Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan @ MFAH, Houston

Meiji Modern 

Fifty Years of New Japan 

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

July 7 – September 15, 2024

Japan’s Meiji era (1868–1912) was a period of unprecedented cultural and technological transition. Over these remarkable decades, the country experienced radical social and political shifts, which propelled the historically inward-facing society into a new modern, global era. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents a fresh look at the art of this transformative era with the landmark exhibition Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan.

Following over two centuries of near-total isolation, the archipelago of Japan was thrown into chaos with the arrival of the American Commodore Perry in 1853; following a series of international trade agreements, the feudal fiefdoms of Japan were transformed into a modern nation-state, with the Emperor “restored” to the throne. Through more than 150 extraordinary objects borrowed from over 70 public and private collections, the exhibition reveals the profound cross-cultural impact of the country’s developing relationships with the wider world.

Paintings, prints, photographs, sculpture, and fine examples of enamel, lacquer, embroidery, and textiles all evidence a blending of cultures and techniques and the innovative interchange of old and new. Uniquely, the exhibition features a diverse selection of both export wares and items made for display in Japan, reflecting the diversity of tastes and aesthetic discourse in the Meiji period. The exhibition also features several recently discovered masterpieces of Japanese art, many of which have never been shown publicly.

Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan is organized into five thematic sections that reveal the varied cross-cultural influences on Japanese history and identity over the course of the Meiji period.

• Crafting a Modern State highlights the emergence of a country opening up to the outside world through prints, and other objects depicting Western scenes and motifs. Depictions of Meiji rulers in Western clothing and portrayals of American dignitaries in Japanese clothing underscore these new international connections. This also illustrates the importance of art and artwork both as industry and as a tool of diplomacy to the fledgling Meiji state.

• Navigating Changing Seas demonstrates the continued cultural importance of the sea in Japanese art, conveying its role in bringing the outside world to Japan, and bringing Japan to the outside world. A massive bronze masterpiece, nearly life size, of the Dragon King of Sea presenting a warrior with a magical tide-controlling jewel, the most significant piece of Meiji Period metalwork in the United States, is one of the highlights of this section.

• Fashioning the Self assesses the emergence of a new Japanese identity as a non-white, modern nation-state, and considers the changing gender roles of the period, the end of samurai status, the creation of a Meiji bureaucracy, and the growing embrace of modern conveniences as seen in clothing items and prints such as Telephone Call: A Merchant’s Wife. This section also highlights the unprecedented new social freedom enjoyed by women, using a series of woodblock printed illustrations from women’s magazines, a new genre that emerged during the period as women in Japan achieved widespread literacy for the first time. Another highlight of this section is a bowler hat by Hayakawa Shōkōsai I, woven entirely out bamboo reeds.

• Making History, Enshrining Myth examines the importance of a national religion, traditions, and myths to the formation of a modern nation-state, and considers how a self-conscious reinterpretation and re-articulation of the past helped inform a contemporary nation and its global future through unique new expressions. Crucially, this section also considers the role of China and the appreciation of Chinese art and culture during the Meiji Period and includes a rare and important two-sided painted screen by Noguchi Shōhin, one of the few female painters of the Meiji Period.

• Cultivating a Modern Aesthetic shows the traditional themes of plants and animals as the motifs and subject matter most eagerly embraced by foreigners, and therefore commonly made for export. Such artistic production translated to diplomatic soft power as well as a lucrative way to fund industry. It also fueled Western expectations for and definitions of “Asian tradition,” setting precedents for cultural and geopolitical relations and tensions that continue to unfold in the global arena today. This section features several important painted screens that have not been shown publicly for over 100 years and an imposing but beautiful ceramic painted made by Itaya Hazan, the father of Japanese studio ceramics. This vessel, the only known work by the artist in North America and one of only a handful outside of Japan, was acquired directly from the artist by Henry Walters in 1915, and is one of many such works in the exhibition that were purchased during the Meiji Period as contemporary art, highlighting Japan’s importance and might on the world stage by the end of these tumultuous five decades of new Japan.

Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan has been organized by the Japanese Art Society of America. The exhibition is co-curated by Bradley Bailey, the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Curator of Asian Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Chelsea Foxwell, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Chicago. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated scholarly catalogue with essays and entries, published by Yale University Press.

Meiji Modern

Fifty Years of New Japan

by Chelsea Foxwell and Bradley M. Bailey

Published by Yale University Press, 2023

272 Pages, 11.30 x 9.25 in, 275 color illustrations

Gary Tinterow, Director and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, noted, “Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan provides a fascinating window onto this transformative era, a collision of culture and identity that forged newly modern approaches to esthetics, trade and statehood in Japan. It also shows to great effect the unprecedented achievements of Japanese artisans and artists, culminating centuries of technical perfection. We are pleased to partner with Japanese Art Society of America, on their 50th anniversary, to bring this unprecedented exhibition to the MFAH.”

“Late-19th-century Japan represents an early and compelling chapter in the history of global modern art, as Japan became one of the first non-Western nations seeking to repel colonization by making the case for the integrity of its art and culture,” commented Bradley Bailey. “While seemingly opposed, these two ambitions intertwined to produce a distinct form of expression that helped to define Japan’s classical past as well as its global future.” 

Previous Venues:

Asia Society, New York, October 3, 2023 – January 7, 2024

Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, March 21 – June 9, 2024

MFAH - MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS / HOUSTON

1001 Bissonnet, Houston, Texas 77005

www.mfah.org

Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism @ The Met Fifth Avenue, New York + Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism 

The Met Fifth Avenue, New York 

October 13, 2023 – January 21, 2024 

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 

February 25 – May 27, 2024 

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) and André Derain (1880–1954) embarked on a creative partnership in the summer of 1905 that would change the course of French and European painting. The two painters daringly experimented with energetic bursts of color, form, and structure, the outcome of which led to a bold, new artistic language known as Fauvism (from the French fauve, or “wild beast”). Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism presents, for the first time in the United States, the legacy of that legendary summer through 65 paintings, drawings, and watercolors by Henri Matisse and André Derain on loan from national and international museums and private collections.

"This captivating exhibition not only speaks to the transformative partnership of Matisse and Derain, but it also provides a highly focused and engaging view of their groundbreaking artistic practices," said Max Hollein, The Met's Marina Kellen French Director and CEO. "Vertigo of Color is remarkable in that the works are largely experimental, giving us the opportunity to understand their process and look back at a singular moment that has so powerfully resonated with generations of artists and audiences."

It was the partnership between the two artists—along with their intense investigations of color and light and their will to experiment outside the canon—that led to Fauvism in the early years of the last century. While staying in the modest fishing village of Collioure, Henri Matisse and André Derain worked toward a new aesthetic of color and light, drawing inspiration from local surroundings and their experience of the bustling life of the port, quiet beaches, and landscapes. Their evolving visual language grew from the sensory experience of a moment in time, rather than from observable reality—a sweep of sand brushed in saturated red, a cork oak tree delineated in pink, shadows of reflected light in dazzling hues. Matisse wrote, “My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory; it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility.” 

"As the story of a rewarding partnership, this exhibition is the first to focus intently on the paintings, drawings, and watercolors that laid the groundwork for Fauvism," said Dita Amory, Robert Lehman Curator in Charge of the Robert Lehman Collection. "In just nine weeks, Matisse and Derain revolutionized color and liberated brushwork, paving the way for modernism."

Exhibiting several paintings at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in November 1905, Henri Matisse and André Derain were both derided and praised. They puzzled audiences and stirred controversy—and soon galvanized a group of contemporary artists to follow in their path, a new path in European art that radically contradicted conventional norms. Responding to the now-legendary Salon exhibition, a prominent French journalist labeled them and their fellow artists “les Fauves,” literally “wild beasts.” Though Fauvism was short-lived, it gave rise to a ravishing palette in an evolving modernist dialogue, and the Salon d’Automne played a key role in disseminating its inventions.

Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism, which is co-organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, features many of the most celebrated works of Fauvism. The works on view include loans from Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou; National Galleries of Scotland; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; as well as private collections.

