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Eye Level from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Celebrating Nam June Paik's Birthday
July 18, 2013 - 10:00am
Takeshi Murata
The artwork and ideas of Nam June Paik were a major influence on late twentieth-century art and continue to inspire a new generation of artists. Each year, the museum celebrates Paik's birthday on July 20 with a talk by a contemporary artist who was influenced by his work. This year, we welcome digital video artist Takeshi Murata, who will share how his interests have been shaped by Paik's innovative work. Murata manipulates animation, digital video, and appropriated footage to create complex and visually compelling works. He exploits the distortions and glitches that result from digital compression to create flowing layers of color and form that appear almost painterly in style. Murata was one of the first artists to employ this technique, which is known as "datamoshing." If you find the concept confusing, check out Murata's 2005 Monster Movie, recently acquired by the museum for the permanent collection, in which the artist transforms a section of an old B-movie into a swirling, hypnotic dance of color. Want to know more? Join us on Saturday at 6 p.m. for his talk! There will be Paik cake. (@PaikBot will be tweeting, too.)
Categories: News: Museum Blogs
Take 5! Five Questions with Jazz Drummer Harold Summey
July 16, 2013 - 11:30am
Jazz drummer Harold Summey will present the music of the Weather Report at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Take 5! concert on July 18, 2013 from 5-8 p.m. in the Kogod Courtyard. Laurel Fehrenbach, Public Programs Coordinator, asked Summey a few introductory questions about this rarely heard music.
Laurel Fehrenbach: Tell us a little bit about the Weather Report as a group? Who was in it and how did it get started? Harold Summey: Weather Report was started and co-led by Austrian keyboardist, Josef Zawinul and American saxophonist, Wayne Shorter. A seminal jazz fusion band of the 1970's and 80's, it made household names of musicians such as Omar Hakim, Jaco Pastorius, Airto Moriera, and Victor Bailey to name just a few. It's creation could be attributed to both Shorter and Zawinul's experience playing with Miles Davis and his experimentation with open and extended improvisation and rock rhythms. But, the fact that, at least in the beginning, Weather Report's improvisational concept involved the entire group rather than one preeminent soloist dominating the musical space, set the group apart. The original members were Joe Zawinul, keyboards, Wayne Shorter,soprano and tenor saxophones, Dom Um Romao, percussion, Eric Gravatt, drums, and Miroslav Vitous, bass.
LF: What are some of the other styles of jazz that influence their music? HS: One can hear various influences in the music of Weather Report including rock, free jazz, and Latin styles and, at times, R&B. With the addition over the years of several gifted percussionists including Brazilians Dom Um Romao and Airto Moriera, the music took on a distinct world music flavor.
LF: The group was around for a long time. How did it change over time? How did the effect the music that was produced? HS: The group started as much more of an extension of the Miles Davis groups of the period but gradually moved into much more predetermined arrangements. With this gradual change their hugely successful 1977 recording, "Heavy Weather" which included the Billboard hit, "Birdland", was made possible.
LF: What impact did the Weather Report have on the rest of the jazz world? HS: I think the lasting impact of Weather Report starts with the contributions of its members as composers, particularly Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter. More broadly, the linking of one of the essential elements of jazz, instrumental improvisation with interesting composition, world rhythms, and the drive of rock and R&B rhythms is still prevalent in the "smooth jazz" music of today.
LF: What is it about their music that you love so much? Why do you think it is important to showcase this music at Take 5? HS: With that said, as a serious musician I am very much interested in showcasing music that would not otherwise be heard but is nevertheless important to our cultural heritage. Just as we study and perform the works of great European masters of music, even more so should we study and perform American masters, their works, and their other influences and contributions.
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Experience the Smithsonian AIDS Memorial Quilt Panel
July 15, 2013 - 10:00am
THe Quilt panel on display during the Smithsonian Staff Picnic on the National Mall
The Smithsonian AIDS Memorial Quilt Panel will be displayed in the Kogod Courtyard at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery on July 17th, between 11:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. This is a special one-day-only opportunity for members of the public to view a meaningful Smithsonian community art project. Alli Jessing, Programs coordinator and auditorium manager at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, talks about her experiences working on the quilt.
The 2012 Smithsonian Folklife Festival featured a program titled Creativity and Crisis: Unfolding The AIDS Memorial Quilt. A portion of the AIDS Quilt was displayed on the National Mall during the Festival and visitors were invited to experience this powerful symbol of the AIDS pandemic. During this time, the Smithsonian community also rallied together to create a panel for the Quilt. It started with a half-dozen staff members sketching out ideas over coffee. After more than a year of dedicated work, the Smithsonian AIDS Memorial Quilt Panel is complete thanks to the efforts of more than 140 staff, docents and interns from offices all across the Smithsonian who volunteered time, skills, energy and supplies towards the project.
Volunteers spend their lunch hour at a quilting bee in the lobby of the McEvoy Auditorium at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Lunch hours were spent at quilting bees and volunteers crocheted tiny flowers for the garden scene while commuting on the metro. Workshops were organized to help teach staff who wanted to contribute to the project but didn’t know how sew. Office file cabinets were filled with scraps of fabric, yarn and countless spools of thread. When I arrived at my office in the morning, there would often be a bag of donated material on my desk, or a stack of completed quilt blocks waiting for me.
