Exhibits

Keith Haring: 1978-1982&#8242- Exhibit Opening in Brooklyn

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Keith Haring: 1978-1982, the first large-scale exhibition to explore Haring’s early career, will be presented at the Brooklyn Museum from March 16 through July 8, 2012 [note date change]. Tracing the development of the artist’s extraordinary visual vocabulary, the exhibition includes 155 works on paper, seven experimental videos, and over 150 archival objects, among them rarely seen sketchbooks, journals, exhibition flyers, posters, subway drawings, and documentary photographs.

&#8220We are delighted to have this exceptional opportunity to present this groundbreaking exhibition of these dynamic works created by one of the most iconic and innovative artists of the late twentieth century as his formidable talents emerged,&#8221 comments Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman. &#8220The works of art and the accompanying documentary material place in new perspective the development of this unique talent.&#8221

The Brooklyn presentation of the exhibition, which was organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Kunsthalle Wien, Austria, will feature approximately thirty-one additional works on paper, of which thirty are black-and-white subway drawings, as well as a 1978 scroll Everyone Knows Where the Meat Comes From. It Comes From the Store.

The exhibition chronicles the period in Keith Haring’s career from the time he left his home in Pennsylvania to attend New York’s School of Visual Arts, through the years when he started his studio practice and began making public and political art on the city streets. Immersing himself in New York’s downtown culture, he quickly became a fixture on the artistic scene, befriending other artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf, as well as many of the most innovative musicians, poets, performance artists, and writers of the period. Also explored in the exhibition is how these relationships played a critical role in Haring’s development as a facilitator of group exhibitions and performances and as a creator of strategies for positioning his work directly in the public eye.

Included in Keith Haring: 1978-1982 are a number of very early works that had previously never before been seen in public, twenty-five red gouache works on paper of geometric forms assembled in various combinations to create patterns- seven video pieces, including his very first, Haring Paints Himself into a Corner, in which he paints to the music of the band Devo, and Tribute to Gloria Vanderbilt- and collages created from cut-up fragments of his own writing, history textbooks, and newspapers that closely relate to collage flyers he created with a photocopy machine.

In 1978, when he enrolled in the School of Visual Arts, Keith Haring began to develop a personal visual aesthetic inspired by New York City architecture, pre-Columbian and African design, dance music, and the works of artists as diverse as Jean Dubuffet, Pablo Picasso, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock. Much influenced by the gestural brushwork and symbolic forms of the Abstract Expressionists, his earliest work investigated patterns made of geometric forms, which evolved as he made new discoveries through experimentation with shape and line as well as media. He meticulously documented his aesthetic discoveries in his journals through precise notes and illustrations. In 1980 he introduced the figurative drawings that included much of the iconography he was to use for the rest of his life, such as the standing figure, crawling baby, pyramid, dog, flying saucer, radio, nuclear reactor, bird, and dolphin-all enhanced with radiating lines suggestive of movement or flows of energy.

The exhibition also explores Haring’s role as a curator in facilitating performances and exhibitions of work by other artists pursuing unconventional locations for shows that often lasted only one night. The flyers he created to advertise these events remain as documentation of his curatorial practice. Also examined is Haring’s activity in public spaces, including the anonymous works that first drew him to the attention of the public, figures drawn in chalk on the black paper used to cover old advertisements on the walls of New York City subway stations.

Keith Haring died in 1990 from AIDS-related complications. His goal of creating art for everyone has inspired the contemporary practice of street art, and his influence may be seen in the work of artists such as Banksy, Barry McGee, Shepard Fairey, and SWOON, as well as in fashion, product design, and in the numerous remaining public murals that he created around the world.

Keith Haring: 1978-1982 is curated by Raphaela Platow. The exhibition is co-organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati and the Kunsthalle Wien, Austria. The Brooklyn presentation is organized by Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Project Curator, and Patrick Amsellem, former Associate Curator of Photography, Brooklyn Museum.

