GMOA in the News

Art Daily is featuring Art on Wheels today. For more information on Art on Wheels, click here.

The museum is also mentioned in Plan Your Meetings, in an article about the benefits of booking meetings on university campuses. Scroll down to the section on UGA.

Take One Picture

The Tate Gallery, in England, has just posted the latest results from its Take One Picture program, an educational effort that involves cross-curricular work in primary schools based on a specific work of art from the Tate's collection. The website contains a gallery of previous pictures and students' interpretations of them, including the most recently completed project, on J.M.W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire. We think it's a neat and successful program!

50 States Project

We can't remember exactly where we found out about the 50 States Project, but it's a neat idea. Stuart Pilkington has selected one photographer from each state and assigned them a theme about every two months on which to submit one image. The first assignment was "People," and the next, the results of which haven't yet been posted, is "Habitat." The other six have not yet been announced. Georgia's photographer is Maury Gortemiller, who is also a competitive apneist and was in the most recent MFA class to graduate from the Lamar Dodd School of Art. That's his submission for "People" above. We should be both happy and proud that out of all the photographers in the state, the one selected is a part of this university.

Mark your calendars

Dr. Robert Nix taught for many years at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, instructing students in photography and pursuing it on his own time as well. The University of Georgia Libraries and the art school will have a program and reception tomorrow (Friday, May 1, at 2 p.m., in the Hargrett, on the 3rd floor of the Main Library) recognizing Nix's life’s work as the Library celebrates the donation of his outstanding collection. This program is in conjunction with an exhibit in the Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library featuring a selection of Nix’s favorite pieces.



Also, local artist Chatham Murray, who will be having an open house Saturday, May 2, from 11 a.m. to dark, is the subject of an Athens Banner-Herald article today.



We haven't really talked much about the Crafting Romance exhibition at ATHICA, which is co-curated by one of our former interns, Rebecca Brantley, who worked with ex-curator of decorative arts Ashley Callahan in the CURO (Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities) program, but the exhibition is interesting stuff and has a number of associated events, including "Showing the Seams," from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. tonight (April 30). "Showing the Seams" consists of three new performance art pieces: "Stitches," in which artists Brian Hitselberger and Jessi Wohl will be sewn into bed together for the evening; "Imaginatively Conceived," by Andrea Trombetta, which will focus on garment construction; and "Loveseat," by Kate Schoenke, which will feature modern dance. Admission is a suggested donation of $3.



This weekend, May 2 and 3, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., is the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation's artist's market as part of Southworks.

And don't forget about the Indie Craftstravaganzaa in downtown Athens, also this weekend. Whew.

Mama Had One of Those

Recently, former director of the Georgia Museum of Art Bill Paul had the staff of the museum out in two groups to his studio in Athens, a contemporary barn with a very Zen feel, to tour us around his pottery collection, which now numbers more than 1,300 pieces. Paul's focus is not so much on the kind of fine-art pottery that most collectors purchase and more on art/industrial pottery, that area that's neither completely mass-produced nor completely unique, and he often has multiples of the same object that demonstrate their slight variations. Hence the title of the exhibition of these objects at the Lyndon House Arts Center, where you can see them through May 30 in the lobby display case: Mama Had One of Those.

Paul will speak at the Lyndon House on Sunday, May 17, from 2 to 4 p.m., and is hosting a "pottery yard sale" at his place (4900 Barnett Shoals Rd., Athens, GA--be warned that 4900 actually comes after numbers it should precede) on this Saturday, May 2, from 9 a.m. to noon.

One thing Paul kept coming back to that caught our interest is the delight in arranging, and the photo slideshow above captures that to some extent. Arrangement of objects can be an art in itself, even a fine art, as artist Fred Wilson's career demonstrates, and Paul's arrangements don't just consist of pottery. You may see a spraypainted high-heeled shoe half-hidden or a stack of paintings or a tangle of wire, all alongside three vases ostensibly glazed the same shade of purple but that show how different that color can be. To large extent, it's an art form that one has to experience in person, but we hope you enjoy the selection of images and that they help convey the space and the arrangements therein.

Where's GMOA on the Move?

Guess where the sign is in the comments below and win a prize! (If you'd like to see previous images and the answers, click on the tag "Where's GMOA on the Move" underneath this post.)

