Black Artists of Oregon @ Portland Art Museum

Black Artists of Oregon

Portland Art Museum

September 9, 2023 – March 17, 2024

Charles Tatum (American, 1937–2008)

Cosmic Woman, 1973

Wood panel sculpture, 25” x 14” x 14.5" 

Collection of Patricia Soltys 

Photographer: David Czuba

Natalie Ball 

Mapping Coyote Black, textile, 2015, 10" x 10" 

Courtesy of the Artist

Photographer, E.G. Schempf

Jeremy Okai Davis (American, born 1979)

Hue (Streat), 2021 

Acrylic and One Shot on canvas, 50" x 50" 

Photographer: Mario Gallucci

Penda Diakite (Malian-American, born 1992) 

Mandiani, 2021 

Acrylic, rubber, collage on wood panel 60" x 48"

Photographer: Penda Diakite

The exhibition Black Artists of Oregon, presented by the Portland Art Museum, highlights and celebrates the work of Black artists in Oregon over more than a century, exploring this history both through the lens of Black artists whose works are represented in the Museum’s collection as well as the works of influential artists who, historically, have not been exhibited or held in museum collections. 

Considering both the presence and absence of Black artists is critical to understanding the breadth of Black artistic production in Oregon—even in the midst of historic exclusion—as well as how the impact of that history affects our understanding of American art history and the history of the Pacific Northwest. This exhibition serves to deepen the awareness of the talented artists who have shaped and inspired artists regionally and nationally, and it is the first of its kind to consider the work of Black artists collectively in Oregon.

Beginning in the 1880s and spanning through today, Black Artists of Oregon captures the Black diasporic experiences particular to the Pacific Northwest with 67 artists and over 200 objects. Artists represented in the exhibition includes Thelma Johnson Streat, Al Goldsby, Charlotte Lewis, Isaka Shamsud-Din, Ralph Chessé, Charles Tatum, Arvie Smith, Shedrich Williames, Harrison Branch, Bobby Fouther, and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The exhibition and programming also include the works of contemporary and younger artists working now, functioning as bright threads and offering intergenerational conversation throughout the exhibition, including sidony o’neal, Jeremy Okai Davis, damali ayo, Sharita Towne, Melanie Stevens, Lisa Jarrett, Tristan Irving, Ebin Lee, and Jaleesa Johnston.

Carrie Mae Weems 

Untitled (Woman with daughter), from the series Kitchen Table, 1990 

Gelatin silver prints 

Gift of the Contemporary Art Council 

© Carrie Mae Weems 

Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York., 94.19a-c

Isaka Shamsud-Din 

Rock of Ages, 1976 

Oil, gold leaf, and mirror on canvas 

Gift of Roxie Schell and Damon Tempey 

© Isaka Shamsud-Din, 2018.36.1

Thelma Johnson Streat 

Monstro the Whale, 1940 

Wool 

Courtesy of the Fine Arts Collection, 

U.S. General Services Administration. 

New Deal Art Project, public domain, L42.32.1

Shedrich Williames (American, born 1934) 

Untitled, 1972

Gelatin silver print, image: 13 3/16 in x 10 3/8 in 

sheet: 14 in x 10 15/16 in 

Gift of Al Monner, 94.36.1

Iván Carmona Rosario (Puerto Rican, born 1973)

Mariconeo, 2022

Mineral silicate paint on ceramic, 82" x 20" x 16" 

Courtesy of the artist

Photographer: Mario Gallucci

Through the narrative flow of the exhibition, visitors are experience work by Black artists across decades and generations. Particular attention is given to the works of Black artists who were producing work during the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, such as Portland-based painter Isaka Shamsud-Din. The exhibition is also mark regional artistic connections with global movements for Black liberation, as seen in the work of Charlotte Lewis alongside Portlanders Organized for Southern African Freedom and artists like Sadé DuBoise, whose “Resistance” poster series contributed to Portland’s 2020 George Floyd protests. Without chronological constraints, the exhibition is grounded by the work of elder artists, intergenerational conversations, and live activation in the exhibition galleries.

Black Artists of Oregon builds upon guest curator Intisar Abioto’s original research since 2018 exploring the lineage and legacy of Black artists in Oregon. The exhibition continues Abioto’s research, which is grounded in Black American practices of listening, keeping, and passing on each others’ stories.

