DOCSLIB.ORG

UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Unaccountable Modernisms: The Black Arts of Post-Civil Rights Alabama Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5h18d8gc Author Alexander, Aleesa Pitchamarn Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Unaccountable Modernisms: The Black Arts of Post-Civil RiGhts Alabama A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the deGree Doctor of Philosophy in Art History by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander Committee in charGe: Professor Jenni Sorkin, Chair Professor E. Bruce Robertson Professor GeorGe Lipsitz September 2018 The dissertation of Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander is approved. GeorGe Lipsitz E. Bruce Robertson Jenni Sorkin, Chair September 2018 Unaccountable Modernisms: The Black Arts of Post-Civil Rights Alabama Copyright © 2018 by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I must thank my advisor and committee chair, Jenni Sorkin. In innumerable ways, she has shaped me as a scholar, writer, thinker, and person. Without her support, this project simply would not exist. I also wish to thank my committee members Bruce Robertson and George Lipsitz. Their unwavering support, intellectual guidance, and practical advice have proved invaluable throughout the course of my graduate career. I am also indebted to the many years of mentorship I received from Laurie Monahan, whose early guidance will always be appreciated. My dissertation received generous external support from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As a Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow at The Met, I was able to have rich, ongoing conversations with many curators and fellows in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. I am especially grateful to my supervisor Randy Griffey, whose scholarly generosity and kind demeanor I aim to emulate. To my fellow fellows—thank you for making all of my New York City dreams come true. Thank you to my art history familia at UC Santa Barbara, for giving me another place to call home. To my husband, Gavin Hartnett, his family, and my own: thank you for believing in me when my own confidence (often) wavered. I want to thank the Souls Grown Deep Foundation and the Arnett family for all the assistance and access I was given over the years. There is no way I could properly write a dissertation on this topic without such help. Special thanks to Bill Arnett, who changed the entire course of my dissertation on one hot August day in Birmingham, Alabama. Most of all, thank you to the artists and families of Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, and Ronald Lockett, for letting me into your lives, sharing your stories with me, and allowing me to share these stories with others. iv VITA OF ALEESA PITCHAMARN ALEXANDER July 2018 EDUCATION Doctor of Philosophy in Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara, September 2018 Master of the Arts in Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara, September 2012 Bachelor of the Arts in Art History, Willamette University, May 2010 PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT 2015-2017: Teaching Associate, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara 2011-2017: Teaching Assistant, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara 2013: Special Collections Assistant, Department of Special Collections, Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara 2008-2010: Museum Collections Assistant, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University, Salem, OR PUBLICATIONS “Thornton Dial Takes Fifth Avenue,” CRITICS PAGE, The Brooklyn Rail. July 11, 2018. https://brooklynrail.org/2018/07/criticspage/Thornton-Dial-Takes-Fifth-Ave “Ronald Lockett's The Enemy Amongst Us and the Artistic Lineage of Bessemer, Alabama,” Blog Post: Collection Insights. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. July 3, 2018. https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/collection-insights/2018/ronald-lockett-enemy- amongst-us-birmingham-bessemer-alabama “Jug Head I,” “Jug Head II,” “Lovers,” “Homage to Malcolm,” “The Afro American Thunderbolt,” “Bosom for Aunt Surlina.” Catalogue Entries. Odyssey: Jack Whitten Sculpture. Exhibition Catalog. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 2018. “Toys,” “Glass Bowl with Fruit,” “Chalkware,” “Milliner’s Head,” “Noah Purifoy,” “Baby in a Red Chair,” “Index of American Design.” Catalogue Entries. Outliers and American Vanguard Art. Exhibition Catalog. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2018. v “Hobby,” “High Trash,” “Lists,” “Classification,” “Accumulation/Collection,” “Scrapbooks.” Catalogue entries. Henry Darger 1892-1973. Exhibition catalog. Paris: Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2015. “Miranda July,” and “Harrell Fletcher.” Encyclopedia entries. Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web resource. 2016. Book Review: “Bruce Nauman: The True Artist.” Foreground: Fine Art for the Culturally Curious. Los Angeles: Shelf Media Group. Web resource. January 2015. “Art brut.” Encyclopedia entry. Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism. Web resource. 