Canada’s Museum of Modern Art, Remai Modern, Announces October 2017 Opening

Inaugural Program Features World’s Largest Collection Of Picasso Linocuts, Artist-Led Projects, Immersive Installations, And Modern And Contemporary Art From Canada And The World

Canada’s museum of modern art, Remai Modern (pronunciation Note: the last name is pronounced RAY-mee), will open to the public October 21, 2017, in Saskatoon. The launch aligns with the international trend of world-class museums opening in unexpected destinations.

Remai Modern is located in Treaty 6 Plains Cree territory and the traditional homeland of the Métis. The museum is informed by the rich history of the Prairies, including Indigenous artists and cultures, progressive political support for art, and unique modernist legacies. The museum’s collection of nearly 8,000 works once resided inside popular local cultural center, the Mendel Art Gallery, and features the foremost collection of Picasso linocuts (406) and 23 Picasso ceramics. Remai Modern builds on the region’s arts legacy created by the former Mendel Gallery and the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops.

Remai Modern will open to the public October 21, 2017 in Saskatoon, Canada.

In 1944, the province of Saskatchewan elected the first democratic-socialist government in North America, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. In 1948 the Saskatchewan Arts Board was founded to provide vital funding to artists in all disciplines. At the time, it was only the second agency of its kind in the world. In the 1950s and 60s, influential modern artists and critics flocked to the Emma Lake artist workshops, just north of Saskatoon. Workshop leaders, including Clement Greenberg, Kenneth Noland, Barnett Newman, Donald Judd, Frank Stella, Anthony Caro and John Cage responded to the wilderness landscape and introduced new concepts. These retreats had a lasting impact on regional aesthetics and fostered exchanges between Canadian artists and the international art world.

Remai Modern’s collection of nearly 8,000 works was developed by the Mendel Art Gallery, which opened in 1964 and closed in 2015. An important component of Field Guide will be the Mendel Gift, 13 paintings by Canadian and European modern artists – including Lawren Harris, Emily Carr, and David Milne – donated by Fred Mendel in 1965 and forming the nucleus of the Mendel Art Gallery‘s collection.

Remai Modern will be opening on Treaty 6 territory in the newly developed River Landing area of south downtown Saskatoon, the largest city in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Located in Canada’s heartland, Saskatoon is a budding cultural hub for the worldly traveler to experience the region’s arts scene, local craft breweries, and food movement.

With an international airport only 10 minutes from downtown, travelers can access Saskatoon via daily flights from major Canadian and U.S. destinations. Air Canada and WestJet offer flights through major Canadian cities like Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa/Montreal and Toronto while Delta, United Airlines, and American Airlines fly to Saskatoon through destinations including Minneapolis, Denver, Salt Lake City and Chicago. Saskatoon is also home to a VIA Rail Canada station and is conveniently accessed by major highways.

This project is made possible thanks to contributions from Government of Canada, Province of Saskatchewan, and the City of Saskatoon. As well as program support from SaskCulture, Sask Arts Board, SaskTel, Canadian Heritage, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

The inaugural exhibition, Field Guide, curated by Executive Director & CEO, Gregory Burke, and Director of Programs & Chief Curator, Sandra Guimarães, will animate the entire building. Selected works from the museum’s collection will be displayed in dialogue with contemporary projects by international and Canadian artists. The collection includes some 8,000 works inherited from the (aforementioned) former Mendel Art Gallery, and the world’s most comprehensive collection of Picasso linocuts (406), plus 23 Picasso ceramics. Upon opening, Remai Modern will be an artist-centered institution that raises questions, inspires discussion, and enables transformative experiences among both local and global audiences.

Field Guide is not a thematic exhibition but rather a series of singular positions and coherent groupings of works that introduce Remai Modern’s program philosophy and direction, providing an open framework that invites consideration of a network of issues and questions impacting art and society today.

“The concept for Field Guide emerges from a set of questions we asked ourselves during the establishment of Remai Modern, including What is modern? Can art confront reality? What is urgent and why? How will Indigeneity shape the future? And what role can be played by a new art museum opening in Saskatoon, Canada?” said Burke. “These questions, and others will continue to inform the development of our programs, articulating a spirit of active engagement, curiosity, and disruption.”

Rather than being a static display, the exhibition will change over time, creating new conversations and rethinking the idea of “modern” from multiple cultural, historic and contemporary positions. Accompanied by a strong focus on live and artist-driven programming, Field Guide introduces the museum as a dynamic field of relations.

