Quarterly July | Aug |Sept 2014 from the Director |
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quarterly july | aug |sept 2014 from the director | Dear Members and Friends: In May we celebrated a major highlight of our year- long Art is 100 tribute with the Art is 100 Gala, and we are grateful that so many of you came out to show your support for the Museum. Thanks to all of you who helped us open the wonderful Creation and Erasure: Art of the Bingham Canyon Mine exhibition as well as celebrate 100 years of creativity on our campus and of great collecting at the UMFA. I hope you’ll join us again on October 3 for a very fun UMFA BOARD After-Hours Party as we debut a new site-specific work OF DIRECTORS by New York City-based artist Tony Feher. Feher has Marcia Price, Chair completed such installations at a number of American Cynthia Sue Anderson art museums, including the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and the Virginia Barlage Indianapolis Museum of Art, and we are so excited to Robert F. Bennett bring his talent to Utah. Toni Bloomberg Jim Bradley* This year, however, has not been without loss—in February, artist Nancy Holt passed away. As you Lee Dever probably well know, one of Nancy’s most significant Fred Esplin* and beautiful works of art is located in Utah’s Great Suzanne Ferry* Basin Desert—the monumental Sun Tunnels (1973–76). Lynn Fey Like Spiral Jetty—an artwork credited to her husband John H. Firmage Robert Smithson, but which Nancy helped create— Jonathan Freedman Sun Tunnels is an internationally recognized work Clark P. Giles of Land art located in our backyard. In late 2012, the UMFA hosted a traveling retrospective exhibition of Wesley G. Howell, Jr. Nancy’s work, organized by the Wallach Art Gallery John C. Jarman at Columbia University in New York. I am so proud Georgianna Knudson* that we brought this important show to Utah and Al Landon recognized Nancy Holt’s incredibly important and Naja Lockwood influential contributions to twentieth-century American Michele Mattsson* art. She gave a standing-room-only lecture and W. Brent Maxfield traveled with a large group of UMFA members and fans out to Sun Tunnels. It was an absolute joy, and Mary S. McCarthey she was so pleased to be back in Utah and to be Kathie Miller received so warmly by our community. Nicole Mouskondis Rashelle Perry Shari Quinney Chris Redgrave Gretchen Dietrich, Executive Director Joanne F. Shiebler Diane Stewart Naoma Tate Elizabeth F. Tozer Raymond Tymas-Jones* Marva Warnock Ruth Watkins* 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 * Ex-Officio 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 | art is 100 Jonas Lie’s General View of the Bingham Copper Mine Luke Kelly | Associate Curator of Antiquities Our third selection on view on the UMFA’s Art is 100 ABOVE | General View of the Bingham Copper Highlights Wall—part of our continuing celebration of 100 Mine, 1917, oil on canvas. years of creativity across the U campus—is an ambitious Collection of the J. Willard Marriott Library, work from the collection of the J. Willard Marriott Library. University of Utah. General View of the Bingham Copper Mine is a sister to a painting in the UMFA’s collection, Bingham Mine (currently ON THE COVER | Bara on display as part of the Creation and Erasure exhibition). Masa Series (South Asian Indian), n.d., In early 1917, the landscape painter Jonas Lie came to Utah painting. Gift of the and sketched several views of the Bingham Canyon Mine, Dayton Hudson Foundation. now owned by Rio Tinto Kennecott. LEFT, PREVIOUS PAGE Until the Bingham series, Jonas Lie was famous for his Nancy Holt | Image from paintings depicting the building of the Panama Canal: October 20, 2012, Sun Tunnels viewing with the massive operation with its blend of manpower and Nancy Holt, organized machines attracted Lie, who borrowed money from a by the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) as part friend to capture this feat of human ingenuity. These paint- of Nancy Holt: Sightlines, ings inspired Daniel C. Jackling, owner of the Utah Copper a traveling exhibition organized by the Miriam Company, to commission Lie to paint his operation—75 and Ira D. Wallach Art steam shovels extracting 30,000 to 40,000 tons of ore a Gallery, Columbia Univer- sity, on view October 19, day, creating an inverted pyramid. Lie’s paintings of the 2012-January 20, 2013. mine drew great reviews when Lie exhibited them in Courtesy Utah Museum New York City, and the works soon dispersed