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.

Twitter

Okay! We give in. We're on Twitter, and you can follow the feed at right in the sidebar or however else you want to. Tweet at us, and we'll respond.

MFA Speaks

This year's "MFA Speaks," in which the graduate students discuss their thesis work, will be held in a couple of different sessions at the new Lamar Dodd School of Art building. Tomorrow, Wednesday, April 15, from 12:10 to 1 p.m., students Jennifer Hartley (that's one of her paintings pictured above), Samantha Mosby and Erin McIntosh will speak on their work in Gallery 307. Friday, April 17, from 12:10 to 1 p.m., students Wes Airgood, Maury Gortemiller and Stacy Isenbarger will speak in Gallery 101 and the Suite Gallery. Attendees should meet in the galleries indicated and feel free to ask questions. The Athens Banner-Herald also has a nice write-up of the exhibition, which closes Friday to be followed by a series of BFA exit shows.

Art Without Walls

It looks like the Georgia Museum of Art isn't the only organization out there trying to expand the realm of public art. One of the reasons we're working hard on new media and other ways to reach you is because we won't have a building of our own for the next two years, but it's a good idea for more reasons than that very concrete one. A new nonprofit organization called Art Without Walls is pushing for public art in both virtual and physical spaces, and its first project is pictured above. Conceptual artist Serkan Ozkaya and assistants drew the front page of the Louisvlle, Ky., Courier-Journal on Friday of this past week. Ozkaya has pursued this kind of project previously, but the idea of a work of art being delivered to thousands of unsuspecting households is an exciting one, one that renews the very concept of public art. Too often, we become accustomed to sculptures or murals that we pass every day. They become part of our everyday environment in a way that lessens their wonder. The Ozkaya/Art Without Walls collaboration breaks up that routine and lets us renew our view of the world around us.

The Collectors Visit...

One week from today, on Tuesday, April 21, from 6 to 8 p.m., the Collectors will visit the home of Dr. Mary Erlanger and the late Professor Michael Erlanger to view their collection. This is a unique opportunity, as Dr. Erlanger will be moving out of state shortly. She and her husband donated a collection of animalier bronzes to the museum that makes up one of our most popular traveling exhibitions (one is pictured above). The cost for this event is $40. Please RSVP to 706.542.0830 or call 706.542.0437 for more information, including how to become a member of the Collectors, which is a higher-level Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art membership group that not only presents this kind of opportunity, but also schedules wonderful trips for its members.

In the News

The New York Times' Michael Kimmelman writes about the losses to art and culture in the earthquake in Abruzzo and makes this interesting point:

Italy is not like America. Art isn’t reduced here to a litany of obscene auction prices or lamentations over the bursting bubble of shameless excess. It’s a matter of daily life, linking home and history. Italians don’t visit museums much, truth be told, because they already live in them and can’t live without them. The art world might retrieve a useful lesson from the rubble.

Nick Cave's show at Yerba Buena of "Soundsuits" is covered as well, and eminently worth a look.


Art Daily has picked up the story about the Second Life version of the Georgia Museum of Art. Please, if you're at all techie, consider visiting us there, where you can wander around the galleries, looking at art, and watch a brief movie in the auditorium.

Elsewhere

Martha Stewart had a great feature on her daily talk show a few weeks ago about the Cooper-Hewitt's exhibition Fashioning Felt. Luckily, she archives her episodes online by subject, so if you click here, you can watch it online. Other sources have, of course, covered the exhibition extensively, but it's nice to see a lay take on it, and there is wonderful video of the creation of a giant felt yurt inside the museum.