“Far from isolated or ancillary, Black arts and cultural production in Oregon has been in conversation and interchange with the world, and a part of its arts and cultural movements, all this time,” says Intisar Abioto. “Black Artists of Oregon is a heralding of Black presence, interchange, influence, and impact.”

Arvie Smith 

Dem Golden Slippers, 2007 

Oil on linen, Gift of Donna Hammar 

© Arvie Smith, 2010.80

Harrison Branch (American, born 1947) 

Untitled, Corvallis, Oregon, 1975

Gelatin silver print, image: 7 5/16 in x 9 1/2 in 

sheet: 13 1/2 in x 15 3/4 in 

Gift of the Photography Council, 2002.58.4

Adriene Cruz (American, born 1953) 

Egungun, 2013 

Mixed media embellished fabric 32 x 36 inches 

Collection of Adriene Cruz

Melanie Stevens (American, born 1979) 

Reflection II: Charles In Form, July 2023 

Linocut print 22 x 30 inches 

Courtesy of the artist

Bill Rutherford (American, born 1937) 

Wabi Sabi: Imperfect Beauty 

Eucalyptus on marble base, 12 x 7 x 7 inches 

Courtesy of the Artist

Artists featured in Black Artists of Oregon 

manuel arturo abreu (b. 1991)

damali ayo (b. 1972)

Natalie Ball (b. 1980)

J.S. Bell (1882-1925)

Harrison Branch (b. 1947)

Nikesha Breeze (b. 1979)

Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918)

Richard Brown (b. 1939)

Iván Carmona Rosario (b. 1973)

David Ornette Cherry (1958-2022)

Ralph Chessé (1900-1991)

Robert Colescott (1925-2009)

Licity Collins  (b. 1972) 

Adriene Cruz (b. 1953)

Cleo Davis (b. 1974)

Jeremy Okai Davis (b. 1979)

Baba Wagué Diakité (b. 1961)

Penda Diakité (b. 1992)

Modou Dieng Yacine (b. 1970)

Sadé DuBoise (b. 1993)

Ray Eaglin (1941-2004)

Mo Fee (1969 – 2020)

Bobby Fouther (b. 1950)

Henry Frison (1940-2020)

Julian V.L. Gaines (b. 1991)

Al Goldsby (1930-2002)

Sherrian Haggar (1946-2019)

Elijah Hasan (b. 1966)

Patricia Herron (b. 1951)

Jason Hill (b. 1976)

Janice Ingersoll (b. 1949) 

Tristan Irving (b. 1990)

Lisa Jarrett (b. 1977)

Jaleesa Johnston (b. 1989)

Nick Jones (b. 1945)

Arnold Kemp (b. 1968)

Rupert Kinnard (b. 1954)

ebin lee (b. 1989)

Charlotte Lewis (1934-1999)

Geeta Lewis (b. 1956)

Mark Little (b. 1948)

Willie Little (b. 1961)

Latoya Lovely (b. 1982)

Ivan McClellan (b. 1982)

Chris McMurry (b. 1970)

Christine Miller (b. 1990)

sidony o’neal (b. 1988)

Katherine Pennington (b. 1953)

Otis Quaicoe (b. 1988)

J.L. Quenton (b. 1953)

Philemon Reid (1945-2008)

Bill Rutherford (b. 1937)

Isaka Shamsud-Din (b. 1940)

Arvie Smith (b. 1938)

Melanie Stevens (b. 1979)

Thelma Johnson Streat (1911-1959)

Kayin Talton-Davis (b. 1980)

Charles Tatum (1937-2008)

Mickalene Thomas (b. 1971)

Sharita Towne (b. 1984)

Thomas Unthank (b. 1936)

Maya Vivas (b. 1990)

Samantha Wall (b. 1977)

Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953)

Shedrich Williames (b. 1934)

Tammy Jo Wilson (b. 1974)

Mosley Wotta (b. 1983)

Eatcho (b. 1980) 

PORTLAND ART MUSEUM

1219 SW Park Avenue Portland, OR 97205

www.portlandartmuseum.org

Marie Cosindas: Instant Color at Amon Carter Museum, Texas

Marie Cosindas: Instant Color
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX
Through May 26, 2013

MARIE COSINDAS (b. 1925) did not intend to be a photographer. The eighth of ten children in a modestly situated Greek family living in Boston, she studied dressmaking in school and took up a career designing textiles and children’s shoes, also acting as a color coordinator for a company that made museum reproductions in stone. On the side, she created abstract paintings filled with atmospheric color.