This exhibition was supported in part by the Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia Contemporary Art Exhibition Fund.

Illustration: Keith Haring (American, 1958–1990). Untitled, 1980. Sumi ink on Bristol board, 20 x 26 in. (50.8 x 66.0 cm). Collection Keith Haring Foundation. Copyright Keith Haring Foundation.

New Crossing the Delaware on Display Amid Debate

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The New-York Historical Society is displaying Mort Kunstler’s &#8220Washington’s Crossing at McKonkey’s Ferry&#8221 until January 17, 2012. Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 painting &#8220Washington Crossing the Delaware&#8221 commemorates General George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River on December 25 in 1776 during the American Revolutionary War. His original painting is part of the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Mort Kunstler, a New York artist known for his historical paintings, has created what he considers a more historically accurate version of Washington crossing the Delaware River. The painting was unveiled at the New-York Historical Society on Monday, December 26, the date in 1776 that Washington led his troops into battle in Trenton after crossing the Delaware.

David Hackett Fischer, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Washington’s Crossing, and featured speaker at the unveiling, says Kunstler’s version is &#8220quite accurate&#8221 and &#8220got more right than any other image.&#8221

The original painting shows the Betsy Ross flag flying, however that flag was not adopted until 1777- Mr. Kunstler’s version has no flag. The original painting depicts the action taking place in the middle of the day, though the actual crossing took place during a stormy night. Based on historical research, the new painting shows Washington and company in a flat-bottomed ferry boat rather than on a row boat.

On that last detail however, there has been some debate. Rick Spilman, writing in the Old Salt Blog, noted:

&#8220The problem is that most historians think that the American crossing of the Delaware used Durham boats, large flat-bottomed boats which hauled cargo such as ore, pig-iron, timber, and produce from upcountry mines, forests and farms down the Delaware River to Philadelphia’s thriving markets and port. Robert Durham, an engineer at the Durham Iron Works in Reiglesville, Pennsylvania, reputedly designed a prototype for these large cargo boats as early as 1757. Washington wrote to Governor Livingston of New Jersey, directing him to secure “Boats and Craft, all along the Delaware side…particularly the Durham Boats” for his anticipated crossing.&#8221

In any event, you’ll have just one day to compare the two paintings first hand. The newly restored Luetze painting will be unveiled in a new frame in the New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum on January 16, the day before the new Kunstler painting comes down at the New-York Historical Society.

Illustrations: Above, Mort Kunstler’s &#8220Washington’s Crossing at McKonkey’s Ferry&#8221- below, Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 &#8220Washington Crossing the Delaware&#8221.

Roberson Museum Commemorates the Civil War

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150 years ago shots were fired on Fort Sumter off the coast of South Carolina signaling the beginning of the Civil War. A century and a half later, Roberson Museum and Science Center has assembled hundreds of objects and stories to tell the story of how that conflict affected this area in a new exhibition appropriately named The Civil War. Read more →

NY Journalism of Djuna Barnes Exhibit Scheduled

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&#8220Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913-1919,&#8221 an exhibition of 45 objects including drawings, works on paper, documentary photographs, and stories in newsprint by the celebrated writer and early twentieth-century advocate for women’s rights Djuna Barnes (American, 1892-1982), will be presented in the Herstory Gallery of the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art from January 20 through October 28, 2012. Among the works on view will be eight illustrations Barnes composed to accompany her newspaper columns.

The Herstory Gallery is devoted to the remarkable contributions of the women represented in The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, on permanent view in the adjacent gallery. Barnes is one of 1,038 women honored in Chicago’s iconic feminist work.

Prior to publishing the modernist novels and plays for which she is now remembered, such as Ryder (1928), Nightwood (1936), and The Antiphon (1958), which present complex portrayals of lesbian life and familial dysfunction, Barnes supported herself as a journalist and illustrator for a variety of daily newspapers and monthly magazines, including the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, McCall’s, Vanity Fair, Charm, and the New Yorker.

