Shoot'n Southern: Women Photographers, Past and Present
April 30 - July 18, 2010
This exhibition will examine the prominent role of women artists in fine art photography, in particular those with a Southern heritage or Southern experiences. Women have had an important role in the development of photography, from the time photography was a pale imitation of painting to its current status as a major component of contemporary art.
The show will feature a broad range of techniques, from the pin-hole camera and multiple exposures to digitally manipulated creations, and will include equally varied artistic perspectives and sensibilities. Shooting Southern will showcase important 20th century figures such as Rollie McKenna and Eudora Welty as well as early career and well-established photographers working today.
The exhibition is organized by the Mobile Museum of Art.
Funding is provided in part by the City of Mobile, Mobile County, the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional Exhibit Information
Shoot'n Southern: Women Photographers, Past and Present Information Sheet
Claudia DeMonte: Mapping Beauty
April 30 - July 11, 2010
Claudia DeMonte is an accomplished and gifted artist, a dedicated teacher, a curator and a collector. The development of her art has taken her through a variety of materials: painted pulp paper sculptures, works in clay, photography installations, bronze and recently, in her Female Fetish series, pewter milagros nailed onto wooden sculptures.
Throughout her explorations of media, she has remained consistent. In each stage of her career, with each medium, she has combined sobering commentary on the status of women in the world with lighthearted humor. The exhibition of DeMonte’s work will be complemented in the Education Wing with her collection of handmade folk dolls from around the world.
Mapping Beauty will be accompanied by a new book on DeMonte’s career by Eleanor Heartney, with an introduction by Agnes Gund.
The exhibition is organized by the Mobile Museum of Art and Claudia DeMonte.
Additional Exhibit Information
Claudia DeMonte: Mapping Beauty Information Sheet
Kate Clark: Give and Take
Courtesy Claire Oliver Gallery
April 30 - August 8, 2010
Kate Clark: Give and Take will present new large scale sculptures by Brooklyn-based artist Kate Clark. Exploring the margins between reality and myth, Clark’s work is a synthesis of human and animal. These creatures are true to life in size and pose, believable, however impossible to comprehend as authentic. Their mortal faces mirror safety, gentility and cultivation, yet Clark leaves visible the seams in her sculpture, reminding the viewer that the exotic and wild has been undone to construct these striking portraits. The artist asks us to embrace contradiction and question man's uncertain relationship with an underlying violence sheathed just beneath a guise of control.
As Ian Tattersal noted in his 1998 book Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness, human features have metamorphosed into a demonstrative, smooth skinned, hairless face which has allowed for an enormous range of universally understood expressions. The ability to read outrage, fear, sympathy and even the subtlest of emotions, has helped humankind to create a civilized culture based on trust in others through these universally understood expressions. Perhaps Clark’s creatures are evidence of the human condition, striving to prove an enlightened existence, yet undoubtedly of wild origin. These sculpture’s sympathetic faces, tinged with anger, regret or seductiveness question what it is to be human.
Organized by the Claire Oliver Gallery, New York City, with the generous assistance of the artist for the Mobile Museum of Art.
Guild Hall: An Adventure in the Arts: Selections from the Permanent Collection of the Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York
February 5 - April 18, 2010
The East End of New York’s Long Island has long attracted artists, writers, musicians, actors and directors, particularly since a rail line from New York City was established in the 19th century.
Guild Hall, established in 1931 in East Hampton, has been called “the cultural center in the center of culture.” The influx of established artists has made the East End the country’s foremost art colony. Included in this exhibition, An Adventure in the Arts, are 73 works of art by more than 40 artists who lived and worked in the East Hampton area, spanning the early 20th century through present times.
Included are works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, John Chamberlain, Chuck Close, Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Max Ernst, Audrey Flack, Jasper Johns, William King, Lee Krasner, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Fairfield Porter, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, James Rosenquist, Donald Sultan, Andy Warhol and others.
The exhibition was organized by the Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY, in association with Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles.