Passport to Paris

Passport to Paris: 19th-Century French Prints from the Georgia Museum of Art, one of our most popular traveling exhibitions, will open at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art tomorrow, April 30, and run through June 7 of this year.

Featuring 46 works from the Georgia Museum of Art's collection, Passport to Paris highlights a variety of printmaking techniques used by well-known artists of the 19th century. Particularly in France, these artists experimented with etching, lithography and woodcut and adopted a range of themes and styles in portraying modern life. After the French Revolution, artists began to depict a greater variety of subjects, such as landscapes, portraits and satires of everyday life. Artists included in the exhibition are Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Eugene Delacroix (pictured above), Odilon Redon, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, Honoré Daumier, Jean-Louis-André-Théodore Géricault and Edouard Manet.

We know it's far afield, but this exhibition is an exciting extension of the range of GMOA on the Move, and if you happen to be in the area, please stop by. Passport to Paris will move from the Oklahoma City Museum of Art to the Pensacola Museum of Art, in Pensacola, Fla., from July 12 to September 12, 2009.

Update: The Oklahoman's website has a review up.

And another article, from OKGazette.com.

Art Daily has covered the exhibition now.

AAM Conference

Several of our staff members left today or yesterday to attend the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting in Philadelphia, one of the most important of professional conferences to the field. This year's annual meeting has a blog and some other associated social media, and its theme is "The Museum Experiment," explained at this link. Keynote speakers are Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, and Malcolm Gladwell, author of several New York Times nonfiction bestsellers, including "Blink" and "The Tipping Point." We're excited to hear what our staff members bring back, as well as what they contribute through their attendance.

Webinar

What in the heck is this Twitter thing anyway? Well, if you'd like to learn more, Patron Technology is hosting a free Webinar on Thursday, May 7, from 1 to 1:30 p.m. EST

This introductory session (for novices only!) will walk you through the basics of setting up your own Twitter account. We'll explain some of the strange sounding lingo (tweets, re-tweets and hash tags, etc) that might be holding you back. Learn some basic tips and techniques that the best of Twitter use, so you can start using it like a pro! We'll also show you how can use Twitter to help your organization without signing up for an account!

What to Expect...

What cars will be at Art on Wheels? Tim Brown, director of membership for the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art, just passed on the following list that should give you some good idea of the expressions of automotive design that will be there:

1956 Lincoln Continental Mark II
1957 Mercedes Benz 300sl Roadster
1954 Mercury Monterey Woodie Wagon
1960 Mercedez Benz 300d
1948 Lincoln Continental Cabriolet
1964 Lincoln Continental Convertible
1960 Thunderbird Convertible
1963 Buick Riviera Coupe
1957 Oldsmobile Super 98
1962 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud Limousine (one of only six ever made)
1974 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow
1967 Mercedes Benz 250se Cabriolet
1950 Ford Convertible
1960 Imperial Crown Sedan
1965 Corvette Roadster

We hope to see you as well. It should be an exciting and different event for us.

Mark your calendars

This Saturday and Sunday (May 2 and 3), from 1 to 6 p.m., Lamar Wood's Brick House Studio, out Highway 78 in Crawford, Ga., is having its Spring 2009 opening reception/exhibition. Artists Tim Adams, Andy Cherewick, Doug Makemson, Michael Pierce, and Wood will display new work, with an artists' reception Sunday from 4 to 7 p.m.


Artist and faculty member Jamie Calkin has been helping UGA's College of Education recognize its centennial year with an exhibition of his original watercolor paintings. The exhibition has featured a rotation of new paintings of Aderhold Hall, UGA’s campus and downtown Athens and runs through Sunday, August 30, in room 232 of Aderhold Hall.

This Thursday, April 30, Chung-Fan Chang, the Georgia Society of Contemporary Painters Visiting Graduate Artist, will speak at 6 p.m. in room S365 of the Lamar Dodd School of Art. According to the press release, "Chang creates large-scale, mixed-media drawings that convey motion, space and energy," but we can't find a website anywhere. At any rate, it should be interesting.



And Friday, May 1, from 7 to 8 p.m., is the closing reception for the exhibition by 11 advanced photography students that is currently running on the second floor of the Dodd.