2016. SELECTED EXHIBITION EXPERIENCE 2018: Contributing Researcher, Epic Abstraction, The Met Breuer 2018: Contributing Researcher, History Refused to Die: Highlights from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation Gift, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2011: Research Assistant, Timeless Renaissance: Count Alessandro Maggiori (1764-1834) as an Art Collector, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University 2009: Curator, Carl Hall: From the Archives, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University 2008: Curator, D.E. May: The Artist as Archivist, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University FELLOWSHIPS, HONORS, AWARDS 2018: Invited Lecturer, Art Study Seminar, Harvard Art Museums, February 2018 2017-2018: Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow, The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2016: American Craft Council Conference Scholarship 2016: Graduate Research Grant, The Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design 2014: Ailsa Mellon Bruce Predoctoral Fellowship for Historians of American Art to Travel Abroad, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts 2014: Margaret Mallory Travel Research Grant, UCSB 2013: Graduate Student Association Excellence in Teaching Award (nominee), UC Santa Barbara 2013: Graduate Committee Award, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, UC Santa Barbara 2013: Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award (nominee), Academic Senate, UC Santa Barbara 2010-2014: Doctoral Scholars Central Fellow, UCSB vi ABSTRACT Unaccountable Modernisms: The Black Arts of Post-Civil Rights Alabama by Aleesa Pitchamarn Alexander Within the discipline of art history, the terms “outsider,” “folk,” or “self-taught” have been historically applied to artists who have worked outside of prevailing institutional structures. Such classifications have often marginalized the artistic production of untrained, working-class African American artists in the twentieth century, particularly in the Southern United States. My dissertation reframes the discussion of twentieth-century Southern black art as a thoroughly modern and contemporary phenomenon, grounded in particular material and social conditions that, far from isolated, have instead engendered rich artistic communities. It does so by taking as a case study the Birmingham-Bessemer School, a group of male artists working in postindustrial Alabama in the decades following the Civil Rights movement. Though excluded from the primary narratives of American modernism, the artistic production of Lonnie Holley (b. 1950), Thornton Dial (1928-2016), and Ronald Lockett (1965- 1998) contest received histories of modern artistic production, including, but not limited to: found object assemblage, relational art and performance, site-specific installation, and nonrepresentational painting. vii First, I examine how the formal and material characteristics of work produced by the Birmingham-Bessemer School—the use of discarded and recycled materials, assemblage-like structures, and the prevalence of yard installations—are tethered to the unique environmental conditions of the greater Birmingham area as it gave rise to industry at the turn of the twentieth century. Secondly, I discuss the entry of the School’s artistic production into the predominantly white art world through museum exhibitions beginning in the 1990s. I argue that the curatorial struggle to showcase the complex social and cultural origins of their work has prevented this form of visual expression from being fully understood within the mainstream art world, as defined by prevailing institutional structures of the museum and the art market. In an effort to historically account for the Birmingham-Bessemer School, my study integrates formal analyses of artwork, artist interviews, exhibition catalogues, and media responses through the lens of queer and critical race theory. This dissertation removes Southern black art from mythologizing narratives of isolated genius or quaint, folk production, by situating it as a challenge to longstanding regional centers of modern and contemporary art in the United States. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………….……..1-29 Chapter One: Lonnie Holley’s Trash Lessons………………………………………………………..30-81 Chapter Two: How Thornton Dial (Re)invented the Idea of Modern Art…………..….82-116 Chapter Three: Ronald Lockett: Queer Refusal…………………………………………………117-158
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Biography [PDF]
    NICELLE BEAUCHENE GALLERY THE GEE’S BEND QUILTMAKERS Live and work in Boykin, AL EXHIBITION HISTORY 2020-21 In the Presence of Our Ancestors: Southern Perspectives in African American Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN (forthcoming) 2020 The Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers, Alison Jacques Gallery, London, UK (forthcoming) Power in My Hand: Celebrating Women’s Suffrage, Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University, University Park, PA My Way: The Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers and Contemporary Abstraction, Parts & Labor Beacon, Beacon, NY Out of Place: A Feminist Look at the Collection, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Trip to the Mountaintop: Recent Acquisitions from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH We Will Walk: Art and Resistance in the American South, Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK Souls Grown Deep: Artists of the African American South, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA The Power of She: A Permanent Collection Exhibition, Myrtle Beach Art Museum, Myrtle Beach, SC 2019-20 The Quilt’s of Gee’s Bend, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA A Different Mountain: Selected Works from The Arnett Collection, Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY 2019 Women of Gee’s Bend, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH Cosmologies from the Tree of Life: Art from the African American South, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA 2018-19 Outliers and American Vanguard Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Jan-May 2018); High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (Jun-Sept 2018); Los Angeles County Museum of