Marie Cosindas initially thought of the camera as a means for making design notes. But as so often happens, several photographs she took on a visit to Greece convinced her that such prints could stand on their own as finished works. In 1961, she participated in one of Ansel Adams’s photography workshops in Yosemite Valley. The following year, when Polaroid sought photographers to test its new instant color film before bringing it to market, Adams recommended her.

Marie Cosindas immediately took to the process of instant-developing color film and, in so doing, proved instrumental in revealing the artistic potential of color photography. She made such exquisite still lifes and portraits that even Polaroid’s founder, Edwin Land, was astounded. This exhibition includes 40 of Marie Cosindas’s one-of-a-kind Polaroid photographs and is the artist’s first major show in decades.

Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX
Museum's website: www.cartermuseum.org

SMMoA Project Room Exhibition Series. An innovative program initiative of the Santa Monica Museum of Art, California

NY/LA - A New, Annual Project Room Exhibition Series at Santa Monica Museum of Art, California

NY/LA is an innovative program initiative of the Santa Monica Museum of Art that diversifies SMMoA’s curatorial voice through an all-new, annual exhibition series. Developed by New York-based independent curator Jeffrey Uslip and SMMoA Deputy Director and curator Lisa Melandri, NY/LA connects emerging contemporary artists on the East and West coasts. NY/LA debut at SMMoA with two exhibitions on view through February 25, 2012: Adam Berg: Endangered Spaces (LA) in Project Room 1 and Georgi Tushev: Strange Attractor (NY) in Project Room 2

NY/LA identifies the intersections of contemporary art that emerge from both coasts and highlight important work from these cultural centers. The annual series will see Uslip and Melandri each select one artist from the East and West coasts, respectively, to show at SMMoA. The series also address current themes and practices of critical debate. Rather than present two artists who share thematic elements or particular artistic congruencies, Uslip and Melandri will select artists whose work represents emerging trends in contemporary art, creating a synergy that would not otherwise be explored.

"Both Los Angeles and New York are known for their innovations, their ability to spark new movements and cultivate new thought and action through art," Lisa Melandri said. "Our goal is to bring the best of both coasts together and elevate the conversation."

Through its bicoastal focus, NY/LA will promote an ongoing dialogue that links contemporary art across the United States. Having each lived and worked on the East and West coasts, Uslip’s and Melandri’s collaboration brings a fresh and original curatorial perspective to this new exhibition series. Uslip’s participation as an independent New York-based curator fulfills SMMoA’s continued objective to broaden its curatorial perspective through collaboration.

"NY/LA is a new program initiative that continues SMMoA’s commitment to innovative artistic practices,"  Jeffrey Uslip said. "By presenting concurrent project room exhibitions with one artist from New York and the other from Los Angeles, our aim is to foster a national dialogue between these two cultural centers."

With NY / LA, SMMoA continues to reshuffle and revitalize its programming.

SANTA MONICA MUSEUM OF ART, Santa Monica, California, USA
Museum's website: www.smmoa.org

Mark Grotjahn, Aspen Art Museum - A survey of paintings and drawings from the 1990s to now

Mark Grotjahn

A survey from the 1990s to now 

Aspen Art Museum, Aspen CO 

February 17 - April 29, 2012 

MARK GROTJAHN, Untitled (Red Face 773), 2007-08. 

Image courtesy of the artist. Photo: Douglas M. Parker Studio

A comprehensive survey of paintings and drawings by artist Mark Grotjahn dating from the late1990s to the present will be on view at the Aspen Art Museum (AAM). Mark Grotjahn makes conceptually grounded works that collide abstract and figurative elements to unsettle the conventions of each medium. By continuously combining these seemingly incompatible poles, as well as those of mimesis and expressionism, rational logic and intuitive process, Grotjahn stakes a claim for the continued vitality of abstraction and of painting itself. 

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition, featuring texts by Aspen Art Museum CEO, Director, and Chief Curator Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson and distinguished critic Barry Schwabsky. 