The exhibition begins with galleries dedicated to André Derain and Henri Matisse and feature several paintings not shown in the United States in over half a century, including Derain’s portrait of Matisse, Henri Matisse (Tate), and Matisse’s portrait of Derain, André Derain (Tate). That summer, while Derain and Matisse shared many of the same geographic vantage points and subjects, their work diverged in structure, composition, treatment of space, and color palette. Matisse preferred to paint in watercolor while Derain worked in oil. There is a gallery devoted to Amélie Matisse, who joined her husband in Collioure along with their two sons. Amélie posed tirelessly for both her husband and for Derain in works of vibrant oil and watercolor, such as Derain’s dazzling Woman with a Shawl: Madame Matisse in a Kimono (private collection). Amélie Matisse  was an indispensable model whose presence advanced the figure painting of both artists immeasurably.

Vertigo of Color also presents significant works on paper, sketches, portraits, and intimate drawings, and features the original catalogue for the Salon d’Automne of 1905. While landscapes, seascapes, and portraits feature prominently, still lifes by Matisse detailing fresh local produce provide another platform for investigations of color and form.

While the exhibition foregrounds the marvelous partnership of the two artists, it also traces how their approaches to painting and drawing differed: André Derain was determined to finish his canvases in Collioure, while Henri Matisse chose to gather inspiration and source material and then work in his Paris studio. Vertigo of Color demonstrates Henri Matisse’s immense influence on modernism in the early years of the 20th century. The exhibition closes with a selection of paintings dating to 1906.  It was in the following years that Henri Matisse and André Derain realized some of their most important paintings of the period, paintings that owe a debt to the experiments of Collioure.

Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism is curated at The Met by Dita Amory, Robert Lehman Curator in Charge, Robert Lehman Collection, and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, by Ann Dumas, Consulting Curator of European Art.

The exhibition is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. It will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from February 25 to May 27, 2024.

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition. It is published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press. Authors include curators Dita Amory and Ann Dumas; Met conservator Isabel Duvernois; and Isabelle Monod-Fontaine, Curator Emerita, Centre Pompidou, Paris. ISBN: 9781588397652

THE MET FIFTH AVENUE

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028

Incomparable Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston @ The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Incomparable Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

November 14, 2021 – March 27, 2022

Pierre Auguste Renoir , Dance at Bougival, 1883, oil on canvas

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Picture Fund  © Museum of Fine Arts Boston, All Rights Reserved

© Courtesy of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

For the first time, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), is lending some 100 of the most significant paintings and works on paper from its renowned Impressionist collection for an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, its only American venue. Incomparable Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston traces the evolution of this 19th-century avant-garde movement, from its roots in the novel, naturalistic landscapes of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Charles Francois Daubigny, and other painters of the Barbizon School, to the early “optical color” experimentations in plein-air landscape painting by Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Camille Pissarro, to the frank depictions of modern urban life by Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The exhibition highlights the artists’ relationships and their thoughts, in their own words, to underscore the philosophy behind this now world-renowned movement. 

“The MFA in Boston was the first museum in the U.S. to acquire a Degas, in 1903, and early patronage by pioneering Bostonian collectors ensured the growth of its now-extensive French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist holdings,” commented Gary Tinterow, Director and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair, the MFAH. “This extraordinary collection has a distinctive capacity to narrate the history of French Impressionism with nuance, depth, and flare. We are enormously pleased to be able to share this rare selection here in Houston.”

The exhibition brings together the MFA’s 19th-century- and early-20th-century paintings, assembled in nine thematic groupings. An exhibition highlight is a breathtaking display of 15 canvases by Claude Monet, painted over a 30-year period, featuring Monet’s most beloved sites. Together, these paintings demonstrate the full scope of his immeasurable contribution to the Impressionist movement.

Additional works included are Claude Monet’s luminous Grainstack (Snow Effect), one of the artist’s famed series of 25 depictions of haystacks in varying seasons and light conditions, exhibited in May 1891 and purchased the following month by Bostonian Horatio Appleton Lamb; Edgar Degas’s empathic double portrait of his sister, Thérèse, and her husband, Edmondo Morbilli (about 1865), which remained with Degas, and then his descendants, until it was purchased by Boston collector Robert Treat Paine, 2nd; Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s life-size Dance at Bougival (1883), with its swirling evocation of modern café life; and Manet’s quintessentially urban portrait Street Singer (1862). (John Singer Sargent’s portrait of the patron who bequeathed this Manet to the MFA, Sarah Choate Sears, hangs in the American Paintings galleries of the MFAH.)

An integral aspect of the exhibition is a fascinating selection of works on paper showcasing the artists’ working processes. These prints, with concentrations of works by Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, and Mary Cassatt, illuminate the artists’ working methods and approaches to their landscapes, portraits, and interiors, as part of a collaborative publication venture. Pissarro sought technical advice from Degas for his etching and aquatint of a favored woodland view. Edgar Degas’s painting Visit to a Museum (about 1879–90), from his series depicting women, including his friend and fellow Impressionist Mary Cassatt, in museum galleries, is accompanied by three prints from that series that portray Cassatt; four etching-and-aquatint prints from Cassatt’s own series In the Opera Box (about 1880) reveal the avid experimentation of her printmaking practice. 

This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It has been curated by Katie Hanson, Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe, and Julia Welch, Assistant Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The presentation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is organized by Helga Aurisch, Curator, European Art. 

MFAH - THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON

1001 Bissonnet, Houston, Texas 77005

Beck Building, Galleries 201–209

mfah.org

Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer @ MFAH, Houston + other venues

Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer 

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 

October 17, 2021 - January 17, 2022 

Todd Webb, Georgia O’Keeffe with Camera, 1959

Printed later, inkjet print, Todd Webb Archive

© Todd Webb Archive, Portland, Maine, USA

Georgia O’Keeffe is a groundbreaking figure of American Modernism, widely recognized for her paintings of New York skyscrapers, radical depictions of flowers, and stark landscapes of the American southwest. Less known is that she quietly honed a photography practice just as distinct as, yet complementary to, her paintings and drawings.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents the first exhibition devoted to O’Keeffe’s photographic practice with the debut of Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer. Organized in partnership with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, the exhibition reveals the wider scope of the artist’s career through some 90 photographs from a previously unstudied archive—a discovery led by MFAH associate curator of photography Lisa Volpe. Photographs in the exhibition are complemented by 17 paintings and drawings of landscapes, flowers, and still lifes from public and private collections across the USA.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer is on view in the Upper Brown Pavilion of the MFAH Caroline Wiess Law Building, before travelling to the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts; the Denver Art Museum; and the Cincinnati Art Museum. 

“Georgia O’Keeffe has long been the subject of exhibitions, portraiture, and volumes of scholarship. She captivated the art world with her works on paper and canvas, yet her photography has never been studied or known despite being essential to her practice,” said Gary Tinterow, Director, the Margaret Alek Williams Chair, MFAH. “We are pleased to present this revelatory exhibition and expand appreciation of one of the most innovative and expressive artists our culture has produced.”

While Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) forged a career as one of the most significant painters of the 20th century, she also had a lifelong connection to photography. Captured on film throughout her life—in early family photos, travel snapshots, and portraits by a cavalcade of photographic artists including her husband, Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946)—O’Keeffe was no stranger to the medium. She expressed her unique perspective through all aspects of her life, and by the time she began her photographic practice in the mid-1950s, her singular identity and artistry were well developed. 

Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer is the culmination of three years of research led by Volpe, who analyzed hundreds of works in different collections and identified more than 400 photographic images by O’Keeffe. Volpe attributed, dated, and catalogued the photographs by examining small details in the images and analyzing the artist’s distinct style.

“In her 1976 book, O’Keeffe mentions her use of photography. Yet her mastery of painting stymied any research into this area for decades. It was a part of her artistic practice waiting to be examined,” Volpe said. “This exhibition reveals the ways in which she used photography as part of her unique and encompassing artistic vision. She claimed the medium for herself and her own artistic use—a radical act late in her career that begs for continued scholarship.”

The exhibition is organized around key tenets of O’Keeffe’s photographic approach: reframing, the rendering of light, and seasonal change.

Reframing views through the lens of her camera, Georgia O’Keeffe saw her environment as an array of possible shapes and forms. Moving from right to left, angling the camera from high to low, or turning it vertically and horizontally, she composed and recomposed her photographs to find harmonious compositions. Prints from Georgia O’Keeffe’s serial captures of the Natural Stone Arch near Leho’ula Beach, ’Aleamai, Hawaii are a highlight, demonstrating the artist’s intuitive search for the ideal relationship of expressive forms.

