From 1994-2010, the Walker Art Center presented an annual month-long screening series featuring women directors, starting with a touring program “Women in the Director’s Chair (WIDC): Homegirls”, which blossomed into the Walker’s very own “Women With Vision” (WWV) festival. This March, the Walker Art Center will celebrate the legacy and influence of these groundbreaking programs that both launched and inspired so many women directors from our region.
Celebrate the legacy and influence of the Walker’s Women with Vision programs, which supported female filmmakers and sought to bring their experiences and perspectives to the forefront. Celebrated international directors screened side by side with local artists at all stages of their careers. Two past participants, Melody Gilbert and Kelly Nathe, guest curate and pay tribute to this era of film programming, largely helmed by Senior Curator Sheryl Mousley.
Image courtesy Walker Art Center.
“My indie filmmaking career kicked off in 2002 when Sheryl Mousley selected my first indie doc Married at the Mall to screen at the Walker in the Women with Vision program. I was so honored, and I know there are so many other women in our region who came up through this program just like me. Finding those filmmakers and having a reunion as well as celebrating the up-and-coming women filmmakers of today are reasons why I wanted to guest curate this program with Kelly Nathe. We both had life-changing experiences by screening films at the Walker, and we wanted to find out what happened to the others. And with the Academy Awards leaving women off the best director list again, we thought now would be a good time to do this.” —Melody Gilbert
The four-day program includes shorts screenings, on-stage conversations, introductions of new films by emerging local directors and a celebratory reception.
Image courtesy Walker Art Center.
“I have always believed that filmmaking is women’s work. When I came to the Walker in 1998, I took on the annual film program that had started in 1994 called “Women in the Director’s Chair” which had a local sidebar called “Homegirls.” I turned the program into Walker’s “Women With Vision” film festival, always keeping the local filmmakers at the center,” states Sheryl Mousley, Senior Curator, Moving Image. “After my eleven years with the festival, and only when a woman, Katherine Bigelow, in 2010 finally won the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director, did I hear the shout, “We’ve won!” While ending the series on a high note, I vowed to continue showing women filmmakers at Walker throughout all our programs. I am proud to say that 25% of the Walker Dialogues are women, and the year-round cinema program continues to give voice to local filmmakers and celebrate the legacy and influence of women in international cinema. I am proud of all the Minnesota filmmakers who have shown their films at Walker. It is a wonderful history and confirmation of home-based talent.”
“My very first short film, Rock-n-Roll Girlfriend, screened in the WIDC: Homegirls program back in 1995 when I was still a student, and I can’t begin to explain how much my inclusion in the program meant to me back then. It remains a badge of honor to this day! I’ve always wondered what happened to all the women who started here. Where did they end up and how did the Walker program that focused on women directors shape their careers? Melody Gilbert and I were co-chairs of Film Fatales in Minnesota, an international organization of women and non-binary directors of feature films, and we both pondered that question and decided to go on a journey together to find these women as well as celebrate the emerging filmmakers in our region.” adds Kelly Nathe
Enjoy a sampling of recent works directed by MN women and selected by Film Fatales, a national organization of women and non-binary filmmakers advocating for intersectional parity in the film industry. The evening’s screening is followed by an onstage conversation led by Film Fatales about making the leap to feature filmmaking in our region.
Alison Guessou’s Happily Married After. Photo courtesy the filmmaker.
Film Fatales Twin Cities Reel, 10 min
Santuario, Christine Delp & Pilar Timpane, 3 min. (excerpt)
A Winter Love, Rhiana Yazzie, 4 min. (excerpt)
Master Servant, Julie Anne Koehnen, 3 min. (excerpt)
North Side Boxing Club, Carrie Bush and Amanda Becker, 3 min.
Peeled, Naomi Ko, 2 min.
Muslim Sheroes of MN: Nimo Omar, Ariel Tilson, 4 min. (excerpt)
The Coyote Way, Missy Whiteman, 4 min. (trailer)
Oh My Stars, Cynthia Uhrich, 3 min. (excerpt)
Happily Married After, Alison Guessou, 3 min. (excerpt)
Little Men, Ayesha Adu, 3 min. (excerpt)
Untitled Hmong Doc, Joua Lee Grande, 3 min. (excerpt)
Underground, Beth Peloff, 3 min.
Self-Creation, Shelby Dillon, 5 min.
Jasmine Star, Jo Rochelle, 5 min. (excerpt)
Shelby Dillon, Self Creation, 2019. Photo courtesy the filmmaker.
“If I say ‘thank you for coming,’ it implies that you are already there.” —Faye Driscoll
Faye Driscoll: Thank You For Coming: Space. Photo: Gemma Galina
One of dance/performance’s most astonishing experimental voices, Faye Driscoll wraps up her Walker-supported trilogy—Thank You For Coming—with a moving requiem on art, the body, loss, and human connectivity. Space builds on and diverges from Driscoll’s earlier works, beloved by audiences across the country, with “an exhilaratingly personal culmination of the series” (Artforum). The intimate new performance piece, presented within an immersive installation on the McGuire stage, is informed by art-historical imagery and emerges as a collaborative creation between the artist, her astute design collaborators, and the audience. Contains mature content.
Through an alchemy of bodies and voices, objects and live sound, choreographer Faye Driscoll (US, b. 1975) conjures worlds that are, like ourselves, alive and forever changeable. The artist poses performance as one of the last secular social spaces, where the vulnerability, necessity, and complexities of our everyday relationships are heightened and made palpable. Driscoll’s projects draw on our shared power to question and shape the structures that govern our behavior. Characterizing her work as “dances that are mistaken for plays,” she creates sets designed to break apart; musical scores made from the performers’ stomps and vocalizations; and props that are worn, used, and reused.
Faye Driscoll. Courtesy the artist.
Faye Driscoll is a Bessie Award-winning performance maker who has been hailed as a “startlingly original talent” (Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times) and “a postmillenium postmodern wild woman” (Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice). Her work has been presented nationally at the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Walker Art Center, The Institute for Contemporary Art/Boston, MCA/Chicago and BAM/Brooklyn Academy of Music and internationally at La Biennale di Venezia, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, Melbourne Festival, Belfast International Arts Festival, Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens and Centro de Arte Experimental (Universidad Nacional de San Martín) in Buenos Aires. Driscoll has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital award, a NEFA National Dance Project Award,MAP Fund Grant, a French-US Exchange in Dance Grant, Jerome Foundation Grant, a Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant, a Doris Duke Artist Award, and a US Artists Doris Duke Fellowship and she is the recipient of the 2018 Jacob’s PIllow Dance Award. She recently choreographed for Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men on Broadway and for Madeline’s Madeline, a film by Josephine Decker.
Expand your understanding of graphic design with the Insights Design Lecture Series, presenting five leading designers from around the world. Dive into the thinking behind their work, then hang out after the lectures to meet the speakers, grab a drink, and chat with your fellow design lovers. This year’s lineup features branding expert Leland Maschmeyer, LA multidisciplinarian Daniel DeSure, hyper-aesthete Hassan Rahim, magazine expert Veronica Ditting, and a special, bonus lecture from design ethicist Ruben Pater.
Directly following each lecture, meet the speakers, grab a drink, and chat with fellow design lovers in the Walker’s Main Lobby or in Esker Grove.
Watch Anywhere: Insights Viewing Parties
If you can’t make it here in person this year, consider having an Insights Viewing Party with and watch the livestream on walkerart.org. Send in your comments and questions for the speakers via Twitter (#InsightsDesign).
Future-oriented designer and creative director Leland Maschmeyer unearths captivating stories hidden within the most unlikely contexts. As co-founder of design agency Collins, Maschmeyer helped reimagine brands such as Spotify, Airbnb, and Facebook. He joined Chobani in 2016 to oversee the creation of its new in-house design team, which was named Ad Age’s 2019 In-house Agency of the Year. As the company’s Chief Creative Officer, Maschmeyer invests the socially-conscious yogurt brand with folklore magic, meticulous mistakes, and design-centric packaging.
Daniel DeSure, Commonwealth Projects/Total Luxury Spa, March 10, 7 pm
Image courtesy Daniel DeSure
Can a juice bar rejuvenate bodies, minds, and communities? Can T-shirts create the future? With an emphasis on his local community and an expansive collaborative network, Daniel DeSure has created a multidisciplinary practice that skirts the worlds of art, fashion, design, and film. His many projects include founding the creative studio Commonwealth Projects, with clients such as Rimowa, Sonos, Nike, Olafur Eliasson, and Sundance, as well as Total Luxury Spa, a ridiculously hip fashion line dedicated to serving LA’s Crenshaw neighborhood.
INDIgenesis: GEN 3, A Showcase of Indigenous Filmmakers and Storytellers, March 19–28
Presented over two weeks, the series INDIgenesis: GEN 3, guest curated by Missy Whiteman (Northern Arapaho and Kickapoo Nations), opens with an evening of expanded cinema and includes several shorts programs in the Walker Cinema and Bentson Mediatheque, an afternoon of virtual reality, and a closing-night feature film.
The ongoing showcase of works by Native filmmakers and artists is rooted in Indigenous principles that consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations. GEN 3 connects perspectives and stories from the past, present, and future to convey Indigenous truths, teachings, and values.
“Indigenous artists use the creative process of filmmaking for revitalization and narrative sovereignty,” says Whiteman. “Our stories tell us where we came from, re-create our truths, affirm our languages and culture, and inspire us to imagine our Indigenous future. We come from the stars. How far will we take this medium?”
Throughout the program, join conversations with artists and community members centered on themes of Indigenous Futurism, revitalization, and artistic creation.
Opening Night: Remembering the Future Expanded Cinema Screening/Performance Thursday, March 19, 7:30 pm Free, Walker Cinema
Missy Whiteman’s The Coyote Way: Going Back Home, 2016. Photo courtesy the filmmaker.
Combining film, a live score, hoop dancing, hip-hop, and spoken word, a collective of Indigenous artists led by curator Missy Whiteman creates an immersive environment that transcends time and place. Guided by ancestral knowledge systems, traditional stories, and contemporary forms of expression, the expanded cinema program features performances by DJ AO (Hopi/Mdewakatonwan Dakota), Sacramento Knoxx (Ojibwe/Chicano), Lumhe “Micco” Sampson (Mvskoke Creek/Seneca), and Michael Wilson (Ojibwe). Archival found footage and Whiteman’s sci-fi docu-narrative The Coyote Way: Going Back Home(2016), filmed in the community of Little Earth in South Minneapolis, illuminate the space.
Missy Whiteman’s The Coyote Way: Going Back Home, 2016. Photo courtesy the filmmaker.