An update

Due to the horrifying events that took place there this weekend, the Georgia Museum of Art's event at Athens Community Theater with Town & Gown Players, The Art of: Scenic Design, may be postponed or canceled. We are leaving the decision entirely up to Town & Gown, and we completely understand if it is too soon. Again, our thoughts are with all of them and with the entire community that has been affected.

CL80

Yesterday, the museum and the State Botanical Garden of Georgia threw a surprise birthday party for C.L. Morehead Jr., a man who has been so good to both of our institutions for many years. Tons of C.L.'s friends and family were on hand to yell "surprise!" and sing "Happy Birthday." A photo gallery is below:

New Daura Curator

The Georgia Museum of Art is pleased to announce the hiring of Lynn Edward Boland as Pierre Daura Curator of European Art. A formal press release will, of course, be distributed shortly. Boland specializes in 19th- and 20th-century European art, with a secondary focus in American contemporary art, and wrote his dissertation on the connections between modern European art and modern European music, specifically in the area of dissonance, the topic on which he lectured at the museum earlier this year, when he discussed the similarities between Arnold Schoenberg's atonal compositions and Wassily Kandinsky's abstract paintings.

Boland will receive his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in May (he defended in March) and start at the museum May 11. Boland received his MA from Texas as well, in art history, and his AB from the University of Georgia in the same subject. While an undergraduate in Athens, he interned at the museum in numerous departments, from membership to development, with work in prints and drawings as well.

Established at the Georgia Museum of Art in 2002 with a gift from Martha Randolph Daura in honor of her father, the Pierre Daura Center contains a collection of paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures by the Catalan-American artist Pierre Daura (1896-1976), who co-founded the important artists' group Cercle et Carré. The gift included the artist's archives, with important material relevant to modern art from the 1920s through the 1960s, and an endowment to support both the center and a Pierre Daura Curator of European Art. This gift facilitates and broadens the presentation and study of European art at the museum.

The Pierre Daura Center initiates and promotes the exhibition and study of the works of Pierre Daura and the contextualization of his oeuvre and career. The Pierre Daura Curator of European Art directs the Center as well as the museum's programming in European art: research, exhibitions, publications, and acquisitions. Primary among the curator's responsibilities is the study of the life and work of Pierre Daura. We look forward with great anticipation and enthusiasm to Boland's arrival here, upon which he will begin work on a major exhibition focusing on Cercle et Carré, tentatively scheduled for Fall 2011 once the museum reopens.

Art Film

Thanks to the New York Times, we learned about Make, a documentary about four artists with varying degrees of mental or physical disabilities: Judith Scott, Hawkins Bolden, Royal Robertson (one of whose works appeared in our exhibition Amazing Grace: Self-Taught Artists from the Mullis Collection) and Ike Morgan. Currently, the film is screening at Ricco/Maresca Gallery in New York, but you can watch the trailer at its official website and scroll through a photo gallery. The thing about artists like this is that, perhaps due to their lack of self-promotion, it's all too easy to discover them only after their deaths, when important stories can no longer be accurately documented. The film appears to be the kind of useful primary research that will serve us in good stead.

Sadness

The entire staff of the Georgia Museum of Art sends its heartfelt wishes of condolences and strength to Athens Community Theater and the Town & Gown Players. This is a tragedy, and our thoughts are with you.

In the News

The New York Times covers the opening of Roxy Paine's huge sculpture Maelstrom at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's rooftop garden, complete with an audio slideshow of its installation in which Paine discusses the work. To see more of Paine's works, which have an undeniable power, click here.

The paper also considers, in the course of reviewing the new exhibition Compass in Hand: Selections From the Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, the curatorial difficulties that can be associated with a huge gift, welcome as it might be in many ways. (There's also a slideshow of the drawings, which include a Lee Bontecou.)

And it has a favorable impression of The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984, which just opened at the Met and has been receiving a lot of other good press. (Slideshow here.) The Met itself has a useful essay on its website about how, exactly, to define the generation addressed in the exhibition.

The Morris Museum of Art, in Augusta, Ga., will open Southern Eccentric: Paintings by Larry Connatser on May 2. The New Georgia Encyclopedia has a good entry on Connatser, a prolific self-taught Georgia artist who painted murals in several cities within the state.

