DEC 2015 · JAN 2016 · FEB HONOLULU MUSEUM OF ART SPALDING HOUSE TXT/MSG • Through January 10 Auguste Rodin: An exhibition about the message behind words, The Human Experience images, objects, and experiences. Selections from the Orvis Artist in the Museum: Edward Clark January 9–February 14, 2016 Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Collections Saturdays 10am–4pm • Sundays noon–4pm Edward Clark melds his two passions—glass and Through Jan 10 spearfishing—to create an immersive installation of blown and sculpted glass forms. This program is generously supported by the Arthur and Mae Orvis Harajuku: Tokyo Street Fashion Foundation. Through April 3 Presented by Hawaiian Airlines HONOLULU MUSEUM OF ART SCHOOL Wendy Kawabata: Days of Grace: Young Artist Fall 2015 Exhibition Aloha Members, intersect. (For more on this event, visit our blog at In the Land California Artist December 5–13 Opening reception: December 5 • 10am–noon Every day I am reminded how the honolulumuseum.org/blog.) Through Jan 3 Grace Hudson in Hawai‘i Honolulu Museum of Art is connected to The current exhibition Harajuku: Tokyo Street Through March 6 The Young Photographers: Work by McKinley, Fashion also links us to contemporary culture—this Women Artists Radford, and Roosevelt High School students December 9–23 the rest of the world. time in the world’s largest city. While the feeling of in Hawai‘i: 1900–1950 Identify Yourself On a warm October morning, members of the this exploration of the global influence of Japanese Through Feb 28 Through April 24 1:1: Prints • December 18–January 2 Tlingit people from the village of Klawock on Prince street looks is a strange mix of cute and creepy, what Artists include Kate Kelly, Human identity through the Honolulu Museum of Art Staff Exhibition of Wales Island, Alaska, arrived for a ceremony emerges is the striking ability of young Japanese to Genevieve Springston ages revealed in textiles. January 9–31 marking the repatriation of a totem pole that has combine cultural influences from around the world. Lynch, Georgia O’Keeffe, Opening reception: January 8 • 5:30–8pm been in the museum collection since 1981. The cere- The mixing of aesthetics—ranging from 18th-century Madge Tennent, and American Array Eye of the Beholder: Docent Exhibition mony ensured that the 19th-century object, which French fashion to Alice in Wonderland to Hello Kitty— Lillie Gaye Torrey. Through Jan 2017 January 9–31 was taken illegally from Prince of Wales Island years creates a new sensibility. The exhibition shows how Late 20th-century postwar Opening reception: January 8 • 5:30–8pm ago, could be returned safely to Alaska. During the fun, interconnected, and complex the world can be. and contemporary American Third Annual Pow! Wow! Hawaii ceremony, there was a palpable sense that we shared (For information on Harajuku programming, art from the collection. Exploring the New Contemporary much with our guests. see pages 13 and 26.). February 7–15 Tlingit master carver Jonathan Rowan, Klawock Opening reception: February 7 • 7–9pm tribal administrator Lawrence Armour, and Klawock Sincerely, FIRST HAWAIIAN CENTER Third Annual Tattoo Ohana Cooperative Association council member Eva February 7–20 Rowan presented the museum with a surprise gift—a Through Feb 5 Opening reception: February 7 • 7–9pm large cedar box that Jonthan made and painted with Dropping In: Recent Work by Tom Lieber Honolulu Printmakers 88th Annual Exhibition Tlingit symbols. The museum now has a special, February 25–March 20 positive connection to a village of 800 people in STEPHAN F. F. JOST Drawing a Bead: Recent Sculpture by George Woollard Opening reception: February 24 • 5:30–8pm Director Alaska where ancient traditions and modern life Celebrate Micronesia Exhibition Dreaming of Nature: Works by Hannah Day, Nelson Flack, February 25–March 20 Chenta Laury and Carl Jennings Opening reception: February 24 • 5:30–8pm 2 EXHIBITIONS 3 Plastic Fantastic? February 3–July 10, 2016 includes an interactive Spalding House space that invites We produce more than 300 million tons of plastic a year— viewers to consider and in the U.S. alone, 33.6 million tons of it is discarded. the pros and cons of Made from chemical compounds called polymers, plastic, as well as to plastic has shaped and defined humanity, for good and bad. Invented more than 100 years ago, the use of this make art with it. lightweight, inexpensive, and durable material exploded during World War II, and today it literally covers the globe. Plastic’s durability also means that when we throw it away, it can persist in landfills and in our oceans for centuries. Plastic Fantastic? looks at the scientific advancements and uses we owe to plastic as well as its effect on