The North Carolina Arts Council launched Museums in a Minute today to spotlight visual arts institutions throughout the state and their dynamic schedule of exhibitions this fall, including El Greco to Velázquez at the Nasher Museum of Art and Andy Warhol Portfolios at the Mint Museum.
The Web based promotion includes a one-minute video tour of a museum’s permanent collection with the museum’s director or curator serving as narrator, a short profile of the museum, and exhibitions scheduled this fall. The information is available at the Arts Council Web site, www.ncarts.org or www.ncarts.org/museumsminute.
“Museums in a Minute not only gives our citizens and visitors a taste of our state’s finest visual arts collections, but serves as a reminder about the importance of giving arts a prominent place in everyday life,” said Arts Tourism Manager David Potorti. “We encourage you to visit and experience these museums in person,” said Potorti, who conceived the program. He works to bring to life the rich stories of North Carolina’s art and culture.
The North Carolina Museum of Art will kick off Museums in a Minute with Museum Director Larry Wheeler narrating the video, which was released today.
A new video will be released each Tuesday during the month of September. The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham will be featured Sept. 9, followed by the Mint Museum in Charlotte on Sept. 16, the Asheville Museum of Art on Sept. 23, and the Gregg Museum of Art on Sept. 30. By the end of the year, the Arts Council will have video vignettes of more than 10 art museums across the state.
In addition to the video, each museum is profiled and a list of current exhibitions is featured. Autumn typically brings the opening of special shows that run through the holiday season—a popular time for friends and families to visit their local art museum.
The Nasher Museum of Art is hosting El Greco to Velázquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III through Nov. 9. The exhibition features 53 paintings, including seven late works by El Greco, three early works by Velázquez and works by their contemporaries. One of the most important old master exhibitions ever presented in the Southeast, El Greco to Velázquez features monumental altar pieces, life-size portraits, some of the earliest still-life paintings in Europe, and more than 50 pieces of Spanish glass and ceramics. Many works are traveling to this country for the first time. For more information visit www.nasher.duke.edu. (UNC TV will air a documentary on the exhibition on Sept. 16.)
In Charlotte, the Mint Museum is hosting Andy Warhol Portfolios: Life & Legends Oct. 4, 2008–Feb. 15, 2009. Warhol became the central figure in the Pop Art Movement that emerged in the United States in the 1950s and was to become one of the major art movements of the 20th century with its themes and techniques drawn from popular culture. The exhibition will feature approximately 60 selections from various Warhol portfolios from the Bank of America collection, including Endangered Species Portfolio, the Flowers Portfolio, the Myths Portfolio, the Muhammad Ali Portfolio, and the Space Fruits Portfolio. Each portfolio comprises up to ten color screenprints. For more information visit www.themintmuseums.org.
N.C. First Art Museums
The Mint Museum in Charlotte became North Carolina’s first permanent art museum in 1936, followed in 1947 by the state’s unprecedented $1 million appropriation for a public art collection for the North Carolina Museum of Art. In 1956, the museum was established in downtown Raleigh and moved to its current facility in 1983, which is now undergoing an expansion.
According to Jeff Pettus, Visual Arts Director for the N.C. Arts Council, most of the state art museums were established after World War II, making North Carolina a relative latecomer to collecting. Still, personal collections of individuals resulted in notable collections at the Ackland Museum of Art (UNC-Chapel Hill), Reynolda House (Winston-Salem), and the Weatherspoon (UNC-Greensboro).
“The maturing of North Carolina museums makes us an enviable destination for museum-goers,” Pettus said. “Exhibitions are drawing visitors from other states and the significant new facilities that have opened in the last decade offer opportunities for diversifying collections, as well as expanded programming.”
While primarily located in North Carolina’s largest cities, art museums, including those affiliated with universities and colleges are accessible across the state.
To interview Visual Arts Director Jeff Pettus, Arts Tourism Manager David Potorti or for more information about Museums in a Minute contact Rebecca Moore at (919) 807-6530 or rebecca.moore@ncmail.net.
Museums in a Minute is available from the home page, www.ncarts.org or by visiting www.ncarts.org/museumsminute.