Art Daily also has an article on Bank of America's Museums on Us program, which enables BOA customers to receive free admission to numerous museums (listed at the end of the article) one weekend a month. (Note that being a member of the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art provides one with similar advantages.) GMOA is not part of the program for the simple reason that we already have free admission.

Finally, today and tomorrow (April 24 and 25) is the Second Annual Virtual Worlds: Libraries, Education and Museums Conference in Second Life. We're sorry about the late notice, but we're sure you can still get in if you'd like to.

Art around Athens

Mark your calendars, people. The next few weeks are busy busy with tons of art events, not least because of the Lamar Dodd School of Art's rotating exit shows.

Click on the above image for more details about the upcoming birdhouse auction to benefit Athens Montessori School to be held May 2 at the Lyndon House Arts Center.

The closing reception for the BFA students in printmaking and photography will be held today, April 24, from 7 to 10 p.m. on the 1st and 3rd floors of the Dodd.

Also tonight, from 6 to 9 p.m., our friend Margie Spalding has an exhibition opening at Hawthorne House, on Milledge Avenue, the reception for which will feature wine and light appetizers from The National.

Seasons, an exhibition by watercolor artist Leigh Ellis in the State Botanical Garden of Georgia Visitor Center, closes this Sunday, April 26.

On April 28 and 29, the Jewelry/Metals students of LDSOA will hold a jewelry sale of items made by graduate and undergraduate students at the Dodd building starting at 9 a.m.

At the Georgia Center for Continuing Education, the photography exhibition My India: Personal Reflections and Captured Moments, in the Hill Atrium, will run through Thursday, April 30, as will the exhibition Orr 2: Interpreting the Legacy, an artistic interpretation of early-20th-century Athens architect Fred J. Orr's architecture through the medium of silk paintings, in the Circle Gallery of Caldwell Hall on the UGA campus, and the exhibition If Walls Could Talk: Then and Now, which consists of posters displaying several historic buildings on the UGA campus as they used to appear and as they appear now, also in Caldwell Hall, in the Owens Library.

Plus, the Athens Indie Craftstravaganzaa, a super-cool market of handmade items and works of art, will be held May 2 and 3 in the parking lot next to Agora at the corner of Pulaski and Clayton Streets in downtown Athens.

Whew!

Interns at the museum

As the UGA semester winds down, we're having to say goodbye to a lot of our interns, who are moving on to bigger and better things. As the Student of the Year ceremony made clear, we owe them a lot, including the following brief article written for the blog about what the experience has been like.

My name is Caitlin Neglia, and I am currently a junior at the University of Georgia majoring in Public Relations and Spanish. After taking several PR classes at the university, if there was one thing that I have learned it would be the one piece of advice that every professor loved to give, “The most important thing you can do for yourself as a PR student entering the work force is to know that classes can’t teach you everything. You need to GET EXPERIENCE!”

As I approached the spring semester of my junior year I decided to take their advice. Luckily, since I was only taking 12 hours, I was able to pursue an internship during the school year. When I saw a listing sent through the Grady College listerv from the Georgia Museum of Art asking for summer interns, I decided to go for it and send in my resume! Four months later, here I am!

I started my internship with the communications department in the beginning of January. As a first-time intern, saying that I was nervous would have been an understatement. However, I was anxious and excited to take this on and knew that I would be getting a lot out of it. As soon as I walked in, I was welcomed with a hug from Jenny, the media relations coordinator, and introduced to several friendly co-workers. At this moment I knew that I would fit in well and have a lot of fun in the meantime.

I am so glad that I have been given the opportunity to work here. The relaxed environment and helpful people have made me feel very comfortable and excited to be a part of the museum. Jenny has been wonderful to work with and has taught me so much about public relations along the way. I have had the opportunity to work on various projects including media lists, media training activities, press releases and other assignments. The wide variety of tasks that I have been assigned to do has helped me become a more flexible person who can easily switch gears to accomplish something new. I now know exactly HOW busy those working in the PR industry are and how unpredictable their schedules can be. Through this internship, I have also learned how to better manage my time in order to balance my hours at the museum with my class schedule and other curricular activities. Honestly, if it was not for the great people and fun atmosphere, I would not have been so willing to come in every day!