The panel commemorates the 2012 Smithsonian Folklife Festival that brought the AIDS Memorial Quilt to the National Mall. It features a fabric representation of the Smithsonian Castle, and knitted and crocheted flowers to make up the beautiful gardens. An illustrated statue of Joseph Henry (the first Secretary of the Smithsonian) watches over the scene. The rose window on the Castle is a doily, handmade by my great-grandmother. Smithsonian volunteers created several miniature versions of panels already in the AIDS Memorial Quilt, but some of the panels were created to remember friends, family and colleagues who have passed away from AIDS. Working hands-on with the Quilt became an intensely emotional experience for many of us, and we are extremely proud of the completed project.
The completed panel was unveiled at the 2013 Smithsonian staff picnic, which is held annually on the National Mall during the Folklife Festival. Anyone who worked on the quilt was invited to sign the border.
The Smithsonian AIDS Quilt Block is approximately 12 ft. x 12 ft., and weighs more than 20 lbs. After being displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery, the panel will be transferred to The NAMES Project, the custodians of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. As of 2012, the AIDS Memorial Quilt included more than 48,000 panels dedicated to over 90,000 individuals, and weighed in at over 54 tons. The Smithsonian AIDS Memorial Quilt panel will become part of this powerful global exhibition that fosters understanding, hope and healing in the face of crisis.
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Cloudsourcing
July 11, 2013 - 3:00pm
Cloud Music by Robert Watts, David Behrman and Bob Diamond (1974-79).
© 1979, Robert Watts Estate, David Behrman, Bob Diamond.
We often look up and imagine what clouds look like, but have you ever wondered what a cloud sounded like? Well, wonder no more.
With the recent acquisition of Cloud Music, a collaboration between Robert Watts, David Behrman, and Bob Diamond, one window-lit corner of the Lincoln Gallery has been turned into a sky-driven audio/video installation. "The artwork reads the sky like a musical score and plays it out live in real time in the gallery space," says Michael Mansfield, associate curator of film and media arts. A closed-circuit camera scans the sky and translates its activity through a specialized video analyzer that sends signals into a custom music synthesizer. Whenever there is a change in the sky the harmonics in the gallery shift. Visitors can see the video on monitors as the aural experience unfolds.
When you stand in front of the installation, you'll find yourself rooting for birds, bad weather, or thick clouds to create new sounds. But, fear not, even a clear sky has its own kind of sound. As Mansfield points out, no matter the weather, "Cloud Music changes the way you look at the sky."
Learn more about the museum's film and media arts initiative on our website.
This post was revised on July 15, 2013.
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Preparing for <i>Our America</i> - From Cuba with Love: The Influence of Cuban Posters on Latino Art
July 10, 2013 - 10:20amIn this blog post Curatorial Assistant Florencia Bazzano-Nelson explores the rich links between Latino art and the Cuban poster movement, which captivated artists in the United States and abroad in the 1960s and 1970s. The works discussed below will be featured in the upcoming exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, opening October 25, 2013, along with other works that attest to the importance of graphics and international artistic models for Latino artists.
Luis González's Hasta La Victoria Siempre
If Cuban poster art took the imagination of many American artists by storm, it was a perfect storm. In the 1960s and early 1970s, a revolutionary social experiment was under way in Cuba. This change inspired some artists in New York and San Francisco to focus on social transformation in their work. As a way of engaging popular culture and the mass media, pop artists promoted screen printing, a relatively new media that facilitated poster production. Partly inspired by American pop art, Cubans generated thousands of posters which were sent all over the world.
Cuban posters arrived in the United States brought by visitors to the Caribbean nation and as inserts in the magazine Tricontinental that the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL) published in Havana since 1966. The high aesthetic quality and creative diversity of these prints moved McGraw-Hill to publish an oversized book entitled The Art of Revolution: Castro's Cuba: 1959-70 with full color reproductions of almost 100 posters. An important exhibition of Cuban posters in 1974 took place at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. Latino artists living in New York and the Bay Area, especially those who supported the civil rights movement and the struggle against colonialism, appreciated how successfully Cuban posters blended art with politics.
Chicanos Rupert García, José Cervantes, and Luis and Hector González, as well as Puerto Ricans Marcos Dimas and Carlos Irizarry often favored the bold graphic style and prominent use of text that characterized many Cuban posters. Like their Cuban counterparts, Latino artists shared a concern for world-wide colonial oppression. As a response to Cuban artist Raul Martinez's serialized images of Che Guevara, Dimas honors Lolita Lebron, a radical Puerto Rican independence activist. Both Irizarry and Garcia transform images from the media into compelling denunciations of the Vietnam war and its aftermath. For their part, Cervantes and the Gonzalez brothers adopt Che Guevara's famous phrase "Hasta la victoria, siempre!" or "Towards Victory, Always" in their posters that support United Farm Workers union. Such references to Cuban art inscribed these artists' work into a larger global context, internationalizing their art as part of the Third World's peoples plight for social justice.
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Handi-hour with Smithsonian Gardens
July 9, 2013 - 11:15am
The next Handi-hour is on Wednesday, July 10 and will feature garden crafts! Staff members from Smithsonian Gardens helped us come up with the activities, which include decorating terra cotta pots, creating cork plant holders, and more. Be sure to watch our latest Handi-hour video, in which American Art program coordinator Katie Crooks and Smithsonian Gardens manager of collections and education Cynthia Brown demonstrate this month's crafts. As always, there will be music, craft beer, and cheese. There are only two more Handi-hour programs at the Renwick Gallery before it closes for renovation at the end of the year (do not fear - Handi-hour will move to the Luce Foundation Center in the museum's main building during the closure), so I hope you can join us!