Indigenous Lens: Our RealityShort films by multiple directors Friday, March 20, 7 pm, $10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors), Walker Cinema
This evening of short films showcases a collection of contemporary stories about what it means to be Indigenous today, portraying identity and adaptability in a colonialist system. The program spans a spectrum of themes, including two-spirit transgender love, coming of age, reflections on friends and fathers, “indigenizing” pop art, and creative investigations into acts of repatriation. Digital video, 85 mins
Copresented with Hud Oberly (Comanche/Osage/Caddo), Indigenous Program at Sundance Institute (in attendance).
Lore Directed by Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians)
Images of friends and landscapes are fragmented and reassembled as a voice tells stories, composing elements of nostalgia in terms of lore. 2019, 10 min. View excerpt.
Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, Jackson Polys, and Bailey Sweitzer’s Culture Capture: Terminal Adddition, 2019. Photo courtesy the filmmakers.
Culture Capture: Terminal Adddition Directed by New Red Order: Adam Khalil (Ojibway), Zack Khalil (Ojibway), Jackson Polys (Tlingit), Bayley Sweitzer
The latest video by the public secret society known as the New Red Order is an incendiary indictment of the norms of European settler colonialism. Examining institutionalized racism through a mix of 3D photographic scans and vivid dramatizations, this work questions the contemporary act of disposing historical artifacts as quick fixes, proposing the political potential of adding rather than removing. 2019, 7 min. View excerpt.
Shane McSauby’s Mino Bimaadiziwin, 2017. Photo courtesy the filmmaker.
Mino Bimaadiziwin Directed by Shane McSauby (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians)
A trans Anishinaabe man meets a young Anishinaabe woman who pushes him to reconnect with their culture. 2017, 10 min. View excerpt.
The Moon and the Night Directed by Erin Lau (Kanaka Maoli)
Erin Lau’s The Moon and the Night, 2017. Photo courtesy the filmmaker.
Set in rural Hawaii, a Native Hawaiian teenage girl must confront her father after he enters her beloved pet in a dogfight. 2018, 19 min. View excerpt.
Erin Lau’s The Moon and the Night, 2017. Photo courtesy the filmmaker.Erin Lau. Photo courtesy the filmmaker. Photo By: Antonio Agosto
Shinaab II Directed by Lyle Michell Corbine, Jr. (Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa Indians)
A young man seeks to honor the memory of his late father in a film that looks at Ojibwe ideas surrounding death and mourning. 2019, 6 min.
Daniel Flores’ Viva Diva, 2019. Image courtesy the artist.
Viva Diva Directed by Daniel Flores (Yaqui)
This road trip movie follows Rozene and Diva as they make their way down to Guadalajara for their gender affirmation surgeries. 2017, 15 min. View excerpt.
Daniel Flores. Image courtesy the artist.
Dig It If You Can Directed by Kyle Bell (Creek-Thlopthlocco Tribal Town)
An insightful portrait of the self-taught artist and designer Steven Paul Judd (Kiowa), whose satirical manipulations of pop culture for an Indigenous audience are gaining a passionate, mass following as he realizes his youthful dreams. 2016, 18 min. View excerpt.
“When all her influences click into place, the result is like little else, in any genre. The pileup of melody often feels luxuriously imaginative.” —Pitchfork
Celebrated as a trailblazing guitarist and formidable band leader as well as an unparalleled jazz artist, improviser, and composer, Mary Halvorson performs with her band Code Girl in concert with singular vocalist Amirtha Kidambi (singing Halvorson’s lyrics), saxophonist and vocalist María Grand, and trumpeter Adam O’Farrill. Bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Tomas Fujiwara (her bandmates from Thumbscrew) also join in. All of the music performed will be from Code Girl’s new album set to be released this fall.
Mary Halvorson, _2019-20_01 Photo: Reuben Radding
As Halvorson’s songs slip between diverse sonic nodes and songwriting modes, her musical messages offer both encryption and revelation. The bristling collective power trio Thumbscrew, a cooperative in the truest sense, opens.
Guitarist and composer Mary Halvorson has been described as “a singular talent” (Lloyd Sachs, JazzTimes), “NYC’s least-predictable improviser” (Howard Mandel, City Arts), “one of the most exciting and original guitarists in jazz—or otherwise” (Steve Dollar, Wall Street Journal), and “one of today’s most formidable bandleaders” (Francis Davis, Village Voice). In recent Downbeat Critics Polls Halvorson has been celebrated as guitarist, rising star jazz artist, and rising star composer of the year, and in 2019 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
Halvorson has released a series of critically acclaimed albums on the Firehouse 12 label, from Dragon’s Head (2008), her trio debut featuring bassist John Hébert and drummer Ches Smith, expanding to a quintet with trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson and alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon on Saturn Sings (2010) and Bending Bridges (2012), a septet with tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and trombonist Jacob Garchik on Illusionary Sea (2014), and finally an octet with pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn on Away With You (2016). She also released the solo recording Meltframe (2015), and most recently debuted Code Girl (2018), a new ensemble featuring vocalist Amirtha Kidambi (singing Halvorson’s own lyrics), trumpeter Adam O’Farrill, saxophonist and vocalist María Grand, bassist Michael Formanek, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara.
One of New York City’s most in-demand guitarists, over the past decade Halvorson has worked with such diverse musicians as Tim Berne, Anthony Braxton, Taylor Ho Bynum, John Dieterich, Trevor Dunn, Bill Frisell, Ingrid Laubrock, Jason Moran, Joe Morris, Tom Rainey, Jessica Pavone, Tomeka Reid, Marc Ribot and John Zorn. She is also part of several collaborative projects, most notably the longstanding trio Thumbscrew with Michael Formanek on bass and Tomas Fujiwara on drums.
The concert takes place on Saturday, February 8, at 8 pm in the McGuire Theater. Tickets are $26 ($20.80 Walker members).
The Walker Arts Center continues to flesh out what is considerably a very dynamic exhibition schedule for the next two years. Additions to the Walker Art Center’s 2020–2021 exhibition schedule include two new solo exhibitions by female artists, Faye Driscoll: Thank You for Coming(February 27–June 14, 2020) and Candice Lin(April 17–August 29, 2021) as well as a Walker collection show of women artists, Don’t let this be easy(July 16–March 14, 2021). For her first solo museum exhibition, Faye Driscoll incorporates a guided audio soundtrack, moving image works, and props to look back across the entirety of her trilogy of performances Thank You For Coming—Attendance(2014), Play(2016), and Space(2019)—works that were presented and co-commissioned by the Walker and subsequently toured around the world over the past six years. Another newly added exhibition, Candice Lin, is the first US museum solo show by the artist, co-organized by the Walker Art Center and the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts (CCVA). Lin is creating a site-specific installation that responds to the space of the gallery at each institution, allowing the shape of the work to evolve over the course of its presentation.
The Walker-organized exhibition Don’t let this be easy highlights the diverse and experimental practices of women artists spanning some 50 years through a selection of paintings, sculptures, moving image works, artists’ books, and materials from the archives.
The initiative is presented in conjunction with the Feminist Art Coalition (FAC), a nationwide effort involving more than 60 museums committed to social justice and structural change.
Other upcoming exhibitions include An Art Of Changes: Jasper Johns Prints, 1960–2018 (February 16–September 20, 2020), a survey of six decades of Johns’ work in printmaking drawn from the Walker’s complete collection of the artists’ prints including intaglio, lithography, woodcut, linoleum cut, screenprinting, lead relief, and blind embossing; The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance (formerly titiled Still and Yet) (April 18–July 26, 2020), is an exhibition that rethinks the history of performance featuring artists whose works include performative elements but also embrace acts, objects, and gestures that refer more to the inert qualities of traditional painting or sculpture than to true staged action.
Additional exhibitions include Michaela Eichwald’s (June 13–November 8, 2020) first US solo museum presentation, bringing together painting, sculpture, and collage from across the past 10 years of her practice; Designs for Different Futures (September 12, 2020 – January 3, 2021)—a collaborative group show co-organized by the Walker Art Center, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago—brings together about 80 dynamic works that address the challenges and opportunities that humans may encounter in the years, decades, and centuries to come; Rayyane Tabet(December 10, 2020– April 18, 2021), a solo show by the Beirut-based multidisciplinary artist featuring a new installation for the Walker that begins with a time capsule discovered on the site of what was once an IBM manufacturing facility in Rochester, Minnesota.
OPENING EXHIBITIONS
AN ART OF CHANGES: JASPER JOHNS PRINTS, 1960–2018, February 16–September 20, 2020
When Jasper Johns’s paintings of flags and targets debuted in 1958, they brought him instant acclaim and established him as a critical link between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. In the ensuing 60 years, Johns (US, b. 1930) has continued to astonish viewers with the beauty and complexity of his paintings, drawings, sculpture, and prints. Today, he is considered one of the 20th century’s greatest American artists.
Artist: Jasper Johns Title: Figure 7 from the Color Numeral Series Date: 1969 Medium: lithograph on paper Accession number: 1985.319 Credit Line: Gift of Kenneth Tyler, 1985. Repro Rights: VAGA; Art copyright Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.Artist: Jasper Johns Title: Target Date: 1960 Medium: lithograph on paper Accession number: 1988.181 Credit Line: Gift of Judy and Kenneth Dayton, 1988. Repro Rights: VAGA; Art copyright Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.
In celebration of the artist’s 90th birthday, An Art of Changes surveys six decades of Johns’s work in printmaking, highlighting his experiments with familiar, abstract, and personal imagery that play with memory and visual perception in endlessly original ways. The exhibition features some 90 works in intaglio, lithography, woodcut, linoleum cut, screenprinting, and lead relief—all drawn from the Walker’s comprehensive collection of the artist’s prints.
Organized in four thematic sections, the show follows Johns through the years as he revises and recycles key motifs over time, including the American flag, numerals, and the English alphabet, which he describes as “things the mind already knows.” Some works explore artists’ tools, materials, and techniques. Others explore signature aspects of the artist’s distinctive mark-making, including flagstones and hatch marks, while later pieces teem with autobiographical imagery. To underscore Johns’s fascination with the changes that occur when an image is reworked in another medium, the prints will be augmented by a small selection of paintings and sculptures.
Curator: Joan Rothfuss, guest curator, Visual Arts.
Exhibition Tour Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh: October 12, 2019–January 20, 2020 Walker Art Center, Minneapolis: February 16–September 20, 2020 Grand Rapids Art Museum, Michigan: October 24, 2020–January 24, 2021 Tampa Art Museum, Florida: April 28–September 6, 2021
Program Features Tina Satter / Half Straddle; Miguel Gutierrez; Ligia Lewis, and Back to Back Theatre
OUT THERE IS BACK WITH 20/20 VISION. Through a range of theatrical aesthetics, this year’s slate of international artists engage us with revelatory works by turns playful and dark, political and personal, gothic and supernatural. They interrogate labels and preconceptions, the artificial and the organic. This year, two artists new to the Walker and two returning favorites push back and look forward, reframe and reposition. Their concerns are ours: identity, race, sexuality, and the meaning of intelligence.
