Born May 26, 1895. in Hoboken, N.J., Dorothea Lange was an important documentary photographer during the Great Depression. Lange studied photography at Columbia University but is best known for her portrait work of migrant workers in southern California. Hired by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) under President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program, Lange documented the desperate conditions of those suffering from the tragedies of the Great Depression. Her iconic images brought the misfortunes of the rural poor to the public’s attention.
Her work is considered both portraiture and documentary due to its emotion-invoking nature. Her best-known image, “Migrant Mother, Nipoma, California, 1936,” is a perfect example of this combination. Lange was able to bring out emotion in her images, in a way that did not always exist in photography. Sadly, Lange passed away in 1965, but her work will forever be remembered for its impact on society as well as the visual arts.
This relatively new art form is blowing up in New York, Philadelphia, Paris and even in our very own Athens, Ga. Yarn Bombing is a new form of graffiti that is more “feminine and cozy” than what you typically see on walls, streets or practically any surface in the urban landscape. According to a New York Times article published recently, Jessie Hemmons, who knitted a pink vest for the statue of Rocky located outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, says that her art is “like graffiti with grandma sweaters.” This oxymoronically named art form got its surge when Mandy Moore (not the one you’re thinking of) and Leanne Prain published a book of photos and tips for up-starters called Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2009). Since then, many have taken up the cause and have created breath-taking and time-consuming projects all around the globe. You can even spot a “bomb” outside the Lamar Dodd School of Art on UGA’s Campus. Whimsical, crocheted smoke clouds escape the cigarette repository outside the front doors of the building.
A "Yarn Bomb" outside UGA's Lamar Dodd School of Art
The message that these artists communicate is somewhere between political activism (acknowledging a feminine side of a typically male-dominated art) and revitalizing the ideas surrounding knitting and crochet. The temporality of the pieces is another thing that draws artists to the medium. The yarn does not hold up in the elements for more than a few weeks and the objects are sometimes quickly removed, but ephemeral qualities make it so exciting. What a great way to spruce up the neighborhood. UGA graduates Francesca Valente and Carrie Mumah chronicle their Yarn Bombs around Washington, D.C., in a group called “The Warm and Fuzzies.”
To learn more about this urban phenomenon, read the article, which also shows a video of a woman “bombing” the bull statue near Wall Street. All we can say is that we love this creative outlet and it is certainly not your average warfare.
The story of the French street artist who goes by the name JR is not unlike that of most graffiti artists. At the age of 15, equipped with a can of spray paint, he began scribbling his name on every building he came across. He never viewed his activity as an art form, rather as a way of making his mark on history. Over time, JR began photographing his adventures and those of his friends. But then something changed. At the age of 25, JR found himself in the midst of the social unrest that was taking place in Paris. He decided it was a time for change, and he began contributing the only way he knew how. With the use of paste and a photocopier, JR began illegally posting massive portraits of Parisian “thugs” on the walls of city buildings. The public was confronted with towering images of the people they feared most and sought to avoid. JR used his art silently to provoke conversation. During his 2011 lecture for the TED organization, he commented that, “it was there that I learned the power of paper and glue. So could art change the world?”
Since then, JR has viewed the world as his gallery space, using everything from streetcars to synagogues as his canvas. He pastes up portraits of members of the community as a way to raise questions. He is interested in documenting the community, not the conflict, which is what separates him from most photojournalists. He has traveled to the Middle East during the heart of the Palestinian conflict and to war-torn nations in Africa. When anyone asked what he was doing, he simply responded with, “art. I’m just doing art.”
Due to the nature of the medium, his work becomes the property of the viewer after he leaves. Decay is part of the process. The passer-by is welcome to graffiti over his work and, over time, weather wears the image down to nothing more than a memory. His art is not meant to change the world; it is meant to change the way we see the world.
He said, “What we see changes who we are. So I hope that, together, we’ll create something that the world will remember. And this starts right now and depends on you.”
Congratulations to David Matheny, who was named the M. Smith Griffith Volunteer of the Year, an award also known as the "Smitty," at the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art Annual Meeting on Tuesday, May 17.
Matheny began his service to the Georgia Museum of Art during the late 1990s, when he was first asked to serve on a fundraising committee for a museum event. He was nominated to the board of directors of the Friends of the Museum in 2002, on which he served for six years. He was president of the board of the Friends from 2006 to 2008. He continues his service on the Nominating Committee and as a committee member for the next Friends’ fundraiser.