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A Democracy of Images
July 5, 2013 - 10:22am
William Christenberry's China Grove Church--Hale County, Alabama
At the museum's McEvoy Auditorium the other evening, guest curator Merry Foresta set out to talk about how she put together the new exhibition, A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. During her hour at the podium she combined personal recollection with history, (or as she remarked, "a little bit country, a little bit rock-n-roll"), Foresta illuminated not only the exhibition, but the museum's history of collecting photographs, the history of the medium in America (from daguerrotype to digital), as well as photography's prominence in American museums from the 1970s onward.
Foresta became the museum's first curator of photography in 1983; she left in 1999 to spearhead the Smithsonian's pan-institutional photography initiative. In 1981, Foresta received a call from a colleague at the National Endowment of the Arts. He had a supply room full of boxes of photos from photographers who had received NEA grants, and the photos needed a new home. She immediately arranged for the transfer of over 1,800 photographs from the NEA to the Museum. Inside the boxes were works by photographers such as Bruce Davidson, Harry Callahan, and William Christenberry (who had sent the NEA color snapshots taken with his Kodak Brownie camera that were processed at a local drugstore), among other photographers.
It is from this base, that over the next sixteen years Foresta built a substantial photography collection at the museum of over 7,000 photos, and curated important exhibitions. For A Democracy of Images, she culled through the museum's immense catalogue to produce a show of 113 images. What makes the exhibition so strong is that it really is a democracy. Yes, you'll find Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, Robert Frank, Walker Evans, and Weegee in the lineup, but not always the familiar image. You'll also come across names and images that you may not have heard of before.
Walt Whitman, known as "the poet of democracy," thought photography was the perfect artistic medium for the United States, an art form for one and all, rooted in everyday people and ordinary things. Check the archive of your personal photos on your cell phone and you'll know that he was right.
If I could coin a word for Foresta it would be "raconteurator," though it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Formed from the words raconteur and curator, she combines the best of storytelling, scholarship, and curation. So enough from me. It's Merry Foresta you really want to hear.
Check out the exhibition website here.
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In This Case: The Dapper Palmer Hayden
July 2, 2013 - 11:00am
Palmer Hayden's The Janitor Who Paints
We are always sad to see a piece leave the Luce Foundation Center, especially when it's a visitor favorite. Sometimes though, an artwork's departure (for loan or display elsewhere in the museum) gives us an opportunity put up another piece from our collection. This was the case with Palmer Hayden's The Janitor Who Paints. Many visitors have inquired about the painting over the years so we were excited when there was a space large enough to display the painting. We were even more excited (we are an enthusiastic group) when we learned that Nicholas Miller, a fellow at the museum, was writing part of his dissertation on Palmer Hayden's work. Nicholas recently gave a talk on The Janitor Who Paints during our Art+Coffee program. You can watch Nicholas' talk on our YouTube channel. We also sat down with Nicholas to chat more about his interest in Hayden's work, the Art+Coffee talk, and his experience as a fellow.
Eye Level: What was your initial attraction to Palmer Hayden's The Janitor Who Paints?
Nicholas Miller: The first chapter of my dissertation is dedicated to discussing Hayden's paintings and experience living in Paris from 1927 through 1932. It was there, in 1931, that he created the first iteration of the painting. I think I was attracted to the many challenges the painting poses to interpretation. Why did Hayden paint over the original composition in the 1940s? Who is the artist represented in the painting, Palmer Hayden, his friend Cloyd Boykin, or perhaps, both? Was African art used as a model for the figure and, if so, what does it tell us about African diaspora communities? And finally, how do we talk about paintings made by African American artists that possess an unsettling proximity to racist caricatures? I'm not sure if any of these questions have definitive answers but I've done my best to provide a few possible solutions.
EL: You mentioned Hayden's dapper apparel in the talk. Why do you think his beret and clothes were so important to his identity?
NM: Well, the clothes make the man! Style, as scholars Richard Powell and Monica Miller have shown in their studies Cutting A Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture and Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, has always played a huge role in the ways members of the African diaspora forge their own identities. I think Hayden was very aware of his own background as a janitor and how this biographical fact was brought up by many critics discussing his work. Also, dandyism has close ties with early modernist art practice; one can think of, for instance, the French impressionists and especially author Charles Baudelaire. Hayden's beret, foulard, and three piece suits could be seen as a way to surpass his working-class background and create a new "artistic" identity while he lived in Paris. As a side, if you're interested in this aspect of black cultural production check out this year's Smithsonian Folklife Festival, specifically the programing surrounding The Will to Adorn: African American Diversity, Style, and Identity.
EL: A visitor noticed that the figure in The Janitor Who Paints is painting with his right hand. Did you ever figure out if Hayden was right or left-handed?
NM: Unfortunately, I haven't quite solved it yet! I've been looking into his biographical material located at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, but it doesn't seem like anyone recorded what hand he painted with. The answer is unclear because in The Janitor Who Paints the artist is using his right hand, but in photographs for the Harmon Foundation he is seen painting with his left. Both images might be staged and not necessarily truthful. Yet another issue with the painting. I'm still hoping to track it down.
EL: Did the talk give you any insights or new thoughts about the painting?