“Is This A Room is a beautiful work—impassioned yet made with a cool hand; straight-faced yet often funny. It is also devastating because damn, the real world is a hell of a writer.” —Artforum
After the FBI interrogated Reality Winner, a 25-year-old former Air Force linguist, the transcript of the encounter ignited director Tina Satter’s theatrical imagination. Satter’s company Half Straddle replicates, word by word, the verbal dance between the whip-smart Winner and reality-twisting agents, demonstrating how military interrogation tactics, toxic masculinity, and systemic marginalization resulted in her conviction for espionage. Funny and suspenseful, engaging and enraging, the production re-creates one afternoon spent in a bizarre and secret world—the turning point of a personal life wrenched irrevocably into the political. Program length: 70 minutes.
Tina Satter is an American writer and director for theater and film who was a recipient of a 2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award, a 2014 Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, and was named an Off-Off Broadway Innovator to Watch by Time Out New York. With Half Straddle, she has written and directed ten original full-length plays, and re-imagined them for a range of spaces as they have toured to numerous theaters and festivals in the U.S. and internationally.
Meet the Artists
Thursday, January 9: Post-show reception with the artists in Cityview Bar
Friday, January 10: Post-show Q&A with the artists onstage.
Out There: Miguel Gutierrez, This Bridge Called My Ass. Photo: Ian Douglas
January 16–17, 8pm, January 18 4pm & 8pm, Walker Commission
“A dense, audacious and wickedly funny work that…contains multitudes and unflinchingly bears their weight.”—New York Times
Movement artist Miguel Gutierrez‘s second Walker commission provocatively investigates identity politics, Latinx clichés, and Western concepts of form, drawing from (in part) the influences of the groundbreaking 1981 feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Gutierrez and five diverse Latinx performers amplify stereotypes to move past respectability politics within an unstable environment of bodies, light, sound, and text (in Spanish, with surtitles). The chaotic, playfully erotic production concludes with an over-the-top version of an absurdist telenovela. Contains nudity and sexual content. Program length: 90 minutes.
Miguel Gutierrez is a choreographer, composer, performer, singer, writer, educator and advocate who has lived in New York for over twenty years. He is fascinated by the time-based nature of performance and how it creates an ideal frame for phenomenological questions around presence and meaning-making. His work proposes an immersive state, for performer and audience alike, where attention itself becomes an elastic material. He believes in an approach to art making that is fierce, fragile, empathetic, political, and irreverent.
Meet the Artists
Thursday, January 16: Post-show reception with the artists in Cityview Bar
Friday, January 17: Post-show Q&A with the artists onstage
The
beautifully constructed dance worlds of Seattle-based choreographer
Kate
Wallich meld with the gloriously ornate theatrical music of
pop/electronic hero Perfume
Genius to create the evening-length The
Sun Still Burns Here. This radical integration of dance and
live music features outstanding performers burning through a
postmodern swirl of classical and contemporary movement. The piece
delves into what the artists describe as “a spiritual unraveling of
romantic decay.” (Seattle Times).
Kate Wallich and The YC & Perfume Genius: The Sun Still Burns Here. Photo Credit: Agustin Hernandez
Kate Wallich is a Seattle-based choreographer, director and educator. Named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2015, she has left a significant mark in the Pacific Northwest through commissions and presentations from leading local, national and international institutions including: On the Boards, Seattle Theater Group, Velocity Dance Center, Seattle Art Museum, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Whim W’Him and Northwest Dance Project, Walker Art Center with Liquid Music, MASS MoCa, The Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, Newfields/IMA, ICA Boston, Danse and SPOTLIGHT: USA in Bulgaria. In 2010, she co-founded her company The YC with Lavinia Vago and has gone on to create five evening-length works and three large-scale, site-specific works with the company. Also in 2010, she founded an all-abilities, community-focused class Dance Church® (no religious affiliation) which reaches over 550+ attendees per week and is taught weekly by professional dance artists in New York City, Seattle, Portland, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and more. Dance Church has partnered with local and national organizations including Gibney, Mark Morris Dance Center, LA Dance Project, Newfields/IMA, BodyVox, Adidas Studio London, Velocity, On the Boards, The Sweat Spot, Design Week Portland and goop among others.
Kate Wallich and The YC & Perfume Genius: The Sun Still Burns Here. Photo Credit: Agustin Hernandez
“Mike Hadreas, the artist better known as Perfume Genius, has always been a physically expressive performer, and he’s made dance a crucial part of his generally stunning live shows and videos. And now he’s about to make it a focus.” —Stereogum
Director Jim Jarmusch and composer Carter Logan (aka avant-garde post-rock duo SQÜRL) perform live to four surrealist and dreamlike silent films by artist Man Ray. They’ll create the semi-improvisational scores onstage in Walker Cinema, with loops, synthesizers, and effected guitars that display the band’s experimental, ambient, and drone-like tendencies. Featuring Le retour à la raison (Return to Reason) (1923), Emak Bakia (1926), L’étoile de mer (The Starfish) (1928), and Les mystères du château de dé (The Mysteries of the Château de Dé) (1929). 68 min.
Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan of Sqürl, 2019. Photo courtesy Sara Driver.
SQÜRL is an enthusiastically marginal rock band from New York City who like big drums & distorted guitars, cassette recorders, loops, feedback, sad country songs, molten stoner core, chopped & screwed hip-hop, and imaginary movie scores. SQÜRL began in 2009 when Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan teamed with producer/engineer Shane Stoneback to record some original music for the film The Limits of Control.
Following these scoring sessions Jarmusch, Stoneback, and Carter continued to record new originals while also exploring the back-alleys of American country, noise, and psychedelia. In 2014, SQÜRL collaborated with Dutch lutenist Jozef Van Wissem to compose and perform the score for the film Only Lovers Left Alive. Bridging ancient and modern sounds, the score serves as a reflection of the distinct textures of Detroit and Tangier. Following their work on Only Lovers Left Alive, Jarmusch and Logan began a new live sonic exploration: scoring four silent films by American Dada and Surrealist artist Man Ray. The performance had its live debut in NYC in 2015 and SQÜRL have continue to tour with the films to this day. With their 2016 score for the film Paterson, SQÜRL dove deeper into the ocean of ambient electronic music on a quest for new ecstatic sounds to enrich the poetry of the film. The following year, the band released EP #260 on Sacred Bones Records, embracing their darker approach to density, tension, elation and release.
Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan of Sqürl. Photo courtesy the artists.
The band’s most recently released recording—the score to the The Dead Don’t Die—is a true expression of where SQÜRL stand at the center of a decade of sonic exploration. It is the culmination of their passion for analog synthesis and guitar violence. It is at once a tribute to the classic sounds of horror and sci-fi, as well as a decapitation of traditional film scores. It is naturally supernatural.
2020 will find SQÜRL back on the road and in support of their upcoming release: a tribute to the legendary cinematographer Robby Müller.
These
titles by Man Ray are also in the Walker Art Center’s Ruben/Bentson
Moving Image collection. Major support to preserve, digitize, and
present the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection is generously
provided by the Bentson Foundation.
It looks as if it will be another banner year of thought-provoking and wide-ranging exhibitions during the coming year at The Whitney Museum of American Art. (And one should not expect any less.) Announcing the schedule for 2020 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator, noted: “In 2020 the Whitney will celebrate its ninetieth anniversary and fifth year downtown, so we’ve created a program that truly honors the spirit of artistic innovation both past and present. We remain focused on supporting emerging and mid-career artists, while finding fresh relevance in historical surveys from across the twentieth century. Also turning ninety, Jasper Johns closes out the year with an unprecedented retrospective that will reveal this American legend as never before to a new generation of audiences.”
On
February 17 the Museum opens Vida Americana: Mexican
Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945, a major
historical look at the transformative impact of Mexican artists on
the direction of American art from the mid-1920s until the end of
World War II. On October 28, in collaboration with thePhiladelphia Museum of Art,
a landmark retrospective of the work of Jasper Johns goes on
view simultaneously at both museums, paying tribute to the foremost
living American artist. In addition, the Whitney will devote
exhibitions to Julie Mehretu and Dawoud Bey, prominent
midcareer artists. The Mehretu exhibition, co-organized by the
Whitney with theLos Angeles
County Museum of Art, encompasses over two decades of the
artist’s work, presenting the most comprehensive overview of her
practice to date. In November, Dawoud Bey, one of the leading
photographers of his generation, will receive his first full-scale
retrospective, co-organized by the Whitney and the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).
The Whitney Museum of American Art
The
Museum will also present Agnes Pelton: Desert
Transcendentalist—organized by the Phoenix
Art Museum—the first exhibition of work by the visionary
symbolist in nearly a quarter century; and Working Together:
The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop, an unprecedented
exhibition organized by the Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts, which chronicles the formative years of
this collective of Black photographers who lived and worked in New
York City. The year will also bring a range of focused exhibitions
dedicated to emerging and midcareer artists, including Darren
Bader, Jill Mulleady, Cauleen Smith, and Salman Toor, as
well as Dave McKenzie and My Barbarian, who continue
the Whitney’s commitment to performance and its many forms.
In
September the Museum will also unveil David Hammons’s
monumental public art installation Day’s End on Gansevoort
Peninsula, across the street from the Whitney. The debut of
this public artwork will be preceded by an exhibition entitled Around
Day’s End: Downtown New York, 1970–1986, which will
present a selection of works from the Museum’s collection related
to the seminal work that inspired Hammons’s sculpture: Gordon
Matta-Clark’s Day’s End (1975).
MAJOR
EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS
“Vida
Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945”,
February 17–May 17, 2020
The
cultural renaissance that emerged in Mexico in 1920 at the end of
that country’s revolution dramatically changed art not just in
Mexico but also in the United States. With approximately 200 works by
sixty American and Mexican artists, Vida Americana reorients
art history, acknowledging the wide-ranging and profound influence of
Mexico’s three leading muralists—José Clemente Orozco, David
Alfaro Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera—on the style, subject
matter, and ideology of art in the United States made between 1925
and 1945. By presenting the art of the Mexican muralists alongside
that of their American contemporaries, the exhibition reveals the
seismic impact of Mexican art, particularly on those looking for
inspiration and models beyond European modernism and the School of
Paris.
Works
by both well-known and underrecognized American artists will be
exhibited, including Thomas Hart Benton, Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron
Douglas, Marion Greenwood, Philip Guston, Eitarō Ishigaki, Jacob
Lawrence, Isamu Noguchi, Jackson Pollock, Ben Shahn, Thelma Johnson
Streat, Charles White, and Hale Woodruff. In addition to
Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros, other key Mexican artists in the
exhibition include Miguel Covarrubias, María Izquierdo, Frida
Kahlo, Mardonio Magaña, Alfredo Ramos Martínez, and Rufino
Tamayo.
