Reception and Live Performance, September 19, 5-7 pm
A solo exhibition of artwork by Jason Robinson. Robinson is currently an assistant professor of studio art at the University of Mary Washington. The exhibition features video, fabric prints, lenticular prints and other media.
… what the mind and senses conceive… Margaret Sutton is an exhibition that has been curated by students in Art History Professor Marjorie Och’s ARTH 317: Laboratory in Museum Studies. These studies have been working in collaboration with UMW Galleries and through their research, they have learned more of 20th century American art and Margaret Sutton, as well as prepare for careers as museum professionals.
Margaret Sutton was a UMW studio art alum from 1926. After her time at Mary Washington, she moved to New York City where she met Alfred Levitt, a painter, and his wife Gertrude, a lawyer. The three of them lived together in a Greenwich Village apartment from 1983 until Gertrude Levitt’s death in 1983 and Margaret Sutton’s death in 1990. In 1993, Alfred Levitt gave more than 3,000 works of art from his personal collection to the University of Mary Washington. The work given not only included Levitt’s paintings, but also the work of the infamous Margaret Sutton.
This exhibition examines the rich work and career of Margaret Sutton and represents the dedication and hard work of the UMW Department of Art and Art History!
Special thanks to Professor Och and her students: Kira Alfano, Krista Beucler, Laurel Davidson, Anna Elmore, Shaheen Fazel, Gabby Gallier, Matthew Geczy, Bucky Goforth, Paige Hildebrand, Meggy Hinson, Juliet Landeck, R.J. McKenna, Ally Pryor, Jordan Skillman, Hannah St. Onge, Alexa Steele , and Cara Wissinger.
April 11th – 26th, 2019, duPont Gallery
Opening Reception & Artists’ Talk April 11th, 5-6pm
Laura Bigger is an artist primarily focused on printmaking and drawing. Her work focuses a lot on environmental issues and the ecological relationships between humans, animals, and ecosystems. She received her BA in Hispanic Studies and Studio Art in 2008 at Colorado College and her MFA with an emphasis in printmaking in 2013 at the University of Minnesota. She is currently a professor and head of the printmaking department at Truman State University.
Artist Statement: “My work explores the relationships that exist among humans, animals, and ecosystems, particularly in terms of the food chain, raw materials, and the human tendency to exert control over natural systems. A lifelong environmental concern and empathic attitude toward other living things motivate my investigation of the following existential quandaries: what does it mean to be a human today, how can we live in the world responsibly, and what is our obligation to do so. These questions lead to an adjacent interest in the basics of survival as they have evolved in our contemporary experience in regard to food and shelter. We have transitioned from hunting and gathering to buying a Styrofoam, plastic-wrapped hunk of meat at the deli, from using fire for heat to more abstract means such as coal or natural gas. And what of our relationship to animals – not only as food, but as companions, predators, environmental symbols? Among other goals, my work seeks to shrink the gap between our conception of humans and non-human animals. I question anthropocentric viewpoints and interpret the man-made environment primarily through print, drawing, and installation.”
Bio: Evan Reed is a sculpture based artist. He transforms found materials and crafts elaborate sculptures that are contemplative, mysterious, and playful. He stands out amongst other sculptors, as he gathers his materials from the curbside rather than purchasing them from craft stores, and then ages the materials in his own yard. He received his BFA from Corcoran School of Art and his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. He is currently a professor of art at Georgetown University and maintains his own studio in Falls Church, VA.
Artist Statement: Reed crafts sculptures that look to create meaning through materials and forms. These contribute to the expressive quality and are the voice of the artwork, the clues to getting it.
Opening Reception: March 14th, 5-7pm, duPont Gallery
Public lecture by juror, Nate Larson, March 21st, 5pm, Monroe Hall rm 116
Nate Larson is a contemporary artist working with photographic media, artist books and digital video.
His projects have been widely shown across the US and internationally as well as featured in numerous publications and media outlets, including Wired, The Guardian, The Picture Show from NPR, Slate, CNN, Hyperallergic, Gizmodo, Buzzfeed News, Vice Magazine, the New York Times, Utne Reader, Hotshoe Magazine, Flavorwire, the BBC News Viewfinder, Frieze Magazine, the British Journal of Photography, APM’s Marketplace Tech Report, The Washington Post, and Art Papers. His artwork is included in the permanent collections of the High Museum Atlanta, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Orlando Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago.
His recent project Geolocation, in collaboration with Marni Shindelman, tracks GPS coordinates associated with Twitter tweets and pairs the text with a photograph of the originating site to mark the virtual information in the real world. New site-specific work from the series was recently completed for Salisbury University Art Galleries in Maryland, Third Space Gallery in New Brunswick, Walter N. Marks Center for the Arts in California, and the Format International Photography Festival in the UK. Larson Shindelman recently created site-specific public artworks for the Atlanta Celebrates Photography Public Art Commission, the Indianapolis International Airport, and the DUMBO Business Improvement District. Geolocation was featured in the “State of the Art” survey exhibition at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in 2014, now touring nationally, including recently at the Mint Museum in Charlotte and Frist Center in Nashville. Flash Powder Projects published a monograph of the project in January 2016.
Nate Larson is currently serving as Chair of the Photography Department at MICA / Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He was recently the Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel Visiting Artist Fellow at Duke University, an artist in residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in Florida, and a Rubys Artist Fellow with the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.