The exhibition will be anchored by several major artist projects that propose new social, personal, and political engagements with the institution and its audiences. A full list of artists included in Field Guide will be announced in the fall and will feature emerging and established artists working in a wide variety of media and across disciplines.

New collaborative project by Tanya Lukin Linklater and Duane Linklater

As part of the opening program, renowned Ontario-based artists Tanya Lukin Linklater and Duane Linklater will introduce a new collaborative project in the Connect Gallery, Remai Modern’s free, ground-floor space sponsored by the TD Bank Group.

Responding to the museum’s positioning on the South Saskatchewan River, the artists are developing a physical and conceptual vessel to carry or hold Indigenous ideas, histories, objects, and forms. Titled Determined by the river, the installation will be activated with selections from Remai Modern’s collection, as well as works the artists will bring to Saskatoon. The river has been a gathering place and catalyst for movement for millennia, and the artists see it as a way to imagine Indigenous presences in the past, in the now, and into the future — a continuance. Their project asks, “How are these continuous presences activated in relation to the site of the museum?“

The artists are also organizing a series of discursive events to accompany the installation, with contributions from Indigenous artists, filmmakers, curators, and writers, many of whom are based in Saskatoon, or have a relationship to Saskatchewan or the Prairies.

Debut of the Picasso Collection, curated by Ryan Gander

Remai Modern is home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of Picasso linocuts, donated to the museum in 2012 by the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation. The inaugural presentation of this collection will be curated by internationally renowned artist Ryan Gander.

Gander’s interest in the linocuts focuses on portraits, as a way to contemplate self-projection and self-image. For Gander, Picasso’s iconic persona makes it difficult to separate the artist’s work and life—they become one grand, extravagant self-portrait. Faces of Picasso: The collection selected by Gander proposes that to understand Picasso, we have to understand his representation of the self.

While Picasso’s works line the gallery walls, the center of the room will be held by Gander’s installation Fieldwork (2015), also recently donated by the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation. Through a window, viewers are presented with a rotating display of idiosyncratic objects connected to the artist. This personal inventory blends biography, memory, and fiction, with Gander’s distinctive sense of humor. Especially for this exhibition, Gander is producing a new object for the installation: a stack of drawings of every Picasso linocut in the museum’s collection. The drawings will also be reproduced in a publication, Picasso and I, offering an intimate catalogue of the collection as interpreted by Gander. Inexpensively produced and available at cost, the book aims to circumvent restrictions around reproductions of Picasso’s work, making the collection more accessible to all.

Critical Work-shop by Thomas Hirschhorn

As part of Field Guide, Thomas Hirschhorn will produce an immersive Critical Work-shop at Remai Modern, titled, What I can learn from you. What you can learn from me. (Critical Work-shop). In advance of the Work-shop, Hirschhorn will spend time in consultation with community groups and organizations in Saskatoon, conducting fieldwork and reaching out to “Teachers” and “Learners” – roles that can also be reversed. The artist will be onsite for the entirety of the Work-shop, from morning to evening, facilitating exchanges of knowledge, skills, and histories between Saskatoon residents and visitors. The gallery will be transformed into a true “Work-shop-Space,” with its own furniture, materials, tools, and hardware, proposing its own organization and logic.

What I can learn from you. What you can learn from me. (Critical Work-shop) will be the first “Presence and Production” work realized by Hirschhorn in Canada. It continues the artist’s approach of constant onsite engagement, as developed in recent projects such as Flamme Eternelle (Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2014), and Gramsci Monment (produced by Dia Art Foundation and installed at Forest Houses in the Bronx, NY, 2013). These inclusive projects oppose hierarchies of culture and artistic value, encouraging unexpected encounters and critical social discourse. What I can learn from you. What you can learn from me. (Critical Work-shop) closely aligns with Remai Modern’s direction as a museum rethinking the conditions for learning.

The Remai Modern Experience

Set where the South Saskatchewan River meets downtown Saskatoon, Remai Modern has a dramatic impact on the city’s skyline. Designed by architect Bruce Kuwabara, founding partner of renowned Canadian architectural firm KPMB, the structure features four cantilevered, horizontal spaces inspired by the low, flat topography of the surrounding Prairie landscape. Portions of the museum’s exterior are covered in a copper-colored mesh screen created by James & Taylor, in a reference to the copper roof of Saskatoon’s landmark Bessborough Hotel.