National Architecture Week

This week (April 13-19), the American Institute of Architects celebrates National Architecture Week, much of which will be hosted virtually on the facebook page located at this link. We thought this would be a good time to highlight our own architects for Phase II of the Georgia Museum of Art: Gluckman Mayner Architects (of New York; serving as the design architects), Stanley Beaman & Sears (of Atlanta; serving as the architect of record) and, of course, the Office of University Architects on the University of Georgia campus. Gluckman Mayner has significant experience with museum and gallery architecture and has designed buildings for the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Museo Picasso, Malaga; the Guggenheim Westside, New York; the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Dia Center for the Arts, New York; and many more. We encourage you to look through the firm's website, which has many examples of the work it has done, and to continue to check back here for construction updates.

Green Symposium News

If you've been wondering about the status of the biennial Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts, given our current lack of a building and closure for construction and renovation, worry no longer. The next Green Symposium is being planned for early 2010, and we'll bring you more details as we have them, including the theme and more specific dates. The symposium is one of the most popular and successful events organized by the museum, and we are at least as happy as many of you to be able to continue to put it on.

In the Collection

While reading this review in the New York Times of an exhibition of Charles Burchfield's paintings at DC Moore Gallery, we were reminded of our own Burchfield, October Wind and Sunlight in the Woods (ca. 1963-63), pictured above. Burchfield's works fall into two major categories: paintings of industry (which the show at DC Moore seems to focus on) and paintings of nature (like the above, a late work). The Burchfield Homestead is a museum devoted to his works and located in the house where he grew up and did many of his early paintings, and its website has some more interesting links. You may also want to visit the site of the Burchfield-Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College, which has yet more information.

Events Around Campus

Curatorial assistant Jenny Gunn just sent along this lecture that some of you might be interested in attending, especially if you're interested in what exactly a curator does.

The Undergraduate Art History Society is honored to welcome guest lecturer Mr. Carter Foster to Lamar Dodd School of Art on Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 5:30 PM in lecture hall S150. Mr. Foster, who completed his undergraduate degree at UGA went on to receive his Masters at Brown University. He has since worked at the National Gallery of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Currently he works as a curator (specializing in drawings) at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mr. Foster will present a lecture entited "Curating the Modern Artist: Edward Hopper and Roni Horn." He has this to say about the lecture: "This talk will discuss modern curatorial practice in the context of two exhibitions with very different sets of parameters. One involves interpreting the work of a historical figure through the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the other working closely with an important living artist to organize a presentation of her work for a major retrospective currently on view at the Tate Modern."

Family Day Photos

Here's a slideshow of images from Family Day: Spring Festival, held April 4, 2009.

Second Life Launched

The Athens Banner-Herald has a nice piece today on the virtual Georgia Museum of Art in Second Life, which is up and running, although not completely finished (we're still in the process of recording audio labels for some of the works of art on the walls and creating an introductory video to be hosted on our website explaining how to register and what to do to get to the museum). The ABH points out that the Center for Teaching and Learning, which did all the programming for the Second Life museum, will be hosting a public seminar this Friday (April 10) at 2 p.m. in room 250 of the Miller Learning Center on the UGA Second Life island in general but also specifically on the museum, and our own Jenny Williams, media relations coordinator and the woman who's made this project happen, will be on hand to present for part of the seminar. Expect to see a lot more about Second Life as we continue to develop our virtual presence.

Young Dawgs Program

Sometimes, it's not always clear how the museum participates in community outreach through the University of Georgia, as opposed to its outreach programs that focus on kids and seniors, which have a more state-wide bent. We were recently encouraged to participate in the Young Dawgs program, which provides internships to high school students as a way of preparing them for the workplace. The museum has always had a strong internship program for undergraduates and the occasional graduate student, but this is our first experience with younger kids volunteering, and they've been great. We had the two pictured above, Deylah McCarty (left) and Victoria Slaboda (right) interview one another about the experience, and what they came up with follows.

Victoria Interviews Deylah

Deylah McCarty is a 17-year-old senior at Classic City High School PLC.

Q. What do you want to be when you grow up?

A. An artist and a musician. I would like to open up my own shop to sell my art and be in a band.

Q. What attracted you to interning at GMOA?

A. Well, the art of course. I was also interested in learning how a museum works though. Seeing the business side of the art world. The opportunity to gain more computer experience was an attractive asset to me.

