partitions the room, creating a space in the corner of the gallery that is occupied by another sound installation, a recording of the artist’s vocal performance of Earth, Wind & Fire’s 1975 song “That’s the Way of the World.” Unlike the space created by the soft drape of the White House and the open field of pod, viewers may not enter the space delineated by a prism.

Originally trained as a painter, Rodney McMillian has expanded the breadth of his practice over the last decade to include sculpture, video, performance, and installation. His work frequently incorporates “post-consumer” objects or “found” materials—as well as interactive and performative elements, resulting in unique forms that have a deep relevance to their context and time. From bedsheets to cut vinyl to household objects, McMillian combines unexpected materials with traditional techniques of painting and sculpture, as well as thoughtfully conceived live and recorded performances that often reference speeches, lectures, or other texts from American history to explore the complex and often tenuous narratives that shape our culture and our lives.

Rodney McMillian: Against a Civic Death is made possible through the support of the Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize at The Contemporary Austin. The Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize was announced in summer 2016 as an unrestricted award to be given every two years to an artist selected by an independent advisory committee made up of renowned curators and art historians of contemporary art. The prize includes a $100,000 award to an artist, along with a solo exhibition, an accompanying publication, and related public programming at The Contemporary Austin. Each artist is selected based on his or her outstanding merit and strong record of international museum and gallery exhibitions, and will be an individual whom the Advisory Committee deems deserving of increased recognition, and for whom the award and exhibition would be transformative.

McMillian was selected by a committee led by Heather Pesanti, Senior Curator of The Contemporary Austin, and including Stephanie Barron, Senior Curator and Head of Modern Art Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Naomi Beckwith, Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Peter Eleey, Chief Curator, MoMA PS1; Hamza Walker, Executive Director, LAXART; and Heidi Zuckerman, Nancy and Bob Magoon CEO and Director, Aspen Art Museum.

The exhibition is curated by Heather Pesanti and will be accompanied by a full-color catalogue published by The Contemporary Austin in conjunction with Radius Books, Santa Fe. The catalogue will be released in Summer 2018 and will include scholarly essays by Pesanti; Adrienne Edwards, Curator at Large at the Walker Art Center and Curator at Performa; Bennett Simpson, Senior Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Cherise Smith, Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies in the Department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin.

RODNEY MCMILLIAN

Los Angeles–based artist Rodney McMillian (American, born 1969 in Columbia, South Carolina) makes work that spans multiple media and techniques in a critique of identity, class, race, and social history through everyday materials and gestures. Currently an associate professor of sculpture at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), McMillian holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, a post-baccalaureate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BA (Foreign Affairs) from the University of Virginia. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at such museums as the Art Institute of Chicago; the Aspen Art Museum; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Saint Louis Art Museum. His work has been featured prominently in biennials including the 12th Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates (2015) and the 2008 Whitney Biennial, New York; as well as in many group exhibitions. He has received awards from The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation (2011); United States Artists and Art Matters (both 2008); and the William H. Johnson Foundation for the Arts (2007). Rodney McMillian is represented by Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects and Maccarone, Los Angeles/New York.

THE CONTEMPORARY AUSTIN – Jones Center
700 Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas
thecontemporaryaustin.org

The Photography of Russell Lee at Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin - Go Out and Look

Go Out and Look: The Photography of Russell Lee
Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
April 20 - October 17, 2004

The Harry Ransom Center's exhibition "Go Out and Look: The Photography of Russell Lee" is designed to honor Lee's long association with Texas and The University of Texas at Austin and to celebrate his life and career.

Taking place in the Ransom Center Galleries, the exhibition showcases Russell Lee (1903-1986), who earned the largest international and historic reputation of any Austin-based photographer.

Russell Lee's impact as a social documentarian and artist was established when he forsook careers in engineering and painting and became the most prolific and one of the best known photographers for Roy Stryker's now-legendary U.S. Farm Security Administration (FSA) between 1936 and 1942.

After working for the FSA Russell Lee built upon his work with equally impressive photography for the U.S. Army's Air Transport Command during World War II and then with the U.S. Department of the Interior's Survey of Mine Health and Safety in the mid-1940s. Russell Lee had become a well-established and important American photographer by the time he and his wife, Jean, made Austin their home in 1947.

By then Russell Lee was largely able to pick and choose his projects and completed his professional career with pioneering work for Standard Oil of New Jersey, Jones & Laughlin Steel and the "Texas Observer" as well as with documentation of the political and social scene around the state. Among the many friends whom Russell Lee knew and sometimes photographed were such Texas luminaries as John Henry Faulk, Ralph Yarborough, Creekmore Fath, Maury Maverick Jr., William Arrowsmith and Hart Stilwell.

Russell Lee began his association with The University of Texas with the publication of his "Italian Portfolio" -- commissioned by Arrowsmith as a special 1961 edition of "Texas Quarterly." A major 332-piece traveling retrospective of his work was mounted at The University of Texas Art Museum in 1965 before going on to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. It would lead to his appointment to the faculty of The University of Texas Art Department in that same year.