global culture and the environment through art. Works from the museum collection by such artists and designers as Takashi Murakami and Charles and Ray Funding for Plastic Fantastic? has been provided by the Eames illustrate how engineering and technology Johnson Ohana Charitable made plastic an artful medium, replacing wood and Foundation, founded by ceramics. Meanwhile, work by four contemporary Jack and Kim Johnson to artists address issues that arise from the production support environmental, art, and use of plastic. Collages by Los Angeles–based and music education. artist Dianna Cohen speak to a throwaway culture This exhibition and related born out of the ubiquity and proliferation of plas- education programs are also tics. Sculptural installations by New York–based artists made possible by: Aurora Robson and Maika‘i Tubbs make references to a new plastic-driven world formed and created with the Hawaiian ......... Electric man-made material. The textile work of German artist •• Swaantje Guntzel reveals the global reach of plastic pollu- Additional support is provided by: tion through visual mapping. And a photography series by Seattle-based Chris Jordan illustrates the sober reality of rtii fHE LOUIS L. ~ BORICK what plastic pollution ultimately does to living creatures. FOUNDATION Plastic Fantastic? includes an interactive space that This project was developed in invites viewers to consider plastic and use it to make partnership with the Kōkua Hawaii art—visitors can construct assemblages of plastic debris Foundation, Surfrider Foundation– Oahu Chapter, and Sustainable fragments, which will be used to create a large public Coastlines Hawaii. ', •:.:--,.•-~· . .· \ .. ,.: --~-'- installation to be unveiled in September 2016. .., .>~ - ' . :) Left: Maika‘i Tubbs. Stepping Stones, 2015. Found plastic bags, bottles, and containers, paper plates, fliers newspaper, cardboard boxes, magazines, postcards, napkins, cigarette butts, paper towels, yarn, videocassette tapes, books, food wrappers, junk mail. EXHIBITIONS 5 ---~~ ~- ,._.•-- -. Beyond the Archive: Gallery talk Paintings by Reem Bassous with Deb Nehmad March 26 • 1:30pm • Free December 3, 2015–March 27, 2016 with museum admission Hawai‘i-based artist Reem Bassous’s new work presents her interrogation of a post-Lebanese Civil War exis- tence, where cultural erasure and assertions oscillate under prolonged political instability. As a survivor of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), Bassous unhinges the memories from her youth and explores the contemporary implications of historic unrest by situ- ating her personal experience in a national trajectory. Instead of recounting the past in archival detail, Bassous has re-conceptualized the human figure as the personification of her generation and as her home city of Beirut, in an effort to describe the shared trauma of a locale and its inhabitants. Bassous’ ghostly figures dissolve into the very material of which they are made, just as Beirut bears the scars of conflict, both ancient and recent, having been built and rebuilt over time—a history that informs the artist’s painting process. Bassous renders the ways in which political crisis is internalized through the use of thick layers of acrylic that blur the distinction between interior and exterior settings; patches of sky and architectural motifs disrupt otherwise domestic environments. This new series echoes the disillusionment caused by recurrent upheaval, and it underscores the artist’s desire to interpret history as a way of stabilizing the present. In Beyond the Archive, Bassous confronts the impact of protracted sectarian strife upon the identity Deborah Nehmad: WASTED of person and place by shifting focus away from an January 29–May 8, 2016 isolated moment in the crisis toward the effects of long-term social conflict endured over many years. At first encounter, the large work in Honolulu artist The stitched red crosses represent homicides, the —HEALOHA JOHNSTON, MA Deborah Nehmad’s installation WASTED appear to black x’s suicides and the burned holes left bare are Curator, Arts of Hawai‘i be abstract triptych tapestries. Upon closer exami- accidents or of unknown intent. Casualties by police nation, however, the patterns of holes and stitches intervention are stitched over in red and black. 11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 convey a powerful, poignant symbolism, functioning Using woodblocks that were burned during the as catalogues of tragedy. process of creating the wasted pieces, Nehmad inked This page: Facing page: Wasted gradually reveals that nothing has changed and rubbed the surface of the blocks to develop the Song of this Dawn I, 2015 Acrylic, wasted, 2010 in terms of gun violence