Matheny has also contributed professionally to the Georgia Museum of Art. He was an architectural consultant for the museum’s 1996 building, and when the first plans for Phase II were being drawn, his expertise was invaluable. He is also a principal in the Armentrout Matheny Thurmond architectural consulting group and was the primary architect for the renovation and expansion of Barbara and Vince Dooley's house.
As a result of his service to the museum, Matheny was nominated in 2008 to serve on the Board of Advisors of the Georgia Museum of Art. He is currently an active member of the board and serves on the Public Affairs and Outreach committee.
Matheny has distinguished himself in one area in particular: fundraising. Since his first committee assignment, he has served on every fundraising committee for every major Friends’ fundraiser during the past decade. During 2006, 2008 and 2011, he was the chair of the Elegant Salute fundraising committee, setting new records for fundraising and a new standard for the Friends. During the past year, his tireless efforts netted almost $100,000, much of which will be directed toward educational programming.
With the assistance of an etiquette expert and a collection of museum employees, who, trust us, have seen it all, we have compiled a brief guide to museum manners in the age of iPhones, bucket-size coffee drinks and handbags you could pitch a tent in.Our favorite sentence in the article? "Jeffrey Arnett, manager of development and marketing for the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago says he is frequently forced to mediate the conflict between modern visitors' hydration needs and the more arid requirements of a photography collection."
The good news is that Chicago's museum employees say you are pretty close to perfect just the way you are. They don't care what you're wearing as long as it's not a backpack. There is nothing you could say about their exhibits that would offend them; they're just happy to have started a conversation. They're flattered that you want to take their picture.
. . . Museum manners, however, have to take into account one fairly unique circumstance. "You're dealing with priceless objects. It's one of the few places that is true."
Which is why, at the Art Institute of Chicago, public affairs director Erin Hogan says, pens, flash photography and backpacks are unwelcome. Also, she says, "we are not a huge fan of pointing," which can lead to jabbing, which runs the risk of unintentional contact with artwork.
We were excited to see this GMOA photo featured as Birmingham-Southern College’s “Hilltop Photo of the Week”!
The photo, taken at this January’s Elegant Salute XII, depicts two Birmingham-Southern alumni: Anna Burns Dyer (’70), and our director, Bill Eiland (’70; right). Eiland was also the recipient of Birmingham-Southern’s Distinguished Alumni Award at the school’s Homecoming/Reunion Weekend festivities this past fall.
The BSC Photo of the Week website also featured a short blurb about the museum’s reopening and expansion. To check it out, click here. Thanks for the shout out, Birmingham-Southern College!
This year’s theme is “Museum and Memory: Objects Tell Your Story,” which highlights the role that objects play in society’s collective memory. Museums aren’t just big buildings filled with old junk; they are visual showcases of humanity’s time spent on this earth. History builds upon itself, and the absence of the precious artifacts housed in museums would be indescribable. Restoration, conservation and curatorship are all integral parts of museums. So on May 18, take an hour or two to visit your local museum (like the Georgia Museum of Art) and appreciate the beauty that has been preserved and displayed for the benefit of you, your community and the future members of society.
Also, don't forget to stop by the gift shop after your visit to the GMOA. We're offering a 20% discount in the shop, both online (with the code MUSEUMDAY) and in person.
Grace is a homeschooled sixth-grader who enjoys playing guitar, geocaching and photography, among other things. She also writes a column for the Athens Banner-Herald and maintains a blog called The Kid Reader. How has a sixth-grader already accomplished so much? Grace credits Athens’ artsy atmosphere:
“If I were in a really big city, I probably wouldn't be able to write for the newspaper. Living in a small town means I have a lot more opportunities. Athens is very welcoming of independent and up and coming artists and musicians."
Speaking of artists, Grace referred to the Georgia Museum of Art’s very own Anthony Goicolea exhibition as a source of inspiration. She attended Goicolea’s artist’s talk that took place at the museum in February and was inspired by the meaning behind his photography.
To read the Athens Patch article on Grace and check out some samples of her art, please click here.
Thanks, Grace, for the shout out and we hope to see you again soon!
Sarah Quinn, a former intern with the department of education at GMOA, has been selected as UGA’s Amazing Student this week! She has been very involved with the museum, also serving as a student docent and being selected as the Louis T. Griffith Student of the Year in 2009.
Sarah is currently studying abroad in Cortona, and she will be in Morocco with the Peace Corps after she graduates. She will be graduating in May alongside her mother, who is finishing up a master’s degree. Congratulations to the Quinns! Check out their amazing story here.