Each year, six works done by student artists are selected to receive awards. This year’s winner are…
Anika Hussain, She Breathed Once, 2018, Mixed Media on Canvas
Award of Excellence
Claudia Duncan, Untitled, 2018, Wax, Wood and Lightbulb
Award of Excellence
Emily Pawlica, Emerge, 2018, Plaster, Hand Dyed Fabric and Makeup on Wood and Plaster
Award of Excellence
Tara Meeks, Personal Space, 2018, Oil on Canvas
Melchers Gray Purchase Award
Samantha Van Heest, Air Dancer, 2018, Oil on Canvas
Emil R. Schnellock Award for Excellence in Painting
Courtney Chetister, They Go Marching, 2018, Multimedia Installation Sculpture
Ann Elizabeth Collins Memorial Art Award
Opening Reception: March 14th, 5-7pm, Ridderhof Martin Gallery
BG Muhn Artist Talk March 15th, 12pm, Melchers Hall rm 107
BG Muhn, professor of painting at Georgetown University in Washington D.C, is a
contemporary artist whose work also explores Buddhist philosophies. Highlighted in
this exhibition are four pieces that illustrate these ideas through innovative
transformations of the traditional Tibetan thangka paintings.
BG Muhn
BG Muhn is a visual artist and a professor in the Department of Art and Art History
at Georgetown University. He has achieved substantial and noteworthy professional
recognition through solo exhibitions in venues such as Stux Gallery in the Chelsea
district of New York City, Ilmin Museum of Art in Seoul and the American University
Museum in Washington, DC. Muhn has received several awards for his artistic
merits, including the Maryland State Arts Council’s Individual Artist Award and Best
in Show at the Bethesda Painting Awards competition. His artwork has been
collected in museums and galleries that include the National Museum of Modern Art
and Seoul Museum of Art in South Korea. He also has received acclaim in reviews
and interviews with The New York Times, Art in America and CNN.
In addition to actively showing his artworks, Muhn has taken a strong interest in
and studied the relatively unknown field of North Korean art. He made numerous
research trips to Pyongyang, North Korea over the last six years and visited art
museums such as the Choson National Art Museum and creative institutions
including Mansudae Art Studio to conduct interviews of artists, art historians and
museum staff. He has delivered lectures on North Korean art at academic venues
and cultural centers including Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Columbia and Harvard
universities, and the Water Mill Center for Robert Wilson in Long Island, the Korea
Society in New York and the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. His research on
North Korean art culminated in a book, Pyongyang Art: The Enigmatic World of
Chosonhwa, which was published in Korean by Seoul Selection in the spring of 2018.
The English version of the publication will be available in the summer of 2019.
Muhn has curated two major North Korean art exhibitions, one at the American
University Museum in Washington DC in 2016 and the other most recently at the
Gwangju Biennale in 2018. North Korean Art: Paradoxical Realism was published in
English in conjunction with the Gwangju Biennale.
Dr. Kurt F. Leidecker, a former professor of Asian Studies at Mary Washington College
and a preeminent collector, chose Mary Washington as the home for his extensive
study collection of 235 Buddhist or Hindu devotional images, statues, paintings, and
carvings that were originally displayed in temples, shrines, and homes in South, East,
and South-East Asia. With approximately sixteen objects, this exhibition samples
statues and paintings of Buddhas and deities mostly produced in Tibet, India, and
Thailand. The highlight of this exhibition is the bronze Buddha statue, which was given
to Leidecker in 1957, when he was teaching at the Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya
University in Thailand. At the time, Leidecker was president of the Washington Friends
of Buddhism Society.
Friday September 7th, noon
Ridderhof Martin Gallery
Jeffrey Abt, Wandering Gallery project (workspace) open, 2013.
Jeffrey Abt, Wandering Gallery project (workspace) closed, 2013.
Jeffrey Abt will present an artist’s talk on his work “Museums as Viewing Machines”, on view in the Ridderhof Martin Gallery from September 6 – October 14.
Abt’s work reflects his interest in museums, the mechanics of presenting work in a museum, and the visual culture of museums. “Museums as Viewing Machines” will display two bodies of work, Abt’s Museum series, and his Wandering Gallery project.
The Museum series focuses on the visual parallels between galleries and sacred spaces, particularly religious sanctuaries. Abt is intrigued by environments created to foster contemplation, whether for the purposes of studying artworks or for spiritual introspection.
The Wandering Gallery project explores the behind-the-scenes, never-ending cycle of unpacking and packing, installation and de-installation, documentation, and interpretation associated with changing exhibitions.
These works, in proximity, invite viewers to reflect on the nature of the places where they see works of art, especially museums, with regard to their architectural interiors, as sites of transience where objects come and go, and the mechanics by which works are presented.
Jeffrey Abt is a Professor in the James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History of Wayne State University. He has a BFA degree from Drake University and he studied at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem before completing an MFA at Drake. Abt pursued curatorial and exhibitions work at the Wichita Art Museum, the Special Collections Research Center of the University of Chicago, and the University’s Smart Museum of Art, before coming to Wayne State. He’s an artist and writer, his artwork is in museum and corporate collections throughout the United States, and he has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in America and abroad. Abt’s writings include the books American Egyptologist: The Life of James Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental Institute published in 2012 by the University of Chicago Press and Valuing Detroit’s Art Museum: A History of Fiscal Abandonment and Rescue published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2017. He is also a co-editor of the Museum History Journal.