Art Museums across N.C. Feature Fall Exhibitions from Contemporary to Classical
Across North Carolina an exciting line-up of exhibitions is slated at various art museums this fall from El Greco to Velázquez at the Nasher Museum of Art to Andy Warhol Portfolios at the Mint Museum and everything else in between.
Below is a sampling of exhibitions by museum in alphabetical order. For a more complete list visit www.ncarts.org and click on Museums in a Minute or visit the individual museum’s Web site.
Ackland Art Museum
Columbia Street, just south of Franklin
Chapel Hill
(919) 966-5736
www.ackland.org
Circa 1958: Breaking Ground in American Art
September 21, 2008—January 4, 2009
Circa 1958: Breaking Ground in American Art will be the largest and one of the most significant exhibitions the Ackland Art Museum has ever mounted. The first major exhibition to examine the importance of the year 1958 as a critical tipping point in the evolution of American art, Circa 1958 explores in depth the moment American artists first departed from Abstract Expressionism to explore new trends that helped define the last half of the 20th century in more than 55 works.
Pleasant Journeys and Good Eats Along the Way: A Retrospective of Paintings by John Baeder
Through October 26, 2008
This exhibition surveys John Baeder’s 35-year obsession with roadside architecture, especially America’s diners. Originally attracted to classic postcard images of Mom and Pop restaurants, Baeder spent most of his career depicting these unpretentious restaurants. He sees these paintings as pleas for preservation as diners are part of the American landscape that fit into an urban context like modern folk heroes.
Asheville Art Museum
2 South Pack Square
Asheville
(828) 253-3227
www.ashevilleart.org
Expectant Gaze—Art from the Eye and Mind
Through 2008
The Asheville Art Museum regularly invites distinguished colleagues to curate special exhibitions of the permanent collection. This fall Roger Manley, a North Carolina-based filmmaker, curator and author joined with the museum to curate the latest installation in this series. Manley’s exhibition Expectant Gaze—Art from the Eye and Mind presents works from the permanent collection that probe art’s two oldest and most essential functions: rendering the visual world and envisioning new possibilities for experiencing it.
Life’s Rich Pageant: A Centennial Celebration of The Eight
September 12, 2008—January 4, 2009
In 1908, the Macbeth Gallery in New York hosted an exhibition of eight young artists whose work was excluded from a juried event of the Society of American Artists and the National Academy of Design because it differed so radically from the academic thought. The show at Macbeth was one of the most important events in the development of 20th century art, proving that a group of artists with strongly anti-academic sensibilities could attract wide public notice and financial success. These artists became known as The Eight: Robert Henri (1865-1929), George Luks (1867-1933), William Glackens (1870-1938), John Sloan (1871-1951), Everett Shinn (1876-1953), Maurice Prendergast (1859-1924), Ernest Lawson (1873-1939) and Arthur Bowen Davies (1862-1928).
Ashcans, Trains and Factories: Students and Followers of The Eight
September 19, 2008—January 11, 2009
This exhibition features the work of artists influenced by The Eight’s emphasis on scenes of contemporary urban life. The exhibition will include works by Robert Brackman, Alexander Kruse, Reginald Marsh, Elizabeth Olds, Walter Pack, Raphael Soyer, Eugene Thomason and others. These works will be drawn from the collection of the Asheville Art Museum.
Cameron Art Museum
3201 S. 17th Street
Wilmington
(910) 395-5999
www.cameronartmuseum.com
ROBERT DELFORD BROWN: Meat, Maps and Militant Metaphysics
Through September 28, 2008
This is Brown’s first museum exhibition following an active career of 50 years. Brown has remained in the vanguard of art since his arrival in New York in 1959, participating in Performance Art, Fluxus, Pop Art, Happenings and Correspondence art movements while formulating his own, unique creative vision. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition, designed and authored by New York artist-writer Mark Bloch who served as the exhibition’s guest curator.
Art & Social Conscience: HOLOCAUST
Through October 19, 2008
This exhibition, the first in the museum’s “Art and Social Conscience” series, features works by art faculty members from 11 of the 16 branches of the University of North Carolina system. Artists were asked to address the Holocaust and its larger context of mankind’s inhumanity to man, and many responded with new work created for the exhibition.