During the next eight years Russell Lee established and developed the first photography program in the Art Department and focused all his photographic activities into teaching. He turned out hundreds of students before he was required to retire in 1973.

Even then, however, he continued to be an active part of the Austin and university photographic communities by remaining accessible to faculty, students, photographers, historians, social reformers, politicians and visitors throughout the remaining years of his life.

The photographs in the exhibition are drawn entirely from the Russell Lee Master Print Collection in the Harry Ransom Center's Photography Department -- a gift of more than 800 photographs printed by the photographer himself and bequeathed to the Ransom Center upon his death.

The exhibition images are presented in a general chronological fashion and feature a broad range of subject matter from most of Russell Lee's subject portfolios made throughout his career, with a special concentration upon his pioneering FSA work. Other general bodies of work include images from such above-named periods as the Air Transport Command, the U.S. Coal Mines Survey, the Standard Oil years, the final decades in Texas and the famous but little-seen body of work that he did in Italy for the university's "Texas Quarterly."

"Unlike a retrospective exhibition, which seeks a thematic approach to essaying critical distinctions within a lifetime of work, this show is intended to be chiefly celebratory, commemorating the richness of Russell Lee's life, career, popularity and continuing influence," said Roy Flukinger, the Ransom Center's senior curator of photography and film and curator of the exhibition.

The title of the show comes from Russell Lee himself. Once, over beer and barbeque with a number of friends and students, he was asked what his legacy would be. He chuckled and replied: "Just say that I made people go out and look!"

HARRY RANSOM HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTER
The University of Texas at Austin
www.hrc.utexas.edu

Lewis Carroll Centenary Exhibition: Reflections in a Looking Glass at Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin

Reflections in a Looking Glass: A Lewis Carroll Centenary Exhibition
Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
September 14 - December 11, 1998

I'd give all the wealth that years have piled
The slow result of Life's decay
To be once more a little child
For one bright, summer-day
--Lewis Carroll

Jabberwocky, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Cheshire Cat, the Hatter, the March Hare, the Snark, and the Boojum. Perhaps no greater menagerie of eccentric cultural icons has ever been known. To honor the life of the reserved man who gave the world these unforgettable characters, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center presents "Reflections in a Looking Glass: A Lewis Carroll Centenary Exhibition."

Commemorating the 100-year anniversary of Lewis Carroll's death, "Reflections in a Looking Glass" celebrates the creative genius of the man who authored Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, two of the greatest children's stories ever penned. Today, nearly 130 years since they were first published, the two have yet to go out of print, have been translated into over 70 languages, and, in addition to the Bible and works by Shakespeare, are the most quoted books in the Western world. Yet while known to the world for his writing, the man born Charles L. Dodgson was also an accomplished photographer, mathematician, inventor of numerous games and puzzles, and an Oxford Don.

Produced by a unique collaboration of curators from a wide-range of disciplines, "Reflections in a Looking Glass" explores the breadth of Lewis Carroll's life and work, presenting a rare collection of original manuscripts, photographs, drawings, games, and letters. Notably, the exhibition displays precious treasures such as The Rectory Magazine, an illustrated journal created by Lewis Carroll and his siblings; the 1865 India Alice; photographs of Alice Liddell, the true-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll's famed character; a board game Carroll invented in 1887; and rare translations of the author's books, including one by Vladimir Nabokov.

While the exhibit's curators originally sought to independently present the varied aspects of Lewis Carroll's career, they soon discovered that their subjects seemingly disparate passions and pursuits were well-integrated throughout his life and work. This awareness informed the exhibition's design, leading to a final presentation that adeptly explores the relationship between Carroll's personal life and his creative opus. "His work as a teacher and mathematician, his hobby of photography, his soaring imagination, his fascination with words, and his deeply religious cast of mind, all were brought to bear in his friendships with children, the true 'family' of his life," notes co-curator Sally Leach.

Indeed Lewis Carroll delighted in creating story photography by dressing up child subjects in costume or placing them in history tableaux, revealing a love for fanciful play which so endeared him to his young friends. This pastime, and the sometimes provocative photos it produced, also engendered endless speculation on the full extent of Carroll's relationship with his young friends. Yet though perhaps disturbing to a contemporary audience, Morton N. Cohen, a preeminent Carroll scholar, asserts that Carroll "never transgressed propriety or violated innocence."

The exhibit will be held in the Leeds Gallery of the Flawn Academic Center on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. Several related activities will complement "Reflections in a Looking Glass." On October 8, Professor Cohen speaks on Lewis Carroll's life; particularly his friendships with children. On Sunday, October 11, in conjunction with Austin's Museum Day, the Ransom Center hosts a "Mad Hatter's Tea-Party"--an afternoon of music, story-telling, puzzles, games, and other entertainment for children and their adult friends. Roy Flukinger, the Ransom Center's senior curator of photography, lectures on Lewis Carroll's accomplished photography on October 22. In addition, building on the popularity of Lewis Carroll's books, the Ransom Center worked with educational consultants to develop classroom materials for K-12 teachers, conducting an educational workshop to showcase these materials on July 22, 1998.

