Tuesday, September 27, 7pm

Trinkle Hall, Room 204

This lecture will accompany the exhibition The French Horse from Romanticism to Surrealism: Works from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on view in the Ridderhof Martin Gallery.

Mitchell Merling  is the Paul Mellon Curator and Head of the Department of European Art at  the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Dr. Merling has served held both Pre-and Postdoctoral fellowships at the National Gallery of Art and served as Curator at both the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts before joining VMFA.  At VMFA, he has produced exhibitions on Fabergé, British sporting prints, 19^th-Century French floral still lifes, and Auguste Rodin, among others, and is currently preparing an exhibition of Rachel Lambert Mellon’s collection of Jean Schlumberger jewelry and objects. Tonight he will talk about both the contents of the French Horse exhibition, and its evolution as an inclusive museum studies student-curated project involving juniors, seniors, and graduates from five Virginia institutions of higher learning, including Mary Washington University.

Wednesday, October 26, 5pm

Melchers Hall, Room 107

Artist Statement:

My studio work over the past thirty years has explored various forms of academic parody. Initially I worked in the genre of archaeological fiction, which I defined as the fabrication and documentation of an imaginary culture. In this context I fabricated artifacts that embodied the rituals and myths of hypothetical peoples.  These are then documented in hand printed bookplates which utilize both visual depictions and written interpretations of the iconography. In recent years my approach has centered on using the conventions of the museum to present works of fiction couched in documentary conventions.  For the “George and Helen Folk Art Collection” I fabricated and documented the work of eleven imaginary folk artists. Another project, Hokes Medical Arts” includes prints and drawings that appear to document medical and anatomical specimens. My current project presents prints and taxidermy for the “Association for Creative Zoology.” When each of these projects is completed, they are presented in the manner of a scientific or historical museum accompanied by scholarly tours that I conduct.

Artistic precedence for my work may be found literary and cinematic traditions of mock-documentation. These include Plato’s “Atlantis” as conceived by Ignatius Donnelly, Jorge Luis Borges’ novella “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Woody Allen’s film Zelig and numerous contemporary artists, most of who are unrecognized by the art market. These include Norman Daly, Richard Purdy, Lenore Malen, Sarah Smith and others. An additional influence on my work is the history of vernacular art and scientific illustration.  I am also interested in the intersection of pranks and contemporary art.

In my approach to academic parody I place a great deal of emphasis on the interrelationship between the various elements in the exhibition. I strive for visual, thematic and conceptual continuity in the exhibitions through the use of repeated stylistic motifs and serial images. While the projects are made from a variety of individual works, I strive to think of each project as an aesthetic whole.

As an artist, academic parody provides an elaborate stratagem by which I can employ a diverse range of visual, written and theatrical means to present a narrative. This genre is potentially unlimited, and can take almost any form, style or medium to reflect almost any system of knowledge or belief. Documentary and museological methods can also take numerous aesthetic and technical forms. Yet, I feel that the complexity of this genre is not an end in itself, but can only have meaning to the extent that universal human needs and conditions are addressed through the work. With these concerns I intend to create a work of fiction that is also a statement of truth.

About the artist

Lyons has taught printmaking in the University of Tennessee since 1985. He received his MFA degree from Arizona State University in 1983 and his BFA degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980. Lyons’ one-person exhibitions have been presented at over 60 museums and galleries in the United States and abroad. His prints are in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. PA.

The UMW Galleries are proud to host screenings of the new season of acclaimed series ART21. Season 8 features sixteen artists from four cities—Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Vancouver—revealing how they engage the culture around them and how art allows viewers to see the world in new ways. Included in the new season are: Natalia Almada, Edgar Arceneaux, Nick Cave, Minerva Cuevas, Stan Douglas, Theaster Gates, Brian Jungen, Barbara Kasten, Liz Larner, Tala Madani, Liz Magor, Damián Ortega, Pedro Reyes, Diana Thater, Jeff Wall, and Chris Ware.

All screenings will be held in Melchers Hall, Room 107 unless otherwise noted.

All screenings are free and open to the public.

Episode 1: Chicago

Thursday, October 6, 5:30-6:30

Chicago is a city rooted in industry and towering architecture, and artists in Chicago are disrupting urban experience through experimentation.

Episode 2: Mexico City

Thursday, October 20, Wednesday, October 19,  5:30-6:30

Mexico City artists exit their homes and studios to use the growing megalopolis as their canvas. The artists present everyday materials as artworks, mine recognizable images for their poetic potential, and take their art to the streets.