Q. What is the most valuable thing you have gained from interning at GMOA?

A. I learned how to make graphics for the website, which involved learning how to use new computer programs, and also just having work experience has been helpful.

Q. What’s your favorite thing that you have done at GMOA so far?

A. The “Art Of” graphic I made that got put on the front page of the website. I’m really proud of it.

Q. What’s the most interesting part about your internship?

A. Meeting new people, gaining new resources, especially people resources.

Q. You’re working in Public Relations, how do you think what you’ve learned there will be beneficial to your future career goals?

A. I’ve learned that being able to handle the public is really important, no matter what department you work in. Social skills are extremely important to business.

Deylah Interviews Victoria

Victoria Slaboda is an 18-year-old senior at Classic City High School PLC.

Q: As you’ve probably been asked a million times, what do you want to be when you grow up?

A: I plan to be a curator of the European arts.

Q: Why did you choose to intern at GMOA?

A: I love art! I thought it would be a good opportunity to see how a museum is run, and it’s a good link to learn more about being a curator.

Q: So far, what is the most valuable thing you’ve learned there?

A: How to resize photos for the website.

Q: What has been your favorite task so far?

A: I took pictures at the GMOA On the Move Campaign, which got blown up really big and hung up at the kick-off party, and I made a giant red arrow, which was also hung up at the party! For some reason I’m really proud of that arrow…

Q: What’s the most interesting event that has happened?

A: The GMOA kick-off party was very fun, with dancing and music, and I got to meet more of the GMOA employees and make more connections.

Q: You intern in the Public Relations department. How has this been beneficial in regards to your career goals?

A: Well, a curator works with the Public Relations department often, and when you work in a place that is essentially for the public (like a museum), it’s important to have a good relationship with the public. Social skills are always valuable, and business social skills will be good to have as well.

The museum plans to continue participating in the Young Dawgs program, and we'll have a new student from it this summer. Our interactions with our interns are always as educational for us as for them, and, honestly, we wouldn't get nearly as much done without them. Thanks, Victoria and Deylah, for being great kids and a big help!

Devotional Prints revisited

As promised, here's the upload to Issuu of the booklet we won our honorable mention for from AAM. Flip through it and enjoy.

Open publication - Free publishing - More prints

New Media

Wow! The Indianapolis Museum of Art just launched an incredible site that collects art videos from all over the place. ArtBabble was featured in a New York Times article Monday, and went live to the public yesterday (Tuesday). It's a little odd that one browses artists alphabetized by first name, but the site is a wealth of content, with a great channel devoted to PBS's superlative series Art 21. This video of Laylah Ali working with a graphic designer is a good example:

Next Family Event

Family Day: Spring Festival was a huge success--thanks for showing up, everyone!--and we'll have some photos up from it soon both here and on our Flickr page and our website.

Our next family event isn't a family day but something a little different. Instructor Toni Carlucci, along with our education department, has adapted her Just My Imagination program* on drawing, and "GMOA Presents: Drawing Plant, Flowers and Other Natural Objects" will be held at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia on Tuesday, April 14 (a week from today), from 4 to 6 p.m. A Google map of the location can be found by clicking here. Carlucci will work with kids aged 8 and older for 2 hours to draw directly from natural objects. The workshop is completely free, but space is limited, so we need you to register in advance by calling 706.542.GMOA (4662). Location within the Botanical Garden will depend on weather, number responding and other factors, so please ask at the Callaway Visitor Center when you arrive, and we should have signs up to direct you to the right place.

