Quarterly Jan | Feb | Mar 2015 from the Director |
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quarterly jan | feb | mar 2015 from the director | Dear Members and Friends: Happy 2015! We're thrilled to have you aboard as we embark on a very exciting year of exhibitions, programs, and planning for the Museum's bright future. And, oh, what a year it will be! We’re hosting two major exhibitions of beautiful and important work by prominent national and international artists—work UMFA BOARD you won't see anywhere else in our region. Our OF DIRECTORS America: The Latino Presence in American Art, an Marcia Price, Chair outstanding assembly of modern and contemporary Latino art from the collections of the Smithsonian Cynthia Sue Anderson American Art Museum, opens next month. In August Virginia Barlage The British Passion for Landscape: Masterpieces Robert F. Bennett from the National Museum Wales will bring to Utah Toni Bloomberg an extraordinary gathering of work by celebrated Jim Bradley* European artists including Turner, Constable, Lee Dever Gainsborough, and Monet. Both exhibitions will Fred Esplin* be accompanied by one-of-a-kind educational opportunities, lectures, and discussions to suit the Lynn Fey needs and tastes of our many audiences. It’s going John H. Firmage to be a blockbuster year! Jonathan Freedman Clark P. Giles Looking ahead, 2016 will bring an enormous opportunity: the Museum’s building upgrade and Wesley G. Howell, Jr. temporary closure. We will spend that gift John C. Jarman of time re-envisioning our gallery spaces and Georgianna Knudson* visitor experience—with essential input from you, our Al Landon members, as well as our Board of Directors, docents, Naja Lockwood volunteers, and community members—for a grand Suzanne C. Marquardt reopening in 2017. Michele Mattsson* Finally, as we look back on a year of wonderful W. Brent Maxfield participation at every level of membership, I offer Mary S. McCarthey special thanks to the generous and forward-looking Kathie Miller patrons who have remembered the UMFA in their Nicole Mouskondis wills. We profiled G. W. Anderson in our last quarterly; I can’t overstate the difference that such Rashelle Perry gifts make to the Museum’s operations. As we all Shari Quinney benefit from past bequests, I extend our deepest Chris Redgrave gratitude to each of you who are designating the Joanne F. Shiebler UMFA as part of your legacy. Diane Stewart Naoma Tate Elizabeth F. Tozer Raymond Gretchen Dietrich, Executive Director Tymas-Jones* Marva Warnock ON THE COVER | Freddy Rodríguez (Dominican), Danza de Carnaval, 1974, acrylic. Ruth Watkins* Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment. © 1974, Freddy Rodríguez. * Ex-Officio The UMFA gratefully acknowledges the continuing support it receives from the University of Utah, Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts & Parks Program, Utah Arts Council, Salt Lake City Arts Council, C. Comstock Clayton Foundation, Estate of Aurelia B. Cahoon, Anne M. and David S. Dolowitz, Helene Druke Shaw Family, Katherine W. Dumke & Ezekiel R. Dumke, Jr. Foundation, George S. & Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation, Marriner S. Eccles Foundation, The William Randolph Hearst Foundations, Emma Eccles Jones Foundation, Wilma T. Gibson Family, Jeanette and O. Ernest Grua, Jr. Family, Estate of John W. and Helen B. Jarman, National Endowment for the Arts, LaReta C. Madsen Family, Ray, Quinney & Nebeker Foundation, John & Marcia Price Family Foundation, S. J. & Jessie E. Quinney Foundation, Joseph and Evelyn Rosenblatt Family Foundation, George Q. Morris Foundation, Estate of E. Frank Sanguinetti, Ms. Suzanne M. Scott, State Office of Education, Utah Division of Arts & Museums, Paul L. & Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, UMFA Board of Directors, Docent Council, Friends of Contemporary Art, Friends of Utah & Western Art and UMFA Members. exhibitions | exhibitions OUR AMERICA THE LATINO PRESENCE IN AMERICAN ART February 6–May 17, 2015 PRESENTED BY Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art explores the varied and deep links between Latino art and U.S. history, culture, and art, providing insight into our nation’s past and unfolding present. The exhibition, drawn from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s MAJOR pioneering collection of Latino art, features work created SPONSORS since the 1950s, when long-standing Latino communities S. J. and increasingly demanded equal rights, the island of Puerto Jessie E. Quinney Foundation Rico became a commonwealth of the United States, and newer diasporas reached the American mainland. Ray, Quinney & Nebeker Our America includes works by artists who played Foundation important roles in American art movements after SUPPORTING abstract expressionism; leaders in the fields of activist, SPONSOR conceptual, and time-based art; and many who began to Wells Fargo