Episode 3: Los Angeles

Thursday, November 3, 5:30-6:30

While sprawling Los Angeles has world-class museums and art schools, artists working in the shadow of the entertainment industry are more “under the radar,” affording them the space and time to imagine.

Episode 4: Vancouver

Thursday, November 17, 5:30-6:30

In small and tightly-knit Vancouver, artists reframe the world through a series of sophisticated illusions. By recreating historical moments, staging photos of vernacular scenes, and crafting intricate sculptures that trick the eye, artists reveal how everyday images and moments from the past are not always what they seem.

UMW Galleries’ Art Auction & Gala

Preview Reception: Thursday, May 26 5-7pm

Auction Gala: Thursday, June 2, 7-10pm

Ridderhof Martin Gallery

Tickets: $50 each

Ticket purchases available NOW at http://bidpal.net/umwgalleries

Join us for a night to celebrate the art of collecting! Artworks donated by local artists (including UMW faculty) will be featured in an auction to benefit the UMW Galleries.

The UMW Galleries are committed to providing exceptional exhibitions, programming, and care for the permanent art collection for the Fredericksburg community and beyond. But it is only with your help that we can achieve our goals. Please consider participating in this fundraising event, becoming a member, and/or making a donation to the UMW Galleries. For more information about becoming a member or donating directly to the  UMW Galleries visit: https://umwgalleries.org/membership/

Papermaking Workshop

duPont Gallery

December 7, 12- 3 pm

Artist’s Talk

December 7, 4pm

Melchers Hall, Room 107

The exhibition brings together several series of artwork by Andrew Kozlowski that consider objects and their collective impact on our histories, both personal and public. 

The exhibition will feature “Trophy Room” a new site specific piece created for the duPont gallery using wheat pasted and laser cut screen-prints. The structure, a cross between a cabinet of curiosity and a bomb shelter shelving unit, will display objects culled from numerous stories. Some objects are benign: soda cans and beer bottles found in parking lots, bits of rocks and broken boards. Some reflect distant histories: artifacts of a Roman shipwreck, Navajo and Hopi vases, stone tools found in Florida from 20,000 years ago.  And others are from more recent events: the gun that killed Trayvon Martin, a can of tear gas from a riot in Mexico, a baseball cap from a presidential hopeful.  All together this collection reflects on the impossible clash of histories and moments that populate one’s newsfeed on a daily basis.  Here, despite their organized display they lack a reliable provenance, relying solely on the viewer’s own sense of history and memory to animate them. According to Kozlowski, “I find the provenance of the objects we hold in our hands a fascinating reminder that history has always been constructed from what has survived, through careful planning, accidental circumstance, or willful evolution.  Through my work I carve a wide path of questions, calling to question those objects that ultimately define our cultures and our histories.”

The attentive viewer will be able to see objects wandering from series to series, being repeated, mutated, and changed.  All the works in “Trophy Room” seek to ask a question, given all these things in the world, what do you hold dear, find important, and why?

About the Artist

Andrew Kozlowski received his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from VCU in 2007 and his BFA in printmaking from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in 2003. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, with solo exhibitions at 1708 Gallery in Richmond VA, the Philadelphia Print Center, Philadelphia PA, Spring Hill College in Mobile AL, Mary Baldwin College in Staunton VA and Studio 23 in Richmond VA.  In 2009 he completed a residency at the Frans Masereel Center in Belgium and was awarded 2011-2012 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship for his work in printmaking.  He is currently an assistant professor at Auburn University.

Ridderhof Martin Gallery

Wednesday, April 20th 7-8:30pm

The media works screened accompany the exhibition, Video: Shedding the Utopian Moment, held in the Ridderhof Martin Gallery.

The works that will be screened are Damnation of Faust Trilogy (video, 1983-1987) by Dara Birnbaum and Mayhem (film, 1987) by Abigail Child.

Ridderhof Martin Gallery

Thursday, January 14, 4-5pm

Mid Atlantic New Painting 2016 is juried by Lauren Ross. Ross is curator of the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has served as the Nancy E. Meinig Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma and she was Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Curator and Director of Arts Programs at Friends of the High Line in New York City. The University of Mary Washington Galleries is honored to have Ross as the Juror for our 2016 Mid-Atlantic New Painting Exhibition.