NM: Certainly. One of the best and most productive aspects of the talk was being able to take a group up to see the actual painting. So often when I look at a painting it is done in isolation and it was therefore fascinating to see what everyone focused on when viewing the work. For instance, what I originally thought was a radiator was actually the headboard of a foreshortened bed on the right side of the canvas. It was a wonderful collaborative viewing session.
EL: You've been a fellow at the museum this year. What does being a fellow at the museum entail?
NM: Being a pre-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum is, first and foremost, a wonderful honor and has been one of the most productive times of my graduate student career. As a fellow, our primary responsibility is to work steadfastly on our dissertations. We are provided with work space, library and archive access, and ample resources. We also attend weekly lunchbag lectures, have monthly writing workshops, Friday lunches with curators, and one symposium where we present our recent work. The fact that all of the fellows are in residence at the Smithsonian and that the museum has fostered such a congenial and collaborative environment is certainly a very unique opportunity and what makes this fellowship so special.
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A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
June 28, 2013 - 10:10am
Visitors using tablets in the exhibition.
The exhibition A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum opens today, celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the establishment of the museum's pioneering photography collection. The exhibition title refers to Walt Whitman's belief that photography was a quintessentially American activity, rooted in everyday people and ordinary things and presented in a straightforward way. The exhibition features 113 photographs selected from the museum’s permanent collection and includes works by Timothy O'Sullivan, Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Trevor Paglen, William Eggleston and Ana Mendieta.
As is often the case with exhibitions, this represents just a fraction of the 7,300 photographs in the museum's collection. An accompanying website provides information on the works on view and also allows you to explore more than 500 related works. In this way, visitors (both online and on site) can get a broader view of American photography as well as deeper access into our collections. The website is available on iPads in the galleries and is also accessible from your own device - be it computer, tablet, or smart phone - americanart.si.edu/photographs, Enjoy!
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Picture This: Designers in the Luce Center
June 25, 2013 - 8:59am
Heidi Hess with a piece from her "Serving for the Body" series inspired by a muscle and tendon in the foot (left), metal supplies from Hess's studio (above right), and visitors sketching their own jewelry designs (below right).
Last Thursday marked the return of our series Luce Design. Local jeweler and principle designer for Poppy Jewelry Heidi Hess kicked off the summer series. Hess told visitors about her creative process and brought some examples of her metalsmithing tools (including some that were once her grandmother's). Hess also showed off some of her designs, including examples from a series that was inspired by human anatomy. Hess was excited to learn at the end of the night that a work by her professor Mary Lee Hu was on view in the museum's Renwick Gallery.
We hope you can join us for the next Luce Design with local letterpress printer Melanie Oullette Karlins on Wednesday, July 24.
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Seeing Things (11): Model Drinking Coffee
June 20, 2013 - 11:13amThis is the eleventh in a series of personal observations about how people experience and explore museums. Take a look at Howard's other blog posts about seeing things.
Paul Wonner's Model Drinking Coffee
The model is taking a break in a blue robe, sitting in a chair, having a coffee. Perhaps he just put the robe on after holding a pose. Maybe the painting studio is next door. He's looking at us, but perhaps he's looking at the painter. I'm taken in by the colors, the model's stare, and the shapes: the lovely curves of the wood-bent chairs, and the squares of the window behind the sitter, forming a rectangle. I like the sun and I love the shadows, the creamy whites and blues. The brush strokes stun like perfect sentences. Artist Paul Wonner has let us in on this moment, as if it was the most natural thing, to stumble on a model, having a coffee, taking a break. And what does it mean not to have the painting that was painted in the studio, but this, a break from the "real work" that engages the viewer in a conversation, and an immediate search for narrative?
Like David Park, Paul Wonner was a Bay Area painter who worked happily on the West Coast while the New York School was being shaped by the abstract expressionists. Wonner's style comes out of abstract expressionism—there are lots of passages of pure paint even though he applies them to images in the world. "The artist," he is quoted as saying, "is not painting in order to deliver messages of hope and good will nor of doom but simply because painting is, or should be, above everything else what he likes to do."
Here, as in Girl in Swing, also in the collection of American Art, Wonner brings us the light and color of Northern California on top of narratives that reveal the mysteries of the human experience.
Next up, a look at Elmer Bischoff's Two Bathers.
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Q and Art: Copies of Artworks
June 18, 2013 - 10:11amThis post is part of an ongoing series on Eye Level: Q and Art, where American Art's Research department brings you interesting questions and answers about art and artists from our archive.
Edmonia Lewis' Moses (after Michelangelo)
Question: What does the term "after" mean in the description of an artwork, as in a sculpture that is "after Michelangelo"?
Answer: In most cases when an artwork is described as "after Michelangelo" or "after Titian" it means that the work is a copy after a known work by Michelangelo or Titian. For example, the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection includes a work by Edmonia Lewis titled Moses (after Michelangelo). Lewis carved this sculpture, but the subject and composition are based on Michelangelo's sculpture of the same name.
Artworks made "after" the work of another artist should not be confused with forgeries. The intention of a forger is to deceive the viewer, but there are several legitimate reasons for an artist to copy the work of another artist. The Grove Dictionary of Art divides handmade copies into "three distinct but not necessarily mutually exclusive categories: the copy as a means of duplication; the copy in art education; and the copy as a starting-point for the creation of another art work."