Organized by Barbara Haskell, curator, with Marcela Guerrero, assistant curator; Sarah Humphreville, senior curatorial assistant; and Alana Hernandez, former curatorial project assistant. (See previously-posted article here.)
This mid-career survey of Julie Mehretu (b. 1970; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), co-organized by The Whitney with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), covers over two decades of the artist’s career and presents the most comprehensive overview of her practice to date. Featuring approximately forty works on paper and more than thirty paintings dating from 1996 to today, the exhibition includes works ranging from her early focus on drawing and mapping to her more recent introduction of bold gestures, saturated color, and figuration. The exhibition will showcase her commitment to interrogating the histories of art, architecture, and past civilizations alongside themes of migration, revolution, climate change, and global capitalism in the contemporary moment. Julie Mehretu is on view at LACMA November 3, 2019–March 22, 2020, and following its presentation at the Whitney from June 26 through September 20, 2020, the exhibition will travel to the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (October 24, 2020–January 31, 2021); and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (March 13–July 11, 2021).
Jasper
Johns (b. 1930) is arguably the most influential living American
artist. Over the past sixty-five years, he has produced a radical and
varied body of work marked by constant reinvention. In an
unprecedented collaboration, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the
Whitney will stage a retrospective of Johns’s career simultaneously
across the two museums, featuring paintings, sculptures, drawings,
and prints, many shown publicly for the first time. Inspired by the
artist’s long-standing fascination with mirroring and doubles, the
two halves of the exhibition will act as reflections of one another,
spotlighting themes, methods, and images that echo across the two
venues. A visit to one museum or the other will provide a vivid
chronological survey; a visit to both will offer an innovative and
immersive exploration of the many phases, facets, and masterworks of
Johns’s still-evolving career.
A Night of 11 Experimental Dance Works Plus 2 Preshow Performances Curated by SuperGroup
Celebrating
Minnesota dance and performance while expanding a post-Thanksgiving
tradition at the Walker, this year’s Choreographers’ Evening
is curated by SuperGroup—the deliriously inventive
performance collaboration of Erin Search-Wells, Sam
Johnson, and Jeffrey Wells. The evening features a diverse
array of 13 fresh, provocative, compelling, and experimental works by
ever-evolving local dancemakers.
Choreographers’
Evening 2019 features Emily Gastineau, Erika Hansen, Mathew
Janczewski, Cecil Neal, Leah Nelson, Margaret Ogas, Sharon Picasso,
Eva Reed and Piper Rolfes, Kayla Schiltgen, Judith H. Shuǐ Xiān,
Deja Stowers, Shanan Tolzin and Kristina de Sacramento, and
Julie Warder.
SuperGroup. (from left) Erin Search-Wells, Sam Johnson, and Jeffrey Wells. Photo Credit: Bobby Rogers, Courtesy of Walker Arts Center)
On
curating the evening, SuperGroup said, “We chose the pieces for
Choreographers’ Evening based on our group instinct. From years of
creating together, we’ve developed a strong interest in performance
that is densely layered; work that considers a multitude of complex
issues in a multitude of ways and leaves room for disagreement and
incongruity. In some ways, we approached curating this evening as we
might the creation of our own work—looking for ways that varied
content, forms, and concepts can coexist and converse. Reorganizing
how we see the world by building, contradicting, engaging, and
reflecting with and for each other.”
2019 Choreographers; Evening Grid (Photo Credit: Bobby Rogers. Courtesy: Walker Arts Center)
Pre-show Performancesm 3:30 & 6:30 pm Come early to experience a preshow featuring two performances by Erika Hansen and Leah Nelson that take place in the public spaces or lobby of the McGuire Theater (locations to be announced). Both pieces occur concurrently on a loop for the duration of the preshow. Then take a seat in the theater for a showcase of 11 performances.
ABOUT
SUPERGROUP
2019 Choreographers Evening Portrait of SuperGroup by Bobby Rogers. L-R: Erin Search-Wells, Sam Johnson, and Jeffrey Wells. Courtesy of Walker Arts Center
SuperGroup,
a performance collaboration of Erin
Search-Wells, Sam Johnson,
and Jeffrey
Wells),
a Minneapolis-based performance collaboration. Since forming in 2007,
they
have presented work at venues across the Twin Cities including the
Bryant
Lake Bowl, the Red Eye, Bedlam Theatre, the Ritz,
and the Walker
Art Center,
as well as nationally at the Invisible
Dog Art Center
(NYC, presented by the Joyce Theater), Velocity
Dance Center
(Seattle), Philadelphia
Dance Projects/Temple University
(Philadelphia), and ODC
(San
Francisco). Their
work has been supported through commissions from the Walker Art
Center, the Red Eye Theater, and the Southern
Theater,
and through grants from the Jerome
Foundation,
the SCUBA
Touring Network, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council of MN, the MN
State Arts Board,
and the McKnight
Foundation.
The
group’s
latest projects include:
Research COUNCIL,
an episodic series of 10 shows happening monthly at the Bryant Lake
Bowl; COUNCIL,
a new performance that
will be developing in part through a MANCC residency in 2020, and the
recently published performance score/script In
Which _______ and Others Discover the End,
co-created with Rachel
Jendrzejewski
and available through Plays Inverse
BRITISH
ARROWS AWARDS 2019 Friday,
November 29–Sunday, December 29 Walker
Cinema Program
length: 72 Minutes Total
screenings: 95
Celebrate
the UK’s most innovative and daring commercials from the creative
world of British advertising. One of the Walker’s most popular
traditions back for the 33rd year, the British Arrows Awards
showcases an eclectic mix of riveting mini-dramas, high-tech
extravaganzas, wacky comedy, and vital public service announcements.
The
British Arrows is a much-loved program in the Twin Cities with
many people attending year after year. The audiences are moved by the
program, which can be a unique cross-cultural experience, as they try
to figure out brands and products that are not available in the U.S.,
but are cleverly conveyed. It’s a unique experience for American
audiences to view ads that are not invested in the hard sell; rather,
gaining interest in products and services through humor, pathos and a
dynamic cinematography. Although there are 95 screenings this year,
they are sure to sell out quickly.
Megaforce’s Nothing Beats a Londoner for Nike. Photo courtesy British Arrows 2019.
BRITS
NIGHT, Friday, December 6, 7 and 9 pm
Come
early and celebrate with a cash bar, plus music by DJ Simon Husbands
of KFAI’s True Brit Radio. Introduced by Clare Donald and Jani
Guest, British Arrows board co-chairs, and Lisa Lavender, operations
director.
Megaforce’s Nothing Beats a Londoner for Nike. Photo courtesy of British Arrows 2019.
SCREENING
SCHEDULE
Friday, November 29: 3, 5, and 7 pm
Saturday, November 30: 3, 5, and 7:30 pm
Sunday, December 1: 3, 5, and 7 pm
Friday, December 6: 7 and 9 pm: Brits Night. Introduced by Clare Donald and Jani Guest, British Arrows board co-chairs, and Lisa Lavender, operations director.
Saturday, December 7: 5 and 7 pm
Sunday, December 8: 1, 3, and 5 pm
Thursday, December 12: 6, 7, and 8 pm
Friday, December 13: 6, 7, and 8 pm
Saturday, December 14: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 pm
Sunday, December 15: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 pm
Tuesday, December 17: 6, 7, and 8 pm
Wednesday, December 18: 6, 7, and 8 pm
Thursday, December 19: 6, 7, and 8 pm
Friday, December 20: 6, 7, and 8 pm
Saturday, December 21: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 pm
Sunday, December 22: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 pm
Thursday, December 26: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 pm
Friday, December 27: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 pm
Saturday, December 28: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 pm
Sunday, December 29: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 pm
Sam Brown and Tom Barbor’s The Dragon Challenge for Jaguar Land Rover. Photo courtesy of British Arrows 2019.Continue reading →
Walker Arts Center and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series Present the World Premiere of Commissioned Music/Theater work In Your Mouth by Ted Hearne
With Real Time Installation by Conceptual Artist Rachel Perry and Stage Direction by Daniel Fish
“One of the brightest compositional talents of the millennial generation.” – Russell Platt, The New Yorker
The
lush, stingingly true poetry of Dorothea
Lasky
has inspired composer Ted
Hearne‘s new theatrical song cycle, igniting hearts and minds
with ferocity and grace. With frank observations of the everyday
intertwined with revelatory maneuverings of his own voice, Hearne’s
music—a smart mélange of traditional and contemporary tonalities
with an accessible pop sheen—is backed by a quintet of in-demand
musicians. This intimate 12-song suite engages audiences in a
complicated, loving meditation on the personal and domestic, while
savoring the depths of the wildness within. Intensifying the
performance is real-time installation by conceptual artist Rachel
Perry (shown above: Perry’s Blue
Falling,
2019) and stage direction by Daniel
Fish.
Walker Arts Center logo
“What
began as a personal, visceral connection to the stark and emotional
poetry of Dorothea Lasky turned into a set of songs that explores
wildness within the eye of the beholder,” says Hearne. “I’m
so excited and grateful to be working with the brilliant Rachel Perry
and Daniel Fish, who with their perspectives each bring incredible
rigor and beauty to this project. Working with the Walker as a
commissioning and presenting partner is a dream come true and I’m
honored to participate in their rich programming.”
Co-commissioned
and copresented by the SPCO’s
Liquid Music Series and the Walker Art Center, The
world premiere performances take place Thursday, November 21
and Friday, November 22 at 8pm in the Walker Arts
Center’s McGuire Theater. Tickets are $26 ($20.80 Walker
members).
The
Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series, named “Best
of Classical” by The New York Times, develops innovative
new projects with iconoclastic artists in unique presentation
formats. Liquid Music performances invite adventurous audiences to
discover the new and the fascinating within the flourishing landscape
of contemporary chamber music. Visit liquidmusic.org to learn more.
Photo: Jen Rosenstein
Composer,
singer, bandleader and recording artist Ted
Hearne
(b.1982, Chicago) draws on a wide breadth of influences ranging
across music’s full terrain, to create intense, personal and
multi-dimensional works. The
New York Times has
praised Mr. Hearne for his “tough
edge and wildness of spirit,”
and “topical,
politically sharp-edged works.”
Pitchforkcalled
Hearne’s work “some
of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory—from
any genre,”
and Alex
Ross wrote
in The
New Yorker that
Hearne’s music “holds
up as a complex mirror image of an information-saturated,
mass-surveillance world, and remains staggering in its impact.”
Hearne’s album Sound
From the Bench, a
cantata for choir, electric guitars and drums setting texts from U.S.
Supreme Court oral arguments and inspired by the idea of corporate
personhood, was a finalist for the 2018
Pulitzer Prize.Ted
Hearne’s latest release and first album of solo and chamber works,
Hazy
Heart Pump,
is now available on New Focus Recordings.