On paper, canvas, or in a photograph, dappled light and dark shadows are not merely fleeting effects for Georgia O’Keeffe. They provide weighty and essential forms. Sensitive to this formal potential, the artist often photographed the same view throughout the day to create varying compositions. A striking example is Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1964 Forbidding Canyon, a series of five Polaroids that capture changing light between two rock faces. Photographs of her beloved Chow Chows also express such possibilities, contrasting dark dog fur against the sun-washed landscape to find the tension between depth, flatness, realism, and abstraction.

Georgia O’Keeffe also explored seasonal changes by photographing her environment of evolving foliage and light year-round. Her photographs of the Chama River and a kiva ladder in her New Mexico home capture changes in vegetation, precipitation, and sunlight. Similarly, Georgia O’Keeffe regularly photographed the jimsonweed around her home, watching as the trumpet-like flowers obeyed both the cycle of the seasons and a shorter daily cycle, opening in the afternoon and closing with sunrise, from late summer until first frost. Georgia O’Keeffe’s jimsonweed prints signal the artist’s ongoing fascination with the transformations of nature.

MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON

1001 Bissonnet, Houston, Texas 77005

www.mfah.org

Olga de Amaral @ MFAH, Houston & Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills - To Weave a Rock

Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

July 25 - September 19, 2021

OLGA DE AMARAL

Brumas (Mists), 2013

Acrylic, gesso, and cotton on wood

Courtesy of the artist

© Olga de Amaral / Photograph © Diego Amaral

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock, the first major touring retrospective of the prolific, visionary Colombian artist whose pioneering visual language has helped to transform the fiber arts movement. Co-organized by the MFAH and the Cranbrook Art Museum, the exhibition traces Olga de Amaral’s architectural investigations of the woven form through some 50 works created during the past six decades, ranging from her early Muros (Walls) series to the more recent immersive installation Brumas (Mists).

“This retrospective allows audiences to see the six decades of my work side by side for the first time,” Olga de Amaral said. “To have it open at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is a great honor, as they hold leading collections in both decorative arts and Latin American art in the United States. The exhibition was also co-created with Cranbrook Art Museum, the museum of my alma mater, Cranbrook Academy of Art, which is such an important part of my creative history and where I met my husband, the artist Jim Amaral. This retrospective and publication have been years in the making, and I feel they are a wonderful showcase of my life’s work.” 

An “alchemist artist,” Olga de Amaral has experimented radically with material, composition, and space, transforming flat-woven tapestries into forms that defy the confines of any genre or medium. Co-curators Anna Walker, Assistant Curator, Decorative Arts, Craft, and Design at the MFAH; and Laura Mott, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art and Design at Cranbrook Art Museum, chronicle Amaral’s career through four thematic sections: “Radical Materialism,” “Rebel Warp,” “Alchemy,” and “The Line.” They also devote two galleries to the artist’s immersive Brumas (Mists) and Estelas (Stele) series.

“Olga de Amaral is a leading figure who continues to push the boundaries of the fiber arts movement. Deeply rooted in her Colombian heritage and architectural training, Amaral’s sculptures command our attention with their exploration of color, texture, and structure,” said Gary Tinterow, Director, the Margaret Alkek Williams Chair, MFAH. “We are delighted to partner with the Cranbrook Art Museum to present this comprehensive survey and highlight Amaral as a seminal artist of the last 60 years.”

“Amaral has developed a language all her own within the fiber arts movement through experimentation with the loom and her transformational use of materials,” Walker said. “The MFAH has established the most comprehensive collection of her work in North America. It’s a thrill to present these works alongside other important examples that exemplify her creative spirit.”

Exhibition Overview

After earning an architectural drafting degree in her native Bogotá, Colombia, Olga de Amaral (born 1932) attended the fabric and design weaving program at Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art in the mid-1950s. There, she studied under the renowned Marianne Strengell, who emphasized textile design’s relationship with interior space and its use as an architectural material. When she returned home, Amaral applied Strengell’s philosophies to woven works that also were informed by her environment.

• “Radical Materialism” explores Olga de Amaral’s unconventional use of horsehair, wool, gold leaf, plastics, and other materials that reflect the landscape and culture of Colombia while also utilizing texture, color, and light to create dimensionality and structure. A notable example, the Luz (Light) series from the mid-to-late 1960s, features tapestries of cascading, layered polyurethane that depict water flowing across the Colombian terrain.

• The “Rebel Warp” section illustrates how Olga de Amaral has investigated scale and challenged traditional weaving traditions with innovative plaiting, wrapping, coiling, and warp manipulation. The parallel rods of her groundbreaking series Muros tejidos (Woven Walls) support vertical, lattice-like loops to form distinct structures and shapes; principles she also applied to free-standing sculptures such as Columna en pasteles (Column in Pastels) (1972).

• Embracing the spiritual significance of gold in Colombian culture, Olga de Amaral has made gold leaf a signature material. The “Alchemy” section presents selections from Alquimia (Alchemy), her acclaimed 1980s series of wall-hung tapestries composed of individually woven linen squares lacquered with gesso and gold leaf. Also especially notable are works from Amaral’s immersive series Estelas (Stele), whose suspended structures evoke upright stones.

• The works of “The Line” section incorporate painted, free-hanging threads. Highlights include pieces from the Nudo (Knot) series, whose long, loose linen fibers anchored with knots resemble monumental, draped tassels of magenta, turquoise, and gold. Another work, Agujero Negro (Black Hole) (2016) initially suggests a black void painted on gray fringe, but as viewers pass by, threads waft to reveal a sliver of gold paint that glimmers like sunlight. The immersive Brumas (Mists) (2013), a series of three-dimensional, suspended forms, engulfs viewers in vibrant colors and geometric shapes.

OLGA DE AMARAL

ToWeave a Rock

Exhibition Catalogue

Publication: This exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock, authored by co-curators Laura Mott and Anna Walker and co-published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Arnoldsche Art Publishers. 

Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Cranbrook Art Museum. After Houston it will traveling to the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in October 2021.

MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS HOUSTON - MFAH

1001 Bissonnet, Houston, Texas 77005

www.mfah.org

Annette Lemieux: Maud Morgan Prize 2017

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Awards 2017 Maud Morgan Prize, Honoring a Massachusetts Woman Artist, to Annette Lemieux

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), announced that Boston-based ANNETTE LEMIEUX (born 1957) is the recipient of its 2017 Maud Morgan Prize, which honors a Massachusetts woman artist who has demonstrated creativity and vision, and who has made significant contributions to the contemporary arts landscape. Ranging from painting to photography to found-object assemblage, Lemieux’s conceptual works confront urgent subjects such as the horror of war, the nature of time, the elusive truth of memory and the relationship between personal experience and cultural history. Currently a Senior Lecturer on Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University, she has influenced younger generations of artists as a teacher for more than 20 years. The Museum has collected Annette Lemieux’s works since the late 1980s, cultivating a sustained belief in her practice. As part of the Prize, the artist will receive a $10,000 award, and an exhibition of her work will be presented at the MFA in the summer.

“Annette is fearless about tackling timely socio-political issues in her artwork. She is a careful observer of the world and a thoughtful commentator on important issues of our time,” said Matthew Teitelbaum, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA. “We look forward to working closely with her and sharing her voice with a wide and appreciative public.”

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Annette Lemieux received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the Hartford Art School, University of Hartford in 1980. After graduation, she spent a decade in New York City, working as an assistant for artist David Salle and becoming part of a burgeoning scene of appropriation artists—alongside Sarah Charlesworth, Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman—who frequently incorporated text, images, objects and symbols from mass media and pop culture into their work. Her work was featured in the Whitney Biennial in 1987 and 2000, as well as the Venice Biennale in 1990.

Annette Lemieux is the recipient of awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship, Brown University and the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Germany. In 2009 she received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Montserrat College of Art. Her work has been exhibited internationally and acquired by museums across the United States and Europe. In addition to the MFA, these include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Tel Aviv Museum of Art and more. Lemieux’s critically acclaimed projects include solo exhibitions Unfinished Business (2012) at Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts and the mid-career survey The Strange Life of Objects: The Art of Annette Lemieux (2010) at the Worcester Art Museum.