    [Show full text]
  • Art from the African American South
    REVELATIONS ART FROM THE AFRICAN AMERICAN SOUTH “Art is like a bright star up ahead This exhibition celebrates the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s in the darkness of the world. It acquisition of sixty-two artworks created by twenty-two African can lead peoples through the darkness and help them from Americans born in the South during the late-nineteenth and being afraid of the darkness. Art twentieth centuries. Collectively their lives and works were shaped is a guide for every person who is by four major historical events: the African Diaspora in which looking for something.” approximately four-hundred thousand Africans were forcibly —Artist Thornton Dial abducted from their homes and sold into bondage in the United States beginning in 1619; the American slavery system that brutalized and divided their families and descendants until the end “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. of the Civil War in 1865; the institutionalized segregation of the But I’m not concerned about that Jim Crow laws that followed the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877); now. I just want to do God’s will. and the rise of the modern Civil Rights movement in the 1950s. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked Out of this shared history, these artists forged compelling new over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. aesthetic languages that confronted their unique experiences as But I want you to know tonight, African Americans while also addressing universal aspects of the that we, as a people, will get to the human condition.
    [Show full text]
  • Interpreting the Assemblages of Lonnie Holley Through His Performative Explanations
    INTERPRETING THE ASSEMBLAGES OF LONNIE HOLLEY THROUGH HIS PERFORMATIVE EXPLANATIONS Sarah M. Schultz A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of the Master of Arts in the Department of Art. Chapel Hill 2010 Approved by: Dr. John P. Bowles Dr. Bernard L. Herman Dr. Pika Ghosh Dr. Ross Barrett © 2010 Sarah M. Schultz ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT SARAH M. SCHULTZ: Interpreting the Assemblages of Lonnie Holley through his Performative Explanations (Under the direction of Dr. John P. Bowles) For the past three decades, Lonnie Holley has collected materials alongside highways, ditches and in the landfills near his home in Birmingham, Alabama. These objects are used as the raw material for his assemblages. His artistic combinations suggest new relationships between once familiar, now obsolete technologies such as old television sets, computer screens, electrical wiring, barbed wire fencing, rebar, and molded concrete. Interpretations of his work rarely go beyond recounting his extraordinary personal narrative as the seventh of twenty-seven children. This comes at the expense of an in-depth critical analysis of his material and the new relationships he creates in his assemblages. Through a critical analysis of three of his major works, The Inner Suffering of the Holy Cost, Little Top to the Big Top, and Cold Titty Mama I, this study explores how his materials are re-valued, or given new meaning when they are combined. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis has benefitted from a wealth of perspectives. I am especially thankful for the patience of my advisors Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE OUTSIDER ART FAIR ANNOUNCES EXHIBITORS for ITS 27TH NEW YORK EDITION January 17 – January 20, 2019 the M
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE OUTSIDER ART FAIR ANNOUNCES EXHIBITORS FOR ITS 27TH NEW YORK EDITION January 17 – January 20, 2019 The Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, New York Minnie Evans, Untitled (Three faces in floral design) (detail),1967, Crayon, graphite and oil on canvas board, 22.75×27.75 in. Artwork (c) Estate off Minnie Evans. Courtesy of Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, N.C. NEW YORK, NY, November 28, 2018 – The Outsider Art Fair, the only fair dedicated to Self-Taught Art, Art Brut and Outsider Art, is pleased to announce the exhibitor list for its 27th New York edition, taking place January 17-20, 2019 at The Metropolitan Pavilion. The fair will showcase 67 exhibitors, representing 37 cities from 7 countries, with 8 first-time galleries. This year, OAF will host two of its hallmark Curated Spaces. Good Kids: Underground Comics from China will feature zines and original drawings created by Chinese artists. Co-organized by Brett Littman (Director, Noguchi Museum, New York) and Yi Zhou (partner and curator of C5Art Gallery, Beijing), these works deal with subject matter that is scatological, sexual, puerile and anti-conformist, making the distribution and sales of these work in mainland China complicated to almost impossible. A second Curated Space will serve as homage to the late dealer Phyllis Kind. In her obituary for the New York Times, Roberta Smith made this observation: “As the first American dealer to show outsider art alongside that of contemporary artists, Ms. Kind was in many ways as important as Leo Castelli…” Curated by Raw Vision Magazine senior editor and art critic Edward M.