The American Art Museum holds examples from each of these categories. The duplication of portraits of important persons was necessary to meet the requests of patrons. The portraits of monarchs and early American portraits were often copied by the artist or an artist's student. Henry Brintnell Bounetheau's miniature painting of General George Washington is an altered copy of a well-known portrait by John Trumbull. For examples of copies made for the purpose of art education, see Kenyon Cox's sketches of two paintings by old masters: After Titian's Madonna of the Rabbit and After Giovanni Boltraffio's "Sacra Conversazione". Cox saw the original paintings in the Louvre while he was studying art in Paris between 1877 and 1882. From the Renaissance through the nineteenth century, studying and copying the great art of the past was considered an essential part of becoming an artist. In the twentieth century there was a shift towards valuing the originality of an artist over the emulation of the past. However, artists continued to be inspired by the work of previous artists. An example of the third category of copies, "a starting-point for the creation of another work", is William T. Wiley's The Sower after Van Gogh. In this work Wiley started with the subject of Van Gogh's series of paintings of The Sower, but it is not a simple copy; Wiley added his own style to make the work his own.
To read more about copies in art history check your local library for Paul Duro's article in the electronic or print version of the Grove Dictionary of Art: Paul Duro. "Copy." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T019393.
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Picture This: Behind-the-Scenes at the Renwick's Grand Salon
June 13, 2013 - 9:48am
American Art conservators take great care when dusting the paintings in the Renwick Gallery's Grand Salon.
Related: Read about our other behind-the-scenes conservation work here at American Art.
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Conservation: Bathing A Plaster Beauty
June 11, 2013 - 2:05pmMorgan Nau, an objects conservator and plaster specialist on fellowship with American Art's Lunder Center clues us into how conservators keep our artworks clean.
Detail, Karl Bitter's Diana
Anyone who's ever cleaned and polished a wooden table, and then returned the next day only to discover a new coating of dust, will understand one of the many challenges conservators face every day —that endless battle against dust and dirt.
For some materials, such as glass, glazed ceramic, and plastic, dust can easily be wiped away. However, on porous materials like uncoated wood or plaster, as is the case here, dust and dirt can become ingrained in the surface. This makes it more difficult to remove, requiring more than a dusting. I conducted some tests using various solvents to determine what would the gentlest cleaner for artist Karl Bitter's plaster sculpture, Diana. And a water-based cleaning solution proved to be the best.
However, Diana threw another wrench in the works. As a plaster sculpture she is inherently vulnerable to water. Prolonged contact with water weakens plaster and can cause it to crumble. If water penetrates through the plaster it can cause rusting of the internal metal support.
This posed a unique challenge when devising a cleaning method. My water-based solution was very effective at removing the accumulated dirt, but I was concerned about using too much water. I reduced these risks by suspending the cleaning solution in a gel. This way I could put the solution exactly where I wanted it on the sculpture without fear it would affect other areas. In addition, the water would be prevented from saturating the plaster. Using this method I systematically cleaned the entirety of the sculpture, revealing her bright, painted surface.
If you would like to come watch Morgan and the other conservators in action, be sure to tag along on the next Behind the Scenes tour, which occurs every Wednesday at 3:00 p.m.
Related Post: Conservation: Not Your Usual Dental Check-Up
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Not Your Average Night at the Museum
June 5, 2013 - 9:55am
Locals enjoy the music of More Humans at the Luce Foundation Center's Luce Unplugged
Last Friday night, American Art's Luce Foundation Center hosted local bands, brews and great art all in one place— and with no cover charge. Amid the 3,000 artworks located in the Luce Center, we presented the latest installment of our Luce Unplugged Community Showcase.
Art museum-turned-concert venue, the Luce Center once again teamed up with City Paper to present an eclectic lineup of local talent: America Hearts, Lyriciss, and More Humans. This sampling of local music was served up with a sampling of local beer from Alexandria’s own Port City Brewing Company. Each of the three acts also paired their music with artworks currently on display, sending concert-goers upstairs to check them out.
Concert-goers explore the art as the band plays.
America Hearts kicked off the night with a set that could have easily been transported from a divey nightclub. But even while jumping around and surging their electric pulse to the weekend-ready crowd, they couldn't help but take note of the sculptures and Victorian-era architecture around them. Before they dove right back into their unapologetic blend of garage rock and quirky pop, frontwoman Jess Matthews paused just for a second to admit this was the one of nicest places they've ever played. American Hearts chose to pair their new song "I Like Bad Music" with a delicate portrait miniature entitled Brother of the Van Buren Family, which reminded them of Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette, "young and privileged" in a small Polaroid-like keepsake. The song will soon be added to our ongoing Luce Unplugged Mix Tape audio tour.
Next up, Metro area native Lyriciss spent much of his set paying tribute to his DC-Maryland roots, sharing how they have fostered his own upbringing, outlook, and hip hop stylings. He also fittingly chose a painting that reflects these experiences, Blind Musician by William H. Johnson:
Blind Musician speaks to me because I feel it represents any artist dealing with the perils of being involved with the politics of art...It's almost like walking blind with nothing but our talent, and that definitely speaks for me and my career.
Rap artists always bring a unique, expressive presence to the Luce Center, and Lyriciss epitomized this on Friday. It became clear why he has reached wide audiences in recent years (notably donning a Washington Nationals cap in a music video that has well over 50,000 views).