RACHEL PERRY Lost in My Life (Fruit Stickers Standing with Round) 2019 archival pigment print 90 x 60 inches Courtesy the Artist and Yancey Richardson GalleryContinue reading →
Evening Will Feature Live Music by Katy Vernon and PJ Harvey Film A Dog Called Money
The Sound Unseen Film+Music Festival (November 12 – 17, 2019) celebrates 20 years of film, music, and art in the Twin Cities. The opening night event includes a live music performance by Katy Vernon on the Walker Cinema Stage starting at 6:30 pm and a postshow reception in the main lobby. (Visit Sound Unseen for the full schedule of events and locations.)
Walker Arts Center logo (edited)
In
the fall of 1999, Sound Unseen introduced itself as a unique, cutting
edge “films-on-music” festival in Minneapolis. Formulated as a
cultural organization dedicated to the role of film and music as a
conduit of powerful ideas and diverse viewpoints. Its mission is to
foster a greater appreciation of cinema, to bridge cultures, create
and expand community, provide cultural exchange, networking
opportunities and educational outreach through regular interaction
with great films, filmmakers, musicians and artists.
The Sound Unseen Film+Music Festival logo
Since
its inception, It has established itself as one of the premiere niche
festivals in the country, but more importantly as a vital part of the
regional cultural scene. Now in its 19th year, the festival has
expanded to include year-round programming, unique pop-up events, and
special screenings including world and regional premieres.
Named
“One of the 25 Coolest Film Festivals In The World” by Moviemaker
Magazine
in 2016, the “Best Winter Film Festival” by the Star
Tribune
2012, and the “Best of the Fests 2010” from Mpls/St
Paul Magazine,
Sound Unseen continues its tenure as the region’s premiere
films-on-music festival. While bringing the best in documentaries,
short films, and music videos it also showcases rare concert footage,
interactive panels, and live music events. As part of its year-round
presence, Sound Unseen offers a successful monthly screening series
and special events throughout the Twin Cities. This diversity in
content is one of the things that separates Sound Unseen from the
typical outdoor mega concerts and film festivals.
Sound
Unseen has received press coverage in all major local media including
The
Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, City Pages, Vita.mn, Secrets of the
City, Walker Art blog, TC Daily Planet, Northland News, Growler
Magazine, MinnPost; local radio stations The Current, KQRS, MPR,
Radio K and television news including NBC, FOX, and CBS. National
media mentions have included Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, USA
Today, Music Film Web blog, The Playlist,
and AIF
Independent magazine of New York.
Screenshot from PJ Harvey Film A Dog Called Money, directed by Seamus Murphy
Alternative-music
icon PJ
Harvey’s
ninth studio album, 2016’s The
Hope Six Demolition Project,
was created through a unique process that blended travelogue,
photography, performance art, and now a documentary feature. It began
when Harvey, looking to develop a new set of politically tinged songs
that would also evoke a tangible sense of place, decided to accompany
award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker Seamus
Murphy
as he travelled on assignments to war-torn regions in Afghanistan and
Kosovo, as well as to the poor, mostly black neighborhoods of
Washington, DC. As Murphy filmed, Harvey personally interacted with
the members of the different communities and wrote her impressions in
a diary, crafting song lyrics and melodies based on the stories she
uncovered. Back in London, Harvey and her band experimented with
these new songs during a live sound installation called “Recording
in Progress”
at the distinguished
Somerset House,
generating an album’s worth of material entirely within a
glass-walled recording studio, with members of the public invited to
watch. Chronicling the entire project, and even including a handful
of songs not on the final album, A
Dog Called Money is
Murphy’s inspiring, expressionistic document of this unprecedented
collaborative experiment. 2019, Ireland/UK, DCP, 90 min. —Clinton
McClung, Seattle International Film Festival
Sound
Unseen Opening Night
Tuesday, November 12
Live Music:
Katy Vernon, 6:30pm
Screening: A
Dog Called Money, 7pm
Walker
Cinema, $20 ($15 Walker members, students, and seniors)
Designs for Different Futures is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
The
role of designers in shaping how we think about the future is the
subject of a major exhibition that will premiere at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art this fall. Designs for Different Futures
(October 22, 2019–March 8, 2020) brings together some 80
works that address the challenges and opportunities that humans may
encounter in the years, decades, and centuries ahead. Organized by
the Philadelphia Museum of Art, theWalker
Art Center, Minneapolis,
and the Art Institute of Chicago,
Designs for Different Futures will be presented at the Walker
(September 12, 2020–January 3, 2021) and the Art Institute
of Chicago (February 6–May 16, 2021) following its
presentation in Philadelphia.
Among
the questions today’s designers seek to answer are: What role
can technology play in augmenting or replacing a broad range of human
activities?Can intimacy be maintained at a distance? How can
we negotiate privacy in a world in which the sharing and use of
personal information has blurred traditional boundaries? How might we
use design to help heal or transform ourselves, bodily and
psychologically? How will we feed an ever-growing population?
While
no one can precisely predict the shape of things to come, the works
in the exhibition are firmly fixed on the future, providing design
solutions for a number of speculative scenarios. In some instances,
these proposals are borne of a sense of anxiety, and in others of a
sense of excitement over the possibilities that can be created
through the use of innovative materials, new technologies, and, most
importantly, fresh ideas.
Timothy
Rub, the George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer of
the Philadelphia Museum of Art, stated: “We often think of
art museums as places that foster a dialogue between the past and the
present, but they also can and should be places that inspire us to
think about the future and to ask how artists and designers can help
us think creatively about it. We are delighted to be able to
collaborate with the Walker Art Center and the Art Institute of
Chicago on this engaging project, which will offer our visitors an
opportunity to understand not only how designers are imagining—and
responding to—different visions of the futures, but also to
understand just how profoundly forward-looking design contributes in
our own time to shaping the world that we occupy and will bequeath as
a legacy to future generations.”
“Lia: The Flushable and Biodegradable Pregnancy Test,” designed 2018 by Bethany Edwards and Anna Couturier Simpson (Courtesy of the designer). Photograph courtesy of LIA Diagnostics. Image courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019.
Thinking
about the future has always been part of the human condition. It has
also been a perennial field of inquiry for designers and architects
whose speculations on this subject—ranging from the concrete to the
whimsical—can profoundly affect how we imagine what is to come.
Among the many forward-looking projects on view, visitors to Designs
for Different Futures will encounter lab-grown food, robotic
companions, family leave policy proposals, and textiles made of
seaweed.
“Some
of these possibilities will come to fruition, while others will
remain dreams or even threats,” said Kathryn Hiesinger,
the J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Family Senior Curator of European Decorative
Arts after 1700, who coordinated the exhibition in Philadelphia with
former assistant curator Michelle Millar Fisher. “We’d like
visitors to join us as we present designs that consider the possible,
debate the inevitable, and weigh the alternatives. This exhibition
explores how design—understood expansively—can help us all
grapple with what might be on the horizon and allows our imaginations
to take flight.”
The
exhibition is divided into 11 thematic sections. In Resources,
visitors will encounter an inflatable pod measuring 15 feet in
diameter, part of the work Another Generosity first created in
2018 by Finnish architect Eero Lundén and designed in this
incarnation in collaboration with Ron Aasholm and Carmen
Lee. The pod slowly expands and contracts in the space,
responding to changing levels of carbon dioxide as visitors exhale
around it, and provoking questions about the ongoing effect of the
human footprint on the environment.
“Svalbard Global Seed Vault,” designed 2008 by Peter W. Søderman, Barlindhaug Consulting (Exhibition display courtesy of USDA Agricultural Research Service, National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation). Photograph courtesy of Global Crop Diversity Trust. Image courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019.“Recyclable and Rehealable Electronic Skin,” designed 2018 by Jianliang Xiao and Wei Zhang (Courtesy of the designer). Image courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019
The
section titled Generations will explore ways in which the
choices we make today may contribute to the well-being or suffering
of those who come after us. Here, visitors will find a model of the
Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a repository that stores the
world’s largest collection of crop seeds. Located within a mountain
on a remote island near the Arctic Circle, the facility is designed
to withstand natural or human-made disasters. The Earths section
of the exhibition speculates on the challenges of extra-terrestrial
communication in Lisa Moura’s Alien Nations installation and
showcases typeface from the 2016 science-fiction film Arrival.
In
Bodies, designers grapple with choices about how our physical and
psychological selves might look, feel, and function in different
future scenarios. Featured here is one of the world’s lightest and
most advanced exoskeletons, designed to help people with mobility
challenges remain upright and active. Also notable is the CRISPR
Kit, an affordable and accessible gene-editing toolbox, which has
the potential to revolutionize biomedical research and open
opportunities for gene therapy and genetic engineering.
Intimacies
is a section that explores how technologies and online interfaces may
affect love, family, and community. Here, urban experiences of sex
and love are the focus of Andrés Jaque’s Intimate
Strangers, an audio-visual installation focusing on the gay
dating app. Through internet-enabled devices, designers explore the
possibility of digitally mediated love and sex, suggesting what
advanced digital networks hold for human sexuality.
Foods
contains projects that explore the future of the human diet.
Among them is a modular edible-insect farm, Cricket Shelter,
by Terreform ONE, which offers a ready source of protein for
impending food crises. A kitchen installation suggests how technology
and design may contribute to new modes of food production, including
an Ouroboros Steak made from human cells.
“Circumventive Organs, Electrostabilis Cardium (film still),” designed 2013 by Agi Haines (Courtesy of the designer). Image courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019.
Additional
sections of the exhibition will focus on the future of Jobs and how
Cities will function and look 100 years from now—with
robotic baby feeders, driverless cars, and other
developments—affording a glimpse at how we might navigate living
beyond this planet. Shoes grown from sweat are among the innovations
visitors will find in a section devoted to Materials, while
Power will look at how design may affect our citizenship and
help us retain agency over such essentials as our DNA, our voices,
and our electronic communications in a future where the lines between
record-keeping, communication, and surveillance blur. Data
acknowledges and questions the different ways that information
might be collected and used, with all its inherent biases and
asymmetries, to shape different futures.
The
curatorial team is comprised of: at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, Kathryn B.
Hiesinger, The J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Family Senior
Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700, and Michelle
Millar Fisher, formerly The Louis C. Madeira IV Assistant
Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700; At the Walker
Art Center, Emmet Byrne,
Design Director and Associate Curator of Design; and at the Art
Institute of Chicago, Maite
Borjabad López-Pastor, Neville Bryan Assistant Curator of
Architecture and Design, and Zoë Ryan,
the John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design.
Consulting curators are Andrew Blauvelt,
Director, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield
Hills, Michigan, and Curator-at-Large, Museum of Arts
and Design, New York; Colin Fanning,
Independent Scholar, Bard Graduate Center,
New York; and Orkan Telhan,
Associate Professor of Fine Arts (Emerging Design Practices),
University of Pennsylvania School of Design,
Philadelphia.