Another thing that made my experience so great were the other interns that I got to work closely with. The other two PR interns, Lauren and Orian, along with the publications intern, Stephanie, were so much fun to be around and made the days at the museum seem to go by quickly. I truly believe that it is not only important to enjoy what you do in general, but also who you spend your time with while doing it. I can tell that everyone at the museum genuinely enjoys being around each other, making it an ideal place to work and intern.

The things that I have learned during my internship at the Georgia Museum of Art are things that I will take with me to whatever I do in the future. From the times spent stuffing envelopes to the memories of doing “the train” during the On the Move kickoff party, I have enjoyed all of my experiences as an intern at the museum. I will definitely miss being here every weekday, and all of the people that I have met during this internship. To all the future PR interns: have fun! Enjoy the experience and make the most of it! Thanks for a great semester!

Elsewhere in the news

While we mostly focus on the downside of the economic downturn (e.g., the Miami Art Museum's budget cuts, which, admittedly, seem to have been done extremely well, with no real loss in programming), there are occasionally benefits as well, such as Saatchi Gallery's newly announced "Art for All" campaign. Saatchi Online is selling art without taking the usual 50% dealer's commission, which, as the slogan makes clear, certainly makes art collecting more accessible to everyone. Here's the sale room, if you'd like to browse around.

In other news, the New York Times has a story about Crow House, the former home of the artist Henry Varnum Poor, which the surrounding community bought in order to transform it into a museum (rather than letting the property be developed). This noble aim is, however, being undermined and challenged by the artist's son, Peter Poor, who still owns the contents of the house and has been selling them and donating them to museums. It's an interesting example of the complications that can arise once reality comes into play with the founding of a museum, and, as you would expect, there's also a marvelous slideshow of interior shots of the building.

GMOA in the News

The Second Life GMOA is the main story on UGA's homepage today! And it's well timed, too, as we've just finished making some improvements to the virtual building and reopened it to the public. UGA has tied the story in to their "Building the Learning Environment" series, and you can find it here. MagicProject.net, a French website on e-art and cyberculture, has visited our virtual location and written about it, although our French is a little rusty. Still, teleportez-vous seems encouraging and clear enough! Please visit us in Second Life, and keep coming back. Soon we'll have audio labels recorded and posted for several of the paintings, meaning you can walk up, click on them, and hear a 30-second clip about the work and the artist.

Events Around Campus

This Saturday, April 25, the Lamar Dodd School of Art is hosting an iron pour at the sculpture facilities at 263 South Thomas Street as part of Jim Buonaccorsi's foundry classes. Viewers will be restricted from the immediate casting area, but there are locations to observe. For more information, including, perhaps, what time it takes place, call 706.542.1511 or email ferrous@mindspring.com or lmillard@uga.edu.

In 2008, the Grady College of Journalism made a video podcast of one of these, which is still viewable online here. And Stacy Isenbarger has a Flickr set up of the one in February, from whence we grabbed the image above.

The Collectors Visit...

Here's the photo set from the Collectors' visit to the home of Mary and the late Michael Erlanger, this past Tuesday.



The next Collectors event is Art on Wheels, the invitation for which appears below (click to make it bigger).


We really think it's going to be a unique event, and it's important for you to know that the cars that will be there are not run of the mill vintage automobiles but truly rare and special ones. Print invitations are on their way to you. To find out more about becoming a member of the Collectors, click here.

Happy Earth Day

No, we didn't forget about Earth Day. We were just trying to track down some information, so here it is.

What are we, at the museum, doing in the Green world?

First and foremost, the major expansion and renovation project that we call Phase II and that will result in new gallery and storage spaces plus much, much more (the reason, also, that we don't have our own gallery space at the moment and are pursuing all this GMOA on the Move programming) will be LEED certified at the silver level at very least. We're shooting for gold, but we're very confident of silver. What does that mean? LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is a green building rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a non-profit trade organization that promotes sustainability in how buildings are designed, built and operated. Different levels of certification come from receiving points in categories like "sustainable sites," "water efficiency," "materials and resources," "energy and atmosphere" and the like. So what are some specifics? We'll have an efficient site plan that includes stormwater management and strong water efficiency measures, for one thing, and we plan to recycle all construction waste that results. We'll have further details for you once construction begins in earnest, but know that the LEED certification is important to us.