AAM and Aspen Skiing Company Lift Ticket Project

For the 2011-2012 ski season in Aspen, Mark Grotjahn has also designed five limited-edition lift tickets that feature images of his exuberant mask sculptures. Four of the sculptures are on public display at the peaks of each of the Aspen Skiing Company’s four mountains, allowing skiers to make the connection between the images on their lift tickets and the actual artworks. The fifth sculpture will be on view at the Aspen Art Museum in conjunction with the exhibition. 

 MARK GROTJAHN 

2011-2012 Aspen Skiing Company Lift Ticket (1 of 5), 2011. 

Image courtesy of the artist and the Aspen Skiing Company 

MARK GROTJAHN was born in 1968 in Pasadena, California, and lives and works in Los Angeles. He has had one-person exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland; and the Portland Art Museum, Oregon.  

Aspen Art Museum admission is free courtesy of John and Amy Phelan 

AAM online: www.aspenartmuseum.org

Cranbrook Academy Art Museum: History, Renovation and Expansion

HISTORY OF CRANBROOK ACADEMY OF ART AND ART MUSEUM, "AMERICA'S BAUHAUS"

Founded by newspaper magnate George Gough Booth and his wife Ellen Scripps Booth, Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum represent an ongoing educational experiment that the whole Cranbrook Educational Community embodies—"an original and radical plan to integrate all the arts in a perfect ensemble," according to Museum Director Gregory Wittkopp.

Cranbrook Academy of Art has been described as "America's Bauhaus," in recognition of the singular impact the school – one of the nation's leading graduate schools of art, architecture, and design – has as a place of artistic creation. Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, Harry Bertoia, Ralph Rapson, and Eero Saarinen created mid-century modernism at Cranbrook. Michael and Katherine McCoy started Product Semantics at the school. Daniel Libeskind, Jun Kaneko, Hani Rashid, Nick Cave, Richard De Vore, Tony Matelli, Niels Diffrient, Ed Fella, John Glick, Duane Hanson, Jack Lenor Larsen, and Lorraine Wild all studied or taught at Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Today, the Academy graduates more than 70 young artists and designers each year. The school's faculty of ten Artists-in-Residence are award-winning practitioners in their fields with work exhibited at some the world's most distinguished venues, including the Venice Biennale, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, The American Academy of Arts, and many others.

Reed Kroloff, Director of Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum, says, "People may not realize it, but Cranbrook art and design is everywhere. Whether you're sitting in an Eames office chair or riding in a new subway car in New York City, you are experiencing design by Cranbrook graduates [Antenna Design, which created the most recent subway cars, is co-directed by Masamichi Udagawa, a Cranbrook graduate]. The impact of this school on American life is ongoing and profound."

The Art Museum represents the culmination of Booth's plan. The Museum's collection of art and objects includes sculpture, paintings, models and drawings, ceramics, glass, furniture, textiles, and metalwork, and it is renowned for its variety – with the decorative, applied and fine arts all represented–its depth, and its unrivaled quality. Among the many treasures owned by Cranbrook Art Museum are works by Agnes Martin, Donald Judd, Bridget Riley, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Maija Grotell, Peter Voulkos, Eliel, Eero, Loja and Pipsan Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Florence Knoll, Marianne Strengell, Marshall Fredericks, Carl Milles, Arthur Neville Kirk, Paul Manship, and William Morris.

CRANBROOK ACADEMY OF ART AND ART MUSEUM: RENOVATION AND EXPANSION

Designed originally by Eliel and Eero Saarinen (with later buildings by Steven Holl, Lake/Flato, Rafael Moneo, Peter Rose, and Tod Williams and Billie Tsien), Cranbrook is a National Historic Landmark, located on 320 acres of rolling, wooded landscape approximately 18 miles northwest of downtown Detroit. And, on a campus famous for its architecture, Cranbrook Art Museum is considered one of Eliel Saarinen's masterpieces.

The complete renovation and expansion accomplishes two things, according to Museum Director Wittkopp. "On a fundamental level, we are making a commitment to the infrastructure of the museum by raising Saarinen's masterwork to the standards of 21st-century museum practice, in terms of mechanical systems, lighting, communications, and other technology," he says. "But Cranbrook is, ultimately, a community where art and life are inextricably linked, and we believe that a museum and its collections are important only if they can continue to inspire new generations of artists." To that end, and in keeping with Cranbrook's tradition as a center of educational innovation, the new Collections Wing creates a model that is unprecedented: a museum whose collections in their entirety are visible and accessible. "The Academy has always seen the collection as a critical component of our pedagogy," explains Kroloff. "So we decided early on to create a very different kind of environment for viewing it. Instead of seeing only the fraction of the collection that most museums offer, our students, faculty, and visitors will have access to all 6,000 objects in a way that's never been possible before. Cranbrook Art Museum and its collections will be an integrated teaching environment like no other."