*Just My Imagination, a year-long community outreach program from the Georgia Museum of Art, is an exciting way for groups to discover their creativity and learn from local artists who represent the best that Georgia has to offer. Available free of charge to community centers and libraries throughout the state, these workshops are designed to provide participants with a meaningful exploration into the imaginative side of art at your own location. Just My Imagination workshops are recommended for groups of all ages. The instructors are experienced in adapting their classes to meet the needs of the groups in their age and skill level. Children under the age of 12 must be accompanied by an adult. This program is sponsored by the Turner Family Foundation in memory of Nancy C. Turner and the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art.

Knowledge Transfer Project

Several members of the GMOA staff are participating in a project with students in Dr. Kristina Jaskyte’s Managing Innovations in Organizations course. This course is part of the MA in Nonprofit Organizations in the UGA School of Social Work.

The project is called the Knowledge Transfer Project. The purpose of the project is for the students to teach members of an organization what they are learning about innovation and creativity so that the organization can put that knowledge to use. The students--Chris Copley, Kate Lundberg, Natasha Murphy, Kate Pavich and Katy Logue Thompson--approached GMOA after seeing the "GMOA On the Move" calendar and wondering how the staff were handling the transition.

Kate Pavich wrote the above at our request, as we weren't really sure how to describe this process, but we hope it'll be a valuable experiment, and we certainly think it will at least allow us to think about difficulties associated with the move (lack of space, among others) in, indeed, more flexible and creative ways. The snapshot above pictures the first module the students sent us.

Design Award

We got some great news yesterday. The American Association of Museums (AAM) runs a publications design competition every year, and while we always enter, we rarely come away with anything (2004 honorable mentions for Enchanting Modern: Ilonka Karasz and Armin Landeck and another in 2001 for Essence of Place, most recently). This year, however, we've snagged an honorable mention in the category of "Supplementary materials" (e.g., brochures) for our booklet that accompanied the exhibition Devotional Prints from Germany and the Netherlands, the cover for which is pictured above. AAM hasn't yet posted the full list of winners, but will soon. We thank Giancarlo Fiorenza, our former Pierre Daura Curator of European Art, for organizing the exhibition and writing wonderful text; Scott Sosebee, our graphic designer (and a former Athenian), for doing such a fabulous job, especially with that cover, which really captured the intimacy of the show; and University Printing, for making our vision reality. We don't have many copies left of the booklet, but if we can get a pdf up on Issuu, we'll post it here.

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.

In the News

Art Daily featured one of our own exhibitions this weekend, The South in Black and White: The Works of James E. Routh Jr., 1939-1946,which the Georgia Museum of Art is organizing for the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum at Georgia Tech, in Atlanta. Photography has not been done yet, but it will be soon, and we will have images for you, as well as in the catalogue that is in progress.

Other articles not directly related to GMOA but of interest include this piece on the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's financial difficulties and this one on the tremendous expansion of the Walters Art Museum's searchable collection database. The New York Times has an interesting article on conservation and climate control at museums, especially in light of green initiatives.

Congratulations

To our buddy Jerry Siegel, a wonderful photographer and friend to the Georgia Museum of Art (that's his photo above of Beverly Buchanan, one in a series of photographs of artists), who just received an Artadia Award for Atlanta at the $15,000 level. The Artadia Awards are new to the area. Three internationally prominent jurors--Jeffrey Grove (Wieland Family Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, High Museum of Art, Atlanta), Clara Kim (Gallery Director and Curator, REDCAT, Los Angeles) and Hamza Walker (Associate Curator and Director of Education, The Renaissance Society, Chicago)--conducted studio visits with 15 short-listed artists drawn from nearly 300 applicants throughout greater Atlanta (23-county area). We send Jerry our heartiest congratulations.

Events Around Campus

This is very late notice, and we meant to put it up earlier, but there is a Romance Languages Colloquium today (Friday, April 3) from 3:30 to 4:40 p.m. in Gilbert Hall (room 360) on a topic many of our patrons might be interested in. The description we received reads as follows:

Dr. Nina Hellerstein will combine a discussion of French and Mexican culture, visual art, and our very own material surroundings in a presentation entitled, "Franco-Mexican Artist Jean Charlot (1898-1979), his French Connections and his Mexican-Inspired Murals on the UGA Campus."