Al Miner, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, will collaborate with Annette Lemieux on her solo 2017 exhibition at the MFA marking the award of the Maud Morgan Prize.

“Annette has long been an admired and beloved fixture in the region’s art scene,” said Al Miner. “I’m thrilled to be working with an artist so deserving of this distinction. And I especially look forward to introducing audiences to recent MFA acquisitions and to debuting her exciting new body of work, which evidences her staying power.”

MAUD MORGAN PRIZE

Established at the Museum in 1993, the Maud Morgan Prize honors the recipient with a cash award and an MFA presentation of her work. The $10,000 prize is given biennially to a Massachusetts woman who has worked as an artist for at least 10 years, who has demonstrated creativity and vision, and who has made significant contributions to the contemporary arts landscape. In addition to recommendations by MFA curators, nominations are solicited from a broad cross-section of contemporary curators from throughout the Commonwealth. This year’s process involved 25 nominating organizations—more than in any previous year—and resulted in five finalists. After submissions were reviewed, finalists were chosen by a committee of MFA curators, and visits were made to the artists’ studios. Committee members selected Annette Lemieux, a decision endorsed by MFA Director Matthew Teitelbaum.

The committee included Al Miner (Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art), Jen Mergel (Robert L. Beal, Enid L. Beal and Bruce A. Beal Senior Curator of Contemporary Art), Liz Munsell (Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art and Special Initiatives, a position supported by Lorraine Bressler), Emily Zilber (Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts), Kathryn Gunsch (Teel Curator of African and Oceanic Art) and Patrick Murphy (Lia and William Poorvu Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings and Supervisor, Morse Study Room).

Previous winners of the Maud Morgan Prize include Marilyn Arsem, Sarah Braman, Wendy Jacob, Ambreen Butt, Shelley Reed, Jill Weber, Ranee Palone Flynn, Suara Welitoff, Laura Chasman, Shellburne Thurber, Catherine McCarthy, Kendra Ferguson, Elsbeth Deser, Bonnie Porter, Natalie Alper, and Jo Ann Rothschild.

MAUD MORGAN (1903 - 1999)

During her most active years as an artist and instructor in Massachusetts, Maud Morgan represented a voice of recognition for women committed to a career in the arts. She was associated with some of the most distinguished artists of the 1930s and studied at the Art Students League in New York with Hans Hoffman. Morgan exhibited with the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York in the company of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko before instructing students of studio art, including Frank Stella and Carl Andre, with her then-husband, painter Patrick Morgan, at Abbot Academy and Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. At the age of 92, she published her autobiography, Maud’s Journey: A Life from Art. Throughout her career, Morgan was a source of inspiration for many artists, young and old.

MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON
www.mfa.org

Contemporary Latin American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Contingent Beauty: Contemporary Art from Latin America
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
November 22, 2015 - February 28, 2016

In November, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents Contingent Beauty: Contemporary Art from Latin America, an exhibition featuring a selection of major works by 21 established artists from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela. Encompassing a variety of media including drawing, sculpture, video, and interactive object- and video-based installations, the exhibition highlights contemporary artists who use seductive and engaging materials to convey their social, political, and environmental concerns. Curated by Mari Carmen Ramírez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and director of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), with Rachel Mohl, curatorial assistant, Latin American art, Contingent Beauty is on view in Houston from November 22, 2015, to February 28, 2016.

Drawn primarily from the Museum’s permanent collection of modern Latin American art—one of the most comprehensive collections of its kind in any public institution—nearly all of the 32 works on view have been acquired by the Museum over the last five years through the Caribbean Art Fund, a special initiative of the Museum and Fundación Gego. Established in 2010, the goal of this fund is to research, promote, and collect works by artists from the greater Caribbean. Since its inception, the Caribbean Art Fund has sponsored the acquisition of 37 major works by artists from Colombia, Cuba, and Venezuela. Works by Central American artists are presently under consideration. 

“While the Latin American art department has an international reputation for its unrivaled Modernist and Constructivist collection, Contingent Beauty demonstrates the breadth of the Museum’s holdings of contemporary Latin American and Caribbean art,” said MFAH director Gary Tinterow. “With this installation, we invite Museum visitors to discover artists active in the region today, many of whom have made significant contributions to the global art scene.”

“In the hands of these artists, the work of art—while formally sophisticated and seductive—becomes not an end in itself but a tool to heighten viewers’ awareness of critical factors shaping their everyday environment,” said Ramírez. “The works employ conceptual, sensory-based or interactive strategies that playfully elicit the viewer’s active participation. As visitors become key elements in unfolding the work’s meaning, this exhibition promises to provide them with an exciting, fun-filled, and eye-opening experience.”  

Artists

In addition to artists whose works were acquired through the Caribbean Art Fund, Contingent Beauty features works by exceptional mid-career Latin American artists, generating a dynamic dialogue that cuts across chronological and geographic borders. Featured artists include Tania Bruguera (Cuba), Johanna Calle (Colombia), Yoan Capote (Cuba), María Fernanda Cardoso (Colombia), Los Carpinteros (Cuba), José Gabriel Fernández (Venezuela), Magdalena Fernández (Venezuela), Víctor Grippo (Argentina), Carmela Gross (Brazil), Grupo Mondongo (Argentina), Guillermo Kuitca (Argentina), Oscar Muñoz (Colombia), Roberto Obregón (Venezuela), Gabriel Orozco (Mexico), José Alejandro Restrepo (Colombia), Miguel Ángel Ríos (Argentina-Mexico), Miguel Ángel Rojas (Colombia), Teresa Serrano (Mexico), Regina Silveira (Brazil), Javier Téllez (Venezuela), and Tunga (Brazil).

Material and Message

The artists in Contingent Beauty intertwine aesthetic refinement with biting critiques of timely issues grounded in the complex realities of Latin America and its long history of colonization, political repression, and economic crisis. These issues range from poverty, violence, gender, government corruption, and globalization, to the war on drugs and the legacy of colonialism. The “beauty” of these works is contingent upon contextual interpretation. Each piece harbors a tension between opposing elements, such as beauty and violence, seduction and repulsion, or elegance and brutality.

Miguel Ángel Rojas’ Broadway (1996/2010) illustrates the idea at the core of this exhibition: A trail of more than 3,000 coca leaves precariously pinned to the wall functions as both a poetic statement and a powerful indictment of illegal drug trafficking. From a distance, the leaves could be a line of ants; up close, the allusion to farm laborers and the narcotics trade becomes apparent. María Fernanda Cardoso’s Woven Water: Submarine Landscape (1994)—26 clusters of dried, preserved starfish suspended in constellations at various heights—entices visitors into a mysterious undersea environment, while serving as an overt criticism of commercial tourism and the commodification of nature.

Estadística (Statistics) (1996–2000), by the renowned Cuban artist Tania Bruguera, was produced communally as the artist invited her friends and neighbors to donate and assemble locks of their own hair into a Cuban flag. By echoing women’s collectives who secretly sewed Cuban flags during the Cuban War of Independence, Bruguera’s flag creates an analogous resistance to Fidel Castro’s regime. Similarly, Yoan Capote spent eight years collecting teeth from friends, family members, and acquaintances in Cuba for his work Stress (in memoriam) (2004–12). The piece presents a metaphor for resistance in that a heavy concrete block is precariously balanced on top of rows of these teeth, and rocks back and forth in a grinding motion.

In the same vein, Johanna Calle and Regina Silveira employ everyday materials to create non-traditional drawings and explore issues of urban disenfranchisement. In Obra negra (Black Opus) (2007–08), Calle sews chicken wire onto cardboard to produce schematic drawings of the precarious dwellings of Colombia’s shantytowns and the feet of the children who inhabit them. Silveira, in turn, applies to the wall vinyl impressions of bare feet belonging to hundreds of Brazilian street children in her work Irruption (Oval) (2005).