    [Show full text]
  • ART HISTORY INSIGHTS OCTOBER 2020 the Monthly Newsletter That Brings You Selected Articles of Interest and Opinion from the World of Art History and Visual Culture
    ART HISTORY INSIGHTS OCTOBER 2020 The monthly newsletter that brings you selected articles of interest and opinion from the world of art history and visual culture. This issue focuses on Art, Craft and Industry, which links with the theme of our forthcoming Global New Voices virtual postgraduate research conference. HOW THE PATTERN & DECORATION MOVEMENT THE GEE’S BEND QUILTERS CHALLENGED MACHISMO MODERNISM Quilts from the Alabama hamlet of Gee’s Bend have been Artists Valerie Jaudon and Joyce Kozloff were central sought after and prized by museums. For the past century, figures in the 1970s Pattern and Decoration movement. women such as Annie Mae Young, Loretta Pettway and They set out to challenge modernism’s white male- Mary Lee Bendolph have stitched together fabric in centric concept of what constituted ‘good art’, and the different shapes, sizes and colours to create quilts like no notion that decorative and applied arts were not of ‘a other. Whilst rooted in folk tradition the practice gathered lesser order’. Today, the movement resonates with our momentum during the Civil Rights movement with the current moment, looking ahead as it did to the plurality Freedom Quilting Bee, a co-operative set up in 1966 of traditions and cultures celebrated in today’s art world, across Alabama’s Black Belt to enable women to sell their to its rejection of sexist and ethnocentric biases and its work at auction and through department stores, including aspirations of inclusivity. As one writer puts it, “What was Bloomingdales and Sears. See more. on the table—the chopping block, as it turned out - were https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/ra-magazine- the very systems of valuation that had dominated Western gees-bend-quilters art history for centuries, and the primary focus was the hierarchy of fine arts above decorative arts”.
    [Show full text]
  • Information to Users
    INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI fihns the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in ^ e w rite r free, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Infonnation Company 300 North Zed) Road, Ann Aibor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 THE INFUSION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART FROM EIGHTEEN-EIGHTY TO THE EARLY NINETEEN-NINETIES FOR MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL ART EDUCATION DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Ronald Wayne Claxton, B.S., M.A.E.
    [Show full text]
  • This Selection of Artist Statements Is Taken from Gee's Bend
    This selection of artist statements is taken from Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts, published by Tinwood Books of Atlanta, GA in 2002. Artists included in this unpaginated selection: Allie Pettway (b. 1917) Annie E. Pettway (1904-1971) Arlonzia Pettway (b. 1923) Creola Pettway (b. 1927) Essie Bendolph Pettway (b. 1956) Lucy Mingo (b. 1931) Lucy T. Pettway (1921-2004) Mary Lee Bendolph (b. 1935) Mary L. Bennett (b. 1942) Qunnie Pettway (b. 1943) Rita Mae Pettway (b. 1941) Ruth P. Mosely (b. 1928) (Please note: The actual quilts are not as bright as they appear in this document. The colors in Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts are accurate.) allie pettway The middle of three quiltmaking sisters in Gee’s Bend (the others being Sweet T. and Lutisha), Allie Pettway (b. 1917) talks about the difficult days of growing up as a subsistence farmer and the consolation that comes from making quilts with friends and relatives. I was born in 1917. My mother was named Patty Pettway, my daddy was named Warren Pettway. They farmed. I was a little girl when my mother passed. My daddy remarried after my mother passed, and I had one of the hardest times you going to have. I started raising the little children, my brothers and sisters, and I had to go to the fields and work in the mud and water. And my stepmother was kind of really mean. I do the best I could. I came up hard. In the fields I was hoeing corn, picking cotton, pulling fodder.