Run Sheep Run: The World of John Austin Sands Monks (1850-1917)
February 5 - April 18, 2010
Run Sheep Run: The World of John Austin Sands Monks (1850 - 1917) presents an exhibition of paintings and prints by American artist and life-long New Englander J. A. S. Monks. Monks’ works, gifts from the artist’s grandson, Douglas M. Wilcox, are all drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection. In Monks’ time, he was considered one of America’s foremost animal painters and enjoyed the distinction of being the only pupil of the distinguished landscapist George Inness, Sr.
Born in Cold Spring, New York, on the Hudson River, his native skill as a draughtsman won him his first job at age 18 as a wood engraver at an engraving firm in Meridan, Connecticut. It was there that he eventually established his own business. A few years later in Boston, through artist G.N. Cass, he met Inness and began a lifelong friendship until Inness’ death in 1894.
To establish his own approach, Monks began to include animals, especially sheep, in his landscape paintings. What began as enthusiasm eventually became an obsession fueled by long visits to farms where he could observe sheep first-hand. Ultimately, he created a panorama of the life cycle of the animal.
Monks’ activity as a printmaker is undoubtedly his most significant contribution to late 19th century American art. In 1884, as a result of an artists gathering of etchers at the Salmagundi Club in New York City, Monks was part of what has become known as the American “etching revival.” This revival saw the return of the etching process to the world of art from its almost exclusive use to reproduce the images of paintings.
Monks’ etchings, expectedly, are devoted to scenes involving sheep, especially the American Merino. As a contemporary C.S. Pietro observed in 1917, “He [Monks] is not only a painter of sheep but is a psychological being who brings out the intimate drama of his love for animals.”
Funding is provided in part by the City of Mobile, Mobile County, the Alabama State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional Exhibit Information
Run Sheep Run Information Sheet
Successions: Prints by African American Artists from the Jean and Robert Steele Collection
January 23 - April 18, 2010
Successions: Prints by African-American Artists from the Jean and Robert Steele Collection will feature 62 works of traditional and non-traditional printmaking techniques such as etching, monoprint, lithography, linocut and silkscreen, by 45 artists including Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, David Driskell, Sam Gilliam, Margo Humphrey, Jacob Lawrence, Stephanie Pogue, Faith Ringgold, Lou Stovall, William T. Williams and James L. Wells. The exhibition will highlight the remarkable focus of the Jean and Robert Steele Collection. Dr. Robert Steele is a Mobile native and former associate dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences and currently Executive Director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Steele and his wife, Jean, have been at the forefront of collecting works on paper by African-American artists for the last 30 years.
This exhibition is organized by the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora and The Art Gallery at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Judith Schaechter: A Relentless Pursuit of Perfection
November 13 - January 31, 2010
This exhibition features nine stained glass light boxes and 13 related drawings by Judith Schaechter, an artist who has achieved the highest critical acclaim for her very personal exploration of this seemingly impersonal medium.
Judith Schaechter’s stained glass narratives are a paradoxical assemblage of medieval depictions, mediated by contemporary tales of human failings. Hers is a demented carnival world, made claustrophobic by dizzying arrays of texture, obsessive detail and intense color.
Schaechter’s work is gut-wrenchingly beautiful. “Beauty,” says the artist, “is considered the most horrible crime you can commit in the modern art world. People are suspicious of anything that makes them feel as though they may lose control. Beauty forces you to confront your helplessness as well as your dark side. My work is not intended to make comfortable people unhappy, although it may make unhappy people comfortable.”
Schaechter’s meteoric professional rise could be attributed to the singularity of her work. In a field much better known for abstraction, her imagery relies on painstaking draftsmanship and the figure. Indeed, the artist has given new meaning to the stained glass genre precisely by adopting its historical function as didactic narrative. The artist balances the methods of painting on glass that date back to the Middle Ages with an unmistakably contemporary style aligned with those of underground comics and political artists.