Guillermo Kuitca’s Le Sacre (1992) is emblematic of these artists’ critical relationship with local and global concerns. Kuitca presents a series of 54 child-size mattresses that invite visitors to walk among them, discovering hand-painted city maps of unknown locations in the world that serve to unify the extremes of the personal and the global. Kuitca’s piece is among a number of large-scale works that draw viewers in for closer inspection. Tunga’s Lezart (1989)—a monumental sculpture made of elemental materials, such as copper, iron, and magnets in the shapes of combs, lizards, and strands of hair, arranged in disturbing juxtapositions—hints at a mythological narrative that is never clearly revealed. Towering at 9 feet tall, A negra (The Black Woman) (1997) by Carmela Gross is an imposing black tulle skirt on wheels that engages issues of race and gender in Brazilian society.

A significant aspect of Contingent Beauty is a suite of video installations that provide insight into the innovative scope and experimental range that the medium has attained since the 1990s, when Latin American artists turned to video as a means to reexamine history and question cultural constructs. José Alejandro Restrepo’s Paso del Quindío I (Quindío Passage I) (1992) is an immersive installation that confronts the viewer with footage from different locations of the Quindío Pass, a trade route leading from the central region of the Andes to the Pacific coast, thereby stimulating viewers to reconsider the history of colonialism in the region. In La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (Rozell Hospital) [The Passion of Joan of Arc (Rozelle Hospital)] (2005), Javier Téllez examines the biases surrounding mental disorders by enlisting psychiatric patients to reinterpret and reenact the 1928 French film classic. In the two-channel video Mecha (2010), Miguel Ángel Ríos uses strategies and resources derived from film to capture the violence and war-like atmosphere of the popular ancient Colombian game of tejo. In Teresa Serrano’s La piñata (2003), we watch as a man beats to death a piñata that is shaped and dressed to look like a woman from the Mexico–United States border. Using geometric patterns to connect to the natural world, Magdalena Fernández creates a video environment in which she synchronizes dots and lines of light with the sound of rain in 2iPM009 (2009).

Exhibition Schedule

Contingent Beauty: Contemporary Art from Latin America debuts in Houston before touring internationally. The Houston opening occurs in the context of the sixth Latin American Experience Weekend, a biennial event that supports the Museum’s Latin American art acquisitions program and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA). The 2015 edition is dedicated to Colombia and will feature a significant representation of Colombian artists in the four-day program, which includes talks, lectures, a gala, and live and silent auctions with works by artists highlighted in Contingent Beauty as well as other historic and contemporary artists from Latin America. The event takes place from November 19 to 22, 2015.

Catalogue

The International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is publishing a fully illustrated, 250-page catalogue to accompany the exhibition. Distributed by Yale University Press, the catalogue consists of introductory essays, individual texts on the artworks in the exhibition, and artists’ biographies. It features contributions by María Gaztambide, Rachel Mohl, Beatriz Olivetti, Mari Carmen Ramírez, Gabriela Rangel, Tahía Rivero, Osvaldo Sánchez, Michael Wellen, and Daniela Wüstenberg.

This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
www.mfah.org

MFA Museum of Fine Arts, Boston – The New MFA opens

MFA - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to open Art of the Americas Wing
and Shapiro Family Courtyard,
designed by Foster + Partners

The highly anticipated wing for the Art of the Americas and Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Family Courtyard at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), will open to the public on Saturday, November 20. In celebration, the Museum is hosting a free Community Day to welcome visitors to see The New MFA. The wing and enclosed courtyard are the focal points of the Museum’s transformational expansion and renovation project, designed by internationally renowned architects Foster + Partners (London). These additions elegantly incorporate a modernist aesthetic into the Museum’s 1909 Beaux Arts building. The MFA’s project represents the most expansive initiative focused on American art and culture happening in the world today. It allows for more than 5,000 works from the Museum’s Art of the Americas collections to be on view, which more than doubles the number previously displayed. Complementing the wing is a soaring glass courtyard—the Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Family Courtyard—one of the most distinctive architectural spaces in Boston, which serves as a dynamic central meeting place within the MFA.

“With the opening of the new wing for the Art of the Americas and the Shapiro Family Courtyard, our vision for The New MFA will be realized. These beautifully designed spaces will enrich the visitor experience and set a dramatic stage for the Museum’s Art of the Americas collections in a unique setting—Boston—where much of this country’s history took shape,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum. “The MFA chose to collaborate with Foster + Partners because of the firm’s unparalleled reputation for space planning and its deep understanding of how to best present the Museum’s great works of art. Foster + Partners has succeeded in not only designing a magnificent addition that is innovative and functional, but also in developing a comprehensive master site plan for the Museum for future generations.”

Foster + Partners, the Pritzker prize-winning international studio for architecture, planning, and design, is led by its founder and chairman, Lord Foster, who supervised the design of the MFA’s expansion and renovation with Spencer de Grey, Senior Partner and Head of Design, and Michael Jones, Partner.

“This has been one of the most fascinating projects—how to combine the constraints of history with a new intervention that will show off the Museum’s extraordinary collection of American Art in a way that will excite, entrance and educate the MFA’s public,” said Spencer de Grey. “Learning from the Museum’s original master plan we have re-addressed the balance of the Museum, creating contemporary spaces for the display of the collection and a new heart for the MFA encapsulated in glass.”

The MFA’s expansion and renovation project will provide additional space for the Museum’s encyclopedic collections, special exhibitions, and educational programs. It increases the building’s total square footage by 28 percent, from 483,447 to 616,937 square feet. The design by Foster + Partners reestablishes the MFA’s important north-south axis envisioned by Guy Lowell, the Museum’s original architect (1870–1927), which brings visitors to the heart of the MFA and improves navigation throughout the building. New landscaping surrounding the Museum’s campus, designed by landscape architects Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd. (Seattle, WA), complements the building. The design, which includes more than 1,000 holly bushes and 50 trees, was inspired by Frederick Law Olmsted’s nearby Back Bay Fens, part of his famed Emerald Necklace.

The 121,307-square-foot wing for the Art of the Americas, located to the east of the Museum along Forsyth Way, features a central glass building flanked by two pavilions of glass and granite, one north and one south. Foster + Partners developed a bespoke, state-of-the-art glazing system for the glass with Seele in Germany and worked with Deer Isle granite from Maine—the same stone used in the MFA’s original building. This dialogue between the old and new is a signature element for which the architects are renowned. The wing’s transparent design makes the Museum more welcoming to the surrounding community, and from the top floors of the four-level building, visitors enjoy a sweeping vista of Boston—from Fenway Park to the Back Bay skyline.

The Art of the Americas Wing contains 53 galleries—totaling 51,338 square feet—which include nine period rooms and four Behind the Scenes galleries. Also featured is the 150-seat Barbara and Theodore Alfond Auditorium—measuring 2,128 square feet—for films, concerts, and lectures, located on the ground level. Adjacent to it are two studio arts classrooms and a seminar room. Additionally, the wing incorporates administrative offices and meeting rooms on the top two levels of the pavilions.

The MFA’s wing offers a broad context for American art, expanding the definition to include works from North, Central, and South America that span the course of three millennia, up to the late 20th century. For the first time since the Museum’s founding in 1870, magnificent works representing all of the Americas are presented together in a wide range of media, including paintings, sculpture, works on paper, furniture, decorative arts, and musical instruments, as well as textiles, fashions, and jewelry.

Galleries are arranged chronologically on the four floors, allowing visitors to travel through time as they rise vertically. They begin on Level LG, which is dedicated to ancient American, Native American, 17th Century, and Maritime Art; Level 1 features 18th-century art of the Colonial Americas and early 19th-century art; Level 2 examines 19th-century and early 20th-century art; and Level 3 presents 20th-century art through the mid 1970s. In the center of each level, large-scale core galleries run along a central spine where key works of art highlight thematic elements of each period. Adding depth and breadth to the broad narratives of these core galleries are additional galleries that run along each side on the north and south.

“The new galleries allow us to present our collections in a variety of ways that highlight different periods, cultures, styles, artists, makers, and themes,” said Elliot Bostwick Davis, the John Moors Cabot Chair of the Art of the Americas Department at the MFA, who led the department’s curatorial staff in the planning and installation of the Museum’s new wing. “We hope visitors will discover a range of objects—whether familiar or entirely new to them—that speak to the breadth, richness, and diversity of artistic expression emanating from the United States and, more broadly, from the Americas.”