express bicultural perspectives in their work. Others ABOVE LEFT | reinterpreted classic American subjects such as Olga Albizu (American, landscape, portraiture, and popular culture. They often b. Puerto Rico), Radiante, 1967, oil. Smithsonian drew from Latino experience and their own experiments American Art Museum. to expand the parameters of media such as graphics, Gift of JPMorgan Chase. photography, and installation art. RIGHT | Joseph Rodríguez, The exhibition includes works by artists of Mexican, Carlos, from the series Spanish Harlem, 1987, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican descent, as well as chromogenic print. other Latin American artists with deep roots in the United Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of States who have defined themselves in numerous and the artist. © 1987, diverse ways: Chicano, Puerto Rican, American, painter, Joseph Rodríguez. sculptor, to name a few. Questioning the limits of the category “Latino art,” this exhibition calls attention to the broad contours of a lesser-known field within the art of COMMUNITY the United States. PREVIEW & PArty Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art is organized by the Thursday, Smithsonian American Art Museum. Generous support for the exhibition has been provided by Altria Group, the Honorable Aida M. Alvarez, Judah Best, February 5 The James F. Dicke Family Endowment, Sheila Duignan and Mike Wilkins, 5–7 pm Tania and Tom Evans, Friends of the National Museum of the American Latino, The Michael A. and the Honorable Marilyn Logsdon Mennello Endowment, Henry R. Muñoz III, Wells Fargo, and Zions Bank. Additional significant support was provided by The Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center. Support for Treasures to Go, the Museum’s traveling exhibition program, comes from The C.F. Foundation, Atlanta, Georgia. Red Iguana exhibitions | salt 11: Duane Linklater Opening February 27, 2015 Whitney Tassie | Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art ABOVE | The eleventh edition of the salt series features new Duane Linklater (Omaskêko Cree of work by Duane Linklater, a Canada-based multimedia Moose Cree First Nation), artist of Native American heritage. Through instal- Tautology, 2011-2013, lation, performance, film, photography, and other Edition of 5 + 2 AP, Neon, transformer, enamel on media, Linklater studies the migration and exchange aluminum, courtesy the of ideas, language, and memory and reveals many artist and Catriona Jeffries Gallery. inconsistencies in knowledge and history. He often works collaboratively and appropriates liberally, challenging modern perceptions of authorship and authenticity. Through his salt exhibition, Linklater will directly engage the UMFA’s permanent collection to explore physical and conceptual processes of translation and the cultural information that is lost therein. Duane Linklater is Omaskêko Cree from Moose Cree First Nation in Northern Ontario. Born in 1976, he holds bachelor’s degrees in fine art and Native studies from the University of Alberta (2005) and a master’s degree in film and video from the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at Bard College (2012). Linklater won the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s preeminent prize for emerging artists, in 2013. He lives in North Bay, Ontario. Exhibition sponsors | The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts UMFA Friends of Contemporary Art (FoCA) University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library RELATED EVENT Artist and Curator in Conversation | Thursday, February 26, 5 pm | FREE Exhibition Preview, 4 pm | Conversation, 5 pm | Reception, 6 pm | exhibitions TONY FEHER: salt 11: Duane Linklater They arrived yesterday, dusty and weary from the journey, but in good spirits. Through December 31, 2015 Whitney Tassie | Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Last fall American sculptor Tony Feher transformed our G. W. Anderson Family Great Hall with his latest site-determined installation. Tony “lived” in the Great Hall for two weeks, creating the inspired and breathtaking work with help from our collections and exhibitions staff and a forty-five-foot boom lift. With a hyper-awareness of the formal qualities of everyday objects—bottles, tape, plastic bags—Feher turns unconsidered, often-discarded materials into poetic sculptures and installations. Feher reconceives these everyday items in ways that create beauty and call attention to the qualities of transience and permanence, not only in these objects but in life itself. For his UMFA installation, Feher used fluorescent pink flagging tape and blue painter’s tape. His simple materials and inventive manipulation of the Great Hall create a new, transformative experience for museum-goers. Museum members and guests have since inhabited the space as a party lounge, wedding venue, formal dining room, and