December 2011

Some Exhibits That Are Still On View

Our policy at Carolina Arts is to present a press release about an exhibit only once and then go on, but many major exhibits are on view for months. This is our effort to remind you of some of them.

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro is presenting the exhibit, Persona: A Body in Parts, which examines the human body as a plastic surrogate form from which multiple and complex identities can be defined, on view at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, through Dec. 11, 2011.

The exhibition includes new work by Carter (New York), a series of new Soundsuit sculptures by Nick Cave (Chicago), recent large-scale photographs by Nikki S. Lee (Seoul), Barbara Probst (New York/Berlin) and Gillian Wearing (London), as well as a newly commissioned sculpture/performance work by Kate Gilmore (New York).

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 336/334-5770 or visit (http://weatherspoon.uncg.edu/).

CAM Raleigh in Raleigh, NC, is presenting the exhibit, Deep Surface: Contemporary Ornament and Pattern, the first major exhibition to examine the re-emergence of ornament and pattern over the last 15 years, on view through Jan. 2, 2011.

Deep Surface celebrates its reinvigoration as a communicative, functional, and desirable form of cultural expression, across all of the disciplines of design. CAM Raleigh is a partnership between the community and North Carolina State University’s (NC State) College of Design.

The exhibition comprises six thematic sections and features 72 remarkably inventive works from 42 international designers and artists, including such seminal works as Marcel Wanders’s Knotted Chair, wallpaper by Paul Noble and Vik Muniz for Maharam Digital Projects, and fashions created from reconstructed second-hand clothes by Junky Styling.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the center at 919/513-0946 or visit (http://camraleigh.org/).

The Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum in Myrtle Beach, SC, will present the exhibit, Brimming Tide: Paintings and Drawings by Brian Rutenberg, on view from Sept. 16 through Jan. 3, 2012.

Rutenberg’s paintings are known for brilliant, multilayered surfaces, that give the effect of a mass of crushed jewels, and reflect his passion for the works of Renaissance masters of Europe. But the roots of his art are in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, and the Myrtle Beach native son returns this fall with an exhibition at the Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum. The exhibition, sponsored by The Bellamy Law Firm, comprises 30 oil paintings and drawings representing a span of work from 1998 to 2011.

As a young and aspiring painter, Rutenberg sought to capture a unique representation of the landscape through abstraction. Drawn from his childhood growing up along the South Carolina coast, his early memories continue to be a presence in his painting. Inspired by artists like Gregory Amenoff, Joan Mitchell and Hans Hofmann, Rutenberg executes paintings that embrace spirituality, fascination with color and an obvious love of paint. Although nature continues to be the major theme in his paintings, each of his works presents a fresh a brand new approach and vision.

For further info check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, call 843/238-2510 or visit (www.MyrtleBeachArtMuseum.org).

The McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC, is presenting the exhibit, ELEMENTS, featuring works by Michael Gayk and Carrie M. Becker, on view through Jan. 7, 2012.

Michael Gayk is a metalsmith and digital sculptor working with combinations of hardware and sensory data searching for novel ways to develop 3D form and meaningful context. His current work investigates the relationship between decorative craft and definitions of technological ‘body’.

Carrie M. Becker enjoys experimenting with her sculptural materials. Through the manipulation of fabric as a rather malleable substrate, she finds that it can be sewn, filled, encased in plastic and wax and built up as the need allows. Since she feels more connected to her work when it can address something more than mere formalism, she seeks to identify the created forms as knowns that are somewhat identifiable.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Center at 704/332-5535 or visit (www.mccollcenter.org).

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC, is presenting the exhibit, John Cage: A Circle of Influences, focusing on the amazing life and work of this artist, musician, composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist and amateur mycologist, on view through Jan. 14, 2012.

The exhibition is being held in conjunction with ReVIEWING Black Mountain College 3, a weekend gathering of scholars, performers and artists coming to Asheville to present ideas and perform works related to John Cage, undoubtedly one of the most famous and influential figures associated with Black Mountain College. Cage taught at BMC in the summers of 1948 and 1952 and was in residence the summer of 1953.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 828/350-8484 or visit (www.blackmountaincollege.org).

The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC, is presenting the exhibit, Margarita Cabrera: The Space in Between, on view through Jan. 22, 2012. The exhibition was organized by SECCA, and curated by Steven Matijcio.

Cabrera is a Mexican-American artist, activist and organizer whose objects and activities address timely issues related to border relations, labor practices and immigration. Turning crafts and their manufacture into the vehicle for socio-political consideration, she questions con-temporary applications of post-NAFTA Latin American labor.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Center at 336/725-1904 or visit (www.secca.org).