Bob Trotman’s Business as Usual
Through October 12, 2008
Business as Usual is an installation of ten carved and painted wooden sculptures by North Carolina sculptor Bob Trotman. The sculptures, which represent men and women in corporate business attire, are divided into three subsections: Committee, Chorus, and Cover Up. The works are dramatically lit and presented as a tableau in one of the museum’s galleries. They will no doubt elicit widely varying interpretations from viewers.
Toy Crazy
October 15, 2008—February 1, 2009
A wildly diverse and irreverent selection of toys and games, from vintage mechanicals, Star Wars, GI Joe and Transformers to contemporary Japanese vinyl and plush toys—this exhibition is a reminder that there should always be time to play!
Gregg Museum of Art and Design
Talley Student Center, North Carolina State University
Cates Avenue
Raleigh
(919) 515-3503
http://gad.ncsu.edu
Frozen Music: Frank Gehry and the Walt Disney Concert Hall
Through December 17, 2008
This exhibition spotlights Gehry’s most recent visible accomplishment, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Frozen Music tells the story of the building’s design process, construction and completed form. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a series of more than 70 images by photographer Gil Garcetti, who was fascinated by the choreography of workers assembling the concert hall’s complex steel frame. He photographed the workers assembling the hall and then returned after the building’s completion to record a fabulous series of panoramic photos.
Charles Ritchie – Sketchbooks
Through October 8, 2008
The drawings, prints, and sketchbooks of Charles Ritchie find inspiration in the artist’s suburban home. Small in size and created in series, the drawings employ watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink. The prints are based on the artist’s drawings and engage the techniques and materials of printmaking to reinvent the image. The artist’s sketchbooks have been kept continuously since 1977 and chart his creative process.
Hickory Museum of Art
243 3rd Avenue NE
Hickory
(828) 327-8576
www.hickorymuseumofart.org
Doug Marlette: His Art & His Words
Through September 14, 2008
The works of nationally-acclaimed editorial cartoonist, author, and North Carolina native Doug Marlette will be featured in this exhibition that emphasizes Marlette’s connections to the South and to his novel The Bridge, this year’s book selection for Catawba County’s The Big Read. The exhibition is designed as a whimsical environment to display his books on comics and cartoons, novels, editorial cartoons and Kudzu comic strip. The show will also feature a video interview of Marlette from Mississippi PBS television and music by The Red Clay Ramblers, co-creators of Kudzu: A Southern Musical.
Born of Fire: Glass from the Museum’s Luski Collection
Through July 5, 2009
An exhibition of glass works given to the Museum by Sonia and Isaac Luski, and Rose and Abraham Luski. Several styles of glass blowing are demonstrated and the show includes artists from the prestigious Penland School of Crafts nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
The Mint Museums
2730 Randolph Road (Art)
220 N. Tryon Street (Craft + Design)
Charlotte
(704) 337-2000
www.themintmuseums.org
Coming Home: Selections from the Schoen Collection of American Scene Paintings
Through September 14, 2008 at The Mint Museum of Art
Features approximately 25 paintings from the collection of Jason Schoen, which have been carefully selected to complement The Mint Museum’s exhibition Quiet Spirit, Skillful Hand: The Graphic Work of Clare Leighton. Schoen’s outstanding holdings of American Scene paintings trace the social, economic, and political changes that occurred across this country between World Wars I and II—roughly the same era in which Leighton was creating her compelling works on paper.
Scene in America: A Contemporary Look at the Black Male Image
Through November 2, 2008 at The Mint Museum of Art
Scene in America: A Contemporary Look at the Black Male Image explores the multiple ways in which artists of various races and genders address issues of race and identity when using images of Black males in their work. Comprised of 27 paintings, photographs, works on paper and sculptures, this exhibition includes works from The Mint Museum’s collection, the Van Every/Smith Gallery Collection of Davidson College, and private collectors and artists.
Jaguar: Power in the Ancient Americas
Through December 14, 2008 at The Mint Museum of Art
The powerful jaguar came to symbolize royal authority from ancient Mexico to Peru. The jaguar’s rare capacity to navigate different environments, from trees to forest floor to rivers and caves, provided a natural model for the shaman’s ability to traverse the human and supernatural realms. This exhibit features the remarkable diversity of jaguar representations in clay, stone, precious metals and the fiber arts throughout the ancient Americas, exploring the extraordinary artistic and ideological variations unique to each culture.