In addition to acting as a gathering place for the local community, the elaborate museum will be an attraction for visiting Canadians, international travelers, and the global art community. Remai Modern‘s spaces are designed for dynamic experiences and will allow for world-class art to be showcased around every corner. The museum will boast intimate spaces and dramatic expanses, along with an atrium and outdoor terraces offering stunning views of the river and sky. The ground floor will feature large-scale art commissions, a changing gallery space, and an active learning studio, as well as a fireplace and open lounge areas, an art and design store, and a restaurant. On the second and third floors, visitors will find Remai Modern’s main programming spaces including collection galleries, a Picasso gallery and sizeable spaces for temporary and internationally touring exhibitions.

Other areas of the building include a 150-seat lecture theater, and impressive event and entertainment spaces, which will be used for performances, members’ nights, private rentals and community events.

The Whitney To Present Solo Exhibitions By Two Emerging Artists

Two New Exhibitions By Emerging Artists Will Be Presented By The Whitney This Summer.

“Following close on the heels of the Biennial, The Whitney’s summer season builds on the strong energy of our emerging artists program,” remarked Scott Rothkopf, Deputy Director for Programs and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator. “Both born in 1990, Bunny Rogers and Willa Nasatir offer a pair of distinct but complementary visions. Each explores mysterious, often dark, narratives within stagey, lapidary tableaus, Rogers through sculpture and video, Nasatir in photography.”

Bunny Rogers (b. 1990), Clone State Bookcase, 2014 (detail). Maple wood, metal, limited-edition Elliott Smith plush dolls, “Ferdinand the Bull” third-place mourning ribbons, and casters, 97 × 121.5 × 24 in. (246 × 309 × 61 cm). Courtesy the artist and Société. Photograph by Uli Holz

BUNNY ROGERS

For her first solo museum exhibition, Rogers will create a new body of work to be installed in the John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Gallery on the Museum’s first floor, which is free and open to the public. The exhibition goes on view on July 7.

In her work, Bunny Rogers (b. 1990, Houston, TX) draws from a personal cosmology to explore shared experiences of loss, alienation, and a search for belonging. Her layered installations, videos, and sculptures begin with wide-ranging references, from young-adult fiction and early 2000s cartoons, like Clone High, to autobiographical events and spectacles of mass violence, such as the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. Rogers’s techniques are as idiosyncratic as her subject matter. She borrows from theater costuming, design, and industrial furniture manufacturing, and often crafts her work by hand. This hybrid approach gives Rogers’s objects and spaces a distinct texture; they read simultaneously as slick and intimate, highly constructed, but also sincere.

Elisabeth Sherman, an assistant curator at the Whitney, who is co-curating the exhibition with curatorial assistant Margaret Kross, noted: “Rogers’s work reveals how certain emotions and traits that we consider to be completely opposite, like empathy and hate, sincerity and deceit, really exist in shades of grey. To paraphrase Rogers’s own words, the viewer may find that both extremes sit within themselves.”

Rogers has had solo exhibitions at Greenspon Gallery, New York; Foundation de 11 Lijnen, Oudenburg, BE; Société, Berlin; and Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris. An artist book, Flowers for Orgonon, will be published in 2017.

Museum Watch: “Irving Penn: Centennial” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Exhibition Dates: April 24–July 30, 2017

Exhibition Location: The Met Fifth Avenue, Gallery 199

Irving Penn is one of the most important modern masters of photography and has inspired future photographers of all genres with his portraits, still lifes and fashion pictures. He is most famously known for having worked as a magazine photographer for Vogue and created numerous personal projects. His work forms significant parts of the world’s most renowned public and private photography collections.

Irving Penn (American, 1917–2009), Single Oriental Poppy, New York, 1968. Dye transfer print, 1987. 16 ⅞ × 21 ⅛ in. (42.9 × 53.7 cm). Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © The Irving Penn Foundation

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present a major retrospective of the photographs of Irving Penn to mark the centennial of the artist’s birth. Over the course of his nearly 70-year career, Mr. Penn (1917–2009) mastered a pared-down aesthetic of studio photography that is distinguished for its meticulous attention to composition, nuance, and detail. Opening April 24, 2017, Irving Penn: Centennial will be the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the work of the great American photographer.

Irving Penn (American, 1917–2009), Rochas Mermaid Dress (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), Paris, 1950. Platinum-palladium print, 1980, 19 ⅞ × 19 ¾ in. (50.5 × 50.2 cm). Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © Condé Nast Publications, Inc.

