Edward Steichen, Photos Exhibition at WCMA, Williamstown

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) presents two exhibitions highlighting different periods from the photographic career of Edward Steichen. In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years, 1923–1937 is the first comprehensive presentation of Steichen work made for the fashion and glamour industry. Episodes from a Life in Photography surveys Edward Steichen’s photography throughout his career. A special celebration marking the opening of these two exhibitions will take place on June 5 at 6:00 pm. Gallery talks will be given at 6:00 pm. This is a free public event and all are invited to attend.

Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years, 1923–1937 presents over 180 photographs that Steichen made while working as Chief Photographer for two of Condé Nast’s best known magazines: Vogue and Vanity Fair. Steichen photographed models wearing fashion from some of the most famous designers of the period including Worth, Poiret, Chanel, and Schiaparelli. He also created portraits of the most prominent figures in literature, journalism, dance, sport, politics, theatre, and film for Vanity Fair, including Greta Garbo, Winston Churchill, Marlene Dietrich, George Gershwin, Frank Lloyd Wright, Amelia Earhart, and Walt Disney. Between the two World Wars, Steichen revolutionized fashion photography while becoming known as “the most famous portrait photographer in the world.” In High Fashion opens at WCMA on May 30 and runs through September 13, 2009, after which it will travel to the Art Gallery of Ontario. A 288-page catalogue accompanies this exhibition.

Edward Steichen: Episodes from a Life in Photography features photographs from throughout Steichen’s prolific career, presenting many different aspects and themes. It also highlights some of the technical and artistic issues that Edward Steichen explored in his printing methods. Episodes depicts Steichen’s transition from pictorialist to modernist photography, which is epitomized by his fashion and glamour photography. Episodes presents 90 photographs and includes multiple copies of certain prints to demonstrate Edward Steichen’s interest in a variety of technological processes. Since June 6 to November 8, 2009.

“We are unbelievably fortunate to have this bounty of Edward Steichen material on view—almost 300 vintage prints,” notes exhibition curator John Stomberg. “These works are rarely seen. We will also be showing all of the original, extraordinarily fine gelatin silver prints (still in their original mounts) that Steichen created for a 1936 illustrated edition of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Together these two shows demonstrate the dynamism of American modernism and Steichen’s critical role in its development.”

In High Fashion, the North American exhibition, was organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis, the Musée de L'Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland, and the International Center of Photography, New York in collaboration with Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Mass.

It was curated by William A. Ewing, Director, Musée de l´Elysée; Todd Brandow, Executive Director, Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography; Nathalie Herschdorfer, Curator, Musée de l’Elysée; and Carol Squiers, Curator, International Center of Photography.

Episodes from a Life in Photography was organized by John Stomberg, Deputy Director/Chief Curator and Lecturer in Art at WCMA, with assistance by Veronika Totos, Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, Class of 2009.

Williams College Museum of Art, 15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Ste 2 Williamstown, MA 01267

The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

Louise Bourgeois at Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown - Sleepwalking

Louise Bourgeois: Sleepwalking

Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown

November 24, 2001 - August 25, 2002

“I’m in a state of sleepwalking which has something to do with the impression I have of not being able to focus my attention on anything for long. At the same time my brain is tremendously active. I have all sorts of ideas and plans in my head and I’m all set to write, or to draw--anything...”

- Louise Bourgeois, Diary entry, November 19, 1944

Louise Bourgeois has always had an abundance of ideas and plans in her head, and has realized hundreds of them over the course of seven decades. With the recent commission of Eyes, 2001, a monumental, permanent, outdoor sculpture by this influential artist, the museum has brought into its galleries a select sampling of her artwork to compliment and provide a context for the sculpture outside. This selection includes, twenty drawings, six sculptures, a photograph of the artist from 1982 by Robert Mapplethorpe, and an audio track titled, Otte from 1995 in which Bourgeois sings a song she wrote in her native French.

Sleepwalking touches on a range of motifs and themes within Louise Bourgeois’ prolific body of work, including that of the “insomnia drawings,” intimate works, primarily in ink on paper, that have aided the artist through an ongoing battle with sleeplessness. Drawings of this nature, such as the 1998 Untitled (I Can or Will Fall Asleep), together with the sculptures in the exhibition, provide a glimpse into her working method. As indicated in her diary entry from 1944 above, Louise Bourgeois is in a constant flux of production, moving effortlessly between materials and motifs, between small works and large public installations. For example, Spider II, 1995, included in the exhibition, is a smaller, yet no less powerful, prototype for Louise Bourgeois’ massive public installation, Maman and two smaller Spiders, recently on view at Rockefeller Center in NYC. While her work has undergone dramatic formal changes over the years she has remained loyal to a handful of visual and psychological subjects: family groups, personal spaces and the fragmented human form.

Louise Bourgeois began her career as a painter and print-maker but sculpture has been her dominant medium since the late 1940s. Though her work shared some stylistic attributes with popular art movements such as Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, because of her gender and her intentionally idiosyncratic style, she remained on the fringes of these groups. Her modest public persona was exploded by the critically acclaimed 1982 MoMA retrospective, Louise Bourgeois, the first of its kind for a woman artist. She has since received many prestigious awards and honors including the first Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Sculpture Center, Washington DC in 1991; distinction as the United States representative at the 1993 Venice Biennale; and the National Medal of the Arts at the White House in 1997. In recent years, she has completed a number of large-scale installations and commissioned public works, including the museum’s 75th anniversary sculpture, Eyes, 2001 located on the front lawn and entrance courtyard.

