Oct Nov Dec 2018 from Director of Education Jill Featherstone
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OCT NOV DEC 2018 FROM DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION JILL FEATHERSTONE ENTIRELY kids Bingo A fun way for kids and adults to talk about a wide variety of art, with the feel of a game. Handouts are available at the Information Desk. Includes light-hearted museum guidelines told through puppy illustrations. Entirely Kids Labels These labels provide conversation starters and interactive prompts for kids and their accompanying adults. Baby + Me Tours Jill Featherstone’s own kids offer s Director of Education at the Babies respond to the visual stimulation her real perspective on developing Art Center, I’m delighted Director of the artwork and the unique architectural museum programming for children. A Jeff Fleming invited me to contribute environments while adults enjoy a free the opening remarks for this newsletter. drop-in tour. The message I’m sharing brings to mind Books + Blankets this passage by the celebrated children’s Free drop-in museum experiences featuring author Philip Pullman, “We say, correctly, story selections inspired by art on view. that every child has a right to food and Listening, observation, and verbal skills shelter, to education, to medical treatment, are practiced. and so on. We must understand that every child has a right to the experience of culture. Art Spectrums We must fully understand that without stories Free museum and studio experiences and poems and pictures and music, children designed for children on the autism will starve.” This belief is a driving force in spectrum. Family participation is encouraged. our work at the Art Center and as such, Reservations required. I’m very pleased to introduce you to our Entirely Kids Days new Entirely Kids initiative. Free drop-in events that activate the museum Entirely Kids encompasses child-centered as a site for creative thinking, making, and learning and family engagement at the other expressive activities. Art Center. While the Art Center has long offered formal learning opportunities such as Family Workshops and studio classes and guided tours for young My Little Artist+Me Classes students and visitors, in an effort to become Participants visit the museum and a more welcoming and relevant space for experiment with art techniques to make, families to visit in their free time, we’ve build, paint, and create together. added opportunities for informal learning Tuition varies; scholarships available. and self-directed discovery. The following list represents some of our new materials and We hope these opportunities events that appeal to the curiosity, interests, nurture wonder and inspire a visit and energy of kids. to the Art Center. 2 | OCT NOV DEC 2018 FROM LAVONNE RUS-OGILVIE DOCENT AND VOLUNTEER IMPACT IN THE SPIRIT OF LOUISE NOUN s a docent and volunteer at the insert a teen (like themselves) into the Des Moines Art Center, I would like Deanna Larson photograph, seeing it as A to thank the Art Center for staging a progression of one woman rather than the exhibition In the Spirit of Louise Noun. a mother and daughters. Due to a perfect storm of opportunities, I witnessed art created in response to I spent many hours with diverse groups of Marlene Dumas’ Light Blonde and rich young women in the exhibition. It started discussions on gender identity. Water with seeing through a feminist lens planning Woman wowed everyone, every visit. for the Feminism and Art weekend as part of A sixth-grader asked if the artist was black, the Art and Activism workshop in late June, then followed up with, “I think she wanted and continued into gallery conversations with to make something that looked like her.” the Young Women’s Resource Center teen While I wish I could summarize all the summer camp students. stories, I can say that more than 100 young Louise Noun would be proud to see how women from diverse backgrounds were her collection and other art by women is inspired and empowered in some way by being used to generate critical thinking and engaging with the art by women presented empower young women: whether it’s the in this exhibition. young woman who reflected on the Cindy Thank you again for your thoughtful Sherman Untitled in the portrait grouping curatorial decisions, and living the saying, “She looks like how I feel most of Art Center’s mission of inclusion. the time,” to middle schoolers wanting to Teens from the Young Women’s Resource Center dialogue with docent Lavonne Rus-Ogilvie about Cecily Brown’s Half-Bind. DESMOINESARTCENTER.ORG | 3 THROUGH JANUARY 6, 2019 / ANNA K. MEREDITH GALLERY CO-ORGANIZED BY FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE DRAWING CENTER BRETT LITTMAN AND DIRECTOR JEFF FLEMING NEO RAUCH Aus dem boden / From the Floor FILM This exhibition is the first museum project deeper experience, or perhaps, for answers. Neo Rauch: in the