The exhibition follows the 2015 announcement of the landmark promised gift from The Irving Penn Foundation to The Met of more than 150 photographs by Penn, representing every period of the artist’s dynamic career with the camera. The gift will form the core of the exhibition, which will feature more than 200 photographs by Penn, including iconic fashion studies of Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, the artist’s wife; exquisite still-lifes; Quechua children in Cuzco, Peru; portraits of urban laborers; female nudes; tribesmen in New Guinea; and color flower studies. The artist’s beloved portraits of cultural figures from Truman Capote, Pablo Picasso, and Colette to Ingmar Bergman and Issey Miyake will also be featured. Rounding out the exhibition will be photographs by Penn that entered The Met collection prior to the promised gift.

The exhibition is organized by Jeff L. Rosenheim, Curator in Charge of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Photographs, and Maria Morris Hambourg, an independent curator and a former Met colleague who founded the department.

Irving Penn (American, 1917–2009), After-Dinner Games, New York, 1947. Dye transfer print, 1985. 22 ¼ × 18 ⅛ in. (56.5 × 46 cm). Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © Condé Nast Publications, Inc.

Irving Penn was born June 16, 1917, in Plainfield, N.J. Educated in public schools, he attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Art from 1934 to 1938, where Alexey Brodovitch (a Russian-born photographer, designer and instructor who is most famous for his art direction of fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar from 1934 to 1958) taught him advertising design. While training for a career as an art director, Penn worked the last two summers for Harper’s Bazaar magazine as an office boy and apprentice artist, sketching shoes. At this time he had no thought of becoming a photographer.

His first job on graduating in 1938 was the art director of the Junior League magazine, later he worked in the same capacity for Saks Fifth Avenue department store. At the age of 25, he quit his job and used his small savings to go to Mexico, where he painted a full year before he convinced himself he would never be more than a mediocre painter.

Irving Penn (American, 1917–2009), Mouth (for L’Oréal), New York, 1986. Dye transfer print. 18 ¾ × 18 ⅜ in. (47.6 × 46.7 cm).. Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, 1917–2009), Marlene Dietrich, New York, 1948. Gelatin silver print, 2000 . 10 × 8 1/8 in. (25.4 × 20.6 cm). Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © The Irving Penn Foundation

Returning to New York, he won an audience with Alexander Liberman, art director of Vogue magazine, who hired Penn as his assistant, specifically to suggest photographic covers for Vogue. The staff photographers didn’t think much of his ideas, but Liberman did and asked Penn to take the pictures himself. Using a borrowed camera, and drawing on his art background and experience, Penn arranged a still life consisting of a big brown leather bag, beige scarf and gloves, lemons, oranges, and a huge topaz. It was published as the Vogue cover for the issue of October 1, 1943, and launched Penn on his photographic career.

Penn soon demonstrated his extraordinary capacity for work, versatility, inventiveness, and imagination in a number of fields including editorial illustration, advertising, photojournalism, portraits, still life, travel, and television.

Irving Penn (American, 1917–2009), Naomi Sims in Scarf, New York, ca. 1969. Gelatin silver print, 1985. 10 ½ × 10 ⅜ in. (26.7 × 26.4 cm). Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. © The Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, 1917–2009), Truman Capote, New York, 1948. Platinum-palladium print, 1968. 15 7/8 × 15 3/8 in. (40.3 × 39.1 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith. Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1986. © The Irving Penn Foundation

In his earlier work Penn was fond of using a particular device in his portrait work, replacing it with a fresh one from time to time. At one time he placed two backgrounds to form a corner into which his subject was asked to enter. It was, as Penn explains, “a means of closing people in. Some people felt secure in this spot, some felt trapped. Their reaction made them quickly available to the camera.” His subjects during this ‘corner period’ included Noel Coward, the Duchess of Windsor, and actor Spencer Tracy, most of whom complied readily.

The Jewish Museum Announces New, Major Collection Exhibition to Open Fall 2017

The Jewish Museum’s long-running collection exhibition, Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey, originally mounted in 1993, recently close, making way for a major, new collection display, Scenes from the Collection, opening in Fall 2017. Culture and Continuity’s last day on view was Sunday, February 12, 2017.