Kathryn
B. Hiesinger is the J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Family Senior Curator of
European Decorative Arts after 1700 at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art. Her work focuses on decorative arts and
design from the mid-nineteenth century to the present and includes
the exhibitions and publications Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion
(2011), Out of the Ordinary: The Architecture and Design of
Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Associates (2001),
Japanese Design: A Survey since 1950 (1994) and Design
since 1945 (1983).
Michelle
Millar Fisher is the Ronald C. and Anita L Wornick Curator of
Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston. She is a graduate of the University
of Glasgow, Scotland, and is currently completing her
doctorate in architectural history at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York. She is the
co-author, with Paola Antonelli, of Items: Is Fashion
Modern? (2017).
Emmet
Byrne is the Design Director and Associate Curator of Design at
the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis. He provides creative leadership and strategic direction
for the Walker in all areas of visual communication, branding,
publishing, while overseeing the award-winning in-house design
studio. He was one of the founders of the Task Newsletter in
2009 and is the creator of the Walker’s Intangibles platform.
Maite
Borjabad López-Pastor is the Neville Bryan Assistant Curator of
Architecture and Design at the Art Institute
of Chicago. She is an architect and curator educated at
the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Columbia
University, New York. She is the author and curator of
Scenographies of Power: From the State of Exception to the Spaces
of Exception (2017). Her work revolves around diverse forms of
critical spatial practices, operating across architecture, art, and
performance.
Zoë
Ryan is the John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and
Design at the Art Institute of Chicago.
She is the editor of As Seen: Exhibitions That Made Architecture
and Design History (2017) and curator of In a Cloud, in a
Wall, in a Chair: Six Modernists in Mexico at Midcentury (2019)
and the 2014 Istanbul Design Biennial, The Future is Not
What it Used to Be. Her projects explore the impact of
architecture and design on society.
Centered
on the innovative contemporary design objects, projects, and
speculations of the exhibition’s checklist, the accompanying volume
proposes design as a means through which to understand, question, and
negotiate individual and collective futures, giving provocative voice
to the most urgent issues of today. It asks readers to contemplate
the design context within broader historical, social, political, and
aesthetic spectrums. Designs for Different Futures addresses
futures near and far, exploring such issues as human-digital
interaction, climate change, political and social inequality,
resource scarcity, transportation, and infrastructure.
The
primary authors are Kathryn B. Hiesinger, Michelle Millar Fisher,
Emmet Byrne, Maite Borjabad López-Pastor, and Zoë Ryan,
with Andrew Blauvelt, Colin Fanning, Orkan Telhan, Juliana Rowen
Barton, and Maude de Schauensee. Additional contributions
include texts by V. Michael Bove Jr. and Nora Jackson,
Christina Cogdell, Marina Gorbis, Srećko Horvat, Bruno Latour,
Marisol LeBrón, Ezio Manzini, Chris Rapley, Danielle Wood, LinYee
Yuan, and Emma Yann Zhang; and interviews with Gabriella
Coleman, Formafantasma (Andrea Trimarchi and Simone
Farresin), Aimi Hamraie and Jillian Mercado, Francis
Kéré, David Kirby, Helen Kirkum, Alexandra Midal, Neri Oxman,
and Eyal Weizman.
Designs
for Different Futures will be distributed by Yale University
Press. The book was overseen by Philadelphia Museum of Art
publishing director Katie Reilly and editors Katie Brennan
and Kathleen Krattenmaker. It is designed by Ryan Gerald
Nelson, Senior Graphic Designer at the Walker Art Center, under the
direction of Walker design director Emmet Byrne.
Futures
Therapy Lab
As
part of the exhibition, visitors to the Philadelphia Museum of Art
galleries will also encounter a space for community meetups, public
programs, school visits, and self-directed activities. The Futures
Therapy Lab will weave personal connections between visitors and
the exhibition as part of a collaboration between the museum’s
Education Department and the curatorial team. Weekly programs,
many of which will occur on Pay-What-You-Wish Wednesday Nights,
will connect visitors with designers, artists, and locally based
creatives. The Futures Therapy Lab will contain a crowdsourced
Futures Library that includes everything from science-fiction
books to the exhibition catalogue. “Thinking about possible
futures is both exhilarating and anxiety-provoking,” said
Emily Schreiner, the Zoë and Dean Pappas Curator of Education,
Public Programs. “The Futures Therapy Lab is a place for
conversation, critique, and creativity in which visitors can imagine
their own hopes, fears and solutions for the future through
reflection, discussion, and art making.”
In
Philadelphia, this exhibition is generously supported by the
Annenberg Foundation Fund for Major Exhibitions, the Robert
Montgomery Scott Endowment for Exhibitions, the Kathleen C.
and John J.F. Sherrerd Fund for Exhibitions,Lisa Roberts and
David Seltzer in Honor of Collab’s 50th Anniversary, the Women’s
Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Laura and
William C. Buck Endowment for Exhibitions, the Harriet and
Ronald Lassin Fund for Special Exhibitions, the Jill and
Sheldon Bonovitz Exhibition Fund, and an anonymous donor.
Related
Programs
The
Futures Therapy Lab will host a series of weekly happenings:
Artists
in the Lab
Artists
and designers share their work through talks, demonstrations, and
workshops. Wednesday Nights, 5:00–8:45 p.m.
The
Designer is In
Talk
it out. One-on-one sessions with local designers offer new
perspectives on your everyday life. Thursdays & Saturdays,
2:00–4:00 p.m.
Sci-Fi
Sundays
Drop-in
readings that explore narratives of the future. Select Sundays,
2:00–3:00pm
The Whitney Museum of American Art announced today that its 2021 Biennial, the 80th edition, will be co-organized by two brilliant members of the Museum’s curatorial department, David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards. The 2021 Whitney Biennial exhibition will open in the spring of 2021 and is presented by Tiffany & Co., which has been the lead sponsor of the Biennial since the Museum’s move downtown.
Image credit: Adrienne Edwards and David Breslin. Photograph by Bryan Derballa
Alice
Pratt Brown Director Adam D. Weinberg noted: “The central
aim of the Biennial is to be a barometer of contemporary American
art. Each Biennial is a reflection of the cultural and social moment
as it intersects with the passions, perspectives, and tastes of the
curators. David and Adrienne will be a great team. They are
inquisitive, curious, and are acutely attuned to the art of the
current moment. No doubt they will bring fresh outlooks to this
historic exhibition and reinvent it for these complex and challenging
times.”
With
a long history of exhibiting the most promising and influential
artists and provoking debate, the Whitney Biennial is the Museum’s
signature survey of the state 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.
Initiated by founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1932, the Whitney Biennial is the longest-running survey of American art. More than 3,600 artists have participated, including Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence, Alexander Calder, Louise Bourgeois, Joan Mitchell, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Serra, Lynda Benglis, Frank Bowling, Joan Jonas, Barbara Kruger, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jenny Holzer, David Wojnarowicz, Glenn Ligon, Yvonne Rainer, Zoe Leonard, Kara Walker, Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Mike Kelley, Lorna Simpson, Renée Green, Wade Guyton, Julie Mehretu, Cecilia Vicuña, Mark Bradford, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Ellen Gallagher, Rachel Harrison, Wu Tsang, Nick Mauss, Sarah Michelson, Laura Owens, Postcommodity, Pope.L, Jeffrey Gibson, and Tiona Nekkia McClodden.
The biennials were originally organized by medium, with painting alternating with sculpture and works on paper. Starting in 1937, the Museum shifted to yearly exhibitions called Annuals. The current format—a survey show of work in all media occurring every two years—has been in place since 1973. The 2019 Biennial (still on partial view on the Museum’s sixth floor until October 27) was organized by two Whitney curators, Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley. It featured seventy-five artists and collectives working in painting, sculpture, installation, film and video, photography, performance, and sound.
David
Breslin was recently named the DeMartini Family Curator and
Director of Curatorial Initiatives, a role he will assume this
month. Since joining the Museum in 2016 as DeMartini Family Curator
and Director of the Collection, Breslin has spearheaded the Museum’s
collection-related activities, curating a series of major collection
exhibitions and overseeing acquisitions. Working closely with his
curatorial colleagues, he has organized or co-organized four timely
and thematized collection displays, including Where We Are:
Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1900–1960, An
Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s
Collection, 1940–2017, Spilling Over: Painting Color
in the 1960s, and The Whitney’s Collection:
Selections from 1900 to 1965, which is currently on view on
the Museum’s seventh floor. In 2018, he co-curated (with David
Kiehl) the landmark retrospective David Wojnarowicz:
History Keeps Me Awake at Night.
Breslin
came to the Whitney from the Menil Drawing Institute, where he
created an ambitious program of exhibitions and public and scholarly
events and helped to shape the design of the Institute’s new
facility. He also oversaw work on the catalogue raisonné of the
drawings of Jasper Johns and grew the collection. Prior to the
Menil, Breslin served as the associate director of the research and
academic program and associate curator of contemporary projects at
the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA; he also oversaw
the Clark’s residential fellowship program and taught in the
Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.
Breslin co-edited Art History and Emergency: Crises in the Visual
Arts and Humanities (Yale University Press, 2016), a volume that
grew from a Clark Conference he organized with art historian Darby
English.
In
2018, Adrienne Edwards was named Engell Speyer Family
Curator and Curator of Performance at the Whitney. Previously,
she served as curator of Performa since 2010 and as Curator at
Large for the Walker Art Center since 2016.
At
the Whitney, Edwards curated Jason Moran, the artist’s first
museum show, now on view on the Museum’s eighth floor. She
originated the exhibition at the Walker in 2018; it previously
traveled to the ICA Boston and the Wexner Center for the
Arts. The exhibition features a series of performances, Jazz on a
High Floor in the Afternoon, curated by Edwards and Moran. She
organized the event commencing the construction of David
Hammons’s Day’s End, featuring a commission by composer
Henry Threadgill and a “water” tango on the Hudson
River by the Fire Department of the City of New York’s
Marine Company 9. Earlier this year, Edwards organized Moved
by the Motion: Sudden Rise, a series of performances based on
a text co-written by Wu Tsang, boychild, and Fred Moten,
which presented a collage of words, film, movements, and sounds.
For
Performa, Edwards realized new boundary-defying commissions,
as well as pathfinding conferences and film programs with a wide
range of over forty international artists. While at the Walker, she
co-led the institution-wide Mellon Foundation Interdisciplinary
Initiative, an effort to expand ways of commissioning, studying,
collecting, documenting, and conserving cross-disciplinary works.
Edwards’s curatorial projects have included the critically
acclaimed exhibition and catalogue Blackness in Abstraction,
hosted by Pace Gallery in 2016. She also organized Frieze’s
Artist Awardand Live program in New York in 2018. Edwards
taught art history and visual studies at New York University
and The New School, and she is a contributor to the National
Gallery of Art’s Center for the Advanced Study in Visual Art’s
forthcoming publication Black Modernisms.
