Steiglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O'Keeffe

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is now showing “Steiglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O’Keeffe,” through Jan. 2, 2012. This exhibition of Alfred Steiglitz’s collection, acquired by the Met in 1949, includes paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Constantin Brancusi, Georgia O’Keefe and Charles Demuth to name a few.

The exhibition features more than 200 works by American and European modern artists as well as publications by Steiglitz and several photo-secessionist photographs.

Alfred Steiglitz (1864-1946) was an advocate of modernist art and owned numerous galleries in the first half of the 20th century promoting influential artists of the time.

Steiglitz’s personal collection is the foundation of the Met’s modern American and European art holdings as well as a testament to his role in the promotion of modern art in the United States and abroad.

Art Opening at the High- "European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century"

The High Museum of Art is known for its impressive 19th-century American decorative arts collection of antique furniture and design, ranging from a beautiful red sofa by John Jelliff and Company of New Jersey, circa 1865- 1875, to the colorful Quilted Bedcover by an unknown African American maker circa 1875-1900. However, June 5, 2010, marks a shift in the museum’s focus on design with the opening of “European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century,” which runs until August 29, 2010.

Working with Modern Atlanta (MA), the museum hopes that the public will respond well to the exhibition covering the last twenty years of design. As local schools and universities like SCAD Atlanta and Georgia Tech supply creative energy and students, Atlanta appears to be in the market for more contemporary exhibitions. MA hosts events “to promote design excellence that comes through the creation of sought-after services and desirable products that inspire and satisfy the needs of humanity, and in turn, encourage sustainable practices in lives, businesses, and the public” (http://bit.ly/c2pNkn). The exhibition coincides with six days of presentations focusing on contemporary design as well as “Design After Dark,” a cocktail party on the High's piazza on Saturday, June 5, 2010, from 7 to 11 pm.

The exhibition will include works from fourteen Western European countries and designers including John Angelo Benson and Ron Arad. The pieces seek to overcome traditional boundaries set by politics and culture and reach a higher aesthetic of art and design. Using materials like hay, glass or metalwork, the furniture comes together as visually stunning and avant-garde.

For more information on the exhibition, please visit http://bit.ly/9C4mZZ. Also, check out last week’s AccessAtlanta article for information on the collaboration between the High and MA.

Women Reclaim the Art World

2008, according to ArtNews, was a notable year for women in the art world. For the first time ever, the Centre Pompidou, the highest grossing, most looked at modern art museum in Paris, turned over its permanent galleries entirely to women artists. Connie Butler, now chief curator of drawings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, points out that MoMA is buying more and more work by women. “I think it is on the institutional agenda in a way that it wasn't a few years ago. Things have changed. Obama is president," she said. Nancy Spector, the Guggenheim’s chief curator, also reports drastic changes at her museum: "When I started here 20 years ago, the discourse about gender issues was not even present in the museum. Now our contemporary collections are just filled with women artists. We buy what we think is the best work, and it is very often by women." Alongside these notable institutions, the Whitney Museum of American Art has also mounted quite a few retrospectives of women artists in recent years. Art critic Jerry Saltz, writer for New York magazine, created quite a stir on Facebook last May: he counted the pieces by women in MoMA's painting and sculpture galleries and proceeded to accuse the museum of practicing "a form of gender-based apartheid. Of the 383 works currently installed on the 4th and 5th floors of the permanent collection, only 19 are by women; that's 4%. There are 135 different artists installed on these floors; only nine of them are women; that's 6%. MoMA is telling a story of modernism that only it believes." Informal studies like these, done especially by social media outlets, have raised awareness of gender imbalances in the art world. “According to the Brainstormers, there are at least half a dozen New York galleries that are now close to 50-50, including Galerie Lelong, D'Amelio Terras, 303, and PPOW. Lombard-Freid's September show, ‘The Girl Effect,’ featured work by seven international women artists” says ARTnews.

Various female artists mentioned in the ARTnews article:

Louise Bourgeois

Atsuko Tanaka

Artists mentioned in the ARTnews article whom we also exhibit at the GMOA:

Georgia O'Keeffe

Alice Neel

The New White House Collection

The White House has a new selection—45 pieces to be exact—of modern and contemporary pieces by artists such as Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, Edgar Degas, Giorgio Morandi, Alma Thomas and George Catlin. Michael Smith, the White House decorator, contacted Harry Cooper, curator of modern and contemporary art at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and inquired about the possibility of borrowing certain pieces Barack and Michelle Obama could display in their private quarters.

We have one rule: "We won’t take anything off public display", Mr. Cooper said in a telephone interview. Nor will the museum lend a work likely to be requested for an exhibition anytime soon. “That limited us to looking at things in storage,” Mr. Cooper added. “But there’s quite a bit.

Mrs. Obama and the house curator,William Allman, picked works they found using various museum Web sites that constituted a diverse and distinct collection, never seen before in the White House. According to Kerry Brougher, chief curator at the Hirshhorn Museum, “There are some very interesting figures. It’s more interesting and shows a greater diversity of art than I’ve seen.” In an ABC interview, Harry Cooper, a trader of modern and contemporary art at the National Gallery, says the Obamas’ chosen collection has what those in the art world call “wall power.”

"A lot of it is really important and pretty powerful. It has wall power. It looks powerful on the walls. Strong works which are visually arresting.” Cooper described the Obamas’ collection as “really mainstream paintings. “I think there’s a great range of work—both abstract work and figurative work and within the abstraction. There’s very clean geometric paintings as well as more expressive paintings.

Of the 45 works, I found the less known ones to be the most intriguing. Where do they come from, why did the first family decide to go with these pieces, and why are they important? I felt compelled to seek out their history and their stories, as they are now entering an important context within the walls of the White House, telling their own story and adding to the new story they are now entering. I picked two artists to talk about, portraitist George Catlin and African American expressionist painter Alma Thomas, both of whom gave voice to an otherwise voiceless community.

George Catlin whose 10 paintings are on display in the White House and is known for capturing American Indian scenes and leaders during the mid-19th century. Besides his heartfelt, thought-out renditions of American Indian life, Catlin was quite outspoken when it came to Indian rights. He saw the bloody battles leading to the demise of the tribal lifestyle and wrote about them extensively in his diaries. He produced around 600 paintings. In hopes of preserving them and the memory of aboriginal tribesmen, Catlin tried to sell his works to the U.S government, which refused to buy it. The penniless Catlin sold his entire collection to a private buyer.

Catlin would be content knowing that now more than 500 of his paintings are safe and sound at the Smithsonian, and now some have migrated to the White House to be admired and pondered, just as Catlin hoped.
Alma Thomas, an Expressionist painter, has two of her works hanging in the White House, specifically in the first lady’s office. Thomas was born and raised in Columbus, Ga., then moved to Washington, D.C., and enrolled in Howard University’s art department. Thomas was the first African American to hold an MFA from Columbia University. Her best-known work is influenced by Expressionism, but she has worked in the realm of realism. Many critics liken her work to that of Henri Matisse and Georges Seurat. Thomas had her first show at the age of 68 when she retired from teaching. She also worked as a political activist and taught in D.C.’s poorest neighborhoods, even with an advanced case of arthritis.
Perhaps this new temporary home for these paintings, will bring lauds and attention to different sorts of art as well as to historically undermined groups of people not always put in the mainstream spotlight.


Pictures from NYTimes

Creating Young Artists

This craft project from Instructables involves using spaghetti to paint your own Jackson Pollock. It makes us wonder about what other leftover food we could use to mimic famous artists.