Alt-rock trio More Humans turned things down a bit to finish the night. Their intimate, acoustic set provided the "unplugged" portion of the evening. And they reminded us how stripped-down sets can sound great in our museum space, thanks to the band's fine-tuned musicianship and vocal harmonies. More Humans chose Wayne Thiebaud's painting Three Sandwiches, calling it "simultaneously straightforward and alienating," a beautiful description also reminiscent of their own haunting music. They too brought fresh material for their setlist. Old and new fans closed in and around (and above!) the band, lining along the mezzanine as the natural lighting of the Luce Center gradually dimmed to reflect the approaching night through the skylight.
Before wandering out of the museum after-hours to carry on with Friday night, it was gratifying to hear how many visitors appreciated not only the night's local music, but American Art's collection which they explored during the various musical sets. There's nothing like experiencing art in a new way!
The monthly Luce Unplugged series will be back again this summer on Sunday afternoons, so come get to know this interesting new local music venue.
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Cleaning Up Our Cowboy
May 30, 2013 - 9:17am
Vaquero, by Luis Jiménez
This past week, the iconic sculpture Vaquero, which was modeled in 1980 and cast in 1990 by Luis Jiménez, received its annual cleaning by museum conservators. A year’s worth of acid rain, car exhaust, bird droppings and pollen were removed from the 16-foot-6-inch-tall artwork, and a protective coating reapplied. The vibrant sculpture, which depicts a bucking horse and Mexican cowboy, has become an emblem for the museum since the contemporary take on an equestrian monument was installed at the museum’s G Street entrance in 1990.
A team of three objects specialists carefully examined and documented any areas of concern in the fiberglass and acrylic urethane sculpture. Vaquero was then washed from top to bottom to remove grime and residue. Once cleaned and dried, the conservators applied a protective coating of wax to areas of the sculpture that are particularly exposed to the elements. Finally, any sections of the gel coat that were beginning to delaminate and lift from the surface of the sculpture were re-adhered with a specialized epoxy. This preservative treatment prepared Vaquero for its 17th year watching over the museum’s entrance.
Did you miss out on this outdoor treatment? Stay tuned to the Lunder Conservation Center's Facebook page for upcoming information on our treatment of Roy Lichtenstein's Modern Head, coming up in June!
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Thomas Day: Man, Maker, Mogul
May 22, 2013 - 9:00am
Thomas Day, Newel, 1855, Glass-Dameron House, North Carolina. Photo © Tim Buchman 2013
The elegant Grand Salon was the setting for a panel discussion on the many lives and interests of Thomas Day, the subject of the Renwick Gallery’s, Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color. Day, a carpenter by training, learned the art from his father and became the most famous craftsman in North Carolina, in the years before the Civil War. His work is both fluid and idiosyncratic, and he created furniture as well as architectural and decorative motifs for the region's elite and mercantile middle class. Born in 1801, Day lived in an increasingly difficult period in our country's history. How did a free man of color attain such a prominent place in society when the country was to become greatly divided in the years leading up to the Civil War? The four panelists John W. Franklin, Donna Day, James L. Roark, and Michael A. Ausbon, helped to answer that question and let us in on Day's art, family, the times he lived in, and how one man could carve out an extraordinary life for himself.
John Whittington Franklin, senior program manager at the National Museum of African American Art and Culture moderated the discussion and, to get things started, told some fascinating stories about his own father, distinguished scholar John Hope Franklin, to whom the exhibition's notable catalogue is dedicated. As a graduate student at Harvard in the 1930s, the senior Franklin traveled to North Carolina to work on his dissertation about free men of color in North Carolina, but, as a black man, he was not allowed to sit in the main research area. Instead, he was given his own small room, a cart for books, and a key to the stacks. That is, until researchers in the main room complained about Franklin being given preferential treatment. Segregation and division by race was not limited to Thomas Day's era. Interestingly, when Franklin hired a professional typist to work on his dissertation, to their joint amazement, they discovered that she had been typing on a table made by Thomas Day.
Family member Donna Day discussed the importance of education in the Day household, a legacy that has been passed down through the generations. Thomas Day and his wife, Aquila, made sure that their three children were educated in all the arts, and were sent to the Wesleyan Academy in Massachusetts. Day, himself, was educated in Quaker schools, and helped to give him entry into the higher echelons of society. James L. Roark, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of American History at Emory University, painted a picture of the time, and the precarious dance Thomas Day had to practice each day as a free man of color in a white society. "He was a complicated man in a complicated time—a free black in a world dedicated to slavery." Day, prosperous until an 1857 bank failure, was also the owner of fourteen slaves at the height of his business. Day's skills outside of the shop, what Roark referred to as, "negotiating racial etiquette everyday of his life," proved just as vital to his survival as his unmatched skills inside the shop.
Those skills as a master craftsman were described by Michael A. Ausbon, associate curator of decorative arts at the North Carolina Museum of History. Ausbon took us inside Day's workshop and showed us the elements typical of Day's pieces which were in demand and deemed the best made in North Carolina. Often characterized by undulating shapes, fluid lines and spirals, Roark talked about Day's "forms and the playful balance between positive and negative spaces," which seemed appropriate for a free man of color who had to perform a delicate balancing act his entire life.
Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color remains on view at the Renwick through July 28, 2013.