Scott
Rothkopf, the Whitney’s Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve
Crown Family Chief Curator, said, “David and Adrienne truly
represent the best spirit and ideals of the Whitney. Not only are
they devoted to—and beloved by—living artists, but they bring to
the art of our time a deep historical and scholarly awareness. The
most recent editions of the Biennial have reaffirmed its vitality and
relevance, and I look forward to discovering how another pair of
Whitney curators will lend their voices to our signature exhibition.”
The first solo museum show of Jason Moran (b. 1975, Houston, Texas), the interdisciplinary artist who grounds his work in music composition, will make its New York debut at the Whitney September 20, 2019. Jason Moran, which originated at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in the spring of 2018, presents the range of art Moran has explored, from his own sculptures and drawings to collaborations with visual artists to performance and video.
Jason Moran, STAGED: Slug’s Saloon
An immersive installation will fill the Whitney’s eighth floor galleries from September 20, 2019 through January 5, 2020. The exhibition will be activated by in-gallery musical performances by the artist himself and by other musicians throughout the run of the show. Two marquee events unique to the Whitney’s presentation will include the New York premiere of Kara Walker’s Katastwóf Karavan (2018), a steam-powered calliope housed in a parade wagon, and a special twentieth anniversary concert for Moran’s trio, The Bandwagon.
Jason Moran is overseen at the Whitney by Adrienne Edwards, the Engell Speyer Family Curator and Curator of Performance, who originated the show at the Walker.
A renowned musician and composer known for jazz styles from stride piano to free improvisation, Moran’s experimental approach to artmaking aligns objects with sound in an effort to underscore their inherent theatricality. Whether executed through the medium of sculpture, drawing, or sound, his works bridge the visual and performing arts. In all aspects, Moran’s creative process is informed by one of the essential tenets of jazz music: the “set,” in which musicians come together to engage in a collaborative process of improvisation, riffing off of one another to create the musical experience.
“Jason
Moran is one of the most vital and boundary-breaking creative voices
of our time, and his wide-ranging collaborations with other visual
and performing artists have had a profoundly generative effect on
their work as well as on his own artistic development,”
remarked Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s Senior Deputy Director and
Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator. “This exhibition
extends the Whitney’s long and vibrant history of presenting
artists who traverse the boundaries of the visual and performing arts
and brings together so many artists who are dear to the Museum. We’re
thrilled the show marks Adrienne Edwards’s curatorial debut in our
galleries and also Jason’s return to the Whitney, following his
appearances in Glenn Ligon: AMERICA in 2011 and our Biennial the
following year.”
Jazz pianist, composer, and performance artist Jason Moran was born in Houston, Texas in 1975 and earned a degree from the Manhattan School of Music in 1997, where he studied with Jaki Byard. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 and has been the Artistic Director for Jazz at the Kennedy Center since 2014. Deeply invested in reassessing and complicating the relationship between music and language, Moran’s extensive efforts in composition, improvisation, and performance challenge the status quo while respecting the accomplishments of his predecessors.
“It
is heartening to have the national tour of Jason’s exhibition
culminate in New York City, where he and so many of his collaborators
live and make their work. New York is where jazz has evolved, and the
venues that fostered it are referenced directly in the major
sculptures that serve as stages within the show,” noted
Edwards. “Presenting the exhibition at the Whitney makes for
a double ‘homecoming,’ since Jason and his collaborators have
long-standing histories with the Museum, having exhibited here or
featuring in our collection. Taking its cue from Jason’s art and
that of his collaborators, this show questions the boundaries between
artistic disciplines and how they are presented. It is a solo show
that is also a group show; it takes place in neither a white cube nor
a black box theater or nightclub, but rather in an in-between space
that is some combination of them all. It is a survey exhibition, yet
holds together like a singular art installation—at times a visual
art show and at other times a performance venue.”
Jason Moran, which originated at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in the spring of 2018, and has traveled nationally to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and theWexner Center for the Arts, considers the artist’s solo and collaborative works as generative investigations that further the fields of experimental jazz, performance, and visual art. Shown together for the first time in this exhibition, Moran’s mixed-media “set” installations STAGED: Savoy Ballroom 1 (2015), STAGED: Three Deuces (2015), and STAGED: Slugs’ Saloon (2018) pay homage to iconic jazz venues of New York’s past. Collaboration has been central to Moran’s experiments, and among the many artists with whom he has collaborated are Stan Douglas, Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin, Theaster Gates, Joan Jonas, Glenn Ligon, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, Lorna Simpson, and Carrie Mae Weems. These collaborative works are exhibited here, many in a synchronized loop arranged by Moran on projection screens. Moran’s original musical scores and a recent selection of his charcoal drawings from the ongoing Run series, which give sculptural presence to sound, are also featured in the exhibition.
STAGED
Sculptural vignettes based on storied New York City music venues, Moran’s STAGED works reimagine the architecture of these cultural landmarks and double as concert stages. STAGED: Savoy Ballroom 1 and STAGED: Three Deuces were part of Moran’s contributions to the 2015 Venice Biennale international exhibition All the World’s Future, curated by Okwui Enwezor. The latest sculpture from the series, STAGED: Slugs’ Saloon (2018), was commissioned for this exhibition by the Walker Art Center. Each is integrally connected to the social history and real politics of the venues for which they are named—important sites of invention and innovation in jazz that were also testing grounds of American policies of nondiscrimination at the height of the Jim Crow period of segregation.
The legendary Savoy Ballroom, which operated between 1926 and 1958 on Lenox Avenue in Harlem, was synonymous with the Swing Era and presented legendary big bands and performers, including Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Chick Webb, and Count Basie. Moran’s STAGED: Savoy Ballroom 1 is lined with an ornate Dutch wax print fabric and features a lush curving wall and overhanging ceiling. The sculpture’s pristine veneer seems counter to the repetitive and droning prison work songs that emanate from speakers. Midtown Manhattan’s Three Deuces club, which operated on 52nd Street from the mid-1940s to 1950s, was an incubator for bebop pioneers like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Max Roach. To evoke this seminal venue with STAGED: Three Deuces, Moran uses pale vinyl padding compressed under a barely eight-foot-tall ceiling and focuses on the corner of a room to conjure the compressed dimensions of the original venue.
Similarly, STAGED: Slugs’ Saloon pays homage to the celebrated East Village jazz venue that presented music from 1964 to 1972 on East Third Street. Often referred to as a “jazz dive”, Slugs’ Saloon showcased free jazz and some of the most important avant-gardists of the era, including Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and Sun Ra. While the original space was described as narrow and oftentimes tightly packed, Moran’s Slugs’ Saloon is open with two mirrors flanking the stage and a multitier platform with a wooden floor that holds a vintage upright piano and drum set. The lower level holds a single chair and Wurlitzer Americana II jukebox, programmed with whistling tunes and samplings of audience incantations from the Village Vanguard.
RUN
Moran’s drawings from the Run series, originally shown at Luhring Augustine in 2016 for his first gallery exhibition, offer highly gestural entrees into the artist’s process. To create the works, Moran tapes elongated pieces of paper on the keys of a piano or keyboard and caps his fingers with charcoal. The paper then catches the movements of his playing. Reminiscent of Robert Morris’s series of Blind Time drawings, the works also bring to mind David Hammons’s basketball drawings and body prints or the impromptu drawings created by Joan Jonas during live performances. Achieved through acts of repetition, the Run series reveals the usually private and deliberate process of jazz composition and the artist’s performance practice, offering viewers an intimate view of his body’s movements in relation to the piano.
COLLABORATIONS
Projects and collaborations, central to Moran’s practice, are represented in the exhibition through the presentation of the artist’s work with leading visual artists. Since 2005, Moran has completed four collaborations with pioneering video performance artist Joan Jonas, and the evolution of much of Moran’s visual work, such as his extension of performance techniques to the process of drawing in the Run series or his transposition of traditional cultural forms into contemporary art, can be tracked through his work with Jonas. Moran first collaborated with Jonas on the music for The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things, an opera performed for the first time in 2005 at Dia: Beacon, and later on Reading Dante (2007–10), Reanimation (2012), and They Come to Us without a Word II (2015). For his first foray into filmmaking, artist Glenn Ligon tapped Moran to compose the score for Death of Tom (2008), an abstract re-creation of a scene from Edwin S. Porter’s fourteen-minute silent film version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In Stan Douglas’s six-hour, single-channel film Luanda-Kinshasa (2013) depicting a fictional jazz-funk band in a recording session sometime in the mid-1970s, Moran appears as the band leader and worked with Douglas on song sequencing for this intricately composed film.
Exclusive to the presentation of Jason Moran at the Whitney will be the temporary installation of Kara Walker’s Katastwóf Karavan (2018) outside in front of the Museum. A steam-powered calliope housed in a parade wagon featuring silhouetted scenes on all four sides in Walker’s distinctive style, Katastwóf Karavan debuted in 2018 at the Prospect.4 Triennial in New Orleans. Katastwóf Karavan takes its title from the Haitian Creole phrase for “caravan of catastrophe” and alludes to the subjugation, violence, and humiliation of life for African Americans in the Antebellum South. The work also plays songs and sounds programmed by Walker and Moran that the artists associate with the long history of African American protest music. In the Prospect.4 Triennial, Moran played the work live via keyboard for two improvised performances. Moran will present another improvised performance with the work at the Whitney in October 2019.
Moran’s recording and performing activity has included collaborations with masters of the jazz form, including Charles Lloyd, Bill Frisell, and the late Sam Rivers. His work with his acclaimed trio The Bandwagon (with drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Tarus Mateen) has resulted in a profound discography for Blue Note Records. Moran has a long-standing collaborative practice with his wife, the mezzo-soprano and composer Alicia Hall Moran. For the 2012 Whitney Biennial, together they organized BLEED, a five-day performance gathering that featured more than ninety performers, including Rashida Bumbray, Bill Frisell, Joan Jonas, Lorraine O’Grady, Esperanza Spalding, and Kara Walker. In 2016, Moran and Hall Moran formed the indie label YES RECORDS. Releases include Moran’s critically-acclaimed live solo piano recording, The Armory Concert (2016), as well as Thanksgiving at the Vanguard (2017), and BANGS (2017). Moran, who teaches at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, has produced several film scores and soundtracks, including the scores for Ava DuVernay’s films Selma and 13th.
Moran’s work has been presented by institutions including the Walker Art Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Park Avenue Armory, the Dia Art Foundation, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Harlem Stage, and Jazz at Lincoln Center. His first solo museum exhibition Jason Moran premiered in Minneapolis at the Walker Art Center from April 26 through August 26, 2018 and traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston from September 19 through January 21, 2019. It was on view at the Wexner Center for the Arts through August 11, 2019 before its U.S. finale in Moran’s hometown of New York City at the Whitney.