What else are we doing? We're including a sculpture garden as part of Phase II that will encourage time spent outdoors and we're moving toward an entirely paperless system in our public relations department. Please let us know if you have any great tips for continuing to be better about this kind of thing and use our resources wisely.

Charlie Lucas sculpture installation

We have a new promised gift to the museum: a sculpture made of found objects by self-taught artist Charlie Lucas, which the preparators recently installed on the sculpture pad in front of GMOA North on Jackson Street. They also documented the whole process in the photo set below. We thank Carl Mullis III, a member of our board of advisors, for this generous promised gift, and we hope you can stop by and see it in person.

NAEA Conference

Carissa DiCindio, our associate curator of education, recently attended the conference of the National Art Education Association in Minneapolis to present, and here's what she reports back:

From April 16 through April 19, I attended the National Art Education Association Annual Conference in Minneapolis, Minn. This organization has a large museum education division, and educators travel from all parts of the country for this conference. I attended many sessions by leaders in our field, including one on how to discuss emotional content in art and another on museum/ school collaborations using the National Endowment for Humanities’ Picturing America portfolio. I also was one of four museum educators selected to be part of the museum division’s special issues forum, “Current Research Trends in Museum Education” during which I presented “Understanding Experiences of Young Visitors in Art Museums: A Review of Empirical Research.” This conference was a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the current issues in museum education, meet colleagues in the field, share ideas, and get feedback on my research. Although it was a busy, event-filled weekend, it was definitely worth the trip!

From now on, whenever museum staff members attend professional conferences, we will try to bring you an account of what they learned. Travel funding has certainly been a concern of the news media, the public, the legislature and others lately, but it is important for staff in all areas of the university to continue to attend professional conferences, both to learn and to share their knowledge, and we'd like to communicate what exactly we're doing with those funds to you, our public.

Louis T. Griffith Student of the Year

Our annual presentation of the Louis T. Griffith Student of the Year award was yesterday, and the award went to Sarah Quinn (she's the one holding the flowers above and posing between her parents; associate curator of education Carissa DiCindio is at the left), who has been working with the education department and volunteering at their events since 2006. It was a wonderful afternoon, full of cake and student appreciation. We love our interns and work-study students very much, and it's important for them to know how much they do for us. Photos are up on Flickr but for some reason aren't loading as a slideshow at the moment.

Edit: Slideshow is now working. See below.

Links

We'd like to direct your attention to the tumblr feed of Julie Phillips, arts/entertainment/features editor for the Athens Banner-Herald and a trapeze artist to boot. The ABH has been branching out into all sorts of new media, like all of us, and this brief blog on the arts and music scenes of Athens is a cool example of it. What the heck is tumblr? It's an easier way to blog. Consider it somewhere between Blogger and Twitter, perhaps? The real point here is that we love Julie, and her tumblr is a great way to keep up with what's going on arts/music-wise in Athens (including the rumor that Rick Astley was in town for Boybutante).


Also click your way over to twenty2wo blog, which exists alongside a magazine on visual art. Online since at least 2007, it's maintained by designer Adam Beneke, and tilts a little toward photography, illustration, and contemporary work.

Ulysses Davis and Bruce Metcalf

These aren't usually two artists you would see mentioned together. Ulysses Davis was a Georgia folk artist known for his wood carvings who passed away in 1990, while Bruce Metcalf is a contemporary studio jeweler who has been very influential in his field. But they have at least two things in common: Both are the subject of solo exhibitions this year, and both have been featured in exhibitions and publications organized and produced by the Georgia Museum of Art.

Ulysses Davis is the subject of a major exhibition opening today at the American Folk Art Museum, The Treasure of Ulysses Davis, which features 100 of his wood sculptures. One of his reliefs, pictured below, appeared in the exhibition and publication Amazing Grace: Self-Taught Artists from the Mullis Collection in September of 2007 at GMOA.


Bruce Metcalf, on the other hand, is the subject of an exhibition opening June 27 at the Bellevue Arts Museum, The Miniature Worlds of Bruce Metcalf, and had a ring included in The Ring Shows: Then & Now and Putting the Band Back Together in August of 2008.


Are we bragging? A little bit, but we're always interested in following artists who have had their work in exhibitions at the museum, especially because we learn so much about them in the process of organizing an exhibition, writing wall text, working on a catalogue, publicizing it all and more that it makes us want to keep on learning. It's kind of like learning a new word and then seeing it everywhere.