Louise Bourgeois: Sleepwalking was organized by Abigail Guay, Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art ‘02 with Lisa Dorin Curatorial and Programs Assistant.

WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART - WCMA

15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Ste 2, Williamstown, MA 01267

www.wcma.org

Romare Bearden at WCMA, Williamstown - "Romare Bearden in Black-and-White: Photomontage Projections, 1964" Exhibition

Romare Bearden in Black-and-White: Photomontage Projections, 1964

WCMA, Williamstown

November 28, 1998 - January 24, 1999

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is presenting "Romare Bearden in Black-and-White: Photomontage Projections, 1964," an exhibition organized and circulated by the Council for Creative Projects, Lee, Massachusetts and New York, New York. Twenty-four works which signal the artist's departure from pure abstraction and his subsequent progression to collage are shown.

In 1963, Romare Bearden (1914-1988) helped organize Spiral, a group of African American artists concerned with the social and political issues of the times. Particularly influenced by the Civil Rights Movement, Romare Bearden proposed that Spiral create a collaborative collage mural using an extensive picture file that he had assembled. When the group's interest in the project waned, Romare Bearden used the materials to create his own photomontage works which he then photographically enlarged and called "projections." The pieces reflect themes from his life--his childhood spent in the South and in Pittsburgh, biblical themes, jazz and blues music, and urban life in Harlem. This body of work from 1964, which has not been shown collectively in over 30 years, highlights these issues that Romare Bearden was to explore for the remainder of his long and successful career as an artist.

Romare Bearden once stated, "I think that the way to escape from reality is to get to the heart of it; confronting it, moving to the core is the only way." Accordingly, he chronicles events through his photomontage projections in a candid, unwavering manner suggestive of documentary photographs, while simultaneously instilling them with a sense of chaos and fragmented reality.

Some of these pieces were exhibited at WCMA in 1969. It was at that time that the museum purchased The Prevalence of Ritual- Baptism, which is included in the current show. Romare Bearden had a direct impact on the students at Williams College: not only did he present a lecture in 1969, but he also taught a Winter Study course on African American art in January of 1970.

An illustrated catalogue with essays by Gail Gelburd and Thelma Golden accompanies this exhibition.

WCMA - WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART

15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Ste 2, Williamstown, MA 01267

www.williams.edu

Robert Rymann, Tim Rollins + K.O.S at WCMA, Williamstown - Beyond Borders: Two Portfolios by Robert Ryman and Tim Rollins + K.O.S.

Beyond Borders: 

Two Portfolios by Robert Ryman and Tim Rollins + K.O.S.

WCMA, Williamstown

July 18 - End of 1998

Two portfolios of prints by American contemporary artists ROBERT RYMAN and TIM ROLLINS + K.O.S. are on display at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) through the end of the year. The show, "Beyond Borders: Two Portfolios by Robert Ryman and Tim Rollins + K.O.S.," challenges how viewers see art and explores commonly held notions about who can produce artwork and for whom it is created.

The exhibition features aquatints by Robert Ryman from 1975 and etchings by Tim Rollins + K.O.S., The Temptation of Saint Antony I-XIV, from 1989. Both artists are represented in major museum collections and have exhibited nationally and internationally. The pieces are on loan from the collection of the well-known conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, who has supported his colleagues through his noted collection of conceptual, minimal, and post-minimal art.

 "We are grateful to Sol LeWitt whose generosity to New England museums and other artists is legendary," said Linda Shearer, director of WCMA. "Although each artist came of age in different decades--Ryman in the 1960s and Rollins in the 1980s, there is a remarkable affinity between their work."

Born in 1930, ROBERT RYMAN sees the challenge of painting as "discovering a new way of seeing." After studying music in college, Ryman moved to New York in 1952 and began to experiment with painting. Since 1955 Robert Ryman has worked predominantly in white. "The use of white in my paintings came about when I realized that it didn’t interfere. It's a neutral color that allows for clarification of nuances in painting. It makes other aspects of painting visible that would not be so clear with the use of other colors." The variations of the square, the border, and even his signature quietly challenge the viewer to look closely to uncover important differences that reveal the artist's process.

TIM ROLLINS, who was born in 1955, has worked collaboratively since the early 1980s with K.O.S., a changing group of teenagers from the South Bronx in New York who call themselves "Kids of Survival." He describes his work with them as "making a way out of no way through art." As a special education teacher, Tim Rollins engaged his students who had been designated as "learning disabled," using a progressive and collaborative method. The fourteen prints on loan to WCMA from the Sol LeWitt Collection are based on Gustave Flaubert’s hallucinogenic prose-poem The Temptation of Saint Antony. Created by Tim Rollins with Richard Cruz, George Garces, Carlos Rivera, Nelson Savinon, and printed by San Francisco’s Crown Point Press, the etchings have an organic and haunting quality that demonstrates the group’s ability to translate the experience of language and life into visual imagery.

This exhibition was organized by summer intern Dorothy Moss, Williams College Graduate Program in Art History, Class of 1999.

WCMA - WILLIAMS COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART

15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Ste 2, Williamstown, MA 01267

www.williams.edu