The Jewish Museum (New York) logo

The Jewish Museum‘s unparalleled collection spans 4,000 years of Jewish culture through nearly 30,000 objects, including painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, ceremonial objects, antiquities, works on paper, and media. Scenes from the Collection will transform the Museum’s third floor and feature over 650 works from antiquities to contemporary art – many of which will be on view for the first time at the Museum. The exhibition was designed by Tsao & McKown Architects.

Hanukkah Lamp, Orivit-Aktiengesellschaft (1900-1905), Köln-Braunsfeld (Germany), 1900-05. White metal: cast and silver-plated; glass: mold formed, 13⅞ x 12¾ x 5 5/16 in. (35.3 x 32.4 x 13.5 cm). The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of Dr. Harry G. Friedman (?), F 3573.

The new exhibition will be divided into eight different sections, or scenes, highlighting the diversity and depth of the collection. The new installation will present the collection as a reflection of the continual evolution that is the essence of Jewish identity, as well as a powerful expression of artistic and cultural creativity.

“Scenes from the Collection will immerse our visitors in a dynamic and engaging experience. Developed collaboratively among the Museum’s curatorial staff, the new installation is a reflection of the Jewish Museum’s unique position as an art museum exploring Jewish culture and identity through a contemporary lens,” said Claudia Gould, Helen Goldsmith Menschel Director of the Jewish Museum.

Torah Binder, Rabat (Morocco), 19th century. Cotton: embroidered with silk thread, 9 1/2 × 103 3/4 in. (24.1 × 263.5 cm). The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of Sonia Cohen Azagury, 2004-64.

In addition, Scenes from the Collection will be flexible, with four scenes changing annually, and one changing every six months, so that different subjects can be examined while more of the collection is on view. The stories the works of art tell will illuminate multiple perspectives on being Jewish in the past and present, how Jewish culture intersects with art and the art world, and how it is part of the larger world of global interconnections.

The eight scenes are:

Origins

Scenes from the Collection will start from the beginning – the year 1904 when the Museum was founded with a gift of ceremonial objects from Judge Mayer Sulzberger. Central to this section will be the question of what, why, and how the Museum has collected and what this says about the changing identity of the institution, the Jewish community, and the art world.

Constellations

Laurie Simmons (American, b. 1949), Woman Listening to Radio, 1978. Gelatin silver print, sheet: 7 15/16 × 9 15/16 in. (20.2 × 25.2 cm); image: 5 3/16 × 8 in. (13.2 × 20.3 cm). The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, 2013-1. © Laurie Simmons, image courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York

In “Constellations,” over 50 of the most visually powerful and culturally significant works in the collection – from antiquities to the twenty-first century – will be exhibited as individual gems but with powerful thematic connections to one another. Such issues will be explored as transforming and transcending tradition, cultural distinctiveness and universality, and ever-changing notions of identity. Groups of works will relate to each other aesthetically or contextually, creating multiple conversations. For example, three works that can be seen as challenging tradition are Peter Blume’s Pig’s Feet and Vinegar (1927), Laurie Simmons’ Woman Listening to Radio (1978), and Nicole Eisenman’s Seder (2011).

Nicole Eisenman (American, b. France, 1965), Seder, 2010. Oil on canvas, 39 1/16 × 48 in. (99.2 × 121.9 cm). The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase Lore Ross Bequest; Milton and Miriam Handler Endowment Fund; and Fine Arts Acquisitions Committee Fund, 2011-3 © Nicole Eisenman.

Art News: Whitney Announces 2017 Biennial Film Program

A Broad Range Of Moving Image Artists To Be Shown In The 2017 Biennial’s Film Program

A series of film screenings and conversations will be presented as part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art on March 17. The series takes place over ten consecutive weekends, from March 17 through May 21, 2017, in the Susan and John Hess Family Theater on the Museum’s third floor. Each Sunday, the 3 pm screening will be followed by a conversation with the filmmakers, joined by writers, curators, and scholars.

Leslie Thornton (b. 1951) and James Richards (b. 1983), still from Crossing, 2016. High-definition video, color, sound; 19:10 min. Courtesy the artists

Film program co-curator and Biennial advisor Aily Nash notes: “At once radical and quiet, global and intimate, the works presented in the 2017 Whitney Biennial film program continue to reflect on the urgent themes seen in the exhibition. These artists are some of the most exciting voices working in moving image today. They engage the medium with formal rigor and innovation while exploring the subjective and affective experiences of the contemporary political and social moment. The broad range of artists spans generations and approaches to the moving image including documentary practice, experimental film, narrative cinema, and video installation.”