    [Show full text]
  • July 1, 2012–June 30, 2013 FY13: a LOOK BACK
    Georgia Museum of Art Annual Report July 1, 2012–June 30, 2013 FY13: A LOOK BACK One of the brightest spots of FY13 was the On October 22, the museum celebrated inaugural UGA Spotlight on the Arts, a nine-day its official reaccreditation by the American festival held November 3–11, highlighting visual, Alliance of Museums (formerly the American performing, and literary arts all over campus, Association of Museums). Although the in which the museum participated eagerly. The museum is usually closed on Mondays, it was vision of vice-provost Libby Morris, the festival open to the public for the day. AAM director was planned by the UGA Arts Council, of which Ford Bell attended the event and spoke about museum director William U. Eiland is a member, the museum, followed by an ice cream social. and its subsidiary public relations arm (at Less than 5 percent of American museums are which Michael Lachowski and Hillary Brown accredited, and the process is not a simple one. represented the museum). The festival attracted Reaccreditation is a lengthy process, involving great attendance, especially from students, and a self-study that the museum worked on for demonstrated the administration’s commitment several years and a site visit lasting several days, to making the arts an essential part of the during which AAM representatives toured the university experience. Later in the fiscal year, the facility from top to bottom, met with university Arts Council began working on a strategic plan, upper administration, and interviewed staff with brainstorming meetings held by both the members, volunteers, students, and patrons of executive and PR committees in the museum’s the museum.
    [Show full text]
  • Appropriation Art Tate: Appropriation
    Appropriation Art Tate: Appropriation https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/appropriation Appropriation! When Art (very closely) Inspires Other Art https://magazine.artland.com/appropriation-when-art-very-closely-inspires-other-art/#: ~:text=Beginning%20in%20the%201960s%20Richard,of%20the%20newly%2Dfamous %20masterworks. Sandra Cinto https://mymodernmet.com/sandra-cinto-encontro-das-aguas/ Marcel Duchamp https://blog.singulart.com/en/2020/05/14/lhooq-1919-marcel-duchamps-uncompromis ing-piece/ Jasper Johns + https://www.thecollector.com/pop-art-famous-iconic/ Richard Pettibone https://www.artsy.net/artwork/richard-pettibone-jasper-johns-flag-1955 A 10 Year Long Art History Course - Vincent Desiderio’s Cockaigne https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/ref/arts/design/01FINE.html?pagewant ed=all Diana Al-Hadid Plays the Classics https://youtu.be/McVvi4GVS6U CanadianArt | Dirty Words: Appropriation https://canadianart.ca/features/dirty-words-appropriation/ Protest Art Zimmerli Art Museum http://www.zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu/information/visitors#.YKFrNWZKg6A Wikipedia: Hi-Red Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi-Red_Center Guerrilla Girls https://www.guerrillagirls.com/ Wikipedia: Diamanda Galása https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamanda_Gal%C3%A1s Protesters Block, Demand Removal of a Painting of Emmett Till at the Whitney Biennial https://hyperallergic.com/367012/protesters-block-demand-removal-of-a-painting-of-e mmett-till-at-the-whitney-biennial/ Outsider Art 10 things to know about Jean Dubuffet https://www.christies.com/features/10-things-to-know-about-Jean-Dubuffet-8066-1.asp x The inside track on Outsider Art the artists to know https://www.christies.com/features/Outsider-Artists-Hot-List-7598-1.aspx#:~:text=First %20coined%20by%20the%20critic,of%20the%20mainstream%20art%20world.