In order to accommodate this program, the building project encompassed two primary aspects: renovating and restoring the original Saarinen museum, and adding the 20,000-square-foot Collections Wing, where much of the collection will be displayed. Creating a conservation environment within the existing building required substantial improvements to achieve current standards for lighting, temperature, and humidity. Restoration of the Saarinen building also included a new roof, windows, and brick repair, as well as the disassembly and rebuilding of the building's famed plazas and ceremonial exterior stairs, which will now include a snow melting system that eliminates the need for destructive winter salting. An original Saarinen-designed coffered gallery lighting system (believed to be the first of its kind, and the forerunner of Eero Saarinen's revolutionary integrated lighting systems at the nearby General Motors Technical Center) was also restored.

The new Collections Wing is located to the northeast of the historic Saarinen museum and houses the new, visible collections spaces, a woodshop, photography studio, loading dock, and a 10'x15' freight elevator to facilitate the transport of artworks within the building. A seminar/conference space is intended for focused instruction regarding the collection. The SmithGroup was the architect for both the restoration and the new building.

The $22 million-project at Cranbrook Art Museum was funded by Cranbrook Educational Community as one of several important restoration projects made possible by a recently completed $181 million Comprehensive Fundraising Campaign. Of this total, the Academy of Art and Art Museum raised nearly $46 million in annual and endowed support for programming, financial aid, faculty support, and new equipment. The $10 million lead gift to the Campaign was received from Maxine and Stuart Frankel and family.

After the two-year construction project Cranbrook Art Museum will reopen on 11-11-11.

CRANBROOK ART MUSEUM, BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI
Cranbrook Academy of Art
www.cranbrookart.edu

Post-War American Art: The Novak-O'Doherty Collection at IMMA, Dublin

Post-War American Art

The Novak/O'Doherty Collection at IMMA 

Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 

Through 27 February 2011 

The IMMA - IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART - exhibites 76 artworks by many of America’s leading post-war artists gifted to the Museum Collection by art historian Barbara Novak and artist Brian O’Doherty. The exhibition is on view since 8 September 2010 until 27 February 2011.

POST-WAR AMERICAN ART: THE NOVAK / O'DOHERTY COLLECTION, donated in association with the American Ireland Fund, comprises paintings and sculpture and an extensive range of works on paper, including watercolours, drawings, photographs and limited edition prints and multiples. Works by Joseph Cornell, Dan Graham, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and a host of other celebrated artists are included in the exhibition.

The donation is particularly rich in works from New York of the 1960s and ‘70s; many the result of friendships with outstanding artists from that milieu. We can imagine the lives of Barbara Novak and Brian O'Doherty over 50 years – they married in 1960 – through these paintings, photographs, drawings, sculptures and prints.  Many works were swops with other artists or tokens of friendship, inscribed with dedications or personal notes; others reflect their ongoing exchanges and correspondence through postcards and letters, such as the postcards sent by Sol LeWitt over the years incorporating sketches. Still other works were gifts, while some were purchased.  Through them we see that Barbara Novak and Brian O’Doherty were central figures in the art community of the 1960s and ‘70s and beyond.

Four important works, by Edward Hopper, Marcel Duchamp, George Segal and Jasper Johns, were gifted in 2009. The forthcoming exhibition celebrates the arrival of the balance of their collection to IMMA. Other artists represented in the collection include  Christo, Mel Bochner, William Scharf, Peter Hutchinson, Les Levine, Sonja Sekula,  John Coplans, Arnold Newman, and Elise Asher. Some works were included in the recent exhibition Vertical Thoughts: Morton Feldman and the Visual Arts – appropriate since the composer Morton Feldman was a close of friend of the donors.

BARBARA NOVAK short BIOGRAPHY

Born in New York, Barbara Novak is an enormously influential art historian as well as artist and novelist.  She is the author of American Painting of the Nineteenth Century, Nature and Culture and Voyages of the Self, recently published as a trilogy on American art and culture by Oxford University Press. She joined the art history department of Barnard College and Columbia University in 1958 and retired as Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor Emerita in 1998. A chaired professorship at Barnard College was named in her honour.