Andy Warhol Portfolios: Life & Legends
October 4, 2008—February 15, 2009 at The Mint Museum of Art
Andy Warhol became the central figure in the Pop Art Movement that emerged in the United States in the 1950s and enjoyed increased popularity in the 1960s. Pop Art was to become one of the major art movements of the 20th century with its themes and techniques drawn from popular culture. The exhibition will feature approximately 60 selections from various Warhol portfolios from the Bank of America Collection. Among the portfolios considered are the Endangered Species Portfolio, the Flowers Portfolio, the Myths Portfolio, the Muhammad Ali Portfolio, and the Space Fruits Portfolio. Each portfolio comprises up to ten color screenprints.
Possibilities: Rising Stars of Contemporary Craft in North Carolina
Through November 30, 2008 at The Mint Museum of Craft + Design
Possibilities: Rising Stars of Contemporary Craft in North Carolina presents new work by six North Carolina craft artists, working in a range of media. Artists include Vivian Beer, Devin Burgess, Cristina Córdova, Anne Lemanski, Brent Skidmore and Jerilyn Virden. Selected for both the quality of their present work and potential impact to the field, these artists are representative of the vitality, diversity and complexity of work presented by a new generation of North Carolina artists. Both visually and conceptually, their work illustrates the rich future of craft in this region.
Ornament As Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection
Through January 4, 2009 at The Mint Museum of Craft + Design
Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection fully explores the impact of contemporary jewelry as a global art form. The goal of the exhibition is to broaden the understanding of contemporary jewelry through a multilayered, critical assessment of the history, issues, and most importantly, the jewelry itself. Placed in context with seminal movements in the non-craft art world, the exhibition encourages the appreciation of contemporary jewelry beyond its traditional boundaries without ignoring its roots. Approximately 300 objects, including about 275 pieces of jewelry, 20 drawings and watercolors, and 3 constructions and sculptures are included in the exhibition.
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University
2001 Campus Drive
Durham
(919) 684-5135
www.nasher.duke.edu
El Greco to Velázquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III
Through November 9, 2008
The exhibition features 53 paintings, including seven late works by El Greco, three early works by Velázquez, and works by their contemporaries. One of the most important old master exhibitions ever presented in the Southeast, El Greco to Velázquez features monumental altar pieces, life-size portraits, some of the earliest still-life paintings in Europe, full-length carved and painted wooden sculptures of Spanish mystics, and more than 50 pieces of Spanish glass and ceramics. Many works are traveling to this country for the first time, some from the churches for which they were originally commissioned.
Black Mirror/Espejo Negro: A Museum Installation by Pedro Lasch
Through January 18, 2009
This large-scale installation by artist Pedro Lasch incorporates his sculpture with more than a dozen works from the Nasher Museum’s permanent collection. The museum commissioned the work to accompany El Greco to Velázquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III and also in anticipation of the upcoming exhibition Escultura Social: A New Generation of Art from Mexico City in spring of 2009. With Black Mirror/Espejo Negro Lasch brings his own poetic and aesthetic reflections to the museum’s pre-Columbian collection, one of the most important of its kind in the world. Lasch teaches art and art theory in Duke’s Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies. He was born and raised in Mexico City and has been based in New York and North Carolina since 1994. (Lasch is on the N.C. Arts Council Board.)
North Carolina Central University Art Museum
Fine Arts Building
1801 Fayetteville Road
Durham
(919) 530-6211
web.nccu.edu/artmuseum/
Charles Ethan Porter: African American Master of Still Life
Through November 2, 2008
This exhibition is the first major retrospective ever to be devoted to the work of Charles Ethan Porter in the United States. Charles Ethan Porter: African American Master of Still Life will bring together more than 50 of the 19th century African American master’s finest and most representative still life oil paintings, including dozens that have never before been on view in the South. Also included in the exhibition will be several landscapes, insect studies, and a number of figure studies in watercolor and pencil. Respected by Frederic Church and supported and endorsed by Mark Twain, Porter was the first African American artist to study at the National Academy of Design, matriculating there in 1869.
African American Modernists Series: Eric McRay
November 9, 2008—December 19, 2008
Please visit museum’s Web site for exhibition details.