The NC Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC, will present the exhibit, Rembrandt in America, featuring more than 30 paintings by Rembrandt and explores the intriguing and often controversial history of collecting Rembrandt paintings in America. The exhibit continues through Jan. 22, 2012.

This groundbreaking new exhibition brings together the largest number of authentic Rembrandt paintings from American collections ever before assembled. Organized and presented by the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Rembrandt in America is the first major exhibition to explore how the desire for Rembrandt paintings by American collectors in turn fueled critical connoisseurship and research about the artist’s work.

The exhibition will present more than 30 autograph paintings by the Dutch master on loan from private collections and more than two dozen American art museums. It includes some of his finest masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

For more info check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call 919/839-6262 or visit (www.ncartmuseum.org).

The Mint Museum Uptown in Charlotte, NC, is presenting the exhibit, Sheila Hicks: 50 Years, a comprehensive exhibition marking the first museum retrospective devoted to this pioneering figure, on view through Jan. 29, 2012.

Hicks is an artist who builds with color and thinks with line. From her earliest work created in the late 1950s to the present day, she has crossed the bounds of painting, sculpture, design, drawing, and woven form, and has been a critical force in redefining the domains of contemporary art-making. While challenging the relationship of fine art to commercial art, and studio practice to site-specific commissions, Hicks has, above all, reimagined the profound, vital relationship between artist and artisan.

For more info check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 704/337 -2000 or visit (www.mintmuseum.org).

The Mint Museum Randolph in Charlotte, NC, is presenting the exhibit, Aesthetic Ambitions: Edward Lycett and Brooklyn’s Faience Manufacturing Company, featuring unique examples of American art pottery from the late 1800s, on view in the Bridges & Levine Galleries, through Feb. 26, 2012.
During the 1880s, the Faience Manufacturing Company (1881-1892), of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, earned critical acclaim for producing ornamental wares that introduced a new standard of excellence in American ceramics. These bold and eclectic wares displayed a synthesis of Japanese, Chinese, and Islamic influences characteristic of the Aesthetic Movement style. The firm owed its artistic and commercial success to Edward Lycett (1833-1910), an English china painter who became its artistic director in 1884.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call 704/337-2000 or visit (www.mintmuseum.org).

The NC Museum of History in Raleigh, NC, is presenting the exhibit, The Photography of Lewis Hine: Exposing Child Labor in North Carolina, 1908-1918, on view through Mar. 25, 2012.

In the early 1900s, most child workers in North Carolina textile mills labored 10 to 12 hours, six days a week. They toiled in hot, humid, lint-filled air that triggered respiratory diseases. They endured the deafening roar of textile machinery. They risked serious injury from dangerous, exposed gears and belts. They forfeited a childhood.

In 1908, the National Child Labor Committee hired photographer Lewis Hine to document the horrendous working conditions of young workers across the United States. That same year, he began visiting North Carolina’s textile mills, where about a quarter of all workers were under age 16. Some were as young as 6.

Peering from across a century, many of the children look much older than their actual years. Hine captured the harsh realities of their mill village lives in Cabarrus, Gaston, Lincoln, Rowan and other Tar Heel counties. His compelling photographs range from girls running warping machines in Gastonia to boys covered in lint after long hours as doffers and sweepers in a Hickory mill.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 919/807-7900 or visit (www.ncmuseumofhistory.org).

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA, will continue its collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA), with the exclusive presentation of the major exhibition, Picasso to Warhol: Fourteen Modern Masters, on view through April 29, 2012.

This exhibition will present approximately 100 works of art created by 14 of the most iconic artists from the 20th century: Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Romare Bearden, Louise Bourgeois, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns. Picasso to Warhol will be one of the largest concentrations of modern art masterpieces to ever be exhibited in the southeastern United States.

For further information call the Museum at 404/733-4400 or visit (www.high.org).

The Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City, NC, is presenting, Formed, Fired and Finished: North Carolina Art Pottery, on view through May 12, 2012.

The exhibition features a collection of more than 90 pottery pieces on loan from Dr. Everett James and Dr. Nancy Farmer, of Chapel Hill, NC. Showcasing unusual works by talented potters, it represents the first and largest showing of North Carolina pottery in Eastern North Carolina.

North Carolina’s art pottery tradition traces its lineage to the 1760s when immigrant potters, mostly from England and Germany, settled their families in Central North Carolina, known today as the Seagrove area. Living on remote farms built on rich deposits of clay, the families made pottery for sale and trade. This traditional ceramic ware was used up to the early 20th century when a movement known as Arts and Crafts was sweeping the country. With an eye toward traditional craftsmanship and simple forms, the potters adopted the movement and began converting their traditional pottery forms into stylized shapes with a new palette of glazes.

For further information check our NC Institutional gallery listings, call the Museum at 252/335-0637 or visit (www.museumofthealbemarle.com).

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