BRIAN O'DOHERTY short BIOGRAPHY

Born in Ballaghadereen, Co Roscommon, Brian O'Doherty variously exhibited in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art and in the RHA and Oireachtas exhibitions from 1950 to 1956. He moved to the United States in 1957, where he became a pioneer in the development of Conceptual Art and also a renowned writer and critic. He has had several retrospectives, most recently in New York University's Grey Gallery. His work has been seen in Documenta, the Venice Biennale, and Rosc. He is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The influence of his ground-breaking collection of essays Inside the White Cube continues.

Commenting on the gift, Christina Kennedy, Head of Collections, said:

‘As IMMA approaches its 20th anniversary in 2011, it is its great good fortune to be the recipient of a most generous gift of artworks from the personal collection of Brian O’Doherty and Barbara Novak. Their gift to IMMA fulfills a longstanding wish of Brian O’Doherty, supported by Barbara Novak, to provide Irish artists and audiences with a collection of modern American art. While there are individual works by American artists in the Collection, the gift launches a whole new area of collecting and focus for IMMA, expanding its horizons to include an immensely rich seam of American art.

This donation cements an already important relationship: not only has IMMA in recent years acquired two superb examples of  the artist’s Conceptualist work, even more powerfully since 2008 it is the location of The Burial of Patrick Ireland.  Patrick Ireland was an identity which Brian O’Doherty assumed, in a performance enacted in 1972 called Name Change, whereby as  a gesture of patriotic protest at the Bloody Sunday killings of 13 civil rights marchers, he pledged to sign his artwork Patrick Ireland “until such time as the British military presence is removed from Northern Ireland and all citizens are granted their civil rights.” Thirty-six years later, in 2008, in a remarkable ceremony, an effigy of Patrick Ireland was interred in the formal gardens at IMMA, in a ceremony of reconciliation celebrating peace in Northern Ireland.’

IMMA’s COLLECTION comprises more than 4,500 works in a wide range of media, having grown significantly, through purchases, donations, long-term loans and the commissioning of new works. It is shown in themed exhibitions at IMMA, and also throughout Ireland via the Museum’s unique National Programme. The presence of IMMA’s Collection abroad has increased substantially in recent years, with large-scale exhibitions in Beijing and Shanghai, China, Boston, Pittsburgh and Chicago, United States, St John’s, Newfoundland, and San Sebastian, Spain, plus numerous loans of individual works to museums and galleries worldwide.

POST-WAR AMERICAN ART
The Novak/O'Doherty Collection 
Published by IMMA, Dublin 
Exhibition Catalogue Cover
(c)2010 Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin

The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated CATALOGUE, with a contextualising comment by Brian O’Doherty and individual insights on almost all of the works by both donors; an introductory essay by Christina Kennedy and a foreword by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA.

IMMA - IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART 

Royal Hospital , Military Road, Kilmainham, Dublin 

www.imma.ie

Collection California Abstract Expressionist Works Given to the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, by George Y. and LaVona J. Blair

The Crocker Art Museum has received a major gift of Bay Area abstract expressionist and other works of art, comprised of nearly 400 pieces by approximately 200 artists. The collection, given by George Y. and LaVona J. Blair, includes paintings and sculptures by many of the artists that defined this California movement, including Ernest Briggs, Edward Dugmore and Lawrence Calcagno. The works characterize the ideals of a momentous period in mid-20th century American art and mark the West Coast’s emergence as leading force in the art world. Works from the collection will be on public view in 2010 when the Crocker unveils its new 125,000-square-foot expansion designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates of New York.

While Abstract Expressionism dominated the New York art scene beginning in the mid-1940s, West Coast artists developed their own quintessentially Californian expressionist style. In close contact with the Beat generation of San Francisco writers, musicians and philosophers, many California artists focused on experimentation and the exchange of ideas in their work. These artists concentrated on portraying an inner reality through style and form as opposed to the emphasis on action of the New York-based artists. At the same time, many of the Californian artists continued to look to the landscape of the West Coast as a source of inspiration. Blair developed a passion for the West Coast style of abstract painting as a student on the G.I. Bill in San Francisco and amassed a nearly comprehensive collection of this work. 