Edit: The New York Times has added a Davis slideshow.

GMOA in the News

Thank you so much to Melissa Link, who wrote a great article that ran in the Athens Banner-Herald today, telling people that, although the Carlton Street building of the Georgia Museum of Art is closed, we're still doing tons of programming. Carissa DiCindio, our associate curator of education, gave some wonderful quotes, and we hope that the article, which focuses on Toni Carlucci's drawing workshop at the Botanical Garden as an example of outreach programming, really will establish in locals' minds that we're still here and doing more than ever.

Drawing Plants, Flowers and Other Natural Objects

Here's the photo slideshow that resulted from this fun event with instructor Toni Carlucci as part of GMOA on the Move:

More museum news

Our director just passed along a couple more articles addressing the financial difficulties museums are facing at the moment, one of which is a small bright spot and the other of which is a new challenge.

The former consists of the news that the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis will stay open for the moment, while the trustees of the university debate its fate.

The latter is the news that Florida State University is facing huge budget cuts from that state's legislature and is considering closing the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, which FSU took over in 2000. The closure discussed so far would be temporary, but the idea behind it is disturbing:

The FSU Board of Trustees wrote in a letter announcing the cuts that they need to look at programs that do not directly serve students, including Ringling.

As with the situation at Brandeis, this is an incorrect impression. Any university that has research as part of its mission, as FSU does, serves students directly through its museum of art by facilitating that research, as well as by helping provide them with a well-rounded education. We sincerely hope the Ringling is able to stay open.

In the News

Not only are the photo slideshows at the New York Times' website fascinating, but the paper also produces audio slideshows, sort of like short podcasts with visuals, and here's a wonderful one by Roberta Smith on the exhibition of late Picassos at Gagosian, in which she discusses the impact of the show (reviewed here). Gagosian's website also has an interview by Charlie Rose of Bernard Picasso and John Richardson.


The Times also has a review of an interesting exhibition at Apexart titled I Am Art that focuses on plastic surgery and views it as an artistic medium. Apex has more about the exhibition on its website, but be warned: there is some graphic video.

Links

One of our absolute favorite blogs to visit for unique musings on art is Garth Johnson's Extreme Craft. Johnson used to reside in the Athens area but relocated to the West Coast a few years ago, where he teaches. He was kind enough to plug our exhibition catalogue Modern Threads: Fashion and Art by Mariska Karasz when it came out, but that's not why we love the site. We love it because his take on art and craft and the areas where they intersect is feisty, enthusiastic and irreverent and because he updates frequently. If you think art's not punk rock enough, we strongly encourage you to bookmark his site, which will provide many an example to the contrary.

Where's GMOA on the Move?

This one's a little bit harder. Guess where the sign is in the comments and win a prize.

New Discoveries in Georgia Painted Furniture

Open publication - Free publishing - More history

This publication, which accompanied the exhibition of the same name in January 2008, was so popular that we've given away almost every copy we had printed. We don't doubt that we'll keep getting requests for it, so we've archived the whole thing on Issuu, embedded above. It's not quite the same as with the beautiful paper we printed it on, but it's in the ballpark.

Slideshows

The slideshows put up by the New York Times on its website are one of our favorite new media features. There's something about flipping through images, with a bit of commentary alongside, that feels more immediate than looking at a few selected to run alongside a story. The most recent one covers the exhibition of recent acquisitions at the Morgan Library and contains some stunning work, including the above, a Sargent drawing.

Where's GMOA on the Move?

We sent our high school interns out to take a bunch of pictures with the GMOA on the Move sign. See if you can guess where this one was taken. Keep checking back. We'll post a new mystery photo every few days on here (and on our Flickr page).

Leave your guesses in the comments, and the first correct answer gets a prize!

Contemporary art

Thanks, PICDIT, for directing us to the work of Dana Clancy, who paints the interior spaces of museums in a series she calls "Viewing Space" (currently up at Laconia Gallery and previously at the Danforth Museum). Clancy balances the presence of human figures with a focus on the interior architecture of spectacular spaces that some have complained minimize the impact of the art. We're not sure if she's taking a stance in that argument, but the paintings do provide an interesting perspective.