This exhibition is accompanied by a 272-page publication, published in conjunction with the Walker Art Center’s 2018 exhibition, which considers the artist’s practice and his collaborative works as interdisciplinary investigations that further the fields of experimental jazz and visual art. Edited by Adrienne Edwards, it features an interview with the artist, and essays by Philip Bither, Okwui Enwezor, Danielle Jackson, Alicia Hall Moran, George E. Lewis, and Glenn Ligon. These texts are accompanied by a photo essay by Moran, a section documenting the creation of Moran’s STAGED sculptures, installation views from the Walker, photographs and other ephemera, and a complete list of works included in the Walker exhibition.
Jason
Moran is organized by the Walker Art Center, and curated by Adrienne
Edwards with Danielle A. Jackson. The Whitney’s presentation is
overseen by Adrienne Edwards, the Engell Speyer Family Curator and
Curator of Performance.
Jason Moran is sponsored by Delta. Generous support for Jason Moran is provided by The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Significant support is provided by Norman and Melissa Selby and the Joyce and George Wein Foundation.
RESPONSIBLY ADVANCING THE ART WORLD THROUGH TECHNOLOGY AND CREATIVITY.
More Than 60 World-Famous Museums, International Art Galleries And Renowned Art Organizations Will Be The First To Launch Websites Using .ART
.ART, the first domain created exclusively for the global art community, is pleased to announce that more than 60 museums and world – renowned arts organizations launched websites dedicated to the new domain first class, including The Art Institute of Chicago , Centre Pompidou, Fondation Beyeler, Fondation Cartier, Guggenheim Museum, Hauser & Wirth, ICA Miami, LACMA, MAXXI, Tate and Walker Art Center, and more. These first. .ART users have entertained plans to activate their new domains, some of which include full migration or consolidation of their existing web sites .ART, while others are launching new websites dedicated to exhibit unique content of its artists and/or collections.
The rights holder in charge of operating and selling the .ART domain is UK Creative Ideas Ltd. (UKCI), an international team based in London. In spring 2016 UKCI signed an agreement with ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, to be the exclusive operator of the top-level domain.
“Our mission is to preserve the cultural heritage of the world of global art. We are honored that so many respected institutions around the world share our vision and conviction that .ART transform the relationship of the arts community with Internet and help protect your online brand heritage , “said Ulvi Kasimov , founder of .ART.
John Matson , CEO of .ART added: “.ART Provides a new way for the art world online identified The domain is short, simple, easy to remember and have immediate association with the arts for our first users, .ART domain is a natural expression of your brand. “
The first users will first receive access to domain names. .ART; therefore, they have the opportunity to launch content on their respective web sites before the domains are available for purchase by the general public in the summer of 2017. The first .ART users have shared their enthusiasm:
The digital director of the Tate, Ros Lawler, said the museum “is delighted to participate in the launch of this new domain, which will help promote some of the art collections, galleries and museums the world ‘s largest.”
Benoît Parayre, Director of Communications and Partnerships in the Centre Pompidou, said: “A domain name for the art world took enough to appear, but now allow many leaders of the cultural industry, museums, art centers, galleries, collectors, etc., have more relevant domain names to promote their collections and programming. “
“The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain is very excited to be part of the new digital neighborhood .ART and evolve further their programs, ” said his digital manager, David Desrimais.
Anton Vidokle, artist and founder ofe-flux, added: “The Internet carries a profound educational potential, and a reliable and informative domain dedicated to art will provide an invaluable source of knowledge The domain….. .art will become an effective platform to dignify. the excellent work of arts organizations and artists from all over the world for all those who love and care about the arts.“
Dominique Chevalier, president of the Syndicat National des Antiquaires Antiquaires (SNA), which organizes the Biennale des Antiquaires at the Grand Palais in Paris, said: “For us, and for our galleries, ‘.com’ is too commercial and ‘.fr’ too . generic the problem with most domain names that say nothing about the activity that one performs, ‘.ART’ solves that.“
Lelia Pissarro, co-owner of the Stern Pissarro Gallery and great – granddaughter of the artist Camille Pissarro, said:.. “The Internet has the greatest impact on the market of global art has taken the art to every corner of the world the way forward in terms of domain names is clearly categorizing industries. We have the impression that they represent the names Pissarro, combined with ‘.com’ detracted elegance. Now to be able to use ‘pissarro.art’ simply is the perfect solution. it comes to cover an old gap in our marketing strategy and how we project.“
The first users have comprehensive plans for their respective sites:
Tate, LACMA, Multimedia Art Museum and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will create websites that highlight the various aspects of their collections, while the Fondation Cartier will use the domain to make its collection available to the public for the first time in its history. Meanwhile, the Centre Pompidou will launch a dedicated website with useful information in English and other languages for their foreign visits.
Hauser & Wirth celebrate the 25th anniversary of the gallery by launching an interactive website that displays a visual chronology detailing the nearly three decades of history gallery. In addition, Canesso Gallery, Galerie Meyer Oceanic & Eskimo Art, Galerie Perrin, Tomasso Brothers Fine Art , Stern Pissarro Gallery and Venus migrated completely its current websites to their new .ART domains.
TIMELINE
December 2016 – February 2017: ICANN (TMCH)-registered trademarks will be able to register their .ART domains in this phase, also called Sunrise.
February – May 2017: The registration process will be open to members of the art world only.
May 2017 onwards: Anyone with an interest in the arts can register .ART domains.
To see the complete list of the first users of .ART, visithttp://www.art.art.
The most comprehensive career retrospective in the U.S. to date of the work of Frank Stella, co-organized by The Whitney Museum of American Art and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, will debut at the Whitney this fall. Frank Stella: A Retrospective brings together the artist’s best-known works installed alongside lesser known examples to reveal the extraordinary scope and diversity of his nearly sixty-year career. Approximately 100 works, including icons of major museum and private collections, will be shown. Along with paintings, reliefs, sculptures, and prints, a selection of drawings and maquettes have been included to shed light on Stella’s conceptual and material process.Frank Stella: A Retrospective is organized by Michael Auping, Chief Curator, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, in association with Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, with the involvement of Carrie Springer, Assistant Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
The exhibition will be on view at the Whitney from October 30, 2015 through February 7, 2016, and at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth from April 17 through September 4, 2016; it will subsequently travel to the DeYoung Museum, San Francisco. This will be the inaugural special exhibition and the first career retrospective devoted to a living artist in the Whitney’s new downtown home on Gansevoort Street. It will fill the entire 18,000-square-foot fifth floor—the Museum’s largest gallery for temporary exhibitions. Annabelle Selldorf, Selldorf Architects, is doing the exhibition design for the Whitney installation.
“A Stella retrospective presents many challenges,” remarks Auping, “given Frank’s need from the beginning of his career to immediately and continually make new work in response to previous series. And he has never been timid about making large, even monumental, works. The result has been an enormous body of work represented by many different series. Our goal has been to summarize without losing the raw texture of his many innovations.”
“It’s not merely the length of his career, it is the intensity of his work and his ability to reinvent himself as an artist over and over again over six decades that make his contribution so important,” said Weinberg. “Frank is a radical innovator who has, from the beginning, absorbed the lessons of art history and then remade the world on his own artistic terms. He is a singular American master and we are thrilled to be celebrating his astonishing accomplishment.”
Born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1936, Frank Stella attended Phillips Academy, Andover, and then Princeton University, where he studied art history and painting. In college, he produced a number of sophisticated paintings that demonstrated his understanding of the various vocabularies that had brought abstract painting into international prominence. After graduating in 1958, Stella moved to New York and achieved almost immediate fame with his Black Paintings (1958–60), which were included in The Museum of Modern Art’s seminal exhibition Sixteen Americans in 1959–60.
The Leo Castelli Gallery in New York held Stella’s first one-person show in 1962. The Museum of Modern Art, under William Rubin’s stewardship, presented his first retrospective only a few years later, in 1970, when Stella was only thirty-four years old. A second retrospective was held at MoMA in 1987. Since then, Stella has been the subject of countless exhibitions throughout the world, including a major retrospective in Wolfsburg in 2012. Frank Stella: A Retrospective is the first survey of the artist’s career in the U.S. since 1987. He was appointed the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University in 1983. “Working Space,” his provocative lecture series (later published as a book), addresses the issue of pictorial space in postmodern art. Stella has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the 2009 National Medal of Arts and the 2011 Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award from the International Sculpture Center, as well as the Isabella and Theodor Dalenson Lifetime Achievement Award from Americans for the Arts (2011) and the National Artist Award at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Aspen (2015).
Throughout his career, Stella has challenged the boundaries of painting and accepted notions of style. Though his early work allied him with the emerging minimalist approach, Stella’s style has evolved to become more complex and dynamic over the years as he has continued his investigation into the nature of abstract painting.
Adam Weinberg and Marla Price, Director of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, note in the directors’ foreword to the catalogue, “Abstract art constitutes the major, and in many ways, defining artistic statement of the twentieth century and it remains a strong presence in this century. Many artists have played a role in its development, but there are a few who stand out in terms of both their innovations and perseverance. Frank Stella is one of those. As institutions devoted to the history and continued development of contemporary art, we are honored to present this tribute to one of the greatest abstract painters of our time.”
The exhibition begins with rarely seen early works, such as East Broadway(1958), from the collection of Addison Gallery of American Art, which show Stella’s absorption of Abstract Expressionism and predilections for colors and composition that would appear throughout the artist’s career.
Stella’s highly acclaimedBlack Paintingsfollow. Their black stripes executed with enamel house paint were a critical step in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Minimalism. The exhibition includes such major works as Die Fahne hoch!(1959), a masterpiece from the Whitney’s own collection, and The Marriage of Reason and Squalor II(1959) from The Museum of Modern Art’s collection. A selection of the artist’s Aluminum and Copper Paintingsof 1960–61, featuring metallic paint and shaped canvases, further establish Stella’s key role in the development of American Minimalism.
Even with his early success, Stella continued to experiment in order to advance the language of abstraction. The chronological presentation of Stella’s work tracks the artist’s exploration of the relationship between color, structure, and abstract illusionism, beginning with his Benjamin Moore series and Concentric Square Paintings of the early 1960s and 70s—including the masterpiece Jasper’s Dilemma (1962). In his Dartmouth, Notched V, and Running V paintings, Stella combines often shocking color with complex shaped canvases that mirror the increasingly dynamic movement of his painted bands. These were followed by the even more radically shaped Irregular Polygon Paintings, such as Chocorua IV (1966) from the Hood Museum, with internally contrasting geometric forms painted in vibrant fluorescent hues; and the monumental Protractor Paintings, such as Harran II(1967) from the Guggenheim‘s collection, composed of curvilinear forms with complex chromatic variations.Continue reading →
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