“Recent years have brought a reassessment of the works by California’s Abstract Expressionist artists and an appreciation of the importance of this school in the history of American art,” said Scott A. Shields, associate director and chief curator, Crocker Art Museum.  “The Blair collection is extremely important to the Crocker because it represents a pivotal era that has been lacking in our collection of California art.  Thanks to the Blair’s generous gift, we are able to offer a broad survey of the story of artistic development in California since 1945.”

The Blair Collection was the focus of the Crocker’s 2004 exhibition San Francisco and the Second Wave, which was the first major exhibition to examine these artists. 

THE CROCKER ART MUSEUM, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA, USA

crockerartmuseum.org

William Pope.L at Mitchell-Innes & Nash

William Pope.L
Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York
September 18 - October 24, 2008

Mitchell-Innes & Nash announces an exhibition of work by WILLIAM POPE.L. The exhibition will comprise a large selection of Pope.L's Failure Drawings, an ongoing series he began in 2003. A solo show of works from this series was recently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago. This will be the artist's first show at Mitchell-Innes & Nash.

The Failure Drawings number over 1100 works of varying size. Pope.L produces the drawings while he is traveling, using the materials he has on hand at the time – from hotel stationery to airline napkins or pages from a newspaper. Often including words and depicting landscapes, they refer both to the everyday elements of travel, and highly personal and figurative journeys.

William Pope.L is a multidisciplinary artist who creates visual art and performance pieces that confront issues of race, sex, power, consumerism, and social class. Among his best-known works are the "crawls," a series of performances staged since 1978 in which he crawls for long distances through city streets. The crawls represent an attempt to bring awareness to the most marginalized members of society.

WILLIAM POPE.L was born in 1955 in New Jersey. He currently lives in Lewiston, Maine, where he is a lecturer on theater and rhetoric at Bates College. He received his M.F.A. from Rutgers University in New Jersey, and studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. William Pope.L has called himself the "friendliest black artist in America," a designation that became the title of a 2002 book on his works published by MIT press. His work has been exhibited and performed at venues including the Art Institute of Chicago, The Whitney Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), and Artists Space, among others. 

Mitchell-Innes & Nash 
1018 Madison Avenue, New York, NY
www.miadn.com

Jasper Johns, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh - "Past Things and Present: Jasper Johns Since 1983" Exhibition

Past Things and Present  

Jasper Johns Since 1983

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

10 July – 19 September 2004

A major exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art includes more than 90 works by the iconic American artist JASPER JOHNS: this is their first and only showing at a UK venue and it is Johns’s first exhibition in Britain in almost thirty years. Past Things and Present: Jasper Johns Since 1983 explores the artist’s work of the last two decades through a selection of related paintings, prints and drawings that demonstrate his continually evolving and innovative talent. The exhibition introduces new motifs that present a marked shift in his approach to image-making. 

One of the forerunners of Pop Art, Jasper Johns has exercised a profound influence on western painting of the second half of the twentieth century. Born in Augusta, Georgia, in 1930, he moved to New York in the early 1950s and quickly earned critical acclaim for his paintings of flags, targets, letters and numbers.

Past Things and Present highlights Jasper Johns’s practice of reworking motifs – which include faces, watches and his mysterious ‘Green Angel’ – in different media. The exhibition will include numerous works related to The Seasons, Jasper Johns’s four-part cycle of images begun in 1985 as well as a series of works which incorporate traced outlines from paintings by Holbein, Grünewald and Picasso.

Jasper Johns has consistently reinvented himself in response to new stimuli and since the early 1980s his imagery has become increasingly autobiographical. His recent work is full of references to his studio and home, to his childhood and to his own work and the work of other artists. In 1984 he stated:

“In my early work I tried to hide my personality, my psychological state, my emotions… I sort of stuck to my guns for a while, but eventually it seemed like a losing battle. Finally, one must simply drop the reserve.”

Past Things and Present is part of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s Year of American Art. Throughout 2004–5, the Gallery is showing work by some of the giants of post-war and contemporary American art including Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha and Cindy Sherman.

The exhibition is organised by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and has toured to Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina. Following its European debut at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, it will travel to Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM) in Valencia and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin.

An illustrated catalogue for the exhibition is available.

SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART 

75 Belford Road, Edinburgh 

www.nationalgalleries.org