United States to focus solely on the But in Rauch’s drawings, like in all good Comrades and Companions German artist Neo Rauch’s drawings. It is mystery stories, the answers don’t give Sunday, November 4 1:30 pm a collaborative project with The Drawing themselves up easily, if at all. Nicola Graef, director Center in New York, where the show will These intimate images provide a limited German with English subtitles travel after its presentation in Des Moines. glimpse into the mind of an artist who does 105 minutes / not rated This comprehensive survey of not often allow such access, and give us Levitt Auditorium approximately 180 drawings showcases an encounter with Rauch’s working figures that inhabit artificial and melancholy processes that his more polished works dreamscapes where things appear to be in often deny. limbo or illogical actions are in play. Rauch’s An illustrated catalogue, produced by The imagery points to mysteries and lost Drawing Center, accompanies the exhibition. narratives that lure the viewer in for a This print was created by Neo Rauch to be sold to support the exhibition. A limited edition of the signed prints can be purchased in the Museum Shop. Film still from Neo Rauch: Comrades and Companions TANDEM GALLERY DIALOGUE with Jeff Fleming, Director and Dr. Peter Daniolos, Training Director, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of Iowa “Exploring Dreams” Sunday, November 11 1:30 pm Anna K. Meredith Gallery Neo Rauch (German, born 1960) Zuflucht, 2018 Lithograph, edition 40 4 x 4 3/4 inches Courtesy the artist, Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin and David Zwirner © Neo Rauch, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 4 | OCT NOV DEC 2018 Neo Rauch (German, born 1960) Der Stammbaum, 2017 Oil on paper 66 1/4 x 81 3/8 inches Courtesy the artist, Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin and David Zwirner © Neo Rauch, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York DESMOINESARTCENTER.ORG | 5 IOWA ARTIST 2018 JEN BERVIN Jen Bervin with mirrored reflection of River detail ARTIST LECTURE + The Des Moines Art Center is pleased PUBLIC RECEPTION: to premiere River by the artist and poet JEN BERVIN Thursday, October 18 Jen Bervin. River maps the Mississippi 7 pm from the headwaters in Lake Itasca, Levitt Auditorium + lobby Minnesota to its delta south of New Orleans, Join Jen Bervin for a lecture Louisiana. Over the course of about her artistic practice and 12 years, the artist sewed the 230-feet- celebrate the opening of her long curvilinear sculpture by hand exhibition with complimentary including each of the thousands of beverages and hors d’oeuvres. reflective, silver sequins that densely cover * Reservations required the surface. She calculates that it took the same amount of time to sew each section of the river as it would take to walk the real one — the scale is one inch to one mile. River is presented from a geocentric perspective as if the viewer was inside the earth’s interior looking up at the river. Bervin was born and raised OPPOSITE in Dubuque, Iowa and currently River, 2018 Silver foil-stamped cloth sequins, resides in Connecticut. Her poetic, metallic silver thread, silver multidisciplinary, conceptually-driven mulberry paper, mull, Tyvek 230 curvilinear feet work results from intensive research Installation dimensions and collaboration with artists and approximately 100 x 20 feet specialists ranging from material Courtesy of the artist scientists to literary scholars. 6 | OCT NOV DEC 2018 OCTOBER 19, 2018 – JANUARY 27, 2019 I. M. PEI BUILDING / COWLES SCULPTURE COURT ORGANIZED BY DIRECTOR OF CURATORIAL AFFAIRS / SENIOR CURATOR ALISON FERRIS IOWA ARTIST 2018 JEN BERVIN DESMOINESARTCENTER.ORG | 7 New Accessions Sterling Ruby Eleanor Antin Purchased with funds from the Coffin Fine The Art Center also purchased two works by Arts Trust, Sterling Ruby’s Basin Theology/ Eleanor Antin and Sherrie Levine with funds Butterfly Wreck, 2013, is a prime example from the Des Moines Art Center Print Club of the artist’s work in clay. The sculpture and the Edmundson Art Foundation. Antin’s exemplifies his exuberant response to materials MAKING IT!, 1971–72, consists of five and his sense of play that resonates throughout photo-postcards and comes from her iconic his practice in the medium. Ruby responds series “100 Boots.” In this series, Antin to the properties of clay and glaze and the photographed the adventures of 100 black accidents inherent in their use, often exposing boots traveling from the West Coast to and exploiting these very mishaps in the final New York and reproduced them in postcards artwork. His clay sculptures are found in she sent to friends. This particular grouping many museum collections worldwide and are of postcards shows the boots’ arrival in exhibited widely, including the 2014 Whitney New York, including their visit to the Museum Biennial, where this work was first shown.