The museum has done a lot of work and scholarship on Charlot, who served as an artist in residence at UGA in 1941 and painted the mural at the Fine Arts Building on Baldwin Street, which is currently undergoing restoration. The University of Hawaii maintains a wonderful resource on Charlot here and the Jean Charlot Foundation's website, to which we have supplied some information, is even more useful. If you have time, we recommend you make it over to the lecture.

Also, the opening reception for this year's MFA graduates at UGA will take place this evening from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. The image that began this post is by John Barwick, one of the students in the show.

GMOA Outdoors

Andrew T Crawford's sculpture Split is up on East Campus Road, near the Carlton Street building of GMOA, and it's looking mighty fine. Preparator Lanora Pierce took a couple of photos of the sculpture itself and (below) of the new weatherproof label we're testing out, courtesy of Graphic Communications Corporation in Lawrenceville.

Andrew Ladis's book

As we've just returned the proof for the festschrift in honor of our dear friend and patron, the late Andrew Ladis (The Historian's Eye, which should arrive at the museum for sale June-ish) to the printer, he's been on all of our minds a lot. His book Giotto's O: Narrative, Figuration, and Pictorial Ingenuity in the Arena Chapel is fairly newly out from Penn State Press, and you can find out more about it here on their website and even sample a chapter here. We miss Andrew a lot, and we're sure many of you do too.

R.A.'s everywhere

During our trip out to Gainesville to interview Durwood Pepper for the Lord Love You exhibition catalogue, we spotted some of R.A. Miller's work hanging on the sides of buildings, around the corner from where we parked in downtown Gainesville.


Although they're more than a little weather-beaten, they look really great outside like this, and it's always nice to walk around a corner and discover some public art. Below, Pepper, Paul Manoguerra and Carl Mullis pose for a photo, post-interview, in front of an R.A. cross.


Check our photostream on Flickr for a few more images from the day.

Family Day: Spring Festival

This Saturday, April 4, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Lamar Dodd School of Art (in the art education classrooms), children will have the opportunity to make self-portrait puppets out of felt. Children can choose from a variety of materials, such as glitter glue and yarn, to decorate their felt canvases and make a puppet with their distinct features. Come let your children express themselves. It's sure to be fun for the whole family!

In the News

If you're wondering what the latest developments are at the William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut, the budget cutbacks have led to reduced hours. And here's something from Time that updates the situation with the Rose Museum at Brandeis.

GMOA Web Shop is up!

After tons of planning and writing and photographing and who-knows-what-elseing on shop manager Amy Miller's part, the GMOA shop is up and running online! Click here to see the offerings or, if that link doesn't work (some browsers have problems with it), click here on the general UGA Marketplace site and choose "Georgia Museum of Art Shop." Have fun browsing. Amy's uploaded many of our very best and most popular items, including a ton of books, jewelry, and toys for young artists, and while it's not quite the same as the in-store experience, with its cozy rugs and warm atmosphere, you don't have to get out of your pajamas to do all your shopping for your artsy friends and families. Check back here, as we'll be highlighting certain items in the store, such as the Seasons cup and saucer set pictured above.

Interview today

Today, Paul Manoguerra, our curator of American art, is going to interview Carl Mullis, folk art collector, and Durwood Pepper, one of R.A. Miller's first dealers and a folk artist himself, about R.A. Miller in preparation for the book to accompany Lord Love You: Works by R.A. Miller from the Mullis Collection, the exhibition we're organizing that will be on view at the Lyndon House Arts Center in early August of this year. We're attempting to record the interview not only for Paul's reference, but also to be able to post it on our website as a podcast. We still have some older podcasts archived on our site here, and it's definitely something we'd like to get back into. Do you listen to museum podcasts? What kinds of things would you be interested in us recording and posting?