Brought up in an unconventional household, Barnes developed an outsider’s perspective on &#8220normal&#8221 life that served her well as a writer. Her liberal sexuality fit in perfectly with the bohemian lifestyle of Greenwich Village and, later, the lesbian expatriate community in Paris. From her first articles in 1913 until her departure for Europe in 1921, Barnes specialized in a type of journalism that was less about current events and more about her observations of the diverse personalities and happenings that gave readers an intimate portrait of her favorite character-New York City. Attempting to capture its transition from turn of the century city to modern metropolis, Barnes developed her unique style of &#8220newspaper fictions,&#8221 offering impressionistic observations and dramatizing whatever she felt to be the true significance or subtexts of a story.

Image: Djuna Barnes, Sketch of a woman with hat, looking right, for &#8220The Terrorists,&#8221 New York Morning Telegraph Sunday Magazine, September 30, 1917. Ink on paper. Djuna Barnes Papers, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries

Iroquois Museum Cuts Staff, Closes Until Spring

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The Iroquois Indian Museum in Howes Cave, NY has announced significant staff cutbacks for 2012. &#8220Severe economic downturns coupled with the recent devastating flooding in Schoharie County have forced the Museum to suspend most Museum operations from January 1 to April 30 and to layoff staff during those months,&#8221 Museum officials said in a prepared statement issued Wednesday.

Normally, the Museum closes from January 1 to March 31, but to conserve finances we will remain closed to the public until May 1. A skeleton staff with volunteer help will continue to maintain the basic operations of the Museum including security and maintenance.

&#8220Despite the reductions, the Board and Staff of the Museum continue to plan a vibrant schedule of exhibitions and programs for 2012,&#8221 the Museum statement said. The museum is expected to open a new exhibit on May 1, “Birds and Beasts in Beads: 150 Years of Iroquois Beadwork.”

There are no plans to cancel the 31st Annual Iroquois Indian Festival, Dance Saturdays during July and August, or other public programs scheduled for the 2012 season.

&#8220The Board and Staff believes that we have an obligation to the founders of the Museum and to all who have supported us over the years to assure that we continue to be a viable public institution, to support tourism in our region, to teach about the Iroquois, to be of benefit to Iroquois people, and to fulfill our mission as an educational institution,&#8221 the statement said.

Early Albany Deptartment Store Exhibition Opens

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The Albany Institute of History & Art is presenting Temple of Fancy: Pease’s Great Variety Store, an exhibition featuring Richard H. Pease’s upscale “Five and Dime” where Albany families could purchase fancy goods, toys, household items, children’s books, and games from the 1830s to 1855. The exhibit will draw from the collections of the Albany Institute, and includes a reproduction of Pease’s 1850-51 Christmas card, considered to be the very first printed in America, on loan from the Manchester University Museum in England, where the only surviving copy resides. The exhibit opened November 19, and will run through March 25, 2012.

Before F. W. Woolworths’, Whitney’s, or even Myer’s department store, there was Pease’s Great Variety Store, located in the Temple of Fancy at 516 and 518 Broadway in Albany. As with other fancy goods stores, Pease’s catered to the middle and upper middle class selling highly decorated goods like ceramics, prints, furniture and other decorative household items that progressively thinking people might have wanted to purchase.

The 1844 Wilson’s Albany City Guide provides a flattering description of Pease’s: “For richness and extensive variety of novelties, combining the beautiful, the useful and the ornamental, this establishment excels any in town. Mr. P. has many fancy articles which are surpassingly rich- exceeding anything in elegance that we have ever thought, dreamed or read of.” Pease’s advertisement in the Albany Evening Journal on December 17, 1841, was the very first time Santa Claus was used to advertise a store. They also produced the hand-colored lithographs of fruit for Ebenezer Emmons’ Agriculture of New York published between 1846 and 1854.

Temple of Fancy: Pease’s Great Variety Store will be on display in the library cases at the Albany Institute of History & Art, located at 125 Washington Avenue, Albany. The exhibition . Coinciding with the exhibition, the Albany Institute has produced a 20-page booklet, “Pease’s Great Variety Store and the Story of America’s first Christmas Card”, that will be available for sale in the Museum Shop.