to collections of Fine Arts. across the country—aside from the two paintings (and a few sketches) that found their way to the University of Utah. exhibitions | Moksha: Photography by Fazal Sheikh July 11–November 30, 2014 Luke Kelly | Associate Curator of Antiquities In 2003, the sacred site of Vrindavan, a city holy to the Hindu god Krishna, drew the attention of artist-activist Fazal Sheikh. Thousands of widows, dispossessed and thrown out of their homes by their families, live in Vrindavan, where life is a constant struggle. Sheikh gained the widows’ trust, and they allowed him to photograph them and record their stories. His portraits, however, do not depict the women as vulnerable or unfortunate. Rather, he portrays women who’ve found strength in their devotion to Krishna and a new family in their fellow widows. We wanted to bring this exhibition to the Museum to share the way Sheikh presents such an important cultural issue in a unique way. Documentaries and articles on the widows of Vrindavan often generalize their challenges and problems, while Sheikh’s portraits personalize the issue and challenge viewers far more than facts and figures ever could. LEFT | Indian (Rajput), Krishna and Gopis Swimming in a River, 1740, gouache on paper. Purchased with the M. Bell Rice Fund. RIGHT | Indian, Untitled (Embracing Couple), gouache on paper. Purchased with funds from Friends of the Art Museum. Krishna: Lord of Vrindavan August 8–November 30, 2014 Krishna: Lord of Vrindavan explores the Hindu God and his role in Hindu theology, giving context to the widows of Vrindavan depicted in the photography of Moksha. The objects, drawn from the UMFA’s permanent collection and spanning the 11th through the 20th centuries, depict famous scenes from Krishna’s life, from his playful childhood in Vrindavan to the great promise he offered Hindus as an adult: that through unconditional love and devotion to Krishna, one could gain moksha (salvation)—the promise that draws the dispossessed, including the widows documented in Fazal Sheikh’s photographs, to the city of Vrindavan even today. | exhibitions salt 10: Conrad Bakker Opens September 12, 2014 Whitney Tassie | Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art For our tenth salt installment, the UMFA presents Canadian artist Conrad Bakker’s three-dimensional painted wood replicas of familiar commodities. Revealing the artist’s hand in loose brushwork, Bakker’s to-scale wood sculptures of books, furniture, machinery, and even web pages are nonfunctional, imprecise copies: his wooden copy of Karl Marx’s Capital, Volume I (1867) cannot be read, just as his hulking wooden motorcycle cannot be driven. But his objects, sold for the exact price of their real commercial models, serve another purpose. Circumventing and calling attention to the inflated values of the art market, Bakker poses questions about the value of artistic labor, the distinction between originality and appropriation, and the power of symbols. ABOVE LEFT | Conrad Bakker Tony Feher (Canadian, born 1970, lives Urbana, Ill.), Untitled Project: Opens October 3, 2014 Robert Smithson's Library [Crystals Diamonds and Anchored by a centrally viewed, monumental wooden Transistors], 2010. Oil paint on carved wood. Courtesy the staircase, the UMFA’s 2001 Marcia and John Price artist. RIGHT | Conrad Bakker Museum Building plays with light and form while (Canadian, born 1970, lives Urbana, Ill.), Untitled Project: capitalizing on the significant sightlines of the Honda CB77 Superhawk, 2013- University and the Wasatch Range. The heart of the 2014, detail. Oil paint on carved Museum, visible from most of the galleries, is its wood. Courtesy the artist. soaring Great Hall. To celebrate this great space, the UMFA invited New York-based sculptor Tony Feher to create a site-determined installation. Whether transforming the way we consider everyday objects like glass bottles, plastic bags, and twine, or highlighting the “tricks” of architectural spaces with poetic installations, Feher’s work is formally brilliant as well as subversive, surprising, and humorous. Feher has made site visits to the UMFA to experiment with materials and get a feel for the city, the building, and the space, and he is now hard at work finalizing the installation. Stay tuned! RIGHT | Artist Tony Feher explored the architecture of the UMFA building in the months leading up to the installation of his work, creating sketches and “doodles,” such as this example, located in curator Whitney Tassie’s office.