The wing was designed specifically around the Museum’s Art of the Americas collections. Many galleries feature walls adorned in rich period colors, sumptuous silk brocades, and imported 18th- and 19th-century wallpapers. Light oak floors from the Pacific Northwest have been used in most of the galleries, and more than 200 climate-controlled display cases made by Goppion of Milan are located throughout the wing. Accommodations have been made for works large and small drawn from the MFA’s Art of the Americas collection. On Level 1, where the ceiling height is 15 feet, a special niche was created above one wall of the New Nation Gallery for The Passage of the Delaware (1819), Thomas Sully’s monumental painting and the first canvas to be hung in the new Art of the Americas Wing. Allowances had to be made for both the painting (measuring 12 feet high and 17 feet wide) and its massive frame. While most of the galleries are 15 feet high, on Level 3 the core galleries have a 21’ 5” glass ceiling (with louvered panels to filter light), which allows for the exhibition of large-scale works.

Many iconic works from the Art of the Americas collection are on view in the galleries, including:

- Goldwork in the Ancient South America Gallery and patterned ceramics by the ancient Mimbres and Anasazi in the Native North America Gallery
- Paul Revere’s historic silver Sons of Liberty Bowl (1768), paired with John Singleton Copley’s portrait (1768) of the silversmith and patriot in the Colonial Boston Gallery
- Winslow Homer’s charming canvas, Boys in a Pasture (1874), in Homer and Eakins: The Civil War Gallery
- More than 40 paintings, watercolors, and drawings by John Singer Sargent, including his masterpiece, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882), in the Sargent Gallery, paired with the two large Japanese vases pictured in the painting
- A brilliant stained-glass window by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Parakeets and Gold Fish Bowl (about 1893), showcased in the Aesthetic Movement Gallery
- A Folk Art Pictorial quilt (1895-98) sewn by former slave Harriet Powers - Joseph Stella’s spectacular painting Old Brooklyn Bridge (about 1941) in the American Art and Design: The 1920s and 1930s Gallery
- Argentinean artist César Paternosto’s recently acquired bold and vibrant oil Staccato (1965), on view in the Abstraction: A Revolution Gallery

The wing’s nine period rooms (located on Levels LG, 1, and 2) offer full-scale settings illustrating the lifestyles of several prosperous New Englanders in the 17th through 19th centuries, such as two mid 19th-century rooms from the Roswell Gleason House in Dorchester, Massachusetts, installed within the Museum for the first time. The four Behind the Scenes education galleries give visitors a hands-on, insider’s view of the work done by Museum curators and conservators. Digital displays and interactive touch screens in many of the galleries enhance the appreciation of works of art and stylistic periods. In addition, three rotating galleries showcase light-sensitive works—photographs, prints, and textiles—such as images by Edward Weston and Alfred Stieglitz, prints by Mary Cassatt and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and Colonial Boston embroideries and samplers.

The Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Family Courtyard, a soaring glass structure enclosing one of the Museum’s two courtyards, is adjacent to the Art of the Americas Wing. The spectacular light-filled gathering place, where visitors can meet, relax, and dine in the café, affords year-round enjoyment of the outdoors and also serves as a venue for special events. Measuring 12,184-square feet and 63 feet high, the courtyard is almost entirely composed of double- and triple-glazed glass—504 large panels, totaling 29,550 square feet—supported by a steel frame. Inside the courtyard, ivory “crema luna” limestone from France lines the eastern wall where it meets the Art of the Americas Wing and frames the wing’s “floating” staircase. Kuru Grey granite from Finland is used for the floor. The courtyard offers a link between the Sharf Visitor Center in the heart of the Museum’s historic building, and the new wing for the Art of the Americas to the east. Because of its location within the Museum’s original building, the design for the courtyard incorporates landscaped areas along its north and south perimeters featuring sculpture and plantings.

A new Ann and Graham Gund Gallery for special exhibitions is located below the Shapiro Family Courtyard on Level LG, where it connects to the wing for the Art of Americas. The gallery measures 8,280 square feet and nearly 16 feet high. It incorporates a square, open plan and moveable walls, allowing maximum flexibility for the display of artwork, and features a state-of-the-art lighting system. Adjacent to the gallery is a Museum shop. A wide range of special exhibitions reflecting a variety of cultures and time periods will be presented in the new Gund Gallery. The first exhibition is Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Contemporary Chinese Tradition (on view November 20, 2010, through February 13, 2011), which offers a dynamic dialogue between masterpieces of the MFA’s collection and newly created works of contemporary Chinese art.

In addition to new construction, the MFA’s expansive building project incorporated significant renovations to the Museum’s historic building, including the State Street Corporation Fenway Entrance to the north and the Huntington Avenue Entrance on the Avenue of the Arts to the south, which reinforced the MFA’s original axis. This enhances the ways visitors encounter the Museum and its encyclopedic collections, and offers a coherent plan for navigation throughout the building. Also renovated were the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Visitor Center, numerous galleries, and conservation labs.

The MFA’s building team, in addition to Foster + Partners, included CBT/Childs Bertman Tseckares Inc., Boston, architect of record, and John Moriarty & Associates, General Contractor, Boston, construction manager. The project, which broke ground in 2005, was supported by a $504 million campaign, which included $345 million for new construction and renovations, and $159 million for endowment of programs and positions, and annual operations. More than 25,000 people contributed to the campaign, which concluded in 2008.

These ambitious expansion and renovation initiatives underscore the MFA’s mission, to make art more accessible and exciting for the more than one million families, school children, college students and adults who come to the Museum each year for inspiration and education, and who value it as a vital community resource. The MFA’s enhancements enrich the experience for visitors from Boston and around the world by offering vibrant new spaces and by showcasing works from all of the Americas in a comprehensive new context. In celebration of The New MFA, a number of special events are planned, beginning with the free Community Day on Saturday, November 20. Those individuals interested in a preview are encouraged to support the MFA by becoming a Member and attend special Members Week activities November 14–19.

ART OF AMERICAS PUBLICATION

 

A NEW WORLD IMAGED  © MFA

In conjunction with the opening of the MFA’s new wing for the Art of the Americas, A New World Imagined: Art of the Americas (MFA Publications, 2010), will be published in November. The book offers a bold new look at the art of the Americas by viewing it through its intersections with the world at large. Taking the vast geography and cultural diversity of the North and South American continents as its starting point, it introduces the ways in which American art, broadly defined, has been shaped both by its encounters with cultures around the globe and by its own past—from the ancient and native populations who first inhabited these territories to the European, Asian, Scandinavian, and Latino émigrés who settled here. Edited by Elliot Bostwick Davis, the John Moors Cabot Chair of the Art of the Americas Department at the MFA, A New World Imagined presents essays by Museum curators who discuss more than 200 works of art from the MFA, including some of its most celebrated paintings, sculpture, and furniture. The 350-page book features approximately 300 color images. By Elliot B. Davis, Dennis Carr, Nonie Gadsden, Cody Hartley, Erica E. Hirshler, Heather Hole, Kelly H. L’Ecuyer, Karen E. Quinn, Dorie Reents-Budet & Gerald W. R. Ward. It is available in hardcover for $60 at the MFA Bookstore and Shop or at mfa.org/publications

Other MFA's related publications

American Painting - MFA Highlights   © MFA

By Elliot B. Davis, Erica E. Hirshler, Janet L. Comey, Karen E. Quinn, Ellen Roberts & Carol Troyen
232 pages. 150 color illustrations

"Over 100 masterworks from 1670 to 1960, by artists as diverse as Sargent, Whistler, Cassatt, Hopper, Gorky, and Pollock. Both a brief history of American painting, from the British colonies to the mid 20th century, and a discussion of its crucial themes, this is a valuable and enjoyable resource."

Native American Art - MFA Highlights   © MFA

By Gerald W. R. Ward, Pamela A. Parmal, Michael Suing, Heather Hole & Jennifer Swope
192 pages. 154 color & 6 b/w illustrations, 1 map

"The collection of Native American artworks is one of the hidden treasures of the MFA, with many of its finest objects seldom displayed to ensure their preservation. This book presents 100 of these little-known works—many published for the first time—ranging from ancient to contemporary, and covering objects from across the North American continent."

