Audios

No Boundaries: Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Abstract Painting

Episode 43: Canvases that manifest an art tradition going back tens of thousands of years. Brooke talks with Henry Skerritt, the curator of No Boundaries: Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Abstract Painting, which will be at the Cornell University Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in Ithaca, New York until August 14, 2016. Skerritt explains how the paintings in this exhibition reflect a genre that has traditionally been ceremonial and impermanent. Although the artists that are featured in No Boundaries have created works that are hung in museums and private collections all over the world, the art is more about the process than the product. All nine showcased artists paint in full awareness that each viewer’s experience with a work of art will be unique from that of the artist.

Henry Skerritt, in addition to being a curator, is also an art historian and songwriter, and is currently a doctoral candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. He originally hails from Perth in Western Australia and his knowledge of and passion for Aboriginal Australian art provide insight into a genre that is in many ways different from other world art traditions.

David O. Brown/Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University

Featured Image: David O. Brown/Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University

Identity

Episode 41: Who are you? Who am I? Who is that? Identity in American culture is often as much about how an individual presents himself or herself as it about how that person’s identity is externally determined. Brooke talks with associate curator Maggie Adler of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas about Identity, an exhibition which explores community, celebrity and individual identity through portraiture from the Amon Carter’s permanent collection. The exhibition highlights the exciting new acquisitions of Sedrick Huckaby’s The 99% and Glenn Ligon’s print series Runaways. Their works – in combination with prints and photographs of and by public figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Martin Luther King, Jr., and and Georgia O’Keeffe – show the various personas individuals adopt. Together, these portraits represent the fluid and constantly shifting role of identity in society from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. Identity runs until October 9, 2016.

Mervin Jules (1912–1994)
Martin Luther King Jr, ca. 1963–68
Woodcut
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. John Richardson Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Edward Weston (1886–1958)

James Cagney, 1933

Gelatin silver print
© 1981 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Sedrick Huckaby (b. 1975)

#075 Oliver Spar’s Daughter (I Go to O.D. Wyatt), 2012–13
From The 99%—Highland Hills
Lithograph
© 2013 Sedrick Huckaby
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Sedrick Huckaby (b. 1975)
#073 Neighbor, 2012–13
From The 99%—Highland Hills
Lithograph
© 2013 Sedrick Huckaby
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Sedrick Huckaby (b. 1975)
#028 Vic, 2012–13
From The 99%—Highland Hills
Lithograph
© 2013 Sedrick Huckaby
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Featured Image:

Glenn Ligon (b. 1960)
Runaways [2 of 10], 1993
Lithograph
© Glenn Ligon; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Thomas Dane Gallery, London
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Confronting the Canvas: Women of Abstraction

Episode 42: The current state of abstraction of the female artist working in New York. The Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville presents Confronting the Canvas: Women of Abstraction, an exhibition that features over thirty works by six contemporary artists and that will run until September 4, 2016. Brooke talked with Assistant Curator Jaime DeSimone about how Confronting the Canvas not only showcases women at the forefront of today’s New York art scene, but also provides insight into the work of women from previous periods, whose art was often overshadowed by that of their male counterparts.

leading, 2015.

Oil on canvas, 84 x 84 inches.

Courtesy of the artist.

don’t back down, 2015.

Oil on canvas, 66 x 66 inches.

Courtesy of the artist

Brass Instrument, 2015.

Acrylic and polymers on panel, 60 x 60 inches.

Courtesy of Berry Campbell Gallery.

Profile (Yellow Yuskavage), 2015.

Oil and mica on linen, 106 x 79 inches. John and Sally Van Doren.

Featured Image:

Abstraction Repulsion, 2014.

Oil and acrylic on canvas, 78 x 40 inches. Hort Family Collection.

Photo courtesy of CANADA. Photo by Jason Mandella.