Featured artists are Basma Alsharif, Eric Baudelaire, Robert Beavers, Mary Helena Clark, Kevin Jerome Everson, Sky Hopinka, Dani Leventhal, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Cauleen Smith, Leslie Thornton and James Richards, Leilah Weinraub, and James N. Kienitz Wilkins. See a complete schedule at whitney.org.

The formation of self and the individual’s place in a turbulent society are among the key themes reflected in the work of the artists selected for the 2017 Whitney Biennial. The exhibition includes sixty-three participants, ranging from emerging to well-established individuals and collectives working in painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, film and video, photography, activism, performance, music, and video game design.

With a history of exhibiting the most promising and influential artists and provoking debate, the Whitney Biennial—the Museum’s signature exhibition—is the longest running survey of contemporary art in the United States. The Biennial, an invitational show of work produced in the preceding two years, was introduced by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1932, and it is the longest continuous series of exhibitions in the country to survey recent developments in American art.

The 2017 Whitney Biennial will be accompanied by an exhibition catalogue, designed by Olga Casellas Badillo of San Juan–based Tiguere Corp., which includes essays by the curators as well as Biennial advisors Negar Azimi and Gean Moreno, a conversation between the curators and Scott Rothkopf, and a roundtable with filmmakers moderated by Aily Nash. The book will also feature individual entries on each of the sixty-three participants in the exhibition along with reproductions of their work. It will be published by the Whitney Museum of American Art and distributed by Yale University Press.

The 2017 Whitney Biennial is co-curated by Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks

Immigrant Contributions To American Society Recognized With 2017 Vilcek Prizes

Visual Artist Nari Ward And Biophysicists Lily And Yuh-Nung Jan Receive $100,000 Vilcek Prizes

Winners Of Vilcek Prizes For Creative Promise Each Receive $50,000 Awards

The Vilcek Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of the annual Vilcek Prizes, recognizing outstanding immigrant contributions to the American arts and sciences. The Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science will be awarded jointly to Chinese-born Lily and Yuh-Nung Jan, a collaborative research duo and professors of molecular physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. The Vilcek Prize in the Arts recognizes Jamaican-born Nari Ward, a New York-based visual artist known for found-object assemblage art. Each prize includes a $100,000 cash award. The prizewinners were selected by panels of experts in each field; they will be honored at an awards gala in New York City in April 2017.

“Like all great artists and scientists, these immigrant prizewinners challenge our very perceptions of the world,” said Rick Kinsel, president of the Vilcek Foundation. “Their works are attempts to understand fundamental questions and concepts in American society, from the neurological underpinnings of the self to the institution of democracy.”

The Vilcek Foundation was established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia. The mission of the foundation, to honor the contributions of immigrants to the United States and to foster an appreciation of the arts and sciences, was inspired by the couple’s respective careers in biomedical science and art history, as well as their personal experiences and appreciation for the opportunities they received as newcomers to this country. The foundation awards annual prizes to prominent immigrant biomedical scientists and artists and manages the Vilcek Foundation Art Collections, a promised gift from its founders.

This year, the Vilcek Prize in the Arts is awarded in the fine arts, marking the completion of an 11-year cycle through various disciplines in the arts and humanities. The recipient, Nari Ward, was born in Jamaica and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 12. He is known for found-object assemblage artworks that invite both a public conversation and an intimate dialogue with the viewer around topics of race, immigration, and the Caribbean diaspora identity. His usage of found objects aims to highlight the history of a place and the urgency of the moment; his installation Naturalization Drawing Table features a large desk—built out of Plexiglas bodega barriers—covered with dense linear drawings made over copies of Immigration and Naturalization Service applications. On select days during the exhibition, viewers are invited to “apply” for naturalization by lining up and filling out an application, giving them a taste of the bureaucratic process of applying for citizenship. Ward has won several prestigious art prizes, including the Joyce Award, the Rome Prize, a Bessie Award, and several other awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Lily and Yuh-Nung Jan were both born in China and raised in Taiwan. They came to the U.S. as graduate students of physics at the California Institute of Technology but switched their focus to biology, in part inspired by their mentor, the renowned biophysicist Max Delbrück. Over the course of a collaborative career spanning over four decades, the husband-and-wife team has made many significant discoveries in the field of neuroscience, with far-reaching clinical implications. They isolated the gene encoding a protein that shuttles potassium ions across cell membranes, enabling the characterization of a molecular player important to functions as vital as maintaining heart rate and controlling muscle movement. Today, this type of ion channel is implicated in diseases such as epilepsy, ataxia, and hypertension. Simultaneously, the Jans identified genes and principles underlying the processes by which neurons acquire distinct identities, burgeon into thickets, and establish precise circuits; their work in this area may help unravel human diseases such as autism and schizophrenia. Currently, professors of molecular physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, the Jans have been honored with membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences, as well as with Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator awards.