American Decorative Arts and Sculpture - MFA Highlights © MFA

By Gerald W. R. Ward, Nonie Gadsden & Kelly H. L’Ecuyer
224 pages. 188 color illustrations

"With over 100 carefully selected masterpieces of furniture, silver, glass, ceramics, coins and medals, basketry, and sculpture, this volume offers a unique window into the beauty and meaning of the decorative arts as they have flourished in the American context, broadly conceived."

Masterpices: Great Paintings of the World in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston  © MFA

Foreword by Malcolm Rogers
224 pages. 170 color illustrations

"Whatever form it takes, the expressiveness and adaptability of paint have stirred artists throughout history. This completely rewritten and redesigned edition of a longstanding favorite presents 150 works by artists from Asia, Europe, and the Americas: delicate Song-dynasty handscrolls, jewel-like images of medieval piety, scenes of mythic drama, austere still lifes, sensitive portraits, grand landscapes, and jarring modern visions. Featuring artists such as Rembrandt, El Greco, Copley, Monet, Sargent, and Picasso, anonymous masters of medieval Europe and Asia, and living painters of uncompromising vision such as Gerhard Richter and David Hockney, Masterpieces is a lavish celebration of the possibilities of paint."

Silver of the Americas, 1600-2000: American Silver in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston  © MFA

Edited by Jeannine Falino & Gerald W. R. Ward
560 pages. over 1,000 duotone illustrations

"Nearly 700 objects from the 17th century to the present, including the Colonial era, Federal period, 19th-century Revival styles, the aesthetic movement, the Arts and Crafts period, and 20th-century modernism."

The MFA Handbook: A Guide to the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston © MFA

By Gilian Shallcross, introduction by Malcolm Rogers
400 pages. Color illustrations throughout

"Featuring more than 500 objects from all times and places (nearly 100 of them new to this edition)—Native American ceramics to European shoes, Egyptian funerary arts to Warhol silkscreens, not to mention the Museum’s world-renowned collections of paintings and sculpture—The MFA Handbook provides a window on works that have surprised, delighted, and inspired visitors since the MFA first opened its doors in 1876."

Director's Choice: A Tour of Masterpices in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston © MFA

By Malcolm Rogers
80 pages. 80 color illustrations

"Discussing some 70 objects from across the MFA’s extensive collections, Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, takes readers on a virtual tour of the Museum’s most outstanding masterworks. The objects presented cover the full range of times and cultures, from Yorumba veranda posts, Mayan drinking vessels, and Asian decorative arts to paintings, sculptures, and prints by the likes of Hopper, Homer, O’Keeffe, Pollock, Rubens, Turner, El Greco, Renoir, and many others."

Invitation to Art: A History of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston  © MFA

By Maureen Melton
96 pages. 60 color & 55 duotone illustrations

"This social and architectural history traces the first 135 years of the MFA, from its beginning as a repository for armor to its current status as a leading arts institution. Informal, anecdotal, and profusely illustrated, Invitation to Art sketches Boston’s transformation from the post-Civil War era to the present, showing how the MFA’s role has changed as a reflection of the times. Illustrated with rare archival documents, this is both an informative history and a delightful souvenir."

MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON Avenue of the Arts
465 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5523, USA
www.mfa.org
Publications are available at www.mfa.org/publications

Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition

Arnold Chang, Li Huayi, Li Jin, Liu Dan, Liu Xiaodong, Qin Feng, Qiu Ting, Xu Bing, Yu Hong, Zeng Xiaojun

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

November 20, 2010 – February, 13, 2011

Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), is a groundbreaking exhibition in which 10 leading contemporary Chinese artists will show works recently created in direct response to masterpieces in the Museum’s world-renowned collection. Opening on November 20 in the MFA’s new Ann and Graham Gund Gallery, the exhibition will juxtapose these new works with the masterpieces that inspired them, creating a dynamic stage on which the classic will historicize the contemporary as the new reinterprets the old. Monumental landscapes, imaginative portraits, and dramatic installations will be showcased in a wide range of formats. Fresh Ink will celebrate the rich diversity and creativity of ink painting today and its profound connection to the millennia-long tradition from which it was born.

“Fresh Ink will introduce our visitors to some of the most exciting and creative minds of our times,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA. “This dialogue between the Museum’s treasured masterpieces and the fresh interpretations of contemporary Chinese artists presents works from the MFA’s collection in a new light.”

Fresh Ink is the culmination of a project more than five years in the making, beginning in 2005 with the exhibition’s conception and artist selection. In 2006, 10 artists from China and the Chinese diaspora were invited by the MFA to attend an artist-in-residency program at the Museum. During the next three years, each traveled to Boston and studied masterpieces from the MFA’s collection; eventually, they each selected one work to which they would directly respond with their own work. The 10 artists participating in the exhibition, ranging in age from their late 30s to early 60s, are Arnold Chang, Li Huayi, Li Jin, Liu Dan, Liu Xiaodong, Qin Feng, Qiu Ting, Xu Bing, Yu Hong, and Zeng Xiaojun. What is reflected in this group of artists, in their fascinating biographies and diverse styles, and in their individual connections to tradition, is a commitment to understanding the past while forging a vibrant future—a concept at the core not only of Fresh Ink, but of contemporary China itself.

“Artists are the most astute observers of art,” said Hao Sheng, the MFA’s Wu Tung Curator of Chinese Art, who organized the show. “A highlight of planning the exhibition was the time spent looking in storage with the artists, watching them putting questions to works of art and finding unexpected answers from them. This thrilling dialogue will resume between new and old works, which will be shown together in the exhibition for the first time, one next to another.”

Fresh Ink features 10 pairings of classic and contemporary works among the approximately 40 pieces (including preparatory sketches and woodblocks by the artists) in the exhibition. The masterpieces chosen from the Museum’s collection vary in age, medium, and culture. They span 3,000 years, from an 11th-century BC bronze vessel, to paintings on silk from the Song Dynasties period (AD 960–1268), to a Jackson Pollock canvas of 1949. The new works also range widely in format, from traditional handscrolls, hanging scrolls, and carved wooden screens, to silk banners and monumental folding books.

Near the entrance of the exhibition, eight bolts of golden silk will cascade from the ceiling, measuring 17 feet tall and featuring life-size portraits by Yu Hong. Her work responds to Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk (early 12th century), a treasure of the Museum’s collection attributed to the artist-emperor Huizong (1082–1135), which she first saw in her art school class when she was a teenager in Beijing. Known for her depictions of women, the artist re-envisioned the Tang dynasty (618–907) court ladies as 21st-century women in Spring Romance (Collection of the Artist, 2009), and included her self-portrait among the group of women.

Another artist whose self-portrait is incorporated in his work is Li Jin, who responded to Northern Qi scholars collating classic texts (Northern Song dynasty, 11th century). The ancient scroll depicts a scene of scholars cavorting, drinking, reading, and writing. Li created a playful response with his paintings Reminiscence to Antiquity I–VII (Collection of the Artist, 2009), which include two long handscrolls and seven narrow hanging scrolls. Li stayed in Boston for six weeks during his residency, and the artist’s sensitivity to the city is evident in visual references, including a Red Sox hat-wearing Bostonian and a curious harbor seal.

Liu Xiaodong, regarded in Chinese art circles as the most talented oil painter of his generation, is known for his sensitive engagement with social issues. In response to the violence he saw in the classical work Erlang and His Soldiers Driving out Animal Spirits (Ming dynasty, 15th century), Liu reflected on the subject of violence he read about in American schools in his 5 x 25-foot work What to Drive Out? (MFA, Boston, 2008). The artist painted full-length images of nine American teenagers from Boston high schools, incorporating their thoughts about violence, which the teens wrote as colophons on the left side of the scroll. The painting was acquired by the Museum upon its completion in 2008.

A different kind of portraiture was created by Liu Dan, who painted nine oversized portraits of the renowned “scholar’s rock,” the Honorable Old Man Rock (Rosenblum Family Collection, first collected at about 1600) from nine different angles. Famous for his rock portraits, Liu assimilates the very character of the 5 ½-foot rock, which serves as the focal point of his dramatic installation, Illusions of the Old Man Rock I–X (Collection of the Artist, 2009). The nine rock paintings (each measuring 4 x 8 feet) are arranged in a circle around the rock, with a 30-foot-long handscroll of an imagined landscape wrapping the exterior of the circle.