Illustrations: Above, courtesy Albany Institute of History & Art- below, America’s First Christmas Card, Designed and printed by Richard H. Pease for his &#8220Pease’s Great Variety Store in the Temple of Fancy&#8221 c.1851. Image courtesy of Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections.

Met Announces Exhibition Catalogs Online Project

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced the completion of a collaborative project coordinated by the Met’s Thomas J. Watson Library to preserve and digitize the early exhibition catalogs of Knoedler & Company, a renowned art gallery in New York.

In total, we digitized 898 catalogs, checklists, and unpublished materials from the Watson, Arcade, and Knoedler collections, comprising approximately 14,000 pages of content created between 1869 and 1946. Many items include extensive handwritten annotations- in several cases, more than one copy of a particular catalog was digitized to capture these unique additions.

Knoedler & Company was established in 1857 and has been among the most important art dealers in New York City for a century and a half. Following the pattern of Watson Library’s successful collaboration with the Frick Art Reference Library on the Macbeth Gallery project, we worked with Knoedler & Company and the Arcade libraries (Frick Art Reference Library, Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives, and the Museum of Modern Art Library) to identify Knoedler exhibition catalogs, pamphlets, and checklists in our collections to create a series that is as complete as possible.

Access to these items is available through the libraries’ respective online catalogs, Watsonline and Arcade, as well as the OCLC library cooperative catalog, WorldCat. The catalogs’ contents are full-text searchable in Watson Library’s digital content management system, CONTENTdm.

The project was made possible by the Lifchez Stronach Fund for Preservation at the Thomas J. Watson Library and funds from the Frick Art Reference Library.

Illustration: An image from the Catalogue of an exhibition of woodcuts by Albrecht Durer : March 6th to April 7th, 1928.

Vietnam War Graffiti Exhibit Opens Veterans Day

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The personal thoughts and feelings of American soldiers and Marines going to war in Southeast Asia come to life in the “Marking Time: Voyage to Vietnam” exhibition opening Nov. 11 (Veterans Day) at the New York State Museum.

The stories of these soldiers and Marines are told through the graffiti they left behind on the bunk canvases they slept on, aboard a ship that brought them to Vietnam in 1966-67. Eight canvases inscribed by soldiers from New York state are included in the traveling exhibition, open until Feb. 26, 2012. Uncertain about their future, the young troop passengers inscribed personal thoughts about families, hometowns, patriotism, love, anxiety, discomfort and humor.

Their canvases, bunks and personal items were discovered in 1997 onboard the General Nelson M. Walker. The transport ship was being scrapped after seeing service during World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. In between it was in reserve status in a Hudson River berthing area, near New York City, for six years. Military historian Art Beltrone discovered the historic graffiti and other artifacts during a trip to Virginia’s James River Reserve Fleet, where the ship had been relocated from New York.

When discovered, the Walker was a veritable floating time capsule, filled with hundreds of historical artifacts relating to the Vietnam War, the 1960s, and the men who went to war. Many of those artifacts will be on display. Included is an original eight-man rack of sleeping bunks, complete with the original mattresses, sheets, pillows, blankets and life vests. The rack shows how confining living space was during the uncomfortable 18-23 day, over 5,000-mile voyage to Vietnam. There also is clothing, shoes, comic books, magazines and copies of The Walker Report, the ship’s official newspaper written, printed and distributed by troop passengers. Other personal objects left behind, such as playing cards, empty cigarette and candy wrappers, liquor bottles, religious tracts and rosary beads, were found hidden under the sheets.

The multi-dimensional exhibition also includes two short films, “Marking Time: Voyage to Vietnam” and “Discovery of a Forgotten Troopship,” which can also be viewed online.