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Report Fiscal Year 2016 American Folk Art Museum July 1, 2015–June 30, 2016
    ANNUAL REPORT FISCAL YEAR 2016 AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM JULY 1, 2015–JUNE 30, 2016 The American Folk Art Museum received a grant from the Friends of Heritage Preservation to conserve a work by Thornton Dial. The conservation treatment was carried out by conservators Barbara Appelbaum and Paul Himmelstein, of Appelbaum & Himmelstein, LLC. They have decades of experience working on paintings, textiles, and folk art, including extensive work on the museum’s collection. The Friends of Heritage Preservation is a small, private association of individuals, based in Los Angeles, who seek to promote cultural identity through the preservation of significant endangered artistic and historic works, artifacts, and sites. AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM COLLECTIONS AND EDUCATION CENTER 2 LINCOLN SQUARE, (COLUMBUS AVENUE BETWEEN 47-29 32ND PLACE, LONG ISLAND CITY, NY 65TH AND 66TH STREETS), NEW YORK, NY 11101-2409 10023-6214 212. 595. 9533 | WWW.FOLKARTMUSEUM.ORG [email protected] The Man Rode Past His Barn to Another New Day, Thornton Dial Sr. (1928–2016), Bessemer, Alabama, 1994–1995, oil and enamel on canvas with clothing, carpet, rope, wire, and industrial sealing compound, 84 x 120", gift of Jane Fonda, 2001.2.1. Photo by Gamma One. AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM ANNUAL REPORT FISCAL YEAR 2016 WELCOME LETTER 2 Dr. Anne-Imelda Radice INTRODUCTION 3 Monty Blanchard DASHBOARD 4 EXHIBITIONS 6 LOANS AND AWARDS 16 PUBLICATIONS 17 EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS 18 ADULT PUBLIC PROGRAMS 24 COLLECTIONS AND EDUCATION CENTER 28 MUSEUM CAREER INTERNSHIP PROGRAM 29 MEMBERS AND FRIENDS 30 FALL BENEFIT GALA 32 MUSEUM SHOP 33 NEW ACQUISITIONS 34 FINANCIAL STATEMENTS 40 DONORS, FOLK ART CIRCLE, AND MEMBERS 42 BOARD OF TRUSTEES 45 STAFF 46 IN MEMORIAM 48 Left: Photo by Christine Wise.
    [Show full text]
  • AIZURI QUARTET Winner, 2018 M-Prize Competition
    AIZURI QUARTET Winner, 2018 M-Prize Competition 1) DRAWN FROM THE EARTH Following its 2019 GRAMMY-nominated debut album Blueprinting (New Amsterdam, 2018), the Aizuri Quartet will release and tour its highly anticipated second album during the 2021-22 season. The new album explores deep connections between humankind and nature through the distinct lenses of three composers: Armenian priest and composer Komitas Vartabed (1869-1935), contemporary Japanese composer Misato Mochizuki (b. 1969), and Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957). The Armenian Folk Songs of Komitas are a window into the powerful connection between Armenians and their land, both the soil that peasants till and the homeland of which the diaspora dreams. In her vivid and intense 2006 string quartet Terres Rouges (meaning “red earth,” i.e. iron-rich soil), Misato Mochizuki’s music suggests the vibrant energy of natural processes that have been ongoing for millennia. Mochizuki’s compositional process often draws from her deep curiosity for nature, but starts from scientific and philosophical investigations more than personal communion with the natural world. Paul Griffiths writes, “the creative starting point for her is more likely to be a book on genetics than a walk in the forest.” Sibelius’s Voces Intimae was written during a period of psychological crisis and self-imposed exile in his rural home “Ainola” (named after his wife Aino) as he tried to escape the alcoholism that plagued him in Helsinki. Working in isolation and absorbed in nature, his music during this period began to shift from the grand optimistic expression of Finnish nationalism that dominated his youth to something more dark and personal.
    [Show full text]
  • Final Project
    Brown 1 Pierson Brown ARTH-432 Professor Elder 3 May 2021 Painting Through Faith: Self-Taught Artists of the American South Exhibition Link: https://www.artsteps.com/view/608f03fe51f030f9968b0ed0?currentUser I. Theme The theme for this exhibition proposal is Christianity and its influence on self-taught artists of the American South in the 1970s. II. Project Proposal In this exhibition, entitled Painting Through Faith: Self-Taught Artists of the American South, the focus lies on three artists: Sister Gertrude Morgan, Howard Finster, and Purvis Young. Each of these artists represent different areas of the American South, respectively from New Orleans, Louisiana, Rome, Georgia, and Miami, Florida. As this exhibition will show, their religious conviction and desire to create art permeates barriers of location, racial identity, and gender identity. Each artist is represented by 4 paintings that best exemplify their particular style and religious passion. This provides enough context to place the artists in conversation with one another and allow for thought provoking discussion from the visitors and intellectuals. The theme of this exhibition captures the role of religion in the practices of Southern self-taught artists. More particularly, Painting Through Faith investigates how the practice of Christianity and folk art permeated boundaries of race and gender just after the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1970s. Each work included was created in the 1970s and the included text prompts viewers to view the paintings with the Civil Rights Movement in mind. As Brown 2 the country was just recently engaged in a period of both terror and hope, these artists offer a unique perspective of how their environment shaped their perspective.
    [Show full text]