The Vilcek Foundation also awards the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise, given to younger immigrants who have shown substantial talent and ability early in their careers. Each prize includes a $50,000 cash award. The winners in the fine arts are the following:

Iman Issa, born in Egypt, a conceptual artist, creates objects and installations in an attempt to address complex philosophical questions. Her original area of study was phenomenology, a branch of philosophy that examines the structures of consciousness that organize subjective experience—or, put another way, how we take meaning from things we individually experience. Later, Issa realized that art allowed for nuanced exploration of those topics, and continued her philosophical questioning through art. She is particularly interested in monuments and memorials—aesthetic forms tasked with a function that holds a shifting relevance based on their location in time and relationship to history. Her work has been shown at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the 8th Berlin Biennial, and the New Museum, and she has received the DAAD 2017 Artist in Residence Award, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, and the HNF-MACBA Award.

Meleko Mokgosi, born in Botswana, is a slow, considered painter; behind every painting he produces are hours of research, reading, and conversations with people. Mokgosi is interested in depictions of Africa and its people; he believes that the widespread misrepresentation of Africa and Africans has done a violence to the people of the continent, and through his art he attempts a representation that is fair and just. He is deeply concerned with politics and seeks to understand and illuminate the relations of power that shape people, families, villages, regions, and nations. Mokgosi has been named the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters Grant and the Jarl and Pamela Mohn Award, and he has shown his work at Art Basel, the Armory, the Hammer Museum, and the Whitney Museum.

Gap Launches Limited-Edition ’90’s Archive Re-Issue Collection with ‘Generation Gap’ Film

Gap Pays Homage To The Past And Celebrates Emerging Talent With Rumer Willis, Coco Gordon, Evan Ross, Chelsea Tyler, Lizzy Jagger, TJ Mizell and Naomi Campbell

Gap announces the launch of a limited-edition collection – the ’90’s Archive Re-Issue – for men and women featuring iconic styles from the ’90’s including the Bodysuit, Reverse Fit and Easy Fit Denim, Pleated Khakis and the timeless Pocket Tee, available online and in select stores globally starting February 7.

The design team came up with the idea for the collection after multiple visits to Gap’s on-site archives studio in New York where the company houses key fashions from all of the brands spanning the course of the company’s 46-year history. After pouring through racks and racks of some of the brand’s most beloved styles, the team realized that so many key ’90’s fashions are not only relevant today, but many of these timeless pieces are so uniquely Gap.

To launch the collection, Gap collaborated with director Kevin Calero to create ‘Generation Gap,’ a film that is the ultimate contemporary homage to the iconic Gap ads of the ’90’s with references to “Mellow Yellow,” “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “Just Can’t Get Enough” and updated with a modern twist. ‘Generation Gap‘ features a roll call of emerging talent cast from the offspring of stars of the iconic Gap ’90s ads with a special cameo from the timeless icon and Gap alumni Naomi Campbell wearing the iconic pocket tee that she modeled in 1992 for her Steven Meisel shoot. Set to an a capella version of the 1992 Billboard music #1 hit ‘All 4 Love‘ by Color me Badd, ‘Generation Gap‘ is a nod to the past and a celebration of the next generation as they reimagine the iconic Gap looks in their own unique style.

Gap Launches Limited-Edition ’90’s Archive Re-Issue Collection with ‘Generation Gap’ Film

This reissue is a true homage to some of their customers’ favorite ’90s trends. In fact, the design team was so committed to the authenticity of the project, that the pieces will feature the exact same tags, trims, hardware and denim washes that some may still have in their drawers.

“We were determined to replicate the same color and washes of the original denim pieces from the ’90s using our current fabrics, some innovative wash techniques, and a sustainable process. We sent our manufacturing partners photos, swatches, and multiple samples to make sure we got everything exactly right,” said Natalie Nelson, Wash Manager of Gap’s denim design.