The exhibition is curated by Beltrone and his wife, Lee of Keswick, Va. Together they founded the Vietnam Graffiti Project (VGP) which, assisted by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, is dedicated to finding the graffiti writers and Walker voyage passengers to tell and preserve their stories. VGP is still trying to identify many of the writers, including many of those from New York state. Among those who have been found are Harmon Adams of Kenmore, near Buffalo, and Dave Dubreck of Churchville, near Rochester.

1st Jewish Congregation Torah Scroll Exhibition

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Rare and centuries-old liturgical objects, manuscripts, maps and other historic artifacts—including a Torah scroll rescued from the hands of British troops during the American Revolution — will be on loan to the New-York Historical Society beginning November 11, 2011, for the installations The Resilient City and Treasures of Shearith Israel.

The presentations of Treasures of Shearith Israel and The Resilient City at the renovated and transformed New-York Historical highlight the history of religious freedom in New York City and honor the first Jewish congregation to have been established in North America—a congregation that remains vibrant and active today, and is a neighbor of New-York Historical.

Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue, was founded in 1654 by the first Jews to settle in North America: a group of 23 immigrants who came to New Amsterdam from their previous place of residence in Recife, Brazil. From 1654 through 1825, Shearith Israel was the only Jewish congregation in New York City. The congregation met in rented quarters until 1730, when it constructed its first building, which was located in downtown Manhattan on Mill Street (now known as South William Street). Many of the furnishings from the 1730 building are now installed in an intimate chapel, called the Little Synagogue, in Shearith Israel’s current home, consecrated in 1897, on the Upper West Side.

The Torah Scroll will be on display in the Judith and Howard Berkowitz Sculpture Court in the Rotunda of the New-York Historical Society, where it will be surrounded by four late-20th-century views of the New York cityscape by artist Richard Haas. This installation will establish a dialogue between the city’s past and present and help reinforce the underlying themes of diversity, tolerance and resilience that are also addressed in inaugural installations presented in New-York Historical’s new Robert H. and Clarice Smith New York Gallery of American History, where visitors may explore the history of the United States as seen through the lens of New York. The many other significant objects on loan to New-York Historical from Shearith Israel will be displayed in the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture.

These loans have been facilitated Norman S. Benzaquen.

Photo: Congregation Shearith Israel, (founded 1655) New York, 1897 building. Courtesy Wikipedia.

Albany Institute Celebrates Mummy Collection

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The Albany Institute of History & Art will celebrate the 102nd anniversary of the Albany Mummies’ arrival with a Mummy Birthday Party on Sunday, November 6 from noon to 5 PM. This annual Family Festival is FREE with museum admission and will include Egyptian themed art activities, tours, and refreshments.

Learn the history of the mummies and ancient Egypt through guided tours of the Ancient Egypt exhibition at 1 PM and 3 PM. Children are invited to bring a toy to mummify in our art studio between 1 and 4 PM. Using hieroglyphics, participants can decorate cupcakes provided by The Placid Baker of Troy, NY.

The two mummies were brought to the Albany Institute from Cairo, Egypt in 1909 by Samuel W. Brown, a member of the museum’s Board of Trustees. The mummies and their coffins have been seen by generations of visitors and have become part of Albany history. They remain objects of ongoing international study, slowly unveiling clues about the ancient world in which they once lived. The Albany Institute will present a major exhibition on Egypt in 2013, The Mystery of the Albany Mummies, which will tell the full story of the mummies’ journey to Albany.

For more information about the Mummy Birthday Party contact Barbara Collins, Education Coordinator, at (518) 463-4478, ext. 405, [email protected].

Related Exhibition: Ancient Egypt Permanent Exhibition in the Egyptian Gallery

Three key concepts: “The Nile,” “Daily Life,” and “The Afterlife,” are explored through objects, text, and hands-on activities to give an overview of ancient Egypt. This gallery features the Albany Institute’s mummies, along with loan objects from major national museums.

Photo: Partially unwrapped mummy, male, Late Dynastic to Early Ptolemaic Period, (525-200 BC). Courtesy Albany Institute of History and Art.