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Upcoming Cineconcert: Andrew E. Simpson and <i>The Wind</i>
May 16, 2013 - 11:54amOn May 19th, composer and pianist Andrew E. Simpson will perform his original score for the 1928 silent film The Wind at a special afternoon screening at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. Lillian Gish, the "First Lady of American Cinema", plays an innocent girl who moves from her Virginia home to the western prairies and is haunted by the ever-present wind. Joint Programs Coordinator Alli Jessing spoke to composer Andrew Simpson about his process for connecting his music to the history of silent film.
Silent Screen Actress Lillian Gish
Eye Level: When did you start composing scores for silent film, and what was the first film you worked with?
Andrew Simpson: I first started composing silent film scores in 2005, and began accompanying them as a piano soloist in 2006. The first score I wrote was for Liberty, a 1929 Laurel and Hardy comedy short directed by Leo McCarey. This is a very funny film, which features the usual high-class slapstick pranks: the boys make a successful prison break, but end up wearing each others' pants in their haste to put on civilian clothing. Eventually, a crab falls into Stan's pants, with predictable results, and they destroy phonograph machines and records in front of a store, attract the attention of the cops, and wind up on the high girders of a construction site. The film is very high-energy, with lots of suspenseful moments on the girders (which lasts for about half of the 22-minute film). Its energetic activity fits well with my own musical style.
I wrote Liberty for the Snark Ensemble, the silent film group which I founded with composer/performer Maurice Saylor. My score is fully composed and notated, scored originally for two woodwinds (clarinets and saxophones), piano, and percussion. The score draws strongly on jazz styles, from the Dixieland-inspired title theme to the Benny-Goodman-esque and sound in the faster girder section. The Snark Ensemble has performed Liberty many times; in fact, I believe that it is the group's most-performed score. The ensemble makes its AFI Silver Theatre debut in late April 2013, and this film is on the program.
EL: What scene in The Wind was the most fun to score? Which one was the most challenging?
AS: The most fun was a scene early in the film when Letty (Lillian Gish) arrives from Virginia at her cousin Beverly's (male) ranch in west Texas, and the two cowboys who pick her up at the train station and bring her to Beverly's place are vying with each other to impress her. The Wind, as a powerful drama, has only a few truly comic scenes, and this one needs underscoring which captures the humor but also the underlying seriousness (at one point, in the midst of the funnier stuff, Letty catches sight of sand blown against the window by the wind, something which frightens her greatly: this ominous image recurs throughout the film). Because my score for The Wind is for chorus and instruments, there is text (I compiled the text and wrote original lyrics). The music in this scene is based on a melody like a fiddle tune with a bright, easy feel, to which the chorus adds whimsical words, such as:
Sopranos/altos (to the tenors/basses):
I don't want to dance, I don't want to play you; I just want a little home And little ones to stay you.
Tenors/basses (to the sopranos/altos):
I ain't the best, But sure I ain't the worst, neither.
In a way, the words here stand for Letty's amused but standoffish attitude towards the cowboys and the men's invitations to her to dance.
The most challenging scene was the big storm scene (the "norther"). For one thing, it's quite long—several minutes—and so the pacing must be careful (don't peak too soon or for too long, in other words). The music must rise to the power of the film's visual climax, which is always a great challenge. Musically, the melodic and harmonic material should build steadily while not becoming redundant, and it should closely track the developing emotions of the characters. EL: What interests you about the relationship between music and cinema? AS: Music and cinema share a fundamental trait: both unfold in time. You can't listen to a piece of music or see a film without seeing it front to back. Even if the order of the film or the music is deliberately reversed, you still experience that order from front to back when listening or watching, and so it is still linear. Composers think in terms of filling time, and questions of proportion and pacing in music parallel what directors think about, as well. What I try to do in my silent film scores is to track the emotional and dramatic essence of a film as closely as possible while honoring music's own special rhetoric.
Secondly, I have always found that most of my musical ideas and pieces spring from a visual stimulus - a painting, sculpture, photograph, or even a remembered image - and so the visual appearance of silent films also suggest musical analogues to me. Video stimulates audio, you might say, although the resulting audio feeds back into and informs the video. This two-way street, this mutual influence, fascinates me.
EL: Who is your favorite classical musician, and who is your favorite contemporary musician?
AS: If you're talking about "old" composers, it's Beethoven. Among "new" composers, I don't really have a single favorite, although I admire such composers as John Adams, Thomas Ades, Kaija Saariaho, and Chen Yi. I also have an ongoing research interest in Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis. He is best known to American audiences as the composer for the film Zorba the Greek. But he is also a classical composer, with operas, chamber music, and orchestral pieces. There are many, many others working in all areas of music who produce exceptionally fine work: it's an exciting time to be in the field!
EL: If you won the lottery tomorrow and could fund your dream project, writing a new score for any film, what would it be?
AS: Well, I'd like to do a big historical epic for an equally big orchestra, something such as Ben-Hur or Abel Gance's multi-hour Napoleon. I'd also like the chance to conduct the orchestra. I'll be conducting the National Gallery of Art Chamber Orchestra in two new short Civil War film scores of mine on October 20, and this will be a great challenge!
The Wind cineconcert is on Sunday, May 19, 2013 at 3pm in American Art's McEvoy Auditorium. This program is jointly presented with the National Portrait Gallery. Free tickets distributed in the G Street lobby 30 minutes before the start of the program (limit two per person).
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Fabricating for an Exhibition: Jim Baxter and <i>Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color</i>
May 14, 2013 - 12:25pmThe exhibition Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color opened last month at the Renwick Gallery. Georgina Goodlander chatted with Jim Baxter, an exhibits specialist at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, who created architectural components inspired by Day's work to complement the pieces of furniture on view.