Judith Schaechter‘s stained-glass windows are composed of flash glass: a thin veneer of brilliant color bonded to paler layers of color underneath. Most of the color is harbored within the glass itself; Schaechter reveals it by sandblasting and engraving the flash, then often layering several pieces together. She models her images in black enamel, fired on the kiln, and sometimes adds silver stain or cold paint. The windows are then assembled with the copper foil technique and installed in a light box.
This exhibition was organized by Claire Oliver Gallery, New York.
All That Glitter and Noel Concept Collection
December 11 - January 24, 2010
The use of glass in jewelry design has a long history. As the concurrent Museum of Arts and Design-curated exhibition GlassWear makes clear, glass continues to inspire contemporary makers to blur the boundary between functionality and art.
Ornamenting the body, jewelry draws attention to the wearer and showcases their individual sense of adventure and style. For most people, artist-designed glass jewelry has long been available in the form of rhinestone costume jewelry manufactured by others, in multiple copies.
All That Glitter: Modern Rhinestone Jewelry was selected by Paul W. Richelson, Chief Curator, from the large, private Midwestern collection of Charles G. Schoenknecht, the Atlanta collection of Martha Stamm Connell and another private Southern collection. The exhibition spotlights the importance of rhinestone jewelry, from the 1920s through the 1960s, when a familiar day dress or evening gown could be transformed with the addition of a sparkly pin, bracelet or necklace. During that time, American and European high-fashion designers embraced costume jewelry and even designed collections and helped popularize the rhinestone accessory.
Collected over a 30-year period, this exhibition includes many examples of American and European originality in design, such as glittery pieces created to add a happy, positive note to holiday celebrations. In the spirit of the season in which these pieces are exhibited, the Museum will also present the Noel Concept Collection of artwork created by local artists commissioned by the Art Patrons League and the Mobile Museum of Art in the 1980s and 1990s.
Glasswear: Glass in Contemporary Jewelry
October 2 - January 3, 2010
This exhibition combines two of the most vibrant and inventive areas in the decorative arts today- glass and jewelry. This presentation showcases highly innovative works by 60 internationally renowned jewelry artists, representing countries as diverse as the United States, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Japan, Australia, South Africa, among others. Many of the works will be seen for the first time as special commissions for this exhibition. Visually exciting works will exploit the expressive potential of glass to engage our senses and challenge our ideas of adornment and the values of materials.
GlassWear has been produced in partnership with the Schmuckmuseum, Pforzheim, Germany. It was made possible with a grant form the Art Alliance of Contemporary Glass. This exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by the Museum of Arts and Design and the Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, Germany.
Organized and Circulated by Museum of Arts & Design, New York, NY
Francisco Goya: Los Caprichos
October 2 - January 3, 2010
This exhibition features an early first edition of Los Caprichos, a set of eighty etchings by Spanish artist Francisco de Goya y Lucientes published in 1799. It is one of the most influential series of graphic images in the history of Western art.
Also Included in the exhibition for comparison are other works by Goya: four later edition prints from Los Caprichos; two examples of early etchings after Velasquez; and one example each from Goya's other major graphic series: Los Desastres de la Guerra, Los Proverbios, and La Tauromaquia. Additionally, to demonstrate the broad influence of Los Caprichos, the exhibition includes a drawing by Edward Hagedorn, circa 1925, after Los Caprichos plate 51, "Se repulen," and eight etchings by contemporary artist Enrique Chagoya, The Return to Goya’s Caprichos, published in 1999.
Organized and Circulated by Landau Traveling Exhibitions.
Pardon the Genius: The Wearable Art of Earl and Tod Pardon
October 2 - January 3, 2010
This exhibition, drawn from two private collections by guest curator Martha Stamm Connell, explores the unique contributions of father and son artists Earl and Tod Pardon in the development of art jewelry as a medium that stands alongside any as a vehicle for artistic expression.