Congratulations, Athens!

The L.A. Times just published a list of 29 places to visit in 2009, and Athens, Ga., made the list! One of only a few destinations in the United States (the others are San Elijo State Beach, in California; Honolulu; Virginia City, Nevada; Las Vegas; and Yosemite National Park), it's alongside such exotic places as Laos, Uruguay and Borneo. While we might quibble with their choice of a gameday photo to illustrate the piece, the words speak of the diversity and historical interest of Athens. We only hope the new visitors inspired by the article can wait until this summer, when they'll have the chance to see Lord Love You: Works by R.A. Miller from the Mullis Collection, on view at the Lyndon House Arts Center, as we don't otherwise have a venue for them to experience what the Georgia Museum of Art has to offer.

You Are Invited!

Our next "The Art of" event, "The Art of: Scenic Design," is scheduled for May 13 at Athens Community Theater (scroll down for a map of the area). Click on the image below for more details. Postcards are set to go out any day to the Friends list, but you are all invited.



Here's a map of the area. The pushpin marks the location of the Taylor-Grady House, and Athens Community Theater is just behind, on Grady Ave. Please call us at 706.542.4662 with any questions, including if you need directions.

National Architecture Week continues

The Georgia Museum of Art is hardly the only museum around undergoing expansion or construction these days. Here's a selection of others we've been following on Art Daily:


The Smithsonian has selected Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup as the firm to design the National Museum of African American History and Culture, pictured above. There's a slideshow with more images at the New York Times website.


The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is reopening its reinstalled American art galleries in its new building.


The Boston Museum's development team has announced its plans for the new building in downtown Boston.


The British Museum has announced plans for a major expansion designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP).


And the North Carolina Museum of Art is one year from opening its huge new space.

The role of university museums

One thing we've been thinking about a lot lately in light of the controversies over university museums at Brandeis, the University of Connecticut and elsewhere is the specific role of those institutions, which differ in many ways from other kinds of museums. The exhibition that opens today at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University is an excellent concrete example of how. Appellations from Antiquity focuses on 19th- and 20th-century works in the Cantor's collection that allude to mythology through their titles, but the subject of the exhibition is less important to our point than how it came to be. The press release reads:

“Appellations from Antiquity” emerged from a 2008 Stanford seminar, taught by Jennifer Marshall, entitled “The Art Museum: History and Practice.” Student Rachel Patt, a classics major (2009), created the exhibition proposal, which was developed for installation under the guidance of Patience Young, the Center's curator for education, for the museum's Lynn Krywick Gibbons Gallery.

This kind of interaction with students that develops out of their work with the collection is unique to university museums and produces new scholarship and new ways of looking at and categorizing art. We have certainly greatly enjoyed our own work with students in this capacity, from the annual MFA exit show to Shaping the Silhouette, a collaboration with Jose Blanco's class in the department of textiles, merchandising and interior, to numerous small exhibitions in the Martha Thompson Dinos gallery that have been organized by students, and while some of that curatorial work with students has been scaled back while we undergo construction and expansion, we hope to pick it up again and pursue the implementation of a museum studies program when we reopen in 2011.

Arts Marketing

Why did we finally decide to start Twittering? Well, this article on the Patron Technology website certainly helped. Patron is an e-marketing service geared toward the arts, and while we don't have the funds to take advantage of their services, we do read their newsletters and their blog voraciously for tips. Will Twitter be useful for us or for you? We don't know yet, but we'll find out through doing. Follow us on Twitter here.

In Memoriam

We were so sad to learn that one of our most wonderful volunteers, Kate Howell, passed away unexpectedly over the weekend. Kate not only spent countless hours helping in our library, but also helped start the docent program at the Georgia Museum of Art, and we will miss her very much. Her obituary in the Athens Banner-Herald is here, and gives details on services. Thankfully, we have a great volunteer spotlight by which to remember her, written by the current publications department intern, Stephanie Kingsley. The article ran in the Winter 09 issue of the GMOA newsletter and a scan of it appears below (click on it to enlarge), in case you did not receive that issue or no longer have it. Stephanie did an amazing job documenting Kate's incredible life, and while the piece wasn't intended to serve as a memorial, it will let us remember a devoted volunteer and a fascinating woman.