Exhibits Specialist, Jim Baxter, and his exhibition design work for Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color
Eve Level: Tell us about your job. What do you do at the Museum?
Jim Baxter: As an Exhibits Specialist, my main job is to fabricate exhibition pedestals, cases, platforms and architectural components. I also install, maintain, and de-install art.
EL: How did you get into this kind of work: What's your background? Are you an artist?
JB: I studied art at the University of Maryland, specializing in sculpture. Finding that people were more apt to buy furniture than sculpture, I started building custom furniture. At the same time I worked for an art transport company, where I built crates and packed art for the Smithsonian and elsewhere. Through this company I made the contacts to help me get a job, first at the National Portrait Gallery, then at the Renwick Gallery. Now, after 38 years away from making art, I've started doing figurative ceramic sculpture and totally love it. I've found that modeling, or what I consider "building" the human figure is like constructing a piece of furniture. You need to have the same understanding of proportion, joinery (how the bones connect and move), balance, and grace.
EL: You recently created some architectural components for the exhibition Thomas Day: Master Craftsman and Free Man of Color. What did that involve?
JB: I started by meeting with the designer to establish what could be built in the limited time I had before the pieces needed to be installed, and what material should be used. I began the project by making an actual size mock-up of one of the units cut in half so everyone could see exactly how it would look in the gallery space. I worked from both the designer's drawings and actual photographs of each component. I then drew to scale the entire component on a Masonite backboard, noting the depths of the different layers and dimensions. Then I fabricated and glued the pieces to the backboard starting with the bottom layer and working up. The curves were first roughed out, then I refined them by eye and feel to give them a graceful flow.
EL: What challenges did you encounter in the Thomas Day project?
JB: Building the stair component was the biggest challenge since my shop is so small. Everything had to be laid out exactly for each of the four panels to fit together perfectly when installed.
EL: Do you have a favorite work in the Thomas Day exhibition?
JB: Thomas Day's newels are definitely my favorite even though we weren't able to get any for the show. (A newel, also called a central pole, is an upright post that supports the handrail of a stair banister.) I made one for the stair component based on photographs. They're so wonderfully whimsical and crazy. I think Day's creative imagination was truly let loose with his newels.
EL: Looking back, what has been your favorite project at the Museum?
JB: I can't think of a particular project that would be my favorite but two exhibitions really stand out. These were Ruth Duckworth (ceramic sculpture) and Sam Maloof. I had the opportunity to meet two of my favorite artists before they passed away. It was just a hand shake and a hello but one I'll never forget.
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In This Case: <i>Prairie Chicken</i>
May 9, 2013 - 9:22amKelly Trop interned at American Art from September 2012 to May 2013. She worked in the Public Programs office and Luce Foundation Center and wrote this post about her experience.
Edward Kemeys' Prairie Chicken
As an intern at the American Art Museum's Luce Foundation Center, one of my first assignments was to write an object label for Edward Kemeys' bronze sculpture, Prairie Chicken. The Kemeys biography at my disposal mentioned he was the first American to make a career out of animal sculpture, but there was no specific information on this particular sculpture. Now Prairie Chicken and I were deep in uncharted territory. Who was going to tell me about this sculpture's creation? How was I going to determine its historical and artistic significance? And were those really a pair of tiny wings sticking out of its neck?
I started by taking a close look at the statue. From the level of detail in the texture and features, I concluded that Prairie Chicken was a realistic portrait of an actual wild animal. But I'd never seen a prairie chicken before, so I researched them by reading online and watching an embarrassing number of prairie chicken videos. It turns out that Kemeys' sculpture is an anatomically accurate life-size model of a small prairie chicken, which is a type of grouse that was once ubiquitous in the Midwest. Kemeys would have been able to see prairie chickens in action at their 'leks', or breeding grounds, and he would have noted their booming mating calls, inflatable orange eyebrows and throat sacs, and the mobile, horn-like pinnae feathers at their necks. As a newly-fledged prairie chicken connoisseur, I can tell you that prairie chickens are at their most appealing when stomping around all puffed up, trying to attract mates or scare off rivals!
Edward Kemeys learned anatomy by hunting and dissecting many wild animals and birds. He often dabbled in amateur taxidermy to capture a particular pose. It is possible that he used one or more of his homemade models as a reference for Prairie Chicken. However, without proper tools and training in taxidermy, he probably couldn't have kept his models' throat sacs full of air throughout the drying process. So while this work may unwittingly reveal Kemeys' weaknesses as a taxidermist, his execution of its pose shows both a dedication to accuracy and an attention to detail.
Kemeys' dual role as an animal portraitist and public sculptor became clearer to me over the course of my research. Kemeys was working on this sculpture in the 1870s, when prairie chickens were more numerous than ever before. But shortly thereafter, the rapid approach of homesteads and farmland into wilderness areas began driving the birds' population down. Today, despite conservation efforts, all species of prairie chickens are now vulnerable or endangered. While Kemeys may not have anticipated this particular fate, he saw his sculptures both as personal records and public memorials.
Near the end of his life, Kemeys moved to Washington, D.C., and tried to convince the government to commission his work for public spaces in the city. Sadly, he did not succeed in that goal. However, since case 16b in the Luce Center has Prairie Chicken and and many more of his sculptures, you can still experience a little bit of the wild west when you visit the American Art Museum!
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