Jewelry has been an art form since pre-historic humans fashioned talismans and adornments from objects found in nature. Throughout history, the tastes and fashions of changing cultures have been reflected in the jewelry produced by designers and artisans. For example, jewelry in the Victorian era was often lavishly ornate when compared to the later creations of the Art Deco era, when streamlined curves and simplified forms were the rage. Earl Pardon, then, “the grandfather of craft jewelers,” was not the first to reflect the artistic concerns of his time in jewelry. He was, instead, a modernist artist who used the materials of the jeweler with a joyful freedom and mastery of the craft. His work encompasses the many concerns of abstractionism, at turns formal, mythological and expressionistic—sculpture on a miniature scale. His pieces often contain a variety of gems, precisely selected for their contrasts of intense color, as a painter would use cadmium and cobalt.
Earl’s son Tod apprenticed with his father and has continued to explore the possibilities of an art that is small in scale and dazzlingly beautiful while also conveying multiple layers of meaning and symbolism. His iconography references images and folklore gathered from his trips to Africa, the Colima sculpture he grew up with in his parents’ home, Cycladic art, Modernist art and design from the 1950s, as well as personal and more universal symbolism.
Jun Kaneko
September 25 - December 6, 2009
This exhibition displays the talent of an artist whose accomplishments are unrivaled in the field of ceramic art. Kaneko’s ceramic works are an amazing synthesis of painting and sculpture. In the words of his mentor and teacher Peter Voulkos, “His works are enigmatic and elusive, simultaneously restrained and powerful, Eastern and Western, static and alive, intellectual and playful, technical and innovative.”
One of Kaneko's most impressive pieces in this exhibition is a figurative head sculpture measuring over 8 feet tall, engaged in silent contemplation on its pedestal, it recalls, yet abstracts Buddhist iconography.
Casey Downing, Jr.: Past and Present
May 22 - September 22, 2009
This overview of recent work by Mobile artist Casey Downing, Jr., presents over 35 recent sculptures as well as maquettes and a selection of his two dimensional work.
Examples of his rigorous geometric abstract sculptures are featured as well as maquettes and realist portrait sculpture. The exhibition will also feature drawings and assemblages which offer insight into Downing’s methodical investigations of form and character.
Additional Exhibit Information
Casey Downing, Jr.: Past and Present Information Sheet
Shared Expressions: The Bay Area Art Partners
May 15 - September 13, 2009
This exhibition demonstrates the wealth of talent and diversity of interests among the artists of the Mobile Bay region. Invitations were sent to 10 arts organizations to select from their members work which best exemplifies the creativity and accomplishments of their respective media.
Organization’s invited to the exhibit: the Mobile Art Association, Mobile Watercolor & Graphics Arts Society, Coastal Clay Coalition, Azalea City Quilters Guild, Camera South, Azalea Woodturners, Shibui Chapter of the Sumi-é Society of America, Bay Area Porcelain Artists, Mobile Rock and Gem Society and the Mobile Arts Council.
Additional Exhibit Information
Shared Expressions Information Sheet
A Generous Spirit Illustrated: Recent Gifts from G.B. Kahn
May 15 - September 13, 2009
Since his first gift to the museum in 1970, one of the museum’s most continuously generous donors of works of art has been well-known Mobile resident G. B. Kahn. As a collector with wide interests in historical and contemporary art, both western and non-western, his gifts have covered a wide spectrum of periods and media. This exhibition presents a selection of paintings, prints, sculpture and decorative arts given to the museum in the last five years.
Funding provided in part by the City of Mobile, Mobile County, the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional Exhibit Information
G.B. Kahn Information Sheet
PICTURING HEALTH: NORMAN ROCKWELL AND THE ART OF ILLUSTRATION
March 6 - May 24, 2009
The Norman Rockwell Museum is both a testament to the life and work of one of America’s best loved artists and the preeminent museum in the field of illustration. Picturing Health seeks to inspire an appreciation and understanding of Rockwell’s art within the context of the illustration world. This exhibition features eleven original oil paintings by Norman Rockwell from the Pfizer Collection, including some of the finest examples of the artist’s imagery for advertising. These beloved portrayals inspired Americans to view themselves and their physicians with optimism and presented the notion that health is affected as much by our emotional lives as by our physical well-being.