A catalogue devoted to Lewis Carroll's photography (published by Aperture and including many of the Ransom Center's holdings) will be for sale during the exhibition. 

After closing in Austin, "Reflections in a Looking Glass: A Lewis Carroll Centenary Exhibition" will tour four sites in New York and California.

HARRY RANSOM HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTER
The University of Texas at Austin
www.hrc.utexas.edu

Photographer David Douglas Duncan Archive at Ransom Center, Austin, Texas

Photographer David Douglas Duncan Archive

Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin

The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin announces the acquisition of the award-winning photographer David Douglas Duncan's world-renowned archive. The Ransom Center archive captures the career of one of America's great photographers, containing over sixty years of photographs, negatives, correspondence, albums, manuscripts, equipment, and personal memorabilia. "Acquiring David Douglas Duncan's prestigious archive brings the Ransom Center's overview of photojournalism's impact into the modern age," noted Roy Flukinger, curator of the Center's photography collection.

David Douglas Duncan: "Tough, Audacious, and Original"

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1916, David Douglas Duncan began his career as a photojournalist at the age of 18. While a student at the University of Arizona majoring in archaeology, he snapped the fleeing victims of an early-morning hotel fire using a 39-cent camera, a gift from his younger sister. He was later surprised to learn that one frantic guest captured on his film was America's Public Enemy No. 1, the infamous John Dillinger.

From this serendipitous beginning, David Douglas Duncan went on to become one the world's greatest wartime photographers, capturing highly acclaimed and poignant images in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Of his combat photography, Duncan himself wrote, "I wanted to show the way men live and die when they know death is among them."

Commissioned as a U.S. Marine Second Lieutenant in 1943, David Douglas Duncan earned numerous decorations for the aerial photographs he boldly snapped from the belly of a P-38 fighter plane. David Douglas Duncan later linked up with Fijian guerrillas, fighting the Japanese from behind enemy lines, and was in China before Peking fell to the Communists.

As a civilian photographer for LIFE magazine, David Douglas Duncan rejoined the Marines in Korea, photographing nameless battles, the liberation of Seoul, and the Marines' harrowing Christmas retreat from the Yalu River. Through Duncan's stark black-and-white photographs, the epic saga of the "Forgotten War" came alive, piercing America's collective memory. Today, that memory remains vital, due largely to what Edward Steichen, former Curator of Photographs at the Museum of Modern Art, called "the greatest photographic document ever produced showing men at war."

Already retired from the military with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, David Douglas Duncan again rejoined the Marines in Vietnam, most notably photographing the siege of Khe Sanh. In 1968, Duncan flew straight from the besieged outpost to hand deliver the negatives that were to comprise I Protest!, his broadside denunciation of the war.

While perhaps most known for his wartime photographs, David Douglas Duncan has aimed his camera at a wide-range of subjects. He provided the first coverage penetrating the Iron Curtain and, with the assistance of Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev, spent three years photographing Russia's Kremlin treasures. His intimate friendship with Pablo Picasso and his family produced one of the most exclusive and revealing portraits of the artist and his world. Seven books by Duncan capture these insights including the best seller Picasso's Picassos (1961).

In 1972, David Douglas Duncan set a new standard in photographic achievement, becoming the first photographer to hold a one-person exhibition at New York's prestigious Whitney Museum of Art. His career, aptly described by the esteemed foreign corespondent John Gunther as "tough, audacious, and original," produced a number of legendary images that the Ransom Center will proudly preserve for scholarship, public viewing, and posterity.

The David Douglas Duncan Archive at the Ransom Center

The Ransom Center's collection of David Douglas Duncan's work is expansive and unique. It contains all of Duncan's wartime photos and negatives, including his award-winning coverage of both the Korean and Vietnam wars. In addition, the collection includes the total body of writing, editing, and design work Duncan undertook to produce his war trilogy--This is War! (1951), I Protest! (1961), and War Without Heroes (1970)--and the production materials (correspondence, contracts, text, dummies, layouts, and proofs) for each of Duncan's twenty-one books. The collection also houses extensive correspondence between Duncan and his family and friends, editors at LIFE, and numerous notables of the twentieth century.

The David Douglas Duncan Endowment for Photojournalism

After the Ransom Center attained his archive, David Douglas Duncan, in a gesture characteristic of his legendary individuality, returned the initial purchase fee to establish an endowment in his name. The David Douglas Duncan Endowment, devoted to enhancing the study of photojournalism, will support exhibitions, public events, research, and new acquisitions at the Ransom Center. In partnership with related academic departments, the Center will seek to maximize the educational and public benefit of these activities. With this goal in mind, the Duncan Endowment's first exhibition is currently being planned in conjunction with the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library at the University of Texas. The exhibition, scheduled to open in the first week of March, 1999, will feature the works of the endowment's creator, David Douglas Duncan.

HARRY RANSOM CENTER

University of Texas, Austin

300 West 21st Street, Austin, Texas 78712

www.hrc.utexas.edu