Two artists have offered two very different responses to one of the MFA’s great treasures, Nine Dragons (1244) by Chen Rong (first half of the 13th century). Li Huayi interprets the qi (chi)—the circulating life energy that in Chinese thought is believed to enliven all things—of these fearsome, mythical creatures as craggy mountains and rocks, twisting pines, and misty clouds in his finely painted landscape Dragons Hidden in Mountain Ridges (Collection of the Artist, 2009). By manipulating the absorbency of his medium, xuan paper, and splash painting sections of his monumental work, Li achieves an ethereal effect. Measuring 7 feet tall and 18 feet wide—the largest work the artist has ever created—this innovative screen design features six vertical panels joined together and curved at the end, with a hanging scroll at the center a few inches in front of the panels. Zeng Xiaojun was also inspired by Nine Dragons. His response has taken a two-fold approach, illustrated by both a 32-foot-long scroll, Nine Trees (Collection of the Artist, 2009), where the writhing dragons are reimagined as aged, gnarled cypress trees, and a sumptuous 8 x 11-foot folding screen made out of zitan wood, featuring ink paintings of twisting cypress trees on one side, and carved and lacquered dragons on the other.

Landscapes are the eternal subject of Chinese ink paintings. Offering a fresh take on this is Arnold Chang, a Chinese-American artist living in New York who chose to respond to Jackson Pollock’s painting Number 10 (1949), which will be displayed flat on a table, as is customary with Chinese scrolls. Chang saw the opportunity to invite comparison between the fluid motion of Pollock’s “drip technique” and the Chinese landscape brush idiom. His painting Secluded Valley in the Cold Mountains (Collection of the Artist, 2008), and his earlier sketch Brushwork Study for Reorienting Pollock (Collection of the Artist, 2008), reflect his interpretation of Pollock’s gesture.

Xu Bing revisited the definitive painting instructions on Chinese landscape, the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (late 17th century), transforming simple images from this primer into a complex work of art. Instructional motifs, featuring rocks, trees, and water elements with accompanying texts, were scanned from the manual, cut, then arranged to form a new panorama. The new composition was then carved into woodblocks, from which long scrolls were printed using traditional printing techniques.

For his landscape Visit to the Eight Great Sites (Collection of the Artist, 2009), Qiu Ting pays homage to Zhao Lingrang’s Summer Mist along the Lakeshore (Northern Song dynasty, 1100), a scholarly work from the Museum’s collection that was investigated in depth in the artist’s doctoral dissertation on Chinese brush painting. Although, at age 39, Qiu is the youngest of the 10 artists, he is ostensibly the most traditional in his painting style. Capturing the wistful lyricism of this Northern Song masterpiece, Qiu’s use of mist as a reoccurring motif ties the two works together. Visit to the Eight Great Sites also features numerous inscriptions at the end of the painting, containing a collection of commentaries on Zhao Lingrang that range from historical texts to Qiu’s own reflections.

The final work in Fresh Ink is a dynamic installation by Qin Feng, who responds to the oldest object in the exhibition, a monumental bronze vessel from the 11th century BC. Qin, a resident of both Chelsea, MA, and Beijing, drew upon his upbringing in China’s Xinjiang Province, a multicultural crossroads where Chinese, Uighur, Arabic, and Russian were among the languages used, for his Civilization Landscape (Collection of Artist, 2009). Fascinated by the written word, the artist was inspired by the inscriptions on the ceremonial vessel, which are some of the earliest traces of written Chinese. Surrounding this historic work of art are 15 large-scale folding books and 12 hanging scrolls by Qin, painted in words that are both ancient and of his own invention. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to contemplate these works by walking among the standing books, some of which are 5 feet tall.

Fresh Ink offers the opportunity to “eavesdrop” on the vibrant visual dialogue between today’s artists and established masters. By bridging eras—from the 11th century BC to the 21st century AD—and bringing people together from Beijing to Boston and beyond, the exhibition will present the venerable tradition of Chinese art anew, offering to global audiences a fresh encounter that goes beyond the preconceptions of traditional and contemporary, East and West.

CATALOGUE

Accompanying the exhibition is the catalogue Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition (MFA Publications, 2010), which features an introductory essay by Hao Sheng, the MFA’s Wu Tung Curator of Chinese Art, and 10 artist profiles by Sheng and curatorial research associates Yan Yang and Joseph Scheier-Dolberg. The 208-page soft-cover catalogue is available for $40 in the MFA Bookstore and Shop or at www.mfa.org/publications

ARTIST OVERVIEWS

Below is an overview of the artists and their new works, as well as the corresponding masterpieces from the MFA collection.

Arnold Chang • Born in 1954 in New York, where he currently resides
• MFA masterpiece: Number 10 (1949) by Jackson Pollock (1912–1956)
• Artist’s response: a landscape handscroll, Secluded Valley in the Cold Mountains (Collection of the Artist, 2008), and a preparatory sketch, Brushwork Study for Reorienting Pollock (Collection of the Artist, 2008)

Li Huayi
• Born in 1948 in Shanghai, lives in San Francisco 

• MFA masterpiece: Nine Dragons (1244), a handscroll by Chen Rong (first half of the 13th century)
• Artist’s response: Dragons Hidden in Mountain Ridges (Collection of the Artist, 2009), a six-panel screen and a central hanging scroll

Li Jin
• Born in 1958 in Tianjin, where he still resides
• MFA masterpiece: Northern Qi scholars collating classic texts (11th century), traditionally attributed to Yan Liben (about 600–673)
• Artist’s response: Handscrolls, A New Take on Scholars Collating Classic Texts (Collection of the Artist, 2009) and hanging scrolls, Reminiscence to Antiquity I-VII (Collection of the Artist, 2009)

Liu Dan • Born in 1953 in Nanjing, now resides in Beijing
• MFA masterpiece: Honorable Old Man Rock (Rosenblum Family Collection, 17th century)
• Artist’s response: Nine life-sized portraits, each reflecting a different angle, titled Illusions of the Old Man Rock I–IX (Collection of the Artist, 2009), and a handscroll of imagined landscape, Landscape (title TBD), (Collection of the Artist, 2009)

Liu Xiaodong • Born in 1963 in Liaoning Province, now lives in Beijing
• MFA masterpiece: Erlang and his soldiers driving out animal spirits (Ming dynasty, 15th century)
• Artist’s response: Painting, What to Drive Out? (MFA, Boston, 2008), with commentary written as colophons by nine teenagers from the Boston area. (Liu discusses his work in a podcast available on the MFA’s website)

Qin Feng • Born in 1961 in Xinjiang Province, resides in Chelsea, MA, and Beijing
• MFA masterpiece: Fangyi-shaped Ritual Vessel (Late Shang dynasty to early Western Zhou dynasty, 11th century BC)
• Artist’s response: Installation of large folding books and hanging scrolls, Civilization Landscape (Collection of the Artist, 2009)

Qiu Ting • Born in 1971 in Guangdong, resides in Beijing
• MFA masterpiece: Summer Mist along the Lakeshore (1100) by Zhao Lingrang (late 11th–early 12th century)
• Artist’s response: Handscroll, Visit to the Eight Great Sites (Collection of the Artist, 2009)

Xu Bing • Born 1955 in Chongqing, lives in Beijing
• MFA masterpiece: the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (1923 edition based on its first edition published in late 17th century)
• Artist’s response: Printed scroll, Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll (Collection of the Artist, 2009)

Yu Hong • Born in 1966 in Xian, lives in Beijing
• MFA masterpiece: Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk (early 12th century), attributed to Emperor Huizong (1082–1135)
• Artist’s response: Painting, Spring Romance (Collection of the Artist, 2009)

Zeng Xiaojun • Born in 1954 in Beijing, where he lives
• MFA masterpiece: Handscroll, Nine Dragons (1244) by Chen Rong
• Artist’s response: Handscroll, Nine Trees (Collection of the Artist, 2009) and painted panels in a zitan wood screen (Collection of the Artist, 2009)

The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. Generous corporate sponsorship is provided by United Technologies Corporation. Additional support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. Artist residencies have been supported in part by the Asian Cultural Council.

For general visitor information, visit the MFA website at www.mfa.org