Norman Rockwell’s paintings, which explore the subjects of the doctor-patient relationship, physical fitness and health and healing across the generations, will be accompanied by original works exploring similar themes by twenty of today’s most prominent visual commentators. These artworks, created for publication during the past decade, reflect contemporary perspectives on subjects explored more than fifty years ago in Norman Rockwell’s art. Commentary focusing on recurring themes, artistic and cultural influences and the commercial climate that has influenced the creative process will be woven throughout the exhibition. A designated segment of the exhibition will offer insights into the artist’s process, from first idea to finished painting and published work. The exhibition will also explore the impact of narrative images, which have had and continue to have a singular impact on public perception.
Picturing Health: Norman Rockwell and the Art of Illustration was organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Picturing Health: Norman Rockwell and the Art of Illustration is being sponsored by Pfizer Inc. For over 158 years, Pfizer has been working to help people live longer, healthier lives.
Funding provided in part by Drs. Martha and Joseph LoCicero and Yellowbook.
THE ART OF THE THEATRE
February 13 - May 3, 2009
The Mobile Museum of Art, in cooperation with the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival (ASF), presents The Art of the Theatre. This exhibition of art and artifacts from Shakespeare’s Wars of the Roses trilogy illustrates the creative design and Construction processes that transform the Bard’s written word into a 21st-century theatrical production in the Elizabethan style. Costumes, props and sets are supplemented by design drawings, photos and videos that put the artifacts in their performance context while revealing the tricks of the theatrical trade.
The Wars of the Roses trilogy is an adaptation of four of Shakespeare’s plays (Henry VI, Parts A, B, and C, plus Richard III). The plays are set amidst England’s civil wars between the House of Lancaster under the banner of the red rose and the House of York with its white rose. The trilogy was in production at ASF from February 23 through June 16, 2007, as a rare modern adaptation of an Elizabethan theatrical production. As in Shakespeare’s day, a small acting company performed the complex historical drama with a simple set and symbolic props to distinguish one character from another.
The exhibition captures the behind-the-scenes creativity that goes into the modern production of a Shakespearean play. It features a model of the stage set and the throne and the council table that are constants in all three plays. Exhibition viewers will see artifacts from the plays’ production and how those artifacts were designed and fabricated. Video and photos from the production as well as images of backstage production shops will also be included.
ALABAMA BOUND: CONTEMPORARY FINE PRESS AND ARTISTS' BOOKS
October 10, 2008 – April 12, 2009
In the modern era, the ability to infinitely reproduce books has devalued what were once the prized, handmade possessions of a wealthy elite. Despite this, artists working in the field of Book Arts continue as a labor of love the production of unique handmade and beautifully letter press-printed objects.
Billie Goodloe was the curator for this sampling of fine hand-set letter press and hand-bound books. All of the astonishingly diverse objects in this show were made by Alabama artists working in design, typography, printing and hand binding. The results can range from sculpturally vigorous pieces to traditional book forms of exquisite refinement, many of which incorporate hand-made paper and unusual material inclusions.
ILLUMINATING THE WORD: THE SAINT JOHN'S BIBLE
October 10 – April 12, 2009
Commissioned by Saint John's University and Abbey, this contemporary masterpiece of medieval craftsmanship and calligraphy is a rare expression of artistic vitality.
The Saint John's Bible exhibition consists of one hundred pages that have been created for the first handwritten, illuminated Bible from the modern era. Scribes in a Wales scriptorium under the artistic direction of Donald Jackson, one of the world's foremost calligraphers and the Scribe to Queen Elizabeth, are creating the Bible.