Works Well With Others

Episode 36: Fine art is more often than not the product of a singular vision. American artist John C Gonzalez turns this paradigm on its head by producing works that showcase the vision and talents of others.
Brooke talks with Ian Alden Russell of Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery about the Works Well With Others exhibition that ran from May 7 to June 12, 2016. Russell explained how the gallery was able to feature Gonzalez, a native of Providence, Rhode Island, as part of the gallery’s regional focus.

All images used with permission

Press

Boston Globe Review

Brown University

The Likeness of Labor

Episode 24: On this episode I talk to Christopher Oliver, curator of the Likeness of Labor exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. We talk about the haunting history of child labor in the early U.S.

Obj. No. 75.60 Lewis W. Hine (American, 1874–1940) Addie Card, 12 Years, Spinner in Cotton Mill, Vermont, 1910 Silver gelatin print 4 11/16” × 3⅝”W 11.91 cm × 9.21 cm Image must be credited with the following collection and photo credit lines: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Virginia Museum Art Purchase Fund Digital photo: David Stover © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Ultimate trust…

75.54; Lewis W. Hine, American, 1874 – 1940 (Artist); Italian Madonna, Ellis Island; 1905; silver gelatin print; Sheet: 7 × 5 in. (17.78 × 12.7 cm) Image: 6 11/16 × 4 7/8 in. (16.99 × 12.38 cm); Virginia Museum Art Purchase Fund; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

A man hides his rotten teeth with a callused hand…

Obj. No. 89.28 Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965) Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona, 1940 Gelatin silver print 10⅜”H x 13⅜”W 26.35 cm x 33.97 cm Image must be credited with the following collection and photo credit lines: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund. Digital photo: Travis Fullerton © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Obj. No. 2011.17 Wright Morris (American, 1910–1998) Uncle Harry Entering Barn, 1947 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 10”H × 8”W (25.4 cm × 20.32 cm) Image: 9⅝”H × 7⅝”W (24.45 cm × 19.37 cm) signed on verso Wright Morris Image must be credited with the following collection and photo credit lines: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Floyd D. and Anne C. Gottwald Fund Digital photo: David Stover © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

American Stories 1800–1950

Episode 3: Brooke talks with James Mundy of Vassar College about American Stories 1800-1950, an exhibition which features artists from the Hudson River School and runs through April 17, 2016.

Featured Image: The Francis Lehman Loeb Center at Vassar College

Al Farrow: Wrath and Reverence

Episode 2: Brooke talks with Alice Stites of the 21C Museum Hotel in Lexington, Kentucky about their Al Farrow: Wrath and Reverence exhibition. Farrow has been crafting figures out of unorthodox materials like ammunition, steel, bronze, as well as clay since 1970.

Farrow’s work can also be found in the public collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the San Jose Museum of Art; the de Young Museum; the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; and the collection of the State of Israel. Most recently, he has had solo exhibitions at the Aeroplastics Contemporary in Brussels and the Forum Gallery in New York City. Farrow has exhibited with Catharine Clark since 1994 and is also represented by galleries in Washington, D.C. and Brussels.

The Wrath and Reverence exhibit at 21C the shows religious images from churches, mosques, and temples in a new light to illustrate the fine line between war and peace, holy and unholy, sacred and secular.

Featured Image: 21C Museum Hotel –Louisville, Kentucky

Laura Spong at 90

Episode 1: Brooke talks with Wim Roefs of the if ART Gallery in Columbia, South Carolina about the Laura Spong at 90 exhibition.

Ninety year old abstract expressionist Laura Spong was doing her art in South Carolina for many years before people “got it.” She says “It’s mostly just putting it on the canvas and then reacting. The first line I put up, I react to that to do another line, so it builds itself in that way. It’s frustrating, because it almost feels like you don’t have any control over the creativity.”

Not one to put on airs, Spong doesn’t pontificate about the meaning or importance of her work, but her resume speaks for itself. She has been featured at Charleston’s Spoleto Arts Festival, the Greenville County Museum of Art, the South Carolina State Museum, Charleston’s Smith Killian Fine Art, as well as on the set of the Lifetime television show Drop Dead Diva.

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