Photos from GMOA’s second student night, Keepin’ It Surreal, are now posted on our Flickr and Facebook pages. The Georgia Museum of Art Student Association hosted the student night on Thursday, April 21, at GMOA. Circulatory System and Never played, and there was a DJ set by Stay at Home Dad. Cookies and milk were served midway through the event in the GMOA lobby, and student docents conducted tours of the exhibitions throughout the night. Elliott King, a leader in the critical study of Salvador Dalí’s work after 1940, gave a special tour of our exhibition “Dalí Illustrates Dante’s ’Divine Comedy‘” at 10 p.m. after his lecture at the museum earlier in the evening. The event was attended by 450 students!
The Princeton University Art Museum ran an inspiring article by Leonard Barkan in the guest column “Art Matters” of their quarterly publication this past fall. Here is what he has to say about the impact of university art museums:
“I came to the visual arts late. I was acting in plays, attempting the simple Chopin waltzes on the piano, and writing (terrible!) poetry by the time my age registered two digits; but I was so radically ungifted in art class that my parents were told I might have some sort of hand-eye retardation. By my teenage years, I had discovered the obvious—that it was even more satisfying for me to experience the arts than it was to produce them myself. And so I became a professional student of literature, plus all but bankrupting myself attending plays, concerts, and operas.
Even with this conversion from performer to connoisseur, though, painting and sculpture still seemed like a world beyond my capacities. Until, as a quite grown-up scholar, I realized that everything I had loved about the Renaissance literature had something to do with Renaissance art—that I couldn’t think about Petrarch without thinking about Giotto and Simone Martini, or Shakespeare without Titian, or the Renaissance rediscovery of ancient literature without the rediscovery of ancient sculpture. So I began to retrain myself as an art historian.
Then I came to Princeton, where for the first time I was able to develop close ties with a university museum. By some sort of elective affinity, I became acquainted with the superlative prints and drawings collection, masterfully managed by Curator Laura Giles and Associate Curator Calvin Brown, while, at the same time, I began work on a project that would eventually become Michelangelo: A Life on Paper. In this book, soon to be published by Princeton University Press, I attempt to understand the great artist’s inner life by looking at the combination of visual and verbal sketched on his worksheets—everything from doodles to finished drawings, from shopping lists to sonnets.
As it happens, there is in the Museum’s collection a piece of paper, containing the masterfully executed profile sketch of a young man with classical features and luxuriant ringlets, which is now fairly widely recognized as the Princeton Michelangelo. When I look at this remarkable five hundred-year old object, I am less interested in determining whether every single line of chalk was executed by the Master than I am in unlocking different sorts of enigmas. Was the artist memorializing a real person—friend? pupil? lover?—or was it rather his vision of an imaginary classical ideal? How might we understanding the nasty little hook-nosed caricature that hovers around the young man’s left sleeve? And what about the fact that x-rays have revealed a tiny architectural drawing, probably relating to a project in a much later phase of Michelangelo’s career, which suggests that he held on to this drawing for thirty years before using its flipside?
Speaking of long-term holdings, the fact that I have the chance to hold on to this drawing, just as the artist himself did, is a tribute to some 130 years of Princeton collecting—more specifically in this case, to Frank Jewett Mather Jr., director of the Museum for a quarter century and donor of this very sheet to the collection. But I’m not alone in enjoying this privilege. Visitors from the University, from the Princeton community, and from around the world not only have access to painting and sculpture in the many open galleries in the Museum; they are also welcome to make appointments to see the extraordinary holdings of work on paper.
I took advantage of that hospitality during the spring semester of 2009 by teaching an undergraduate seminar on Story-Telling in Pictures and Words, in which we moved back and forth between literary forms—short stories from Boccaccio to Grace Paley—and pictorial narratives, such as those based on the Bible and on Greek mythology. The highlight of our semester was a series of visits to Prints and Drawings. It wasn’t Michelangelo who occupied us, though. Early in the term, we did sit around the study room table contemplating the beautiful series of Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress; then, with the help of John Pinto, we unrolled and examined Piranesi’s amazing nine-foot etching of Trajan’s Column. But the visits that will remain most vividly in our minds involved the opportunity to study a different sort of work on paper, by Bud Fisher, Rube Goldberg, and Walt Disney.
From Piranesi to Pinocchio, from Michelangelo to Mutt and Jeff: that’s my idea of a great university museum.”
Barkan does an excellent job of illustrating how much impact university museums can have on their communities, as both a teaching tool and a place of enjoyment. We at the museum hope that we can be as much of an inspiration to those in the Athens.