The Saint John’s Bible is at once the old and the new. What is old is that every word is being written by hand, and all the illuminations (narrative scenes and decorations) are being individually designed and painted by hand, in the traditional manner that medieval Bibles were written and illuminated. It incorporates many characteristics of its medieval predecessors: it is being written on specially prepared vellum (calf-skin parchment), using quills (from geese, swans and turkeys), and hand-ground pigments, and gilding with gold leaf. All this preparation is done on site at the Scriptorium in Wales, as it would have been done in a medieval monastery.
What is new is that the Bible employs a modern English translation, and that the latest capabilities of computer technology and electronic communication are being utilized to enable a team of scribes, working simultaneously, to produce perfect sheets that can later be combined in perfect order. To assure a seamless continuity, the layout of every word and every page is planned on computer for the scribes to reproduce. The scribes all use a special font designed by Donald Jackson, so that their contributions are uniform and indistinguishable.
An important feature about the making the Bible is that it is a team project, blending the efforts of several teams both in Wales and here in the United States. A theological committee at Saint John’s chose the Biblical passages to be illustrated by a team of several artists, whose work presents a diverse range of ideas and styles. Besides Donald Jackson himself, the team includes a natural history illustrator and an icon designer. The butterflies and flowers of central Minnesota inhabit the margins, while one illumination recalls the vanished twin towers in New York. The signature illustration is based on a photograph of the earth taken from the Hubble space telescope.
Organized and circulated by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Saint John’s University. The exhibition and its national tour are made possible by Target.
ALBRECHT DÜRER: ART IN TRANSITION
October 10 – January 4, 2009
Dürer’s genius was a bridge, with the fantastic demons and monsters of the medieval mind on one end and the rational perspective and scientific observations of the Renaissance on the other; the one hundred prints in this exhibition demonstrate the full range of his imagination.
In the fall of 1494 Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) left his home in Nürnberg, Germany to spend a year in Italy. The promising young artist had as his goal the study of Italian Renaissance art and its roots in classical antiquity. During this trip - the first of two (his second was in 1505) - Dürer paid particular attention to how his Italian artistic contemporaries created naturalistic human figures. The artist was particularly interested in how to compose a figure within pictorial space, of how to create the lifelike forms one saw in nature.
In 1495 Dürer returned to Nürnberg to set up his workshop informed by all he had learned abroad. In woodcut, engraving and etching, the artist used line to compose naturalistic images that suggest light, shadow and depth, and that revel in both mundane and exotic detail. Dürer’s visual synthesis - of human proportions, nature, mathematical perspective, and classical and southern Renaissance artistic traditions -resulted in what many consider to be the most innovative printed impressions to this day.
Exhibition organized by the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt.
Tour organized by International Arts & Artists,Washington, D.C.
The Mobile Museum of Art is especially grateful and indebted to the Museum of Biblical Art, New York City for generously providing exhibition design services and educational content for this exhibition.
WE'VE CHANGED THE WORLD: THE MOBILE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL AT
October 3 to November 16
In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Mobile International Festival, Festival manager Estella Dorn engaged Savage to photograph participants of the Festival, many of whom have performed and shared the flavor of their original countries at the Festival since its inception. It is these people, originally from over 70 countries, who have made the gathering such an important event in the life of Mobile, with over 14,000 students attending each year. Around 40 large format photographs will be displayed.
Savage commented that he greatly appreciated the good humor of his subjects and their helpfulness, and that of Dorn, in making this project a reality.
THE SOUTHEASTERN JURIED EXHIBITION
July 11 – September 14, 2008
The 7th incarnation of the Museum’s biennial, all media Southeastern Juried Exhibition, was once again a great opportunity to provide visitors with the chance to see the work of some of the most exciting and innovative artists living and working in the 12 state geographic region bounded by Kentucky, Virginia, Florida and Arkansas. A cosmopolitan variety of style and techniques was noted by the Juror of the Exhibition, Ron Platt, the Hugh Kaul Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art. Mr. Platt selected 69 works of art by 63 artists from 228 artists applying.