North Carolina Museum of Art
2110 Blue Ridge Road
Raleigh
(919) 839-6262
www.ncartmuseum.org
Julie Mehretu: City Sitings
Through November 30, 2008
Julie Mehretu: City Sitings brings together nine monumental paintings by this renowned contemporary artist. Inspired by cities, Mehretu employs a dynamic visual vocabulary in her intricately layered canvases combining maps, logos, urban grids, and architectural renderings. Mehretu’s paintings explore timely issues of migration, globalization, conflict, and social action using the urban landscape as the setting. Her multifaceted canvases engage viewers in a new vision of their own urban landscape. Don’t miss this internationally celebrated artist’s first exhibition in the Southeast.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art
2250 Reynolda Road
Winston-Salem
www.reynoldahouse.org
Seeing the City: Sloan’s New York
October 4, 2008—January 4, 2009
More than any other artist of the so-called Ashcan School, John Sloan set out to celebrate the lives of ordinary Americans. He created a “pedestrian aesthetic” that, far from glamorizing the emerging vertical vistas of skyscrapers, focused instead on people, street life, elevated trains, and the pedestrian experience. Sloan moved to New York City in 1904, and he remained anchored there—painting, serving as art editor for The Masses, and teaching at the Art Students’ League—for the rest of his life. By including paintings, drawings, prints, and photographs, the exhibition presents a nuanced view of the artist’s years in the city and the city’s effect on his art. Seeing the City will be the first major traveling exhibition to focus on Sloan’s images of New York and the first since the 1970s to present significant new scholarship on the artist.
Weatherspoon Art Museum
UNC - Greensboro
Spring Garden and Tate Streets
Greensboro
http://weatherspoon.uncg.edu
TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art
Through September 28, 2008
TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art is the most extensive and significant exhibition of this material ever presented in North Carolina. It is also the first to look closely at the connections between Latinos working in the United States and artists from Latin America. The exhibition features the work of more than forty highly acclaimed artists working over the last two decades; they hail from the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Guatemala, and Cuba. Their artwork, like the term “Latin American,” is far from homogenous: It moves across and beyond borders that are geographical, social, cultural, and aesthetic.
Peter Takal Drawings
Through October 19, 2008
Peter Takal (1905-1995) was born in Romania, educated in Berlin in the 1920s, lived and worked in Paris in the 1930s and became a U.S. citizen in 1944. He is internationally known as a printmaker and a prolific draftsman. His subjects range from Parisian street scenes to linear fantasies of plant life and landscapes with surrealist overtones that evolved after he acquired a farm in eastern Pennsylvania in 1945. Peter Takal Drawings is comprised of works on paper from both the Weatherspoon’s permanent collection and that of the Arkansas Arts Center, which is the home of over 2,000 pieces by the artist.
40th Anniversary Art on Paper 2008
October 19, 200—January 25, 2009
Art on Paper 2008 represents the 40th anniversary of this exhibition that surveys the state of contemporary drawing and other works on, or of, paper. It will showcase unique works by both emerging and established artists. Since 1965, the generous support of xpedx (formerly Dillard Paper Company) has allowed the Weatherspoon to purchase a number of works from each year’s exhibition. Today, the nationally recognized Dillard Collection numbers nearly 550 works by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Stella, Eva Hesse, Robert Smithson, Brice Marden, Roni Horn and Matthew Ritchie.
Jeff Whetstone: Post Pleistocene
November 2, 2008—February 22, 2009
North Carolina-based photographer Jeff Whetstone’s newest body of work, Post-Pleistocene, examines the history of man-made markings found within the depths of the Saltpetre caves of Tennessee and Alabama. From the vegetation surrounding the interior openings to the corridors and hidden rooms of these natural shelters, Whetstone’s large-format color photographs envelop us in the strange and foreboding darkness of spaces where all manner of people have taken refuge from the outside world.
For a more complete list of exhibitions visit www.ncarts.org and click on Museums in a Minute or visit the individual museum’s Web site. Media inquiries can be directed to
Rebecca Moore at (919) 807-6530 or rebecca.moore@ncmail.net.
Museums in a Minute is available by visiting www.ncarts.org/museumsminute.
The mission of the North Carolina Arts Council is to make North Carolina a better state through the arts. The Arts Council is a division of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, www.ncculture.com, and celebrates those who create and enjoy art in all 100 counties.