JOSH SIMPSON: A VISIONARY JOURNEY IN GLASS
July 4 – September 21, 2008
This exhibition, organized by the Huntsville Museum of Art, consisted of nearly 100 works from the artist’s personal collection that surveyed his entire career. The exhibition revealed the progress from Simpson’s early, workman-like investigations of traditional techniques and forms to more layered and multi-dimensional variations based on them.
With increased experience, Simpson mastered the techniques of the Venetian glassblowing tradition and began incorporating flowerlike murrines and filigree latticino as elements suspended in the bodies of his vessel and paperweight forms. The floating elements in his layered work suggest organisms, and led him to call a continuing series of his vases Inhabited Vases. His investigation of the paperweight form led to larger orbs he terms Planets, with floating clouds and underwater vistas. Also included in the exhibition were the Megaplanets, which required Simpson to handle over 100 pounds of glass while working to embed gold foil, hundreds of murrines and other exquisite glass forms into the finished product.
GEN X: POST-BOOMERS AND THE NEW SOUTH
April 11 – June 29, 2008
Organized by curators Paul W. Richelson and Donan Klooz of the Mobile Museum of Art with guest curator Lisa Gadel Johnston, Gen X: Post-Boomers and the New South featured works by artists who had roots and or training in the Southeastern United States. Within this larger group the exhibition further focused on artists under the age of 40 whose achievements had received attention on a national level.
The exhibition included a mix of both traditional and non-traditional media. Visitors to the exhibit could view traditional works consisting of paintings, printmaking and sculpture as well as the non-traditional media of video, digitally-manipulated and large-scale photography, animation and original furniture design that incorporated unusual materials.
The exhibition sought to detect the influence of the South’s societal aspects and its historical baggage on this generation of contemporary artists. For many of the participating artists the importance of maintaining significant ties with the family and cultural traditions of the South was an important aspect of incorporating meaning and authenticity into their art.
POETIC SPIRIT: HENRY WO YUE-KEE AT EIGHTY
April 4 – June 15, 2008
This delightful exhibition returned the art of Henry Wo Yue-Kee to Mobile for the first time since his original one-man exhibition here in 1972. Henry, as he prefers to be known to his many friends and admirers in Mobile, recently celebrated his 80th birthday with solo exhibitions of his paintings in his native China and Hong Kong. Henry Wo Yue-Kee’s work can be found in collections worldwide.
Henry Wo Yue-Kee is one of the foremost masters of the Lingnan style of painting. His work blends characteristics of both Western and Japanese art into traditional Chinese brush painting. Nature has always provided the inspiration for Wo’s paintings, which invoke a dreamlike imagery. The beauty of the birds, flowers, and lotus blossoms that are commonly found in Henry’s works can be felt in the meditative discipline of his brush. Beautiful colors distinguish the Lingnan style, as Wo makes full use of the harmonious hues of cool greens, blues, autumnal rust and oranges in a highly original and personal manner.
RODIN: A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, SCULPTURE FROM THE IRIS & B. GERALD CANTOR FOUNDATION
January 25– March 23, 2008
Featuring more than 60 bronzes that spanned Auguste Rodin’s career, this exciting exhibition, sponsored by the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation, included such works as The Thinker (1880) and The Kiss (ca. 1881 – 82). The exhibit vividly demonstrated Rodin’s powerfully expressive imagination which made him the most famous artist of his day. It also made clear his revolutionary contributions to the aesthetics of modern sculpture.
The works were chosen to convey major projects and themes throughout Rodin’s career and included his earliest bust of his father, Jean-Baptiste Rodin, as well as his later studies of dancing figures. In addition to the well-known cast versions of The Gates of Hell and The Burghers of Calais, the exhibit also included works on paper, photographs, portraits of the artist and an educational model that demonstrated the complexities of the lost wax casting process that was Rodin’s favored method of sculptural production.
CRAIG NUTT: CERTIFIED ORGANIC
January 18 – March 23, 2008
Organized by the Mobile Museum of Art, this retrospective outlined the career of one of America’s foremost artists in the field of polychrome wood sculpture and creative furniture design. With loans from the artist and private and public collections, the exhibit traced Nutt’s development from a maker of traditional furniture forms to an artist known for his trademark whimsical “vegetable” designs.
Nutt began his career as a furniture maker and artist in Northport, Alabama in the late 1970s where he gradually made the transition from furniture making in the classical manner of English and Early American craftsmen to the sculptural, carved, and polychrome forms that have since been a distinguishing feature of his career. Nutt’s pieces are found in many private collections and museums including the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery. His creations are also featured in numerous magazines and books on fine wood working and furniture design.
Paula Owen contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue.
A BRUCE LARSEN CHRISTMAS
November 30, 2007 – January 6, 2008
Fairhope, Alabama artist Bruce Larsen created an enchanting environment with his “found object” creations as he explored both the joy and sometimes excessive materialism of Christmas. A sense of childish exuberance and a bit of sly humor characterized this unique exhibition. Larsen used the cast-off machinery of his Baldwin County home’s farming heritage to create amazingly large sculptures, often of animals and other assemblages.
For this exhibition Larsen created a madcap menagerie of reindeer and nutcrackers, a jack-in-the-box and somewhat ghoulish angels reminiscent of a Tim Burton movie. The fruits of Larsen’s delightfully fertile imagination brought “oohs and aahs” from the many school tours that visited the exhibition, as well as amused and appreciative smiles to the faces of adult visitors.
ALABAMA FOLK POTTERY
October 12, 2007 – January 6, 2008
Until the early twentieth century, hundreds of folk potters worked throughout the state of Alabama. Before the age of electrification, their wares were needed for the basics of everyday living, including the preservation, preparation and serving of food. Families in need of a crock, churn, chamber pot or storage jar obtained it from their nearest potter, or from a merchant who bought from regional potters.
Alabama Folk Pottery, organized by the Birmingham Museum of Art, traced the evolution of the Alabama pottery tradition from the early historic period through the mid-twentieth century. The exhibition’s guest curator, Joey Brackner, Director of the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture, invested more than twenty years researching Alabama folk potters culminating in this exhibition and a book of the same title./p>
M. C. ESCHER: RHYTHM OF ILLUSION
October 12, 2007 – January 6, 2008
Consisting of more than 80 prints and drawings from the 1920s through the 1960s, this popular exhibit of M.C. Escher’s works truly defined him as one of the most popular and intriguing artists of the 20th century. Born in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898 – 1972) earned worldwide renown for his precisely rendered visual illusions that ranged from an image of never-ending steps to a flock of geese flying in two directions at once.
A wide cross-section of people, from connoisseurs of graphic arts to the scientific community, has found his work challenging and captivating. Organized by Oregon’s Portland Art Museum, this exhibition led viewers to see how, through his intellectual curiosity regarding the laws of nature and their persuasively deceptive visual effects on the mind’s eye, Escher created in two dimensions a world of fantastic spatial and planar geometric rhythm – precise illusions of his own.
MAGDALENA ABAKANOWICZ: DRAWINGS
October 5, 2007 – January 13, 2008
Organized by the Mobile Museum of Art in cooperation with the artist and the Marlborough Galleries, New York, this intriguing exhibition of 30 large drawings by renowned sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz spanned over 25 years of the artist’s career. The exhibited drawings were finished works of art, and presented an intimate view of Abakanowicz’s interests in this media. Subjects ranged from trees and flowers to the human face.
Born in Poland in 1930, Abakanowicz studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1950 – 1954 and began her career as a painter. Her first sculptures, entitled Abakans, were created in the early 1960s and were highly original monumental forms made from woven fibers. The artist eloquently describes her work: “I transmit my experience of existential problems, embodied in my forms built into space.” Kneeling on the floor, Abakanowicz makes her drawings using black ink and charcoal to expressively define her subjects, frequently filling the entire plane of the paper with the force of her vision. The theme of individuality in an anonymous multitude